Reprise: Christmas Cat

My friend Lewis has been faithful and regular in his appreciation of what I post here. In particular, he has mentioned more than once his enjoyment of a short story I wrote and posted four years ago on Christmas Eve. I happen to like the story, too, and decided to repost it here. I hope y’all enjoy it. And I hope you’re all enjoying a peaceful season as we ease into Christmas Eve tomorrow. 

~ S.K. Orr

Christmas Cat

The damp leaves muffled all sound as Wynn moved down the slope towards the creek. A crow sitting high in a pine called down into the woods, and the sound reminded Wynn of human conversation. It had been a few days.

She’d been there for almost an hour, she told him on the slow climb to her house. Come down to fetch water in plastic milk jugs and slipped on the slick carpet of leaves and hurt her back and leg, and was a bit confused about where she was, but not too cold just yet, so she had lain there and studied on her situation a bit, and then heard Wynn scuffling through the leaves and decided to greet him.

The smell of old potatoes and Vick’s Vapor Rub and damp dust met Wynn’s nose. The house was cold and almost completely dark, and he stood still, trying to see in the faint light, trying to see where to move, trying to see what to do. The old woman moved and Wynn heard a snick as she pulled down on a chain, and a bare light bulb came to life and cast a bleak and shadeless light into the room. Wynn set his pack down by his boot.

Furniture was arranged in a circle in the room, and magazines were piled around each piece. The two couches and the loveseat held stacks and piles of clothing, and a daybed with a rusty white enameled frame supported dishes and canisters and three coffee makers. One smudged rose-colored recliner was empty save for an ancient sleeping cat. Next to the recliner, a tin tv tray held a bread plate, a coaster, and a small remote control. A few feet in front of the recliner was a plastic milk crate with a tiny television perched atop it. On the floor beneath the television sat a display of two conch shells with a bright red crucifix between them, nested on a base of ceramic flowers. A small light bulb was supposed to illuminate the display, but the cord snaking from its back was unplugged from the wall. The Christ figure on the crucifix was elongated, like stretched taffy, and its face was distorted in lean, painted pain.

In the next room was an enormous dining table, heavy laden with plastic milk jugs. Most of them appeared to be filled with water. The woman saw Wynn looking at the table and smiled up at him with all five of her visible teeth, her furrowed face gleaming beneath her purple wool stocking cap.

“If I don’t keep the jugs offa the floor, the ratses eats holes in ‘em, and they leak all over the floor.”

Wynn looked at the floor beneath the table and saw several layers of yellowed newspaper, curling and mildewed. Rat turds speckled the papers. He looked at the woman and slipped his pack from his shoulders.

“I’m Ella Morelock. What’s yore name?”

“Call me Wynn.”

She smiled again. “Okay, Wynn.”

“Did you hurt yourself?”

She shook her head, then removed her old coat and examined it for mud. “Naw. Jist knocked the wind outta me. How come you to be down there by the crick?”

“Looking for a place to camp tonight.”

Ella motioned him to a chair at the table full of jugs. He moved his pack out of the way and pulled out a chair. She stood before her guest, taking in the quality of his clothes, the rough spots on his hands, the length and cut of his hair. Wynn was aware of her close scrutiny, and felt more transparent than at any time since he’d walked out of Texas. Finally, Ella moved to the recliner. She reached down and lifted the sleeping cat by one leg. The animal awoke but made no protest at the disturbance. He hung there, patient and passive, his clean white body marred only by deep black patches on his head, giving him the appearance of having been nosing around in a coal scuttle. Ella laughed and swung the cat into her lap as she dropped into the recliner. The old cat straightaway curled up on her bony legs and prepared to re-enter his nap.

“This is Floyd. He’s nineteen year old. Born right over there in that corner, on a pile of sacks.”

“Nineteen.” Wynn whistled. “That’s an old cat.”

“He’s good comp’ny. Ain’t worth a flip as a ketcher, ‘cos he’s ’bout blind. But he loves me and he keeps my feet warm in the bed in winter. Why you sleep out of doors?”

Wynn leaned forward, watching the cat. “I’m just traveling. Seeing the country.”

Ella watched his face as he watched the cat, and Wynn knew she was measuring him, evaluating him again. She pointed at him. “Headin’ anyplace pertickler?”

“No, ma’am. Just walking.”

“You got a weddin’ band on. Where’s yore wife?”

“Buried in Texas.”

“That why yore walkin’ the country?”

He smiled into her seamed old face. “Seemed to be as good a reason as any.”

“I reckon.” She frowned down at the cat, stroking its clean, white fur. “You kin sleep on the porch tonight if you want.”

Wynn nodded. “I wouldn’t want to put you out, but it looks like rain again, and the shelter of the porch would be nice.”

“You ain’t puttin’ me out. I’ll offer you supper, but I ain’t got much.”

He smiled. “Oh, I don’t eat much. Can I help you fix it?”

Ella stared down at the cat for a long moment, then looked up, her eyes flinty. “Well, might as well be truthful. All I got is two taters and some coffee. Yore welcome to share ‘em with me.”

Wynn sensed the need to be careful, but he spoke with as much nonchalance as he could. “There wouldn’t be a store around here, would there?”

She looked at Wynn with the same hard eyes, but they softened after a moment. She looked away and seemed to be debating with herself. Wynn braced himself to hear her ask him to please leave; he knew she would preserve her emaciated dignity before she would accept help.

But she gestured with a thumb and said, “They’s a fillin’ station about a mile back yonder. Got a little store in it, sellin’ some groceries, pet food, beer. Prices’re high as a cat’s back, though.”

Wynn brightened. “Well, why don’t I go on down there and get us something for supper?” Ella frowned but Wynn held up his hand, interrupting her. “It would be my pleasure. It really would, Miss Ella.”

She liked the “Miss” part, and showed her five teeth again. “How ’bout I walk down there with you? I kin help tote what needs totin’.” She stood and dropped Floyd onto the seat of the recliner, where the cat nestled in and went back to sleep without opening his eyes.

And that was how Wynn found himself walking arm-in-arm with a Appalachian mountain woman in her seventies at twilight on Christmas Eve. They entered the store to the stares of the owner and his cashier, who stopped a conversation in favor of gawking in the blank, graceless way of the descendants of Scots-Irish pioneer settlers.

The store smelled of cigarette smoke, and Wynn remembered that he’d detected the same smell in Ella’s house, though he hadn’t seen any cigarettes or ashtrays. He took a hand basket and moved through the store, guiding Ella with a hand on her lean arm. The old woman flushed and laughed, feeding on the toxic curiosity of the pair behind the counter. As they strolled the narrow aisles, Wynn asked questions in a whisper. Do you like those? That? These? And Ella answered in quiet honesty. Yes. No. Never had any. Don’t care for ‘em. Yep. Nope. Laws, them’s good.

In just a few minutes, Wynn filled the basket. Eggs, lunch meats, milk, bread, canned soup, canned meat, crackers. He set the loaded basket on the counter, smiled at the staring cashier, and took up another empty basket. He walked to where Ella was looking with shy interest at cans of potato chips and bags of fried pork rinds. Following her gaze, Wynn scooped up some of each and basketed them. Ella giggled like the little girl she’d once been.

Wynn paused by the cooler. “Miss Ella, you don’t care for a beer, do you?”

She looked back to make sure the watchers were still watching. They were, and Ella savored in her mind the hours of speculation and gossip this visit would provide for the community. She turned back to Wynn, her voice clear and strong.

“Naw, I think it’s plumb nasty. But I do like a taste of sweet wine.”

Wynn grinned down at her and took a bottle of Boone’s Farm from the cooler and put it in the basket. After a moment’s deliberation, he added a six-pack of Bud Light. Then he prowled some more.

When a third basket was full, they moved to the counter. Ella stood close to Wynn as he reached into his pocket for money. He turned to Ella as the cashier rang up the merchandise.

“What kind of cigarettes do you smoke?” he asked.

She held up her hand. “Oh, no, sir. I don’t need them nasty, expensive thangs.”

He smiled, inclined his head to her. “But if you were to buy some, what would you buy?”

She looked at the owner, a balding rumpled man whose boiled-egg eyes were memorizing every second of this phenomenon. She looked back at Wynn. “Well, when I buy ‘em, I buy them gen’ric ones. The ones what’s got that injun’s head on ‘em.”

Wynn caught the owner’s eye and pointed. “And a carton of those, too, please.” He felt Ella stiffen, then relax. Good girl.

The five plastic bags cut into the fingers of each of his hands, but the burden felt light. Ella walked with care beside him, carrying a bag in each of her own hands.

Back at the house, they unloaded the bags in the cramped kitchen. Then Ella busied herself opening cans and packages, laughing as Wynn did impersonations of the store manager’s facial expressions. Floyd ambled into the kitchen and Wynn reached down to stroke his lean old back. Ella’s eyes glistened as she opened the small sack of Cat Din-R and poured some into the margarine dish that served as Floyd’s supper bowl. Wynn watched the cat take a delicate bite, shake it as if to kill it, then crunch with contentment as he hunched over the bowl. Wynn looked at Ella.

“How about a glass of that wine? I’ll have a beer with you.”

By the time supper was ready, both souls were relaxed and had a slight buzz, though neither would have been able to say whether the shared feeling’s origin was alcohol or companionship, a warmth that complimented the peace between new friends. The loneliness and bleakness of their solitary lives was, for a short time, suspended in the frigid air above the small, decrepit house, away from their hearts, collected griefs on holiday.

Ella cleared one end of the table, shoving water jugs down to the other end. Wynn cracked open another beer, reached over to pour more wine into Ella’s coffee mug, and marveled at the meal as she set it before them. Fried Spam sandwiches and Pringles potato chips and Ramen noodles and Oreo cookies and a jar of sweet gherkins, along with cups of tomato soup and tubes of saltines and Ritz crackers. Slices of Velveeta and summer sausage and a can of Vienna sausages perched on the lid from a Cool-Whip dish. They stared at the food, both smiling.

“You wanna give thanks?” asked Ella, taking her seat.

“I already have,” said Wynn.

Ella laughed with pristine delight, and reached with crooked, arthritic fingers for a potato chip. While she munched, Wynn lifted his eyes to the stained ceiling and said, in simple words, a thank-you to the unseen One Who had brought him to this table. Ella nodded as he prayed, chewing her Pringles.

Later, the dishes were soaking in a plastic pan and the two friends sat in front of Ella’s tiny gas heater, she in her recliner, Wynn cross-legged on the floor with Floyd dozing beside him.

For an hour, they talked. Ella told her story while Wynn listened, and his heart felt bruised as he listened to her mountain cadences and the telling of a life’s record of privation and loss and disappointment and betrayal and grim acceptance. In turn, he told his hostess of his own soft days, of his questioning of a life spent paying lip-service to faith in God, of his frustrated search for answers, of his loss, of his journey, of his willingness to risk comfort for truth. They finally talked themselves out.

“I’ve kept you up too late, Miss Ella.”

She shook her head. “No, you ain’t. But you ’bout got me drunk.” They laughed together, and Floyd stirred slightly, stretching his paws towards the fire.

“I hate you sleepin’ on that cold porch. Yore welcome to bed down here on the couch.”

He looked over at her, loving her and hating the fact that he would be leaving her forever in a short time. He nodded. “The floor right here will be fine, Miss Ella.”

“I’ll see you in the mornin’-time” She stood and bent, picking Floyd up by one leg. The old white cat croaked a soft, rusty meow and flailed just a bit, wanting down. Ella put Floyd back onto the floor. He walked to Wynn, rubbed against the man’s back, and curled up next to him on the floor, his eyes shut tight.

Ella frowned, watching. “Well. Looks like y’all have made friends.” She bent again, this time turning off the gas to the stove. When the flame whuffed out, she stood erect and walked to her bedroom, unaccompanied by her cat for the first time in a long age, and shut the door behind her.

Wynn fetched his pack and took the bedroll from it. He spread the sleeping bag out on the floor near Floyd, then took off his boots and sweater. He tightened his abdominal muscles, gauging his need in that most personal and masculine self-inventory, put his boots back on, crept to the door, opened it, and slipped out into the night. Floyd stepped onto Wynn’s sleeping bag, sniffing and kneading, and then twisted himself into a tight, white comma on the olive-drab fabric.

Wynn moved to the woods across the yard and relieved himself onto a patch of blackberry canes, then zipped up and turned towards the house. His foot hooked around something and he lost his balance, whirling his arms in the cold air, finally falling hard onto the slick leaves that carpeted the cold ground. Wynn looked back to see what had tripped him.

A small cedar, about waist high, among the blackberry canes. Pine needles had blown into a perfect brown collar around the tree’s base. The little tree shimmered in the dim light, vibrating from Wynn’s violent contact with it. Wynn stared and sighed, feeling the cold.

The man stood and brushed himself off, fretting at the wet patches on his knees, shivering in the December air. He moved to the house and eased back up onto the porch. He noticed his forgotten walking stick leaning against the wall-boards, its rawhide strap dark and damp in the air. When he tried it, the door stuck just a bit, but he opened it with deliberate quiet and closed it behind him and turned towards his sleeping bag. Ella was in the doorway of her bedroom, frowning, watching him.

“You all right?”

“Yes, ma’am. Just…just taking a breath of night air.”

She laughed. “G’night, then.” She started to close her door, then turned back to her guest. “Merry Christmas, Wynn.”

He swallowed. “Merry Christmas, Miss Ella.”

She remained in the doorway. “That’s the first time I’ve said that to anyone in a long time.”

He shrugged, trying to smile, trying to be light-hearted. “First Christmas Eve in a long time that I haven’t been able to say it to my wife.” He cleared his throat. “But I’m awful glad I got to say it to you.”

The old woman nodded, her gray head still snugged in the stocking cap. “All right then. G’night.” She closed the door.

No need to zip the sleeping bag; Wynn was much warmer than he had been in several nights sleeping under the sky. Floyd was sprawled on his legs, purring with feeble intensity. After a little while, Wynn heard Ella snoring in her bed, in her dark room, in her thin dreams. The last thing Wynn saw before he closed his eyes was the row of still-glowing ceramic elements in the little gas stove. They looked like the ceiling in a long passage through a gothic cathedral, and the thought made Wynn smile through his pain. He slept.

A few hours later, Wynn came fully awake. The house was cold now. The weight of the old cat between his shins was comforting, and it reminded him of things now lost, things from which he had turned away. His mind had not been quiet, and now he sat and shaped the dreaming thoughts into the structure of a plan. He threw back the flap of his sleeping bag and pulled his legs with care from beneath Floyd’s warm body. Rubbing his face with his warm hands, the man let his eyes adjust to the dark room. After a time, he stood and padded over to the kitchen, where a cardboard box stood, a box into which Ella had emptied all the trash from their Christmas Eve party. Wynn carried the box back to his bedroll and reached to his pack, finding his small battery lantern and turning it on. Floyd opened his eyes slightly and yawned, then stretched, turned in two circles, and burrowed down into the sleeping bag’s folds again.

Wynn felt for his knife, opened it, and reached into the box. He pursed his lips and looked at the cat, his mind searching for a pattern and a meaning, and he turned to his work. Every few minutes he stopped to listen. Each time, after he was sure that he heard Ella’s soft snoring from the other side of her bedroom door, he bent to his work again.

The next morning, Ella awoke with a snort and felt for Floyd; the cat was not on the bed with her. Then she remembered. She threw back her quilts and put on her shoes and sweatshirt and pulled the stocking cap down over her brows, and she opened her door.

She almost fell over Floyd, who was standing at her door, calling to her in his broken old cat-voice. She reached down and picked him up, kissing the top of his black-patched head and whispering to him as he closed his eyes and drank in the affection and the warmth of her grip. Something about the cat was different; something about the house was different. Ella opened her own eyes and looked around the room. The floor was bare; Wynn Laufen had gone.

He was six miles away and singing to himself when Wynn realized that he’d forgotten his walking stick. He had intended to pick it up, but had gotten distracted when he decided to leave a small stack of money on the kitchen table, nestled between two jugs of spring water. I can find another stick, he thought, and continued walking into the sun, singing about how the angels did say.

After boiling some jugged water for coffee, Ella poured Cat Din-R into Floyd’s bowl and decided to smoke her a cigarette. She shook one from the open pack on the table and picked up the box of kitchen matches and went to the front door. Floyd interrupted his breakfast to follow her out and greet the day. On the porch, Ella tucked the cigarette into the corner of her mouth and struck a match, lighting up and taking a deep draw. She waved the match out and tossed it into the frosty grass at the foot of the porch steps. Blowing the smoke out, she squinted across the yard at something.

The little cedar tree was festooned with Wynn’s work. Colorful circles cut from aluminum cans and cardboard boxes and cellophane bags and smoothed foil hung from the thin, spiky branches. He left me a Christmas tree, she thought. And then she looked down at Floyd, and saw for the first time his collar, a collar braided from empty pork rind bags, red and white and shiny.

Christmas cat, she thought, and took another drag of her cigarette.

~ copyright 2019 by S.K. Orr