The Cat's Job (2 page)

"Damn," she said, and her own voice
spooked her, too loud in the brilliant silence.

Careful, careful as she could and then
some, she turned and skated across the dooryard, heading for the
truck.

She was doing all right 'til her
forward foot slid a little too quick, the bad knee gave and she sat
down sudden on ice hard as stone, feeling the jolt from her
tailbone to her head.

It was a comedy skit, then, with her
trying to get upright with nothing close by to hang on to and her
boots everywhichway on the slick. Finally, she gave it up and
scooted the last couple feet to the truck on her can, the beginning
of a breeze tickling her ear. She reached up for the door latch and
didn't quite connect, reason being she was staring at tires fully
encased; the ice sheathing the rubber growing right into the ice
surface of the drive. Three, four inches of ice.

"Need the axe for that work," Agnes
muttered, and her own voice wasn't quite so spooky now, what with
the breeze moving around and pinging off the frozen branches. Not
quite a natural sound, that ping, but better than
silence.

She put her attention on the matter,
got a hand on the latch and hauled herself upright, shoulder
popping and knees complaining. When she was pretty sure her feet
were going to stay where she'd put them, she let go the latch. The
mitten stuck to the ice and mites of wool pulled loose, but the
knit held without raveling.

The breeze had picked up to a
near-wind, burning her ears on the way by, which made her regretful
of the watch cap. Just over her head, the oak groaned and she heard
that ping again, which she thought might be the ice,
cracking.

The truck was in solid: Axe work, sure
enough. She figured to hack out a couple sections of ice, expose
some metal, and let the sun do the rest of the work. There was
plenty food put by, between the freezer and the pantry; plenty wood
for the stove. A drive into town wasn't an urgency, but she didn't
like being without the means to travel, if travel was called
for.

The wind snarled, sudden and winterly;
the oak over her head moaned.

Out in the back wood, some damn fool
fired a gun. Agnes jumped, skidded, threw herself flat against the
truck and managed not to fall. Following the shot was a sound like
a barrel-load of jelly glasses being smashed, and a
thud.

"Tree," Agnes gasped into the cold,
while the wind chewed the tips of her ears. "Tree down." She closed
her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to settle out the tightness
in her chest. She opened her eyes again and looked over to the
barn, which was where the axe would be, hung up on its peg, just
like Jakey'd always done it.

It was then she saw the
cat.

They'd always had cats -- barn cats, that was.
Working
cats, not your tuna-fed layabout the pedigree for
which cost more than Jakey had paid for the farm, back in '48.
There were fewer cats now -- maybe two, maybe three, since Jakey
died and she'd sold off the animals. Still, where there was a barn,
there were mice. And where there were mice, there were
cats.

This cat -- Agnes had seen this cat
around the barn. It had stared at her, like cats stared, about as
friendly as you'd expect. A big gray it was, shaggy as a pony, with
a back as wide as both Agnes' hands put side-by-side. Strong,
upright ears lined in long gray fur, a white muzzle and white feet
the size of snowshoes, with fur growing out between the toes. A
barn cat, like all the others.

Except barn cats didn't march
purposeful across the drive, round golden eyes focused, she would
swear it, on her face.

"Brow-
wow
," the cat announced, as soon as it saw it was seen.
"
Brow
-wow."

Calling to her, Agnes thought, and the
next instant told herself not to be an old fool.

The wind slapped her face with a gust
and she shivered where she stood braced against the truck. "Best
fetch that axe and get on with business," she said and slid a step
away, letting go of her support with caution. Her tail hurt where
she'd sat down sudden, and her knee did, too. She hesitated,
wondering if she might leave the axe work for later, if it was
worthwhile trying to work the latch loose. If she could get the
door wide, get the key in the ignition, she could try rocking the
truck...

"
Brow-wow
!" the cat shouted. "
Move
!"

Move Agnes did, from sheer surprise.
The ice turned her start into a skid, which she fought down to a
slide, then to a skate, heading, by no intention of her own, toward
the cat, or the barn or --

Behind her, a cannon went
off.

Agnes stumbled, pitched forward, flung
her arms out to break the fall and felt the shock in every joint
when she hit. The world slid sideways, roaring. Then came a smash,
a shatter and -- silence.

Belly down on the ice, Agnes took
stock. Nothing broke, she decided, though much was considerably
shook up. After a minute, she undertook to gain her knees, and then
her feet. Twigs tumbled off her back and she dared a look to the
rear.

Overburdened with ice, one of the
biggest limbs of the oak she'd been standing under had let loose.
The truck was stove in; windshield shattered, the glitter of glass
lost among the hard shine of the ice. If she'd've stayed where
she'd been....

She turned back the way she'd been
going, careful. The big gray cat was sitting on the ice, bushy tail
wrapped around white toes, ears perked forward, green-gold eyes
intent on her face.

Agnes stared back. Cats could be
talky, when the mood took them. She couldn't recall ever hearing
one speak out in plain English before, but that didn't count for
nothing. She'd been a twice-a-week regular customer at Halley's
Variety for close to ten years before she heard old Ben Halley
launch a sentence. If barn cats didn't break out into English as a
regular event, it likely just meant they had nothing to
say.

Agnes glanced back over her shoulder,
wincing at the size of the branch across the truck. Her head
would've been stove in along with the cab, if the cat hadn't
decided it was time to speak out. She looked away from the
wreckage; the cat was still sitting on the drive, staring at
her.

"Appreciate the warning," she said,
nodding politely. The cat stared at her a second longer, then
looked aside, and yawned.

Out of the woods came a volley of shots --
onetwothreefourfivesix
! trees dying between one breath and the
next. Agnes shuddered and slid a foot forward, intending to get
into the house and stay there, tending her bruises by the woodstove
until --

Another cannon spoke, which was the
oak at the front corner of the yard dropping a branch the size of a
tanker truck. Encased in ice, the branch fell, hit the power line
leading into the house -- and kept on going. The wire held for a
second against the added weight, ice scattering as it
stretched...and gave way of a sudden at its weakest point, ripping
loose from the power box on the side of the house.

Live wire went down across the drive,
tangled in oak branch, and spitting like a mad cat.

Agnes changed her course, moving
away
from those wires. Electric
could run through ice, same as through wire. She knew that. Jakey'd
worked for the power company a couple years when the farm didn't
bring in enough to satisfy the bank. Jakey'd told her all about
wires and how electric was nobody's friend.

Agnes skittered back, aiming to put
distance between herself and a nasty shock. A stealthy movement
down low drew her eye, which was the cat, belly to the ice, bushy
tail straight behind, all its attention on the spitting, jerking
wire.

Barn cats don't have much fear,
especially not a hearty, Maine-bred cat with furry feet as big as
dinner plates. The cat drew in on itself as Agnes watched, setting
up for the spring --

She swooped, got a handful of neck fur
and an arm around solid animal, teetered and went flat on her can
again, both arms full of fighting, twenty-pound cat, which
commenced to screech, claws deep into Jakey's old barn
coat.

"Stow it, you fool!" Agnes gasped.
"That thing'll kill you!"

The cat went quiet. The claws
withdrew. Arms around the cat's middle, Agnes scooted them backward
along the ice, away from the wire, toward the barn.

Her back hit the wooden entry ramp and
she let the cat go, following its dash into the barn at a more
sedate crawl.

She collapsed just inside the shelter
of the roof, glad of a wooden floor and relief from a wind
determined to turn nasty.

Outside, she heard more shots -- more
trees breaking under the weight of the ice. Sooner or later, a tree
would take down the main line on the road, or a power pole itself
would let go. At which point, she figured it would be safe to go
back across the ice to the house. Meanwhile, she'd be lucky if her
ears weren't frostbit and her tailbone sprained.

"Brow-wow?" The cat, very
soft.

Agnes turned her head and squinted
into the dimness of the barn. The cat was sitting about three feet
further in, pushing a paw against what looked to be a mound of
straw.

"
Brow
-wow," the cat said again, and it was grief Agnes heard in
its voice, no question.

Sure of what she'd see, still she had
to get up on her feet, walk over and look. It was only respectful,
to go and look, and to pay proper condolence.

The dead one was orange and white, not
quite as big as the gray that was using its paw to gently push at
the dead one's shoulder, as if it couldn't quite believe what its
senses must surely tell it.

But you
didn't
believe, she knew, not at first. She remembered finding
Jakey face down in the mud between the barn and the house. She'd
shaken him, yelling his name, took in that he was sick, ran inside
and called the Rescue, telling herself it looked bad, but it wasn't
death -- not dead. Not Jakey.

She swallowed, throat tight, and sat
down on the floor by the cat.

"We wear out and we go," she said,
which was how she'd finally settled the matter to her satisfaction,
months after Jakey's dying. "Those of us who've done our best, we
get to go easy. The ones left behind, we're lonely. But we go on.
Life goes on, until it ends."

"Lone-ly?" The cat's big eyes were on
her face.

"Lonely," Agnes agreed, and then did
something she knew better than, meaning only to offer comfort to an
equal independence, who right now sat in a pain she understood: She
put out a mittened hand to stroke the cat's head.

The cat ducked, shied and bolted into
the depths of the barn, disappearing, like barn cats knew how to
do.

Agnes sighed, took another look at the
dead cat, then went back to her post at the door. The town would be
by in a while to clear the road, is what she figured. Trees down
all over and more falling. Conditions like this, there was bound to
be accidents. Rescue had to get through, and it was the town's part
to keep the way clear.

So, she sat at the door, waiting for
the town plow, or a road crew, or a wire team, and maybe she
drowsed, already used to the sound of cannon and gunfire in the
nearby woods.

What woke her was an unexpected weight
on her outstretched leg. Inspection proved that to be the barn
cat's not inconsiderable head. The cat opened its eyes when she
shifted her leg.

"Lone-ly," it explained and Agnes
sighed.

"I know," she said seriously and the
cat blinked its green-gold eyes, nuzzling its chin down on her knee
-- and was upright in the next second, ears to the fore.

Agnes heard it, too, deep in her gut:
the ground-shaking rumble of heavy machinery.

"Plow's coming," she told the cat, and
hauled herself to her feet.

She took the ramp slow and careful and
went a ways down the drive, wary of the wire, though it wasn't
spitting anymore. The wind was a steady push against her face,
carrying the racket of trees breaking. She gauged the progress of
the town plow by the rumble in her chest, and her hand come up to
flag 'er down the instant the blade cleared the drive.

The plow rolled on another eight feet,
braking, which is no small thing for a piece of machinery the size
of your town snowplow. When it was stopped, the driver climbed down
and walked back.

"Keep back from that wire!" he called
up to her.

"I plan to," Agnes
answered.

He hit the end of the drive, braked
sudden enough to skid, caught himself and stood there, hands in the
pockets of his jacket, taking in the damage. Fella maybe her own
age, watch cap pulled snug over his ears and a salt-pepper beard
keeping the south portion of his face warm.

He studied on the tangle of busted
limb and wire, looked over at the truck, then at the
barn.