The portly man faced him, their round bellies almost touching. “Do you know whoI am? Do you know how many coal minesI own?” he replied.
I yawned. I didn’t know either one of them, not really. They jostled over the newspaper, bumping another drinker and pullinghim into the argument. Three pair of shoes danced beneath the bar: dirty working boots, dull patent slip-ons, and shabby evening shoes with a tattered sole. Fiddlesticks. All this over ink and paper. Eddie turned and sipped his drink in peace, ignoring the row.
“Watch it, you clumsy simpleton!” Mr. Abbott yelled.
I wiggled my whiskers and held back an impending sneeze. The men had stirred the dust on the floor, aggravating my allergies.
“Git back to your table, Abbott, or eat my fist!” the man in boots said. Then he struck the bar. I needed no translation.
Nor did Mr. Abbott. He scurried to his seat, his head low.
Now that the entertainment had ended, I returned to my food search and discovered an object more intriguing—a curve of thick white glass—near the heel of Eddie’s shoe. It had seemingly appeared from nowhere. My heart beat faster, railing against my ribcage.Bump-bump, bump-bump. A regular at drinking establishments, I’d found numerous items over the years. A button engraved with a mouse, a snippet of lace that smelled more like a mouse than the button, and the thumb, just the thumb, mind you, of a fur-lined mitten that tasted more like a mouse than the other two. But I’d never found anything of this sort. It reminded me of a clamshell, but smaller.
I sniffed the item. A sharp odor struck my nose, provoking the chain of sneezes I’d staved off earlier. The scent reminded me of the medicine Sissy occasionally took. In retaliation, I batted the half-sphere along the floorboards where it came to rest against the pair of working boots I’d seen earlier. Their owner wore a short, hip-length coat and a flat cap—a countrified costume. Mr. Shakey’s alcohol must not have been to his liking, for a flask stuck from the pocket of his coat. “The guv’ment’s gonna make the Trans-Allegheny a state one day,” he said to the gentleman who’d won Eddie’s paper.
“It will never happen,” the portly man said. “Not as long as Tyler’s in office.”
“Tyler?” Eddie whispered. He kept his back to the two, half-aware of their conversation, and spoke to himself. “I should like to work for Tyler’s men. I should like to…” He rubbed his face. “Smith said he would appoint me. Promised he would.”
The man in boots didn’t bother with Eddie. “You’ll see,” he said to the portly man. “One day we’ll split. Then there’ll be no more scrapin’ and bowin’ to Virginia.”
“Leave it to a border ruffian to talk politics,” he replied.
The man in boots thumbed his nose. “My politics didn’t bother you before, Mr. Uppity.”
Humans typically followedmister andmiss with a formal name. I’d learned that from Sissy when she called me Miss Cattarina and from Josef when he addressed Eddie as Mister Poe, pronouncing itmeester. Muddy, too, had contributed to my education. Always the proper one, she insisted on calling our neighbors Mister Balderdash and Miss Busybody, though never to their faces. Out of respect, I surmised. At least now I knew the older, fleshier gentleman’s name.
“You think we need a Virginiaand a West of Virginia?” Mr. Uppity huffed. “Not hardly.”
Weary of their jabber, I hit the lopsided ball again. It spun and ricocheted off Eddie’s heel. Then I wiggled my hind end and…pounced! When the object surrendered, I sat back to study its curves. It studied me in return with a sky-colored iris. I thought back to the picture Eddie had showed me in the paper and the word he’d uttered—murder. The rest of the tavern had certainly used up the subject. And while details of the crime hovered beyond my linguistic reach, I knew my toy was connected. If not, some other numskull had lost his eye. Either way, humans were much too cavalier with their body parts.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]
The Three-Eyed Cat
I spent the rest of the evening nesting my glass eye like a hen, worried that the person who lost it might come looking for it with their other eye. I’d never owned such a toy, and I didn’t want to return it. When Eddie had finished “refreshing” himself—he could charm only so many drinks from so many people—the three of us left Shakey House: me, Eddie, and the unblinking pearl. Luckily, no one saw me depart with the prize between my teeth, not even Eddie.
We stood on the sidewalk in front of the shuttered bakery. Though I’d been blessed with a long coat, it withered against the autumn air. Eddie, however, seemed impervious to the cold. He whipped his cloak over his shoulder with a flourish and rubbed his hands together.
“Exquisite evening, Catters,” he said. He took three steps forward and stumbled into a sidewalk sign, righting himself with the aid of a lamppost. “Let’s tour the Schuylkill on our way home.” He hiccupped. “A walk down memory lane?”
Had I not been carrying something in my mouth, I would’ve bit him. That’s where Eddie and I met, on the boat docks near the Schuylkill River. I found him there one evening, his cloak inside out, his boots unlaced, staggering too close to the water’s edge. While I’d seen humans swim before, they usually undertook such irrational activities during daylight and when they had full command of their faculties. Fearing for his safety, I called out to him—a sharp meow to cut through his confusion—and lured him from certain death. Once I’d seen him home, he insisted I stay for dinner. How could I refuse a plate of shad? Two autumns later, Eddie was still in my care, an arrangement that both complicated and enriched my life more than a litter of eight.
I nudged him forward and herded him down Callowhill, switching back and forth across his path to keep him from veering into the street and getting hit by a wayward carriage or breaking his ankle on the cobblestones. At the intersection of Nixon, we passed two girls dressed in striped cotton dresses—a garish print, but terribly in fashion—huddled near a milliner’s door. They were trying without success to lock up for the evening.
“Good evening,” Eddie said to them. He nodded and swayed to the left.
They giggled and rustled their skirts in the moonlight. But when they looked at the bobble between my teeth, they screamed and left in a flounce of fabric. It didn’t help that I’d begun to drip at the mouth. Carrying the object these last few blocks had provoked a salivary response that soaked my chin.
“I assure you, I bathed last week!” he called out. Visibly perplexed by their behavior, he watched them depart. “Strange, Catters. I usually scare”—he hiccupped—“frighten women with my tales, not my appearance. Sissy says I’m quite handsome.”
We voyaged on, Eddie’s sideways gait growing increasingly slanted, until we bumped into husband and wife just this side of the railroad crossing. The man shook his fist and instructed Eddie to “steer clear of the missus.” I thought the misstep might lead to a row, but the wife’s piggish squealing put an end to my concern.
“Your cat!” she cried.
“Yes, my cat,” Eddie said. “What of her? One tail, two ears, four feet.”
The woman wiggled a fat finger at me. “And three…three…” She melted into her husband’s arms in a dead faint, her bonnet fluttering to the sidewalk.
I needed no enticement to leave. I bolted, the eyeball still between my teeth, and dashed along the railroad tracks. North of Coates Street, cobblestone boulevards gave way to the dirt roads of Fairmount, our neighborhood. Split-rail fences divided the land into boxes, some of which had been filled with dozing sheep and the odd cow. Unlike Eddie, I could cut through whichever I liked and did so to reach home well ahead of him. Lamplight spilled from the bottom-floor windows of our brick row house—a lackluster dwelling set apart by green shutters—cheering me immeasurably. My companion arrived shortly after, his cloak flapping about his shoulders. Out of breath, we tumbled through the front door and into the warm kitchen, heated through by a wood stove. The smell of mutton and of brown bread welcomed us.