I say, “Thank you.”
He nods—a series of nods, as if, “Yes, yes, yes,” and then shakes his head the other way as if, “It’s not important.”
I wonder what his name is.
I think to reach out and touch his knee—to say something nice but here comes the doctor, his silver car is parked right across from our wall.
He walks toward us, tramping on flowers. Scattering butterflies. He has a bandage on his hand where Natty scratched him.
“I thought you’d be gone on by now. Or at least gone for help.”
Oh my God, he has Natty’s red leather leash. He’s slapping it against his thigh. Then he hands it to me. “Here’s your leash.”
We’ve been looking and calling ourselves hoarse and he’s had Natty all this time. Or at least he knows where he is. I can just see it, the doctor driving down the road and seeing that red leash and tricking Natty some way. Or, more likely, the leash hooked on a prickly blackbrush.
I grab it and start whipping him with it. He’s not ready. He falls backwards into flowers and I keep on lashing at him.
Long as I’m winning, the old man stands there watching, but when the doctor gets up and hits me one good slap and knocks me over, the old man grabs him from behind and holds him. He’s shorter than the doctor but you can see in his stringy arms, very strong.
I’m thinking: My old man.
The doctor says, “It’s….” (It’s again) “…at the pound back in Wilkerville. Unless it’s dead. They don’t keep them very long.”
I don’t even grab a water bottle. I start running—back down the road.
The doctor yells, “Don’t be dumb.”
We’re maybe only seven or eight miles from town and days and days of walking and pushing my cart have made me strong, too. I run on and on.
Pretty soon the doctor’s car pulls up beside me. Since the top is down, as usual, I see right away the old man is in the car with him. The old man tells me to get in. If he’s there, I guess it’s all right. Though maybe the doctor will see that we both end up stuck in what might as well be the pound for people. The car’s only a two seater. I have to sit on the old man’s lap, his arms around me. It’s a nice place to be.
But then a huge dark cloud comes towards us right down the road. Like a huge, huge dust devil. And it’s full of flowers! And the sound. Here comes the disaster. Finally. I’m actually glad that something’s happening at last. I don’t have Natty to hug, but I do have the old man’s arms around me nice and tight.
The doctor stops the car and starts putting the top up, but at the last minute the disaster veers away, rises, then dissipates in a rain of flowers. Flowers all over us, wet and fragrant.
We’re all out of breath though we haven’t done anything but just sit here. We look at each other… even the doctor. I look into the old man’s black eyes. And turn away fast. I’m thinking: that’s where all his calmness comes from. Down in there somewhere.
Again, I wonder what his name is.
The doctor drives us—much too fast even for the desert—into town.
At the pound they say, “That skinny old marmalade cat? He was an odd one.”
“Well, where is he?”
“He got out. Just today. We don’t know how he did it.”
I always knew he was smarter than most but now I wish he wasn’t. I sit down on the curb.
The old man says it. “Smart cat.” Then, “He’ll come back.”… his slow raspy voice. “They always do.”
It’s a reassuring voice and nice to hear it, but it doesn’t reassure me.
The old man sees that. “He will!”
The doctor says, “It’s a cat, for Heaven’s sake. You’ll be fine without it.”
How dare he? Of course I won’t be fine.
I stand up and attack him again. I land two good blows before anybody can do anything.
But he slaps me down.
“The town wants you in the shelter. You’re a nuisance and an eye sore. Look at yourselves.”
The old man pushes him away and gets punched and falls backwards. That makes me so mad I get up and fight even harder. It doesn’t do any good. I’m on the ground again beside my man.
But there’s a great yowling and howling and here, off the roof of the pound comes an orange ball of claws, down on the doctor’s head. And a terrible racket. I’ve heard cats can do that, but I never actually heard the sound before.
The doctor tries to run away, but you can’t run away from a cat on your head.
He’s around the block and out of sight but we can still hear Natty.
We look at each other again, and this time I let myself look… way down in there.
He nods and then I nod.
He takes my hand. (How strong and calloused both our hands are. Like pieces of sandpaper.)
We sit down and wait for Natty to come back.
“You know there is no safe place,” he says.
And I say, “I know it.”
“And not all disasters are that bad.”
And I say, “I know it.”
Pretty soon Natty comes swaggering back.
We walk to our things, me with Natty on my shoulder.
“Let’s go on.”
“Till we get to a nice green place with a river?”
“And trees.”
“And a hill to be on top of?”
“And a cottage.”
I wonder what his name is.
NINE LIVES TO LIVE
Sharyn McCrumb
Sharyn McCrumb is an award-winning Southern writer, best known for her Appalachian “Ballad” novels set in the North Carolina/Tennessee mountains, including the New York Times best sellers She Walks These Hills and The Rosewood Casket. Her other best-selling novels include The Ballad of Frankie Silver and The Songcatcher. Her most recent novels are The Devil Amongst the Lawyers and Faster Pastor, the latter co-authored with NASCAR driver Adam Edwards. McCrumb was named a “Virginia Woman of History” in 2008 for Achievement in Literature. Other honors include: AWA Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature Award; the Chaffin Award for Southern Literature; the Plattner Award for Short Story; and AWA’s Best Appalachian Novel. She lives and writes near Roanoke, Virginia.
She says: “The inspiration for ‘Nine Lives to Live’ was an elderly, dignified Maine Coon Cat, who belonged to a friend of mine. The expression on that cat’s face suggested that he disapproved of us, that he outranked us, and that he was not amused. So I started wondering who he used to be. (I want to come back as a groundhog. They eat constantly all summer, and when they get fat, they’re cute. Then when the weather turns cold and wet, they crawl into the burrow and go to sleep until it’s warm and sunny outside again. And when they wake up—they’re thin!—People say dolphins are the smartest animals on earth, but groundhogs have things figured out pretty well, if you ask me.)”
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course, Philip Danby had only been joking, but he had said it in a serious tone in order to humor those idiot New Age clients who actually seemed to believe in the stuff. “I want to come back as a cat,” he’d said, smiling facetiously into the candlelight at the Eskeridge dinner table. He had to hold his breath to keep from laughing as the others babbled about reincarnation. The women wanted to come back blonder and thinner, and the men wanted to be everything from Dallas Cowboys to oak trees. Oak trees? And he had to keep a straight face through it all, hoping these dodos would give the firm some business.