Granny made those claims when she was in a good mood. When she was in a rantin' mood she'd rail on about how young people had went to hell, disrespectin' their elders, sneaking away to the fields up to no good, instead of church on a Sunday, and generally behaving in ways Granny would never, as a girl, have thought of—though Florie Mae had heard different about Granny, from her own great aunts and uncles.
The evening light was soft in the big kitchen. Florie Mae rose once, pushing the young ones away, to fill the sheriff's coffee cup. Sheriff Waller said Rebecca hadn't come home from work, told them about the birthday party, that Rebecca's mother had called him, and that Tommie had found her car.
Rebecca'd sometimes been on the wild side, when they were young girls, flirting up the boys. But now she was engaged to Tommie, she wouldn't go playing around. Rebecca had dated Grady Coulter when they was younger, Grady and a couple of his wild friends. But she wouldn't go with any of them now, no more'n she'd go away with dark-haired, wild-dancing Albern Haber or one of Albern's drinking buddies. Rebecca never drank none when they was young, and she hadn't put up with no nonsense from those that was drinking, no matter what the gossips said.
No, Rebecca had her wedding dress all picked out, her Ma had reserved the church and ordered the invitations, and Tommie'd made the down payment to rent that little house at the edge of town. No, Rebecca sure wouldn't run off, she and Tommie were as happy as pigs in slop.
By morning the news was all over Greeley that Rebecca was gone. By the next night when she hadn't come home, everyone was certain that someone had done her harm. Sheriff Waller thought so, he was quiet and sour. The police chief thought so, too, he told James she was likely dead—but how would he know? Greeley's police chief didn't know squat. Sheriff did most of the work, made most all the arrests, and ran the County Jail. Sheriff Waller said after he talked with Rebecca's folks and with her little sister and with Tommie, that he was buck-certain something bad had happened to her. Hearing it straight from the sheriff, Florie Mae was sick, thinking what might have happened to Rebecca.
Ever since they were girls, she and Rebecca and Martha had run together, spent the night together, gone to the movies and skating, riding their bikes up to Cody Creek and Goose Lake, lying in the sun on Carver's dock—McPherson's dock now, since Idola married Rick McPherson and her mama left them the house. Idola was some younger, but summers they'd all run in the same crowd.
This night, after the sheriff left, Granny looked hard at Florie Mae. "If someone's out to harm young girls, missy, you'll stay inside and take care."
"I'm not a young girl, Granny. I'm a woman. With three babies and one on the way."
"All the more reason. And if you're such a growed woman, what you doing out there in the night playing at being a little girl, you and Martha Bliss, setting that fool cat-trap, like two children." Granny looked at her so hard she made Florie Mae blush. "You'll not go out there in the yard in the dark of night, Missy. Not until Sheriff catches whoever done this terrible thing to Rebecca."
"You don't know what's happened to her, Granny. You don't know ..."
But they did know, everyone in Greeley knew Rebecca wouldn't just up and leave. And Tommie near going out of his mind with worry, searching the fields and hills over and over the same ground, his pickup all muddy from driving the back roads, and Tommie harassing the sheriff every day for word of her.
Every evening before dark when Florie Mae went to set the trap, it was the same, Granny scolding, "You won't be going out in the yard after dark, missy. If Martha has any sense she won't, neither. Sometimes I think Martha Bliss don't have the sense God gave a chicken. Traipsing around setting them cat-traps. What makes you think that tomcat's dumb enough to get hisself caught in some big ole wire cage?"
Florie Mae didn't say anything. Maybe more to keep her mind off Rebecca more than anything, she was hard set to catch that tomcat and get him "fixed." It hurt her bad to see her two mouser cats have kittens and more kittens all spring and summer and most of them ended up with James drowning them. Those two Mama cats were fine mousers and ratters, but the poor cats spent half the year nursing kittens, and for what good? Their babies hadn't no future. Not like a human child. Not like her and James's young'uns, that would be fetched up strong and wise and ready to go into the world. Them two cats hardly had time to teach their babies to hunt afore they were taken away, and the mamas coming into season again with the tomcats prowling around. And her sweet cats was some scared of that big brindle tom, except when they was right in heat. Even then, when he got them in the family way he left them wounded and bleeding across the shoulders from his rough riding of them, biting them all blood-hungry pulling the fur and skin right off.
But even given the matter was important to Florie Mae, she took a lot of hassling over that cat trap. When Herald Fremkis came into the store to buy gunnysacks and bailing wire and he saw the big wire trap-cage out back, he near laughed his head off. He shuffled back into the store from the back door carrying his gunnysacks and just a snickerin'. "You plan on catching a bear, Florie Mae?"
Herald was forty, with a big gut, balding hair, and red veins in his face from all the beer he drank. But still he had an eye for the ladies, an eye that made Florie Mae keep her distance. Martha called him a dirty old man. When they were girls and they'd gone up to the lake, sometimes he'd be in a boat fishing and hang around leering at them, hang around the dock looking at them in their bathing suits. Herald's wife kept a tight rein on him. Eldora made him clean up ever' Sunday and go to church proper; but she marched him right home again afterward, not a minute to set on the benches outside the church and visit. And Eldora never would stop for Sunday dinner at the Greeley Steak House where everyone went after church, for fear some woman would lay her hands on Herald or smile the wrong way at him.
The idea of laying a hand on Herald Fremkis made Florie Mae feel unclean. But she had to laugh at Eldora. Because if Eldora wouldn't let Herald take her to the steak house, of a Sunday, she had to go home and cook Sunday dinner her ownself.
Now, as Herald set his gunnysacks on the counter, laughing about Florie Mae's "bear cage," Florie Mae watched him with anger. But she didn't snap back at his bad manners. Herald was, after all, a customer. Though if he made one rude remark about her carrying another baby—even if she really didn't show yet—she thought she'd slam the cash register down on his head.
But Herald took one look at her face, and didn't push his rudeness. "How long James going to be able to get them gunnysacks, Florie Mae? Right proud to be able to buy 'em, ain't been no gunnysacks in these parts since my dad were a boy. Nothing as good for hauling out a deer or carrying a few renegade chickens—or drowning a passel of kittens," he said glancing across at the big cardboard box where Florie Mae's little cat family was all tucked up nice and cozy. She'd used a washing machine box from Luke's Appliance, to make a nice big house for the two mothers and their thirteen kits.
"We'll be gettin' those gunnysacks," Florie Mae told him shortly, "as long as Mrs. Hern in Gilmer County can get the burlap and keeps a sewin' 'em."
Herald grinned and reached over the counter, tousling Florie Mae's head as if she was still a child. "What you going to do with thet trap out back, missy? Your Granny says you aim to trap thet tomcat? Haw haw. What you goin' do with him? You got enough cats right here already to mouse all of Greeley." He poked a toe at the cardboard box where Goldie and Blackie were nursing their kittens, all fifteen cats curled together. Both mother cats glared up at him with eyes like coal fires. If Herald reached a hand in, Florie Mae hoped they'd slash him. If they didn't, she would. She'd heard stories about Herald when he was younger tying a stray dog to the back of a pickup so it was drug to death—well, he wasn't touching her cats.