#14–Hunting the Cat
When I brought the dishes back to Suli, outwardly the atmosphere was calm and cheerful in the carriage house apartment. Sharaf worked on a brochure at the computer. Suli was mending but she got up to run water in the sink. As she washed my plate, she told me she had already planned that I would stay another night.
“There’s plenty of rice and vegetables so we can feed you. If Sharaf will chop up some of the wood in the barn for your stove, we can keep you warm.”
She dished up a lunch of curried vegetables and rice to me as she spoke. Sharaf got up and donned his coat and gloves.
“The weather forecast calls for freezing rain,” he said, “They might be able to reopen the airports tomorrow afternoon, but there’s a shortage of deicer for the planes. You may be with us for several days.”
He laughed. If he was trying for evil laughter, he succeeded. He slammed the door behind him with such force that Suli flinched. We heard him stomping down the stairs and a few minutes later, I saw him heading to a huge modern barn down slope.
“I’m glad you’re here. I don’t know what’s got into him,” said Suli, “He seems convinced that Natalie will never come back, regardless of whether she marries that man or not.”
“Are they especially close? Sometimes with twins…” I wondered if Sharaf had some kind of a premonition.
“Ever since mother died, it’s been Natalie and I who are close. Sharaf’s hand in glove with father, who hardly wastes a word on us girls.”
By the way Suli shrugged, I deduced she was not feeling any closer to her brother than I was to mine. Searching for neutral subjects of conversation, I mentioned seeing the cat.
“Really?” asked Suli, “Natalie saw a black cat hanging around, but I never did. She’d put out cans of tuna, trying to lure it out of hiding.”
“It woke me up and then scrambled down the ivy to run away over the snow. I bet the poor thing is cold.”
“Natalie left some cat food I was supposed to put out for it. Since I thought it was an imaginary cat, I forgot.” She covered her mouth, looking guilty.
“You’ve had enough to do feeding and taking care of me,” I reminded her. “It’ll have caught a mouse out in the barn, or something. Let me finish this and I’ll come with you.”
Our first stop was at the modern barn to ask Sharaf if he had seen the cat and to admire the stack of wood he was making with a chainsaw. He pulled off his safety goggles.
“Cat? Not here.” He smiled. “Natalie used to leave food by the edge of the woods behind the kitchen quarters. If you walk around back there you might find the bowl.”
Since the snow was deep enough to cover the foundations of the vanished kitchen, I didn’t expect to find the bowl, but Suli and I walked over there. With Suli’s help, I could trace the shape of the kitchen and the stockade wall that enclosed it. She pointed to faint depressions in the snow which marked where slave cabins had stood.
“In September of 1862, there was a fire that burned the old stables and the field barns one night.”
“While the slaves were locked in?” I felt sick, wondering what new horror from history was going to be revealed.
She nodded. “Yes, the field hands burned their way out. They broke down the back wall of the stockade and released the kitchen and house slaves.”
“A mass jailbreak,” I said, “But Jenny—she slept in the house, in the little room with the barred door.”
Suli nodded. “She was the only slave left. The others escaped to the Union Army where some of the field hands enlisted to fight for the Union.”
Ironic, I thought. “What happened to Jenny? Did she go free at the end of the war?”
“I don’t know. She isn’t mentioned in any of the plantation records after 1863.”
For most of the rest of that afternoon, Suli and I tramped around, looking for the cat. To make up for her earlier neglect, Suli sprinkled little mounds of dry cat food in every likely spot where a cat could shelter. The temperature soared into the forties and even before the rain started, the snow became a wet blanket that soaked into my sweatpants, making it difficult to lift one foot in front of the other.
Eventually we took refuge on the back porch of the mansion, a practical structure that sheltered the firewood Sharaf had sawed. I found the neat stacks depressing, as if I would never leave this place. Suli said she had to start cooking. She promised to come back to carry more wood upstairs for me.
I put a couple of smaller pieces in my sling and grabbed a thicker chunk to tide me over until then. Trudging up the narrow back staircase, I shuddered as I passed the barred door. Back in the bedroom, I scraped out the ashes and crammed the big chunk of wood in. Striping off my sodden sweatpants and socks, I hung them on the stovepipe to dry. I put on my jeans and my last pair of clean socks.
When I pulled the clothes out of my rolling carryon, I discovered my book in the outside pocket. I sat back on my heels. This morning, I’d moved it off the desk to make room for my computer. When Susan came back, she’d asked about it, but the book fell from our hands.
I’d left it open on the windowsill to a particular passage.
It was now closed up and packed.
I’d been trying to send a message.
So was Susan.
Outside, the sleet began striking with a musical sound, thousands of tiny crystals chiming as they struck the roof, the windows and the snow. The gray afternoon was melting into the darkest of winter nights. The temperature was plummeting like a lead weight tossed over the railing at the Grand Canyon.
I sealed my laptop into its padded sleeve, strapped it within my briefcase and in a gesture of futility, snapped the tiny lock. I knew from past experience that a single blow from a hammer could smash the lock open again. Since I was already wearing most of my wardrobe, my purse fit easily into the rolling carry-on. I made a quick sweep of the room, packing cell phone charger, toothbrush and all the other little incidentals. My cell phone was still in the pocket of my coat. I left it there. After a bit of thought, I took my wallet and put it in the other pocket. I buttoned the flaps over the pockets so nothing would fall out.
I looked at the sweats and socks steaming on the stove pipe. They were expendable. The thought brought me to a crashing halt. What was I thinking? Within me, Susan prodded me into action again. I found myself clutching briefcase and carryon, realizing that if I was running for my life, I couldn’t take them with me. I needed to hide them.
Susan showed me what I needed in the chill dining room: a heavy sideboard, with shelves above and ornate paneled cupboards below. Taking the skeleton key from its hiding place, I opened the cupboard, finding it empty but lined with velvet—obviously the repository of the Winslow liquor collection. Space was going to be tight.
I ripped open the carry-on bag and dumped everything out to put my computer briefcase inside. I had to take off its shoulder strap and remove everything from its outer pockets like my power cord and adapter. I repacked what I could, zipped the carryon shut and collapsed the handle. Tilting it diagonally, I crammed it in, the wheels scratching the velvet. I stuffed my purse and all the other things around it, locked the cupboard and tucked the key in the front pocket of my jeans.
Then I discovered the shoulder strap of the briefcase coiled on the floor like a flat snake.
The compulsion that had ridden me fell away, leaving me like a plane where the pilot has climbed out and pulled the ripcord. I bent to pick up the fallen strap, draping it around my neck. I started to turn back to the cupboard.
