A Peculiar Grace (45 page)

So Hewitt gave little thought to the cat. With the wet of the past couple of days he was just an old cat looking for a warm spot. And Hewitt was in that exquisite thrall when he was overtaken by design—those moments when all the rest fell away and he was only working. He made his way through the series of sketches and measurements,
never needing to move and only marginally aware of the small weight of the cat on his boot.

The final plan he spent a great deal of time over, checking and rechecking his measurements to the point where he could no longer quite make sense of the numbers, which meant he’d taken it as far as he could without the stones themselves. Slowly he emerged from this state of concentration that was near narcotic. He had his hands flat on that final sheet of graph paper as if it might fly away. He looked out the open doors on to the day. Hours had passed. From the far corner of the desk he lifted a cold chisel Timothy Farrell had made many years ago and presented to Hewitt as a gift. Hewitt never had used the chisel on iron, although there was no practical reason not to—he had far older and less well-made tools he used regularly. But the cold chisel was special and so stayed on his makeshift drafting desk as a paperweight.

He thought then of lunch and the afternoon up in the woods. The world at that moment held perfect symmetry.

It was only when he began to move that he felt the weight of the barn cat against his boot. He looked down and saw the cat was not against the side of his boot but over it, the cat stretched out as if wanting to quietly get as close to Hewitt as he could without disturbing him. Stretched so, the cat’s head was down on the floor one side of the boot and his hind legs and tail sprawled from the other side, so his chest, his ribcage under the tattered coat was so visible Hewitt didn’t need to bend to be able to count the ribs. Or to realize the cat was dead.

Hewitt gazed down. Then bent and picked up the dead cat and held it on his lap. The cat was ancient, so old Hewitt wasn’t sure but thought it had already been in the barn as a kitten when his father died. The cat came in the way of country cats—appearing one day and taking claim of the place. Hewitt held the wornout body and knew it didn’t matter when the cat had come—it just seemed he’d always been there. Mostly shy and hidden but then showing up at the
oddest of human moments. And somewhere in the back of his mind Hewitt had always known he was not truly alone, that there was a witness. Not so much a companion but a quiet discreet soul tucked back in some corner of the barn.

Holding him, Hewitt felt he was holding primeval evidence of his own life but also a secret life now, as with all lives passed, lost to time. The cat didn’t even have a name. He was the barn cat.

After a bit Hewitt went out the lower doors of the forge, cradling the body against his chest and mostly out of sight of the house went around to the back of the barn and let himself in. Avoiding the house because this business was between him and the cat and no one else. In the barn he found a burlap feed bag and stuffed a corner deep into his back pocket and got a spade. It was not a question of finding the right spot. The orchard was, for the cat, an extension of the barn—a good place to hunt mice and moles. Hewitt laid the cat on the burlap sacking and dug a good deep hole, the black dirt coming easy and then wrapped the cat and settled him down in the hole. “Catch a mouse, old fella,” he said and with his hands pushed enough dirt back into the hole to cover him and then used the spade to finish the job. Last thing he set the chunk of sod back into place and lightly tamped it with his feet. Then wiped his hands on his jeans and carried the spade back to the barn.

Once back outside he looked around at the day. It was an exquisite day, a fine day to die, he decided. For an old cat a much better one than some frozen winter morning.

He went to the house and washed his hands. The house smelled of laundry soap and the triple lines above the flower gardens were billowing with sheets. The table was set with plates holding thick tuna sandwiches. Glasses of ice water and a bowl of bread and butter pickles.

She said, “I figured if we were going to buck wood we needed a big lunch.”

He sat and ate a pickle. He said, “This is great.”

She was in the heavy boots and work clothes she’d bought when she was working for Roger Bolton. Her gloves lay on the edge of the table.

She took a bite of her sandwich and still chewing said, “Good morning?”

He took his own bite and chewed slowly and swallowed. Then said, “I got something worked out I’ve been stewing over.”

She ate a pickle and drank water and said, “What were you doing up in the apple trees?”

He told her.

She put down her sandwich and said, “Oh, Hewitt.”

“He was an old cat. He’d a good life.”

After a long moment she said, “And you feel like you ignored him most of the time.”

Hewitt stood up, half his sandwich still on his plate. He said, “Don’t be an idiot. He was a barn cat. And he and I watched out for each other. In our own ways. I’m not wanting lectures from you. But in an hour or so, if you want to hike up, I’ll put you to work.” And picked up the remains of his sandwich and stalked from the house.

By the time he saw her walking through the woodlot with a thermos jug, he was feeling pretty good. He’d cut up an ash brought down by an ice and wind storm the winter past, and a rock maple collapsed from the same storm. The ash was solid, its death a result of the tree forking some twenty feet up and once half of the crown went the stress was too great for the rest of the tree. The maple was another matter—standing dead so most of its smaller limbs had long since given way, leaving the huge rough bole topped with thick stubs of limbs. Probably only half the wood was salvageable, the rest punked or rotten. Still and all he had a pretty good-sized pile to split and was ready for the water he’d forgotten in his pique.

He’d saved a thick round of the ash to use as a chopping block and sat on that with his feet and knees spread, his jeans littered with sawdust and oil stains from the chainsaw and watched her approach.
She was dressed for work and silently handed him the thermos and stood watching while he tipped it back and drank, the water so cold he couldn’t drink as quickly as he wanted, the cold almost paralyzing his throat. He capped the jug and said, “Just what I needed. Thanks. Time I get this split up, we’ll have us a load. You can start stacking the small stuff in the spreader, just keep an eye on me and don’t get too close. Some of these buggers, when they split, can send a piece far and fast enough to break an arm or take out an eye. And I’ve got to watch for myself. Okay?”

“Sorry about the cat,” she said.

“Yeah, well. Let’s work a while. It’s taken the piss out of me.”

S
PLITTING WOOD’S A CURIOUS
enterprise. Each round has slightly different properties, so each reacts differently to the axe, and the axeman, after splitting two or three thousand chunks has a pretty good idea of what to expect. Still there are surprises—the greatest danger for himself as well as Jessica being that wild hurtling piece that refused to simply fall into the growing pile around the block. Twice his shins took a sharp rap from such pieces. But mostly the pile grew and from time to time he’d pause to push away the split wood building around his legs and roll close more of the big rounds.

When the splitting was done, they both took a wordless water break. Jessica’s face was red from the work and the golden light fell around them in the woods and mixed with the smell of the freshly opened wood so the silence between them was easy. The beauty of the day needed no comment. With both stacking, the split wood began to fill the spreader fast. They’d almost finished the first load when the incessant beeping of a car horn came up to them. They couldn’t see the farmyard from this spot but the sound clearly came from there.

“What’s that about?” Jessica asked.

“Trouble.” Hewitt was setting the chainsaw and gas can, jug of bar oil and the axe atop the load. Last thing he grabbed up the
thermos. Climbing on to the Farmall he said, “Come on, hop up on the bar behind the seat. Hold on tight.”

She looked up, still on the ground. “I’ll run down. Nobody knows we’re up here.”

“Whoever it is will hear the tractor, you’d let me start it.”

She looked away through the trees toward the sound of the horn, then back at Hewitt. And took off at a serious lope, a good pace for the woods.

Hewitt started the tractor and cursed, “Fucking girl.” The tractor lurched forward and he could only get up into second until he was clear of the woods. He had no idea who would be sounding so persistent an alarm or what for. He’d already scanned the sky and it was free of smoke.

In the upper reach of the pasture the lane improved and he tried third gear but the load was rocking even after he idled down so he dropped into second again. Then cleared the rise of land and could see the farmyard and recognized Priscilla Warren’s red Wagoneer. Pea, as everyone called her after her size, was the rural mail carrier and although it had only occurred a few times over the years he guessed she had a piece of registered mail, something she needed his signature upon. She was trying to save him the slow tractor ride to the post office.

Jessica was bounding through the lower reach of the hayfield and into the yard. She slowed, stopped and walked on. Pea was out of her truck, kneeling over something on the ground. And once again he didn’t know what had come upon them this afternoon but knew it was not good. He saw Jessica suddenly spurt the last fifty feet and also go down on to her knees.

There was no way for him to travel faster. He could’ve shut the tractor down and locked the foot brakes hard and chocked the wheels of the loaded spreader and run himself but it would save little time. So he drove along and pulled around on to level ground near the barn before he shut down the tractor.

Tom lay dead cradled in Jessica’s arms. Jessica bent over the cat, her body a question mark that had lost interest in its answer, a low croon coming from her that was not a cry and not meant to soothe the passing but from some deep pit, a low humming keen. It was not a good day for cats.

Hewitt went down on one knee and placed a hand lightly on Jessica’s shoulder. He looked over at Pea and saw a smear of blood on one hand, blood from Tom’s mouth most likely when she’d picked him up from the road. Hewitt already knew the story. But he patted Jessica’s shoulder twice, his eyes on Pea as he tilted his head and then rose. Together they went around to the other side of her truck.

Hewitt liked Pea. Ten years his senior, the mother of three children whose husband some years ago had left to join a Buddhist monastery in the Catskills. The story was he’d told Pea to hold on, he’d return a better man for all of them. To which Pea responded she’d empty her deer rifle into him next time she saw him and his Masters at the monastery better be prepared to assist him in his vow of poverty with child support, or she’d sue them to the last inch of their tidy nonprofit status.

She said, “I’m sorry as can be about the cat. I was just slowing up toward your mailbox when he broke out the brush and streaked cross right in front of the truck. I didn’t see him but a second but I heard the thump. He was dead before he even knew it.”

“It’s all right, Pea. It happens. Thanks for blowing the horn. It would’ve been harder if we’d just found the cat on the road.”

“I know. She all right?”

“She will be. Thanks, Pea. You already got yourself at least a half hour behind.”

She said, “I never made it to the box. You want your mail?”

He said, “Naw. Just stick it in the box tomorrow.”

She stepped up into the truck and leaned out the window. “Hewitt. Tell her I’m sorry for me.”

* * *

H
E BURIED THE
second cat of the day a few feet away from the first. Jessica silently refused to come, retreating to the house. This time when the hole was dug and the wrapped cat rested, he paused thinking of the short life of the cat, rescued from Emmett’s and teased back to his playful dominating self. A cat to be reckoned with. A lovely cat.

When he came back around the barn from the orchard the door-yard was empty. As he stood the front screen door popped open and Jessica was outside, running. Coming toward him. Her face a clamor of anxiety and terror spilling up and across it. She ran past him out the driveway on to the road. He followed and stood watching as she fell to hands and knees working up one side of the road and down the other. She was pushing deep into the brush and brambles along the roadside and down to the brook on the farm side of the road. Then she’d climb back and go up the road fifteen feet and start all over again.

She was searching for Rufus. He went toward her, pushing his way into a black raspberry thicket, ducked low toward her agitated stream of kittykittykittykittykitty the rapid chanting a lament.

They worked together both sides of the road a quarter mile up from the driveway and then walked down and did the same the other side of the drive. When they abandoned the roadside search and walked back up the road in the fast drooping afternoon, he said, “We’ll drive up to Emmett’s. Could be they were trying to go back there.”

Jessica was silent. In the driveway Hewitt got behind the wheel of the VW and she slid into the passenger side. Backing around, Hewitt told himself fuck the law, he was the one in shape to drive.

There was not much to be found or seen at the Kirby place. The house was wrapped with yellow police tape and someone had covered all the ground floor doors and windows with plywood sheeting. Together they made a slow circuit of the house calling quietly for the cat. But there was nothing. Except the abyss of Emmett Kirby.

He drove them home. She asked nothing and he said nothing. He only prayed Rufus would return from wherever he was hiding.

He pulled into the driveway and parked by the barn. Jessica sat looking out the window on her side, drifting deep within. And he thought I’ll follow until I hear the crack and then do my best to jump down and be there to catch her, to break her fall.

Jessica trailing, they went through the dusk to the house, darker inside than out. Hewitt turned on lights in the kitchen and continued through the pantry and office and up the stairs and through all the upper rooms, even the spare bedrooms, lighting them up, leaving the doors open. He was heading toward the top of the stairs when he heard a small choked-off scream from below and went at dangerous speed down the stairs into the living room, dark still until as he passed it his hand hit the overhead switch. Jessica was on the couch, Rufus held tight to her chest.