Rama the Gypsy Cat (6 page)

T
HE PEDDLER’S WAGON WAS
quite different from the gypsy woman’s. Her wagon had been filled with a hodgepodge of things collected through the years. When she wanted to find something, she often had to search the whole wagon, tossing garments from the trunk, muttering to herself: “Where? Where? Where?”

When her search was rewarded, she was as joyous as a prospector with newly found gold. “Ah, at last!” she would cry. “My red beads! See, Rama, see how they sparkle! They are more beautiful than I remembered.” And without bothering to put any of the displaced objects away, she would go out to share her find with the other gypsies: “Remember the red beads I searched for? Look! I have found them.” And she would take a turn about the fire, dancing like a girl while the others laughed.

The peddler’s wagon was a marvel of orderliness. When a housewife asked for a spool of yellow thread, he knew exactly where it could be found, and although he had maybe two calls a year for a china-head doll, he knew that the tiny dolls were wrapped in browning tissue paper in the bottom drawer of a small pine chest. In all his years he had never been unable to find something he wanted. His clothes, his whole appearance reflected the same orderly habits as his wagon did.

Rama now fell into a new routine. During the day he remained in the wagon, sleeping on the coat. And during the night, while the peddler slept beside his wagon or in a barn if one were available, Rama cautiously roamed the countryside. His feet healed, and because the peddler was generous, Rama grew fat and sleek again.

The peddler’s wagon zigzagged back and forth across the country from one house to another, and at each stop the peddler asked, “Anybody around here lost a cat?” And each time he felt a certain relief when the answer came back, “No.”

Several times families offered to give the cat a home, but always the peddler refused. “No,” he would say, “that cat belongs to someone, and more than likely I’ll find out who it is.” As the days passed, he found himself hoping he would not find the cat’s owner. Rama was company on his long rides.

Once, in his earlier days, the peddler had had a large gray dog that ran beside his wagon wherever he went. He called him Wolf, and the dog had become a favorite with his customers, even allowing the children to roll and climb over him as he slept.

Wolf had died five years ago this spring. The peddler remembered it well. One moment Wolf had been trotting by the wagon and the next he had dropped to the ground with a moan. By the time the peddler got to him—and he had leaped from his seat at once—Wolf was dead.

The peddler had missed Wolf in the years that followed, and although he had been offered other dogs, he always shook his head. “There’s no dog could take Wolf’s place,” he said. And, indeed, the fat puppies offered him seemed poor substitutes for a fine manly dog like Wolf, who could trot as well as a horse, could sit quietly for as long as he was bidden, and would come, when the peddler was low in spirits, and put his nose in the peddler’s hand.

But a cat was different, the peddler told himself. The cat would never be a companion in the way that Wolf had been. No strong bonds of loyalty would tie them together. Their arrangement was almost one of convenience. Even so, the peddler began to find more and more pleasure in the cat’s presence.

“Whatever do you want with a cat?” the Widow Bowman asked the peddler when he stopped at her cabin one evening.

“The cat listens to me,” the peddler answered with a smile.

“Now, Peddler,” the widow said, winking slyly, “you don’t have to have no cat to talk to. There’s women around who’d like nothing better than the sound of your voice. Why, I could name you one.”

The peddler laughed but he did not ask for the name. Instead he said quickly, “And how’s that fine daughter of yours, Widow Bowman?”

“Rebecca!” the woman called. “If she know’d you was here, Peddler, she’d be out here. Oh, Rebecca!”

A young girl, stout and red of face like her mother, ran into the clearing.

“Come here, Rebecca, here’s the peddler and look what he’s got—a kitty.”

The girl ran to the wagon and caught Rama up in her firm arms. Rama, knowing his struggles for freedom would be of no avail against that tight grip, remained motionless, his eyes wide and alert.

“Oh, Peddler, let me have him, please, Peddler. Oh, Mama, ain’t he just the prettiest thing? Look at his sweet little face.”

Rama, eyes wide, almost black in the late afternoon shadows, waited tensely for a chance to escape.

“Can I have him, Peddler? Please! Oh, kitty wants to stay with me, don’t you, kitty?”

“Miss Rebecca, I. ...”

“Please, Peddler, please—please—please,” she interrupted. She clutched Rama to her and swung around, her feet turning briskly on the dusty ground.

“The girl’s mightily took up with the cat,” Widow Bowman said. “How come you both don’t stay?”

The peddler shook his head quickly. “I appreciate that, Ma’am, but we got to be on our way—me and the cat. I got some piece goods that Mrs. Hawkins up the way is going to be wanting.”

“Well, you’ll stay the night, won’t you?”

“Not this time, Ma’am.”

“But you always do.” She pouted. “Anyway, my boy’ll be home before long and he’ll be wanting to see you. He always says there ain’t nobody he enjoys seeing much as he does the peddler.”

“Now, that’s right kind of him,” the peddler said with a smile, “only we do have to be on our way.”

“You ain’t taking the cat,” Rebecca said, turning her back to the peddler.

“Now, Miss Rebecca, nothing I’d like better than to see you have a pretty little cat of your own, only my way would be mighty lonely without that one.” He realized as he said the words that it was true. He
would
be lonely without the cat.

She remained with her back to him.

“Miss Rebecca!”

“Oh, all right. Here. Take your old cat!” She came toward the peddler and held out Rama. Now Rama knew freedom was near, and he sprang from her arms to the wagon seat and then back into the darkened wagon.

The peddler, almost as quickly, climbed up on the wagon seat. “Well, goodbye to you, Widow Bowman, Miss Rebecca.”

“You sure you won’t stay the night now, Peddler? There’s nice clean hay in the barn.”

“No’m, not this trip.” The peddler drove away quickly and did not slow the wagon until the Widow Bowman’s house was far behind. Then he leaned back and said to Rama, “Nor any other trip, friend.” He liked his solitary life. The lonely countryside gave him a sense of freedom that he found nowhere else.

“Too-rah-lie-oh!” he sang.

Slowly, seemingly without direction, although the peddler’s route was carefully planned, they made their way to the north.

“We’ll swing west soon,” the peddler told Rama, “and maybe you’ll get to see a jack rabbit bigger than you. How would you like that, Gyps?”

“Miaow.”

“You really would like it, huh?”

“Miaow.” Rama licked his bib and settled comfortably on the coat in the corner of the wagon.

O
NE NIGHT AT DUSK,
just before the peddler was to turn his wagon west, they made camp beside the river. It was a lovely spring evening. The moon was full and bright, the breeze was easy, and the grass beneath them was beginning to have the softness of new life.

But Rama was restless. His uneasiness had begun when he had jumped from the wagon and had heard from across the river the long, low mooing of a cow. He had heard this sound often when he was living at the cabin. The cow would moo, and frequently Rama would go and stand at the door to the cow’s shed, drawn by the sound and the pleasant odor of dry grass. Sometimes he would lie there in the morning sun. Now Rama stood by the wagon, waiting to hear the sound again.

He ate with the peddler and then he sat by the peddler’s feet. Always before, on a pretty evening, he would move off on his nightly hunt. But tonight he remained, looking up at the peddler.

“What’s the trouble, Gypsy?” the peddler asked. “Still hungry, are you?”

He offered Rama the remaining piece of meat, but Rama did not take it.

“What’s the trouble, old friend?” the peddler asked again.

Rama did not know. He only sensed that this place was somehow familiar, yet unfamiliar, too. He moved his front paws with a tiny, restless, up-and-down movement that betrayed to the peddler the depth of Rama’s uneasiness.

The peddler stroked him, and Rama responded by rising and rubbing against the peddler’s leg. Yet when he took his hand away, Rama was restless again.

The peddler filled his long pipe and began to puff slowly. He did not smoke often, only when he felt especially content. A satisfactory meal and the lovely evening had made him so tonight. Then, too, the western part of the trip was his favorite, and the anticipation of the long days, the favorable dry weather, the even trail, made him smile with contentment.

He blew a perfect smoke ring in the air and it stayed a moment before it drifted out of shape on the evening breeze.

Rama waited at the peddler’s feet for more attention, but tonight the peddler was lost in his own thoughts. “Too-rah-lie-
oooooh
!” he sang quietly before he drew on his pipe again.

Rama rose and walked toward the river. The moonlight was bright. The river, though higher than usual, was calm and moved unhurriedly between its banks. Rama sat with his front paws close together in the new green grass beneath him.

Beyond, on the opposite bank, the light of a cabin glowed in the trees. It was a faint light and Rama did not see it, but his keen ears heard again the cow mooing in the night. Rama mewed once. It was the long, loud mew he used to give at the cabin door when he wanted to get in. He waited and mewed again.

In the grass at his feet a beetle stirred. Rama looked down. He watched it as it moved awkwardly through the weeds. Then he covered it with his paw. The beetle wriggled free and continued on its way. Again Rama covered it. He felt its movements beneath his paws and he pounced lightly. Shaking his head, he pounced again.

Then, abruptly, as quickly as the game had begun, it was over. Rama turned, yawned, and walked slowly back through the woods. His tail was high, his gait even. Behind him, the beetle scurried through the weeds again.

Rama joined the peddler, who was still lying contentedly before the fire. He sat beside him.

“Still restless, Gypsy?” the peddler asked.

“Miaow,” Rama answered, looking at the peddler with eyes that were pale gold in the firelight.

“Sometimes I am restless, too, friend.” He laid his hand on Rama’s head and moved his thumb over Rama’s forehead. “When I was a young man, I worked two years in my uncle’s store. Two years, friend, and my restlessness was a thing to behold. Like an animal in a cage I was.” He withdrew his hand and began to clean his pipe carefully. “Now I go where I please.” He leaned on one elbow and put his pipe in his pocket. “And now I am not so restless.”

Rama stretched out beside the man, his body curled toward the fire. He watched the flames grow smaller and then he closed his eyes. The rabbits and the night birds were safe, for Rama would not roam the woods. Tonight he felt the need of a human friend.

In the morning the peddler was not surprised to find him gone. Just before dawn, when the cow across the river had begun to moo again, Rama had gone to stand on the riverbank. He had leaped on a fallen tree and crouched there as the first rays of the sun shone on the river.

The peddler put out his fire and went about his usual routine before departing.

“HI—OH, GYPSY,” he called as he hitched the horse to his wagon.

Rama did not move.

“Going west, Gyps!” the peddler called. He stepped up to his seat and took the reins in his hands. “You don’t want to miss that. HEY, GYPSY!”

Rama jumped lightly from the tree and ran to the wagon. He leaped up on the wagon seat. The peddler waited for him to step back into the wagon and settle on the coat, but Rama sat looking straight ahead.

“Too nice a morning for sleeping, friend?” the peddler asked.

“Miaow,” said Rama.

“You over your restlessness?”

“Miaow.”

“That’s good. Can I start up the wagon then?”

Silence.

“I said, Can I start up the wagon?”

Silence. Rama blinked slowly, continued to look straight ahead, and waited.

The peddler leaned down. “Now, Gypsy, we’re going to just sit here all day unless you give me the sign. Tell me, friend, can I start up the wagon?”

“Miaow.”

The peddler threw back his head and laughed. Then he jiggled his reins and set the little wagon in motion. Slowly at first, then gaining speed, the wagon moved away from the river and toward the west.

“Too-rah-lie-
oooooh
!” he sang happily, and Rama licked his bib once, and then looked with alert eyes toward the horizon.

Betsy Byars (b. 1928) is an award-winning author of more than sixty books for children and young adults, including
The Summer of the Swans
(1970), which earned the prestigious Newbery Medal. Byars also received the National Book Award for
The Night Swimmers
(1980) and an Edgar Award for
Wanted . . . Mud Blossom
(1991), among many other accolades. Her books have been translated into nineteen languages and she has fans all over the world.

Byars was born Betsy Cromer in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her father, George, was a manager at a cotton mill and her mother, Nan, was a homemaker. As a child, Betsy showed no strong interest in writing but had a deep love of animals and sense of adventure. She and her friends ran a backyard zoo that starred “trained cicadas,” box turtles, leeches, and other animals they found in nearby woods. She also claims to have ridden the world’s first skateboard, after neighborhood kids took the wheels off a roller skate and nailed them to a plank of wood.

After high school, Byars began studying mathematics at Furman University, but she soon switched to English and transferred to Queens College in Charlotte, where she began writing. She also met Edward Ford Byars, an engineering graduate student from Clemson University, whom she would marry after she graduated in 1950.