Her two mother cats were so close that Florie Mae didn't think either mother knew her own kits. They always dropped their litters the same night, and each cat nursed whichever kits crawled up to her. One would nurse all the kittens while the other went to hunt. Dragging a field mouse out from behind the feed bags or nail bins, either hunter would share her supper—though Florie Mae fed them good, too, from big bags of dry food specially made for mother cats, that James pulled out of stock for her. The whole time Herald was in the store he didn't mention Rebecca, though that was most all anyone in Greeley was talking about. And Herald had sure made eyes at Rebecca, ever' chance he got.
"What you plan to do with them cats this time, Missy? You can't give away kittens. You gone put 'em in a gunnysack and drop 'em in Carter's Pond?" Herald smirked, and stood watching her. "Hope you not turning yourself into another cat lady. You too pretty a little thing to go mental. One daffy female's more'n enough for Greeley."
Florie Mae just looked at him. Herald and his beer-drinking no-good friends laughed at most anything that wasn't just like the way they lived.
Keeps them cats right in the house, they'd say of Martha. Feeds 'em from them little fancy cans. Store-bought food for cats, I've seen her in the A&P loading up on them little cans. And totes ever one of them cats to the town square ever spring fer them free rabies shots. Shuts them cats in a cardboard box and carries 'em over there, as prissy as if she was toting a dish to church supper.
That amused Granny, too, that Martha and a few older women would carry their cats to where the veterinary set up his tent every spring in the square, just about dogwood time, for his free rabies clinic. Granny said maybe it was all right to take your coon-hounds there for a rabies shot. "But a cat? That veterinary ain't doing nothin' but lining his own pockets," the old woman would say darkly.
The Greeley vet made his living on sick cows and horses, but he tried ever year to get folk to pay for fancy shots for their dogs and cats. Tried to get folk to "neuter" them, too. "He draws folk in to get them free rabies shots," Granny said, "then tries to sell 'em all them other fancy shots—and that neutering. What a joke. Tomcats do what tomcats do, it's God's way You can't change God's way.
" 'Course, if a tomcat gets into the chickens, or makes too much noise," Granny said, glancing toward the cupboard, "well then you shoot it." And as for "fixing" the females like the veterinary said, Granny said females were meant to have little ones, that such "fixing" went against God's law.
Florie Mae loved James's Granny, but there were times she had to hold her tongue. It hurt her to see her poor cats carrying two, three litters a year. Hurt her to see the cats' bellies dragging, then them nursing all those kittens, then the poor little kittens give away or dead and the tomcat was on the mamas again. Florie Mae didn't tell anyone, for sure she didn't tell James nor Granny, that she thought cats ought to be loved and happy. She didn't tell anyone she thought cats ought to be happy.
But she knew how it felt to be dragging around heavy with child all the time, and the little ones hanging on her, Lacie June's arms around her leg and the child just a chattering away. Or Bobbie Lee tormenting his little sister so she had to set him down and have a talk with him, the kind of talk where he knew his Mama wouldn't stand no foolishness. She loved her babies fierce, but she was right tired, having 'em all so close together. Never a minute to her ownself, it seemed like.
Well, for sure she did set a store by her young'uns, they was her own flesh and blood, hers and James's. Soon enough they'd be growed big, working in the store a bit and starting to carve out their own lives. And even now, as tired as she was, the minute she was away from them she felt lost.
It was only sometimes that she thought there ought to be more to her own life than making of herself a brood cow. She'd thought some about going on to school in the nighttime, maybe to the trade school for two years, but there was never time for that, with the children.
And oh, James did love his young'uns. Her James was real proud to be starting a fine big family. Working out in the sheds stacking heavy bags of feed or loading customer's trucks, she'd see him glance toward the house where he could hear the children's voices and hear them laughing, and he'd smile.
Well she didn't need to go out to night school to be happy, she did just fine working in the feed store, with Granny there in the back room helping with the babies. Those young'uns was more'n a handful for the spry old woman, playing with their blocks back there in the big kitchen and running their little trucks around, and Lacie June already playing house with the soft dolls Granny made. In between customers Florie Mae could step back into the kitchen and hug Bobbie Lee and Lacie June and wipe their sticky hands and sit down for a minute, with the two hanging on her, and nurse the baby. She could help them with their color books and help Bobbie Lee learn his numbers and his letters. And Granny Lee was there to make the noon dinner and all, to fry up some pork and make beans and cornbread, or fry up a chicken, and always plenty left over for supper, with fresh tomatoes and greens from the garden.
Life would be just about perfect, Florie Mae thought, if Grady Coulter didn't always come nosing 'round the store. If she hadn't to be shut in the store so near Grady ever couple days. Grady knew he did that to her, he saw her blushes and confusion. Grady stopping in to buy a little of this or that, one hank of baling wire, a couple of tomato plants for his ma, he said, and then he'd stand watching her.
Not that Grady did anything, exactly.
And not that he didn't, neither, the way he looked at her.
You want to come in the back, Florie Mae? Show me where them bags of cracked corn are stacked?
No, Grady. You know as well as I do where that corn is stacked.
You want to show me, in the back there, which of them termater plants'll make the best crop, Florie Mae?
No, Grady. You know more about growing tomatoes than I do—or you can ask your ma. She knows all about such matters.
Well, Florie Mae, maybe tonight you'll step out in the back yard there around the sheds, and we can have us a little kiss.
Go on, Grady, get along home. I'm a growed woman with three children and I don't have time for your foolishness.
All right, Florie Mae, he'd say, stepping out the door and looking back at her. All right, but maybe tonight, round after supper time, I'll be out there, waitin'.
Of course he never was, nor did she expect him to be.
But she set the cat-trap early, way before dark fell.
And ever' time after Grady left the store, she had to wrestle with that hot feeling that left her addle-headed and annoyed with herself—and ashamed.
And then if she got busy with the little ones and had to wait until after dark to set the trap, had to sneak out when Granny was upstairs, she'd carry the heavy meat-pounder in her pocket that, if she'd ever hit anyone with it, would leave a waffle grid on their skull. Hurrying out in the dark with her little packet of table scraps for bait, she'd search the shadows for the tomcat. But she'd be lookin' for Grady, too. Or for anyone else who might be hanging around.