He Cared

from before

6.

The best aspect of living half under ground in the dark is that it is cool in the heat of the day.

I had a cat once. I found it as a kitten. It was all black. I had to go south over the highway for glass jars. I had to walk so I wouldn't break em. It was a square flat of 16 ounce jars with lids whapped in plastic.

I had ridden past it days before on my way home from some sketchy work, all the way on the south side. It just sat on the sidewalk along the side of an empty gas station store.

I took the train bridge going over and then split off into the neighborhood. There were wide yards with tall grass and the buildings were quiet. The windows were almost all out.

I'd have heard anything.

The grass was waist high and my feet were getting soaked down in it. I'd take a street home, cuz fuck that.

I got the jars and started walking back. I heard a kitten in the rain gutter of the street I was walking and I stopped to look. A tiny, fluffy, dirty, all black kitten pounced out of the rain gutter toward me as fast as it could, which was comically slow. I was making distance on it at a walking pace. It was crying out. I kept expecting an owl or a crow to light down and take it in its talons, but none ever did.

I walked six or eight blocks down to the place where I'd cross the highway.

There are no cars on the highway, but the sightlines are long. If someone wants to shoot you from far enough away to never be found they can do it down a straight highway thoroughfare from a light pole or a tree or an overpass or a freeway sign truss or the middle of the road with a good telescopic sight. You'd never see it coming.

I got up to the cross street along a bush in the backyard of some late mid-century split level ranch with a second story porch and a square patch of super tall weeds where a garden had clearly been. The frame of the sliding glass door lay twisted half over the railing of the porch and the curtain inside took a little breezy push.

I looked down and the kitten was standing next to my foot, looking out into the intersection. "Fuck you. Are you kidding me?"

I ran out to the median and got down in the middle where the ditch terminated into an iron grate over a cement square with a round hole in the middle, big enough for a man.

The cat came full trot across the road.

A chip of cement and powdered cement came up off the street and the cat spun around flat to the ground and then ran full tilt the rest of the way to where I was in the grass.

They'd missed it, but now we were both compromised. The cat had stopped mewing and was coming up the side of my pants.

I put the flat of jars in the crook of my left arm and drew my pistol looking through the tops of the grass down the road for a puff of smoke from where a rifle had fired seconds ago.

I took too long to look. I couldn’t see any smoke and there were half a dozen concealed elevated possibilities for a crows nest to shoot from.

I thought about it.

There was a sidewalk highway overpass with a box at each end and chain link fence half hooped over the whole length.

I knew where he was.

I fired two rounds at the box on the left end as I looked at it, the box on the side of the road we'd come from and broke into a run.

The little fucker held on til we got to the other side.

I saw the bastard with the rifle sticking his head out of the box after we'd got out of sight. I don't know if I hit him. I dropped a round into the cement box at the end of the sidewalk overpass and then stood and watched to see if he'd get his sight back out to try to find us.

He didn't. I watched for a while. He didn't.

The cat had sat along my shoe looking forward and then up and then forward and moving it's ridiculous tail.

All of it was too small for it's head. It's tail was twiggy and it's limbs were stumpy and its body fit in the ring of my fore finger and thumb.

I picked up my jars and walked the rest of the way home while the sky was starting to darken toward night and the little guy was still with me when I opened the door so I let him in.

When it was grown it got in a fight with a possum.

The possum bit through one of his feet and tore one of his ears and put a round hole through the space between his Achilles tendon and his lower leg bone along the back of one leg.

It was not a good fight for my friend, but he came home and slept. I put my cans by where he slept.

He got up after a couple days and licked a mini ravioli can clean. For the record, I have always loved canned ravioli and am doing fine at my age eating primarily that and pigeons.

I think I slept another two days and then I got up and ate again.

The infections from the possum bites were bad. He healed but he never got better. About a year later he started breaking out in these huge pustules and he died from that. I think it was the possum that killed him.

I don't think she was in the house yet until after the cat was dead and buried.

I meant to tell her about her cat getting into it with the local population. Possums and racoons don't really play.

It seems she didn't either.

Eventually it hurt less. My hearing came back, but I keep my hair short and my ear and the scar down the side of my head made it so everyone looked at me a little longer.

It made my life easier and safer.

I started going out in the day again by the time winter had taken hold of the land and the trees were bare.

I was coming home one morning and I saw smoke coming up out of her chimney and I wondered if she ever thought of me.

I remembered our tea.

I had got rid of the mattress by then.