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CHAPTER III KALI July 15 Sunday mid-morning One is tabby with emerald eyes and a tail that’s long and slender
And into a temper she quickly flies if you ever by chance offend her. Thomas Hood I slept with the skipper for a while, moving up and stretching out across his chest, but all the new noises and smells woke me up before too long. I raised my head and listened to him breathe, contemplating the lean tan face not far from mine. I didn't know much about Sam's past. He didn't talk much about it, to me or anyone else. Once he took me home to meet his parents where they lived in upstate New York, in an area Sam called the Finger Lakes. It was where he grew up, he said. He had rented a car, a little gray Honda, for the trip, and I did not like it one bit. He put me in the car and told me to stay in the seat next to him, but the minute I heard that motor start I made a nose-dive for a spot under his feet. He pulled me out and told me I absolutely could not stay there, but I was just as determined that I would. (It drives me crazy when someone tells me I can't do something; it just makes me more determined). The countryside was racing past us as fast as I could turn my head, which made me nervous anyway, and every once in a while a huge truck would roar by, just about blowing us off the highway. That was just too much. I would make a dash for the floorboard and crouch under his foot, daring him to try and get me out. He would reach under and try to pry me loose, yelling and using those socially unacceptable words of his, while I growled and tried to slap his hand away. Once while we were doing this, the car swerved and made a squealing sound, and before long we heard a strange-sounding whistle - a siren I think it’s called. Sam pulled over onto the side of the road and stopped. "All right, Kali," he said grimly, "if I get a ticket it's coming out of your cat food allowance." A man in a blue uniform asked Sam if he had been drinking. Sam said no, which surprised me because he had a can of Coke sitting right there in plain sight, and I knew he'd had some of it. Sam told the man something about me being under the brake pedal and him not being able to stop when the car in front of us flashed its brake lights. Huh! I could have figured he'd blame me! The man told Sam he was giving him a warning, but he'd better put me in a box. Sam stopped at the next 7-11 store and came out with a cardboard box. He stuffed me in it before I knew what he was doing, and I spent the rest of the trip in there. I was spitting mad, let me tell you, and I let Sam know about it all the way to New York! Finally the car stopped, and through the cardboard walls, I heard Sam's voice. "Hello Mother, Dad. I'm fine, thanks. Yes, I've gotten pretty tan--living on a sailboat does that. No, I'm not hungry right now. I would like to get cleaned up and get Kali out of this box though. My old room upstairs?" I was anxious to get out of that box, but I was also furious with Sam and wanted to teach him a lesson. When he finally pulled the flaps back, I crouched down and refused to move, hissing at him each time he reached his hand down. He finally gave up in exasperation and left me there. I crept out after he was gone and looked around. I had never been in a real house before, and I was quite curious. I investigated thoroughly, climbing up in the window, which overlooked woods and a lake. Then I jumped onto the bed, which was much softer than the berth in the boat, and decided I could grow to like this place. I stretched out and waited for Sam to return. From downstairs I could hear voices, Sam's and what I guessed was his mother's. He was asking something about a brother, and how college was going. They talked for a while; then I heard Sam's voice change. "Mother, don't start on that. I don't want to talk about it." She apparently ignored him, because I heard her telling him he needed to stop living in the past and to get a new life. "She's gone, dead most likely, and you're probably never gonna find out what happened!" She said he couldn't hide on the boat forever. That he should find another nice girl and settle down in a law practice like he went to school for. Sam's voice sounded strange when he answered her. "Maybe I won't find out, but maybe I will. And maybe I won't like what I learn! In the meantime (and I must say this made me rather proud) "Kali and I are managing just fine! I don't need anyone else, and I don't need anyone telling me how to live my life." Later he sort of apologized to her, saying he didn't mean to be rude, but he didn't take back the part about him and me. We stayed for a few days, but I could tell Sam felt uncomfortable, and he seemed relieved when it was time for us to go back to the boat. I'd gotten a few more hints about his past life when every once in a while he'd start rolling around and talking in his sleep, whispering "I'm sorry" and "bastard" and repeating the names Rakes and Marie over and over. But I didn't learn the whole story until much later. I rolled over and stretched, but the Skipper didn’t move, so I hopped up through the starboard porthole and found a spot in the sun to curl up. HARVEY, July 15 Sunday mid-morning Let sleeping dogs lie—Who wants to rouse them? Charles Dickens
When we got home from clamming, Emily stopped and took the newspaper out of the paper box, which sits next to the road beside the creek. We went inside, Emily put the coffee on, and soon the house resonated with what Emily claims is one of her favorite smells (though I personally don't think it compares to dead fish). She poured herself a cup and took a leftover ham biscuit out of the refrigerator for me, then stretched out in the window seat with the newspaper. Emily and I live in a big, fancy house, at least as far as dog houses go. Emily says it's really pretty small, but that's because she's comparing it to human houses. There is a main room, which is where Emily reads the newspaper and eats dinner and does most everything else. A window seat lined with pillows is on one wall, and across from it is a big chair where I like to curl up. In a corner is a wooden table which Emily trimmed with turquoise, red, and purple paint. In another corner is the heater, which turns to a nice hot red ember and warms the room when Emily turns it on in the winter. My bed lies right in front of it. There is a shelf lined with books, another shelf with a stereo and lots of tapes, and on the other side of the room an old, rust colored wooden rocking chair, which I really don't like at all. Whenever my tennis ball goes under there, I have to let Emily get it out. I've been rocked on by that chair before! On one side is a kitchen, which is where my food and water bowls are. There are also an old-fashioned gas stove, a sink, and a refrigerator that makes all kinds of strange noises. Emily says that one day it's gonna just take a gasp and lie down on its side and die, but I don't think there's room in there for it to lie down. Leading off the hall is a little winding stairway, lined with shelves full of more books, that leads to the bedroom upstairs. This is where Emily sleeps. There is a big old bed with an iron headboard, a dresser that Emily painted white with blue trim, and a window on each wall. From one window you can watch the fishing boats as they head out the channel each morning to work their nets, and see big brown pelicans as they soar across the water, searching for their dinner. Another window looks out into the branches of juniper trees, which grow around the house. All kinds and sizes of songbirds hop from limb to limb, twittering about whatever birds like to talk about. A third window looks over Emily's vegetable garden. It's not a very big garden but grows lots of vegetables, which she brings into the house and cooks on her stove. And there’s a great porch that wraps around the front, where Emily likes to sit and swing and I can find a spot of sun and take a nap. It's a pretty cool place to live. It used to be her uncle's, but when he got sick and decided to move to the mainland where there was a hospital close by, he offered it to her. Emily had to scrimp and borrow and spend all her savings to buy it, and I had to switch to a cheaper brand of dog food, but we both think it was worth it. On this day Emily spread the newspaper out in front of her and I slipped up under her left arm, hoping I might get an ear rub or two. Pretty soon it became obvious that her mind was not on the world's news or rubbing my ear. She started twirling a piece of her hair, a sure sign that she was worried. "The more I think about that man," she said, "the madder I get, Harvey. I know I should be happy. I love it here, and I love working on the water. I don't even mind scooping ice cream cones most of the time. (That is her other job besides clamming.) Then some idiot dingbatter comes along and wants to drill big holes in our ocean! He doesn't care about Ocracoke. He doesn't even live here! He says it won't do any harm. Hah! Look what they did to the coast of Louisiana! If he has his way, there won't be any fish or clams when I get old." Emily, unlike me, grew up here at Ocracoke. Her Daddy, so the story goes, was stationed here in the Coast Guard, and when he met Emily's Mom, an island girl, they fell head over heels. Then he got sent down to Georgia, and all of a sudden her Mom finds out that Emily is on the way! So they had a hurry-up wedding and her Dad got a job on one of the ferries at Ocracoke and took to fishing and crabbing on the side. Emily finally gave up on reading the newspaper and pushed me onto the floor. "Well, I'm not going to accomplish anything like this. You go out on your chain while I do some work. I followed her outside, where she hooked me up to my chain. Being tied up is not my favorite thing to do, but I didn't really mind. I can lie in the sun when it is cool or in the shade of the myrtle tree when the sun gets high and it turns hot. I dozed off, lulled by the sound of her singing along to a Patsy Cline tape. Emily is not the best singer in the world. She's always slightly off key, but I like to hear her anyway. As I slept, scenes from the past began to play before my eyes. At first I was romping with my brothers and sisters, running across a yard of green grass and having a wonderful time. Then somehow the dream changed. I was still running, but now I was running across black asphalt, and there was someone in a uniform running after me. He was yelling, and I was not having fun now; I was scared to death! The sound of a kingfisher diving into the creek near where I lay woke me from this nightmare, but soon I dozed off again. I was behind bars now, with the sound of barking dogs all around me. An old man with a goatee was looking over his glasses at me, shaking his head disapprovingly and telling me it served me right. He spoke an incantation in Latin, pointed an ivory-tipped cane at me, and I disintegrated into a pile of black ink. Then I turned into a dog again, but now I was in an old automobile graveyard, and it was pitch dark, and there was a horrible screaming in my ear. The screaming turned into a whistling sound, and suddenly I woke up, realizing that Emily was whistling to me. "Wake up, sleepyhead, you're dreaming again! Don't you want to go to Mom's house with me?" I was glad to get up and out of there. It gives me the willies when I have dreams like that. Emily put some things in her truck, and I hopped in the side door. continues on Tuesday, October 5, 2007    |
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