Exile on Kalamazoo Street (4 page)

T
here were days before Black Kitty appeared in which thick winter clouds hugged a pudgy horizon. Fidgety sparrows clumped together on power lines, or clustered for warmth on bare, bony tree branches. It was so cold it stung to press a finger to a windowpane, even from the inside. January had come wickedly hard and frigid. The street in front of my house—Kalamazoo Street—was submerged beneath a brilliant white coat of snow, and on the first day of the blizzard the snowplows did not dare appear. I saw no one outside at all for hours and the wind whipped the snow furiously. I watched for the sparrows, but they had gone somewhere else and I could not quite imagine where they could go that was any better.

The first of the snowplows appeared skeptically. I could hear it chugging along. Black smoke erupted from its exhaust. I saw two men get out and walk up to where the street lay buried. They wore black rubber boots, thick brown overalls, and hats with flaps like in movies about Russia. Both men were short, squat, and stood with gloved hands on their hips to survey the snow with a perplexed air, as though considering whether to decline this particular order. Then they exchanged a look and climbed back into the yellow snowplow. It carved a path down the street, slowly, sluggishly—a battering ram with a loud chugging motor. One of the men stuck his head out a window to watch the blade cutting. He shook his head and I raised my cup of warm and steamy coffee in salute, but of course he did not look up, had no reason to look up at a window, did not see me or anything but the struggle ahead between metal and frozen water as the icy wind blew back the flaps of his silly hat.

Kalamazoo Street took hours to clear, the snow piled in dirty heaps in front of houses, and the brown and red bricks of the street exposed and clean, like a newly excavated site picked clean by archeologists. But it was still very cold and a glaze of frost soon covered the street. A car slid sideways and was stuck in the only drift that had been left below the curb. I watched the driver, a woman bundled tightly—encased—in a full-length down coat and red knit hat pulled down over her ears as she walked back up the street. She quickly returned with three men equally sealed in thick coats and their heads topped with blue knit caps. They pushed her car out of the drift as the car's exhaust stained the snow the color of charcoal.

At night I watched the clear street from the second-story bedroom window. The moon was almost full and glowed brightly. Across the street from my house, a streetlight flickered into life. I could see the very tall pine tree behind it, and lights warm and glowing in houses along my block, and soon a man in a coat with the hood up trundled along the sidewalk across the street. I could see his breath ejaculating from his mouth, his head was down, and his hands stuffed deeply into the pockets of his coat. I watched him until he disappeared into frigid darkness up the street. I was left looking at the shadowy figure of the pine tree. I wondered absently if the sparrows had burrowed into its dense branches, drawn by the illusion of warmth.

* * *

Another blizzard hit Kalamazoo a few weeks after the first one, but by then I had become quite used to always being in my house and surrounded by snow and having my sister drop off groceries. My life had devolved to watching my limited world from the second-story bedroom window as I drank warm coffee or tea. At first I took many naps and did not feel well at all, but after a while I did feel better, and soon I could tell I didn't need the many naps anymore. I knew that was a sign, a good sign, but of what I was not entirely sure.

After the snow was cleared and piled in tall, dirty clumps once again, I noticed a lean black cat across the street. It picked its way through gaps in the snow and looked for human footprints to walk in, gingerly, across the deeper sections, which the cat did with great care and grace. It would walk around the houses quickly, but always aware and wary. I couldn't imagine where it found shelter during such bad weather, but apparently it did and had managed to survive so far. Food had to be scarce because of the weather, and so after seeing it skulk around for several days, I called my sister to see if she could catch the cat and bring it to me.

I monitored the great cat hunt from my window. My sister was diligent and searched patiently around several houses, looking under cars and into the bare stubs of bushes, and even into the fenced backyards of two houses. But it was quite cold, and even though she was bundled snugly and wore black thick gloves and a sky-blue knit cap pulled down over her ears, I could tell from her movements that she was getting cold and tired. Because it was not a day to drop off any supplies for me, she finally shrugged her shoulders dramatically—knowing I was watching—waved and made a gesture for me to call her. I watched her stomp the snow off her boots before she got into her car and drove away, tiny gray clouds spurting from the exhaust.

* * *

My sister came back on another day after I called and urged her to try and catch the cat again. I'd seen it loitering around the house across the street all morning, sometimes just sitting stoically on the porch steps, where it could feel the few meager rays of sunshine as the sun, very shy, slipped in and out of clouds. The cat seemed uninterested in much of anything at all and appeared unmoved when my sister pulled up and walked slowly toward it with strips of meat from a chicken breast. She placed the morsels on the ground in a spot where there was no snow and retreated a few yards. The cat picked up the scent of the meat and started toward it, but halted, remembering, perhaps, that the choice was between food and the potential of undesirable human contact. But it quickly concluded, I suspected, that there was no choice at all. It chose food—immediate survival—and devoured the meat.

When the cat was done, my sister, who kept cats of her own and understood the timing involved, immediately scooped the cat up with both hands. It twisted and flailed but she had a good grip. Tucking the dark bundle of fur against her side, a bit like a halfback tucking the football securely, she skipped across the street and handed the cat to me while I stood in the open side door of my house. Then she pulled the blue knit cap off her head, as though catching the cat required a victory lap in the form of freeing her long blond hair to tumble out and cascade over her shoulders, strands dancing provocatively in the breeze. Her blue eyes sparkled. She was just two years younger than me, with fifty threatening to soon appear on her horizon, but still she retained girlishness, lightness, in her broad face.

I cradled the cat against my chest with both hands as it squirmed and tried to claw me. But my grip was solid and it could not move much. I looked up and out the door at my sister, who grinned as I struggled to contain the hissing cat. And because again it was not one of the days to drop off supplies, she coaxed her grin into a smile and nodded what I felt was approval of our cat kidnapping. Giving a thumbs up with one hand, she trudged down the driveway to her car. She drove away and only then did I realize how cold the air sweeping in through the door was. Using my elbow, I managed to pull the door closed. I carried the cat up the stairs to the kitchen and released it, laughing as it hit the kitchen floor with all four feet a blur. It slipped on the linoleum and hit a wall before disappearing around a corner. I did not see it again for three hours.

* * *

Where the cat slept at night was a mystery, but I knew it felt most vulnerable when sleeping and had probably already found a secure place in the basement, where there was an old sofa with old blankets piled on it, or in the living room or sitting room, where it could sleep on a chair and still feel safe enough. From downstairs the cat could listen for my footsteps on the stairs long before I could reach it.

Fortunately we had also reached the point where it was aware of what time I generally got up and would slip onto the bed silently, without waking me, just before I naturally woke. And so it was time for a proper name and I named it Black Kitty. When my eyes opened each morning, it would be at my feet, watching.

* * *

A third blizzard came close on the heels of the second one. This time I sat by the bedroom window with the cat on the sill and we both marveled at the heavy flakes. I was used to the snow, and the cat was now outside its jurisdiction, so neither of us had any reason to feel threatened by the storm. As I sipped tea, I unexpectedly thought of James Joyce and “The Dead” and that last paragraph in the story: “Snow was general all over Ireland.” I thought,
I could be in Ireland, or Sweden, or Canada, and it would all seem the same, except for the styles of cars and houses and other cultural artifacts not yet completely covered by snow
.

When the snow stopped, the clouds parted enough for a few weak rays to break through and dance on the snow, which glittered like an immense field of diamonds reflecting light. There was no breeze at all and nothing outside moved. No people ventured out. No cars squirted along the street, and it felt as if I was the only person left on the planet. But that feeling passed. I closed my eyes a moment and soon I felt the cat brush against me and sit with its paws across my legs as I stretched out on the bed.

* * *

Then came the days when I thought about drinking. At first I paced throughout the house deciding—hoping—that exercise would be enough to stave off a relapse, but suspecting I was misjudging the power of exercise. Even as I skipped up and down the stairs—the cat sitting on a living room chair to watch—I began the logistical analysis of what it would take to obtain a drink, or two or three, should exercise and willpower prove inadequate. I began to assess the walking distance, in the snow, to a store, which was not inconsequential, and as I sweated and went up and down the stairs, I grew tired enough finally to sit on a step breathing hard, the cat swirling in and out between my legs. Endorphins were activated. They exploded within me and I felt rather good, and slowly, like dying embers, the thoughts of taking a drink—or two or three—began to fade. Once again I was content to look out the window by the stairs at the snow hiding my driveway.

A period of sleepless nights set in again. I thought I was past all that—liberated from it—and frustrated that I wasn't. I was forced to admit that while the drinking was not happening but the underlying cause was still there, I would be like the cat and nap here and there, but mostly be awake at night and watch what moon there was until it became full. Some nights, little things would stand out, such as the glowing taillights of a car as it crawled along the icy street, or the smaller glow of a cigarette as some hardy soul trudged along the sidewalk.

I did laundry one day with the cat flicking its tail lazily, sitting on the basement stairs where it could keep watch over me while also looking out a basement window at the snow. As I waited on clothes in the washer, I cleaned out a cabinet of odds and ends, thinking that to do so meant accomplishing something, and that accomplishing something might lead to increased self-worth, though I felt I had plenty of worth. Or maybe I was overestimating that. As I rummaged through the cabinet and tossed empty detergent jugs and torn, stained towels, into a trash bag, I found a pint bottle of whiskey that was perhaps a quarter full at most—enough for one stiff drink, or several shots, or just one long pull from the bottle.

I set the bottle on a shelf, tossed the clothes into the dryer, and sat down on a sawhorse left behind by the house's previous owners. I listened to the dryer spinning and stared at the bottle. Once I even got up and picked up the bottle and held it to the naked light bulb dangling from a short cord from the ceiling. I looked at the light filtering through the amber whiskey. I knew how easy it would be to just unscrew the top and down the whiskey in one gulp, but that inclination passed more quickly than I expected, and I sat the bottle down again on the shelf and waited as the clothes spun around and the cat brushed up against my legs.

When the clothes were dry, I carefully folded towels and placed them along with underwear and socks in a basket. The cat jumped onto the dryer and sat watching me, looking down as I folded towels, as if amused at the task. After the basket was full, I looked again at the whiskey bottle on the shelf and tried hard to understand why it could have such a pull on someone, on me. I picked it up and hefted it in my hand. I stared again at the fluid as the light filtered through it. I shook the bottle and put it back on the shelf. I sat on the sawhorse and for a time I simply stared at the bottle as though it might speak and reveal a secret. Then I took it up the stairs and opened the side door. I stared at the bottle one last time and then poured the amber liquid into the snow.

I
t's a truth well understood, if I may borrow loosely from Austen, that bad is often followed by even more bad, an endless sea of bad washing the jetsam and flotsam of your life back on you. I learned that just days after Rev. Mortensen's visit. This time Black Kitty and I were upstairs in the bedroom as I sorted through clothes to keep and discard and making good progress on the discarding side of the equation. Black Kitty's head swiveled sharply when the knocking began. It seemed quite loud and hard, even from upstairs.

From halfway down the stairs, I could see that it was Bennie Amundsen. When the bar had been a constant destination after work—and I had snorkeled in the Whiskey River along with Bennie and other regulars—those times often splashed over into parties at my house and the houses of others. It became a little society of men and women who drank too much to spice up dreary, average lives, and who sometimes checked their morals at the door.

That bar had indeed been a hideaway.

Time at the bar with Bennie and the tribe was like events in a Fitzgerald story—like “Babylon Revisited.” Now I was Charlie Wales at the start of that great story—minus the ritual daily drink.

I sat on the stairs and waited to see if Bennie would just go away, but he knocked hard again, and I concluded that while I had no problem pretending not to be home, he likely knew I was here, and to avoid reality would be to backslide—something I didn't want to do. Black Kitty appeared at my side on the stairs. After rubbing him behind the ears a moment while Bennie knocked some more, I trudged on down and swept the curtain aside. Bennie was lighting a cigarette. I motioned toward the side door. When I got there, the cigarette was dangling obscenely from a corner of his mouth.