Cat Running (13 page)

“Well, do tell.” Mrs. Perkins put her hands on her hips. “You’re a mite of a thing to be in sixth grade. In Zane’s class, you say? Zane’s took quite a likin’ to school here in Brownwood. Don’t want to miss a day. ‘Most like he used to be back in Texas. Used to be right good at his schoolwork back in Texas. Jist like his little brother. Spence always has liked school better’n anythin’. But when we got to Californy Zane got so he wouldn’t even go for a while there. Till we got here to Brownwood.”

When Mrs. Perkins talked about Zane her face changed, lightening the shadows and softening the tight lines around her mouth. She was starting to say something more about him when Sammy started to cough again. Kneeling beside the bed her mother felt her forehead and wrapped the blanket more firmly around her shoulders.

“Don’t you go gettin’ chilled,” she said. “And p’raps you’d best be lyin’ down agin now, ’fore you go gettin’ yourself wore out.”

“I’ve got to be going anyway,” Cat said. “I just came by for a minute to see how Sammy was getting along and—” Suddenly her hands went to her middle, where the bulky sweater was still tied around her waist. There was no use trying to give anything to Sammy now. Just like Zane, Mrs. Perkins would probably refuse to let Sammy keep anything Cat gave her. She looked at Sammy lying on the thin mattress, wrapped in the ragged blanket, and suddenly her lips tightened.

“Mrs. Perkins,” she said, “I brought Sammy a present. I brought it all this way and I’d surely like her to have it.” She had been untying the sweater as she was talking and now she held it out to Sammy’s mother. Mrs. Perkins was frowning as she took the heavy rose-colored sweater in her scarred, work-worn hands. Cat was getting ready to argue, when Sammy said, “Ma?”

Sammy was sitting up again, holding out both arms and smiling. The blanket had fallen off and her arms were bare and very thin. Mrs. Perkins looked at Sammy and then at Cat and there was no anger in her frown, only a kind of patient sadness. Kneeling down beside the bed she pulled the warm sweater over Sammy’s thin arms and down over her smiling face.

It wasn’t until Cat was on her way home, climbing the first slope above Okietown, that she suddenly realized that Mrs. Perkins had accepted not only the present but something else too. Cat was certain she’d slipped up and said
she
or
her
about Sammy at least once or twice, and Mrs. Perkins hadn’t said a thing. And she especially remembered that as she was saying good-bye Mrs. Perkins said, “Thanks agin for the sweater. Jist what Sammy needed in this cold weather. Looks right nice on her too.” Mrs. Perkins had said
her.
Cat was sure of that. So she had also accepted that Cat knew Sammy was a girl.

At the small grove of trees where she’d stood twice before looking down on Okietown, Cat stopped to rest and catch her breath. It was nearly noon now and the sun had broken through a rift in the dark clouds. In the direct sunlight Okietown looked, not brighter, but more distinct, oily blacks gleaming sharply against dirty browns and dull grays.

Now that she knew exactly where it was, Cat could easily pick out the Perkinses’ place with its Studebaker bedroom and open-door flap. Feeling again the damp cold of the interior of the tent, a cold that for some reason seemed even more bone chilling than the outdoor air, Cat shuddered. She was still staring at the tent, seeing in her mind’s eye the stove, the mattresses, and the wet canvas walls, when Mrs. Perkins appeared in the doorway. She was carrying the orange crate and as Cat watched she put it back where it had been just outside the entrance. Then she picked up the geranium and arranged it carefully on the box before she went back into the tent.

As Cat watched from the hillside a narrow ray of sunlight drifted over Okietown. As it passed the Perkinses’ tent it turned the bright spot of orangy-red into a tiny beacon, shining briefly against the dull sameness of its surroundings. But a minute later the clouds closed in again and the geranium in its tin-can planter faded into the shadows. Cat turned and ran for home.

I
T RAINED AGAIN ON
Sunday and Monday and almost every day for the rest of that week. The hills around town were quickly changing from summer gold to winter green. The usual Brownwood winter pattern had begun, green hills, muddy roads, and little trickling creeks turning into rushing torrents. The path beside Brownwood Road had become a series of mud puddles, so that Cat, on her way to school, had to stay on the pavement. No running along the shoulder and certainly no shortcuts over the Three Sisters’ Ridge.

It was that same rainy week that Cat started having long talks with Spence Perkins almost every day. It was getting to be a kind of habit. Every noon hour at about twelve forty-five Cat would leave the playground, or on rainy days her own classroom, to go to the girls’ rest room. And on the way back she’d make a detour down the hall that passed by Mrs. Peters’s third- and fourth-grade room, where Spence Perkins usually sat on the railing during recesses. As soon as she came around the corner Spence would look up from the book he was reading, grin, and say, “Howdy, Cat Kinsey.”

And Cat would say “Howdy, Spence Perkins.”

Most often they began the conversation by talking about Sammy.

Sammy was getting better. On Monday she was allowed out of bed but not yet out of the tent, Spence said.

It was on Wednesday that Cat just happened to ask, “Is your mother still staying home every day with Sammy?”

“Yeah,” Spence said. “My pa too. There ain’t no work to go to, noways. Crops are all done. What didn’t get picked got rotted by the rain. No work around here no more.” Spence ran his hand through his thick, straggly hair and looked up at Cat through narrowed eyes, as if watching for her reaction as he said, “Everybody’s movin’ on in a day or two. The whole camp. Soon as Mr. Otis pays up on Friday. Work ended two, three days ago, but Mr. Otis only pays on Fridays no matter what.”

“Moving on? You mean your family’s going away too?” Cat couldn’t believe it. She felt shocked and hurt, as if she had somehow been betrayed.

Spence shrugged and nodded. “Got to,” he said. “No more work around here.”

“But you can’t,” Cat said. “I mean, you said yourself how much you all like Brownwood School. And how you’re all doing so well here.” Actually, she really had no way of knowing how well Spence and Roddy were doing, but she had noticed how much Zane seemed to have improved in his schoolwork. When he first came to Brownwood he’d been way behind, especially in fractions and decimals, but Miss Albright had given him lots of extra work and lately he seemed to be almost caught up.

Spence shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “But we gotta. You gotta work or you don’t eat. And there jist ain’t no work around here no more.” Then he grinned ruefully. “Tain’t my fault, Cat Kinsey.”

Cat realized then that she’d been glaring. She sighed and shrugged. “I know it!” she said crossly. “But it just doesn’t seem right.”

“Well, we won’t be going right off, like tomorrer, or maybe even next week, like as not. Leastways us Perkinses won’t. Like I tole you, Mr. Otis ain’t paying everybody off till Friday and then my pa’s got to get some tires and a new generator for the Studebaker. And then him and Elmer got to get it runnin’ agin. And that might take ’nother three, four days.”

“Elmer?” Cat asked.

“Yeah. Elmer Davis. Elmer’s a friend of ours who’s right good with engines.”

“My brother’s good with engines too,” Cat said. “He’s been keeping our car running for years, all by himself. My brother likes Studebakers. Does your friend Elmer like Studebakers?”

Spence smiled. “Guess so. Guess right now he’d like anythin’ that would run. He ain’t got no car of his own right now. So he’s goin’ to help Pa get the Studebaker runnin’ an’ then he’s goin’ to hitch a ride with us. Far as we’re goin’, anyways.”

Cat had a momentary mental picture of how that would look. Three grown-ups and four kids plus mattresses, cooking utensils, washboards, and tubs, not to mention oilcan pails, all crowded in, and on top of, one beat-up old car. She’d seen them before—Okies on the road to who knows where. But she hadn’t
known
any of them before.

“Where are you going, for heaven’s sake?” Cat realized her tone of voice still sounded accusing, but she couldn’t seem to help it.

“Not sure for certain. Pa heerd tell that there’s still work in the cotton down near Bakersfield.”

“So you’re just going to start out and go all that way when you don’t even know for sure there’ll be any work when you get there. That sounds pretty dumb to me. And when you get there you’ll probably be all out of money and there won’t be any work after all, most likely.”

Spence nodded. “Most likely,” he said meekly, agreeing with what Cat had said instead of fighting back like Zane surely would have done. She could imagine what Zane would have said if he’d been there—and the
way
he’d have said it with that one-sided curl to his lip and the hateful, teasing eyes. “Humph,” Cat said, and stomped off feeling angry without knowing why. At Spence, somehow, for what he hadn’t said—which didn’t make much sense. And even more at Zane for what he probably would have said if he’d been there. Cat was still imagining what Zane would have said, and the way he would have said it, when she got to the classroom—and there he was sitting on her desk.

Harry Bailey, who was the best artist in the whole school, was drawing on the blackboard, cartoons of Maggie and Jiggs and the Katzenjammer Kids. A bunch of kids were watching, standing around the front of the room or sitting on top of some front-row desks. Cat’s desk was in the front row and the person who was sitting on it was Zane Perkins. Just sitting there on top of
her
desk like it belonged to him. Swinging his bare feet and talking to Eddie Bonner, who was sitting on Janet’s desk, just across the aisle.

Cat sat down at her desk, pulled out her big heavy geography book, and shoved it against Zane’s backside as hard as she could. “Get off my desk, Zane Perkins,” she said.

Zane kind of jumped, but then he turned around slowly and stared at Cat for quite a while before he said, “Well, now. Since yer askin’ me so perlite like, I guess I’ll have to do jist that.”

Everybody laughed. And not like they were laughing at Zane either. Cat opened her geography book and pretended she was reading about the rivers of Mesopotamia, but really she was thinking how disgusting people like Eddie Bonner were. People who started liking somebody—somebody they’d had no use for not too long ago—just because they turned out to be real good at something, like running, for instance.

It wasn’t until the teacher came in and everybody went back to their own seats that Cat began to really think about why she’d been so upset by what Spence had told her. Why should she care what the Perkinses did, anyway? It was none of her business, and after all, the Perkinses didn’t mean anything to her except—except perhaps for Sammy. Cat thought, off and on, about Sammy that whole afternoon, and a lot more at home that evening.

When she sat by her window that night it seemed like Okietown and Sammy were just about all she could think about. It was raining again, a hard, steady downpour that seemed like it was never going to end. Listening to the rustle and rush and spatter and watching the gray ravelings of rain slanting through the light from her window, Cat felt sad and melancholy without knowing exactly why. Usually she liked the rain. Liked listening to its cold gray song while she sat safe and warm behind the windowpane. But tonight was different.

Tonight when she looked out into the wet darkness she kept seeing a pale, thin face. Sammy’s face, wet with tears or rain, floating above a dark huddle of tents and shanties that seemed to be slowly collapsing into an endlessly spreading sea of cold, black mud.

It was still raining on Monday. Cat went to the girls’ rest room early and she was already waiting in the hall when Spence came out of Mrs. Peters’s room.

After they’d both said, “Howdy,” Cat said, “Well, I see you’re still here. How’s the Studebaker coming along?”

Spence shrugged. “Well, they’re workin’ on it. Jist got it all tore up so far. But Elmer thinks they’ll have it back together ’fore long.”

“And running?” Cat asked.

“Well, maybe for a day or two, anyways, if we’re real lucky.” Spence’s twisted grin was brave, Cat thought. Brave to be able to laugh about something so life-or-death important as the old Studebaker was to the Perkinses right now.

“I’ll bet they get it running real soon,” she said. “Cliff says Studebakers are long-lasting cars.”

Spence nodded and his smile became a little less painful. “We got a house now, anyways,” he said. “After the Laytons left we moved into their cabin. Ain’t much of a house but it’s drier and right warm when the stove’s agoin’. Ma thought a warm room to sleep in might help Sammy get over her cough.”

“Is she better?” Cat asked. “Is Sammy better?”

Spence looked at Cat, shrugged, and looked away. Then he turned toward the playground, where rain was still spattering on the blacktop and splashing into the small lakes that had once been sawdust pits.

Ignoring Cat’s question he only said, “Shorely do wish it would stop rainin’.”

T
HAT NIGHT CAT SAT
at her window for a long time. For the first time in what seemed like ages it was a clear, almost cloudless night. The man in a nearly full moon seemed to have a startled expression on his face, as if he were surprised about something. Surprised, maybe, to see that California hadn’t washed completely away after all, and that it had finally come out from behind all those everlasting clouds.

Cat knew
she
was certainly glad to see an end to the rain. Calm, clear nights with lots of moonlight sometimes gave her a hopeful feeling. And right now something, perhaps the moonlight, was making her feel that all sorts of problems could be solved if only people would get to know each other instead of being so suspicious and frightened just because of a few differences. If they’d just get acquainted, for instance, the way she’d gotten to know Sammy and Spence—and Mrs. Perkins too. And Zane? She wasn’t including Zane. At least not very much.