Everyone else had sacked out for the night. The partying had ended about one or so when the MP's had come around to take the light stands away instead of telling us to turn them off as they had been doing. I had set myself down on top of a bunker between some sandbags so I wouldn't fall off. There was only one guy awake on guard duty in the bunker now that the distant, silent trade of red and green tracers of a night engagement out in the bush had ended a couple of hours ago.
1 - The Cat (L, MV) (P)
The one on watch came out to chase me off but I had about three inches of Jim Beam left and I was going to finish it. He accepted a couple slugs of Beam and left me to it. I tried to review the day's events, but all I could manage was to watch the approaching lightning in the muggy heat and wish for Wyoming winters. I continued to drink until the Beam was gone and then nodded off to the cadence of the distant thunder.
I woke up to a line of gray on the horizon. At first, I thought the gabbling of the cooks and Vietnamese kitchen help must have roused me, but they hadn't come in yet. I sat in the silence for a few minutes and then heard the plopping and shuffling sounds again. They were coming from the mess hall so I decided to wander over and see if I could get one of the cooks to give me something to eat.
I stumbled and fell down the bunker, rolling when I hit the ground. I laid there a moment and then sat up and rolled to my knees. My head kind of ached, but not too bad, so I stood up. Two or three shuffles forward and back and then I could see where I was going. The door to the mess kitchen was ajar so I headed for it. I heard the sounds again, more of a clanking this time, but I couldn't see any lights on inside. I made it to the door and hung onto the frame and peered into the dark. Someone was kneeling at the shelves like they were trying to clean up a mess of some sort.
"You need any help?" I hoped I was speaking plain enough. All they did was growl, damned grouchy bastard I thought. I pushed off the frame, lurched inside, and took a step or two more before I tripped over something. As I fell, whoever it was whirled toward me. I hoped they caught me. I didn't want to get hurt.
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In the back of the darkened kitchen the panther crouched over the pile of goods she had knocked from the shelves in her search for food. As she clawed open the bag of dried meat she had sniffed out at the back of a shelf, the dust from a broken sack of flour made her eyes sting, water and blink uncontrollably and so sticky she could not see anything clearly in the dark. The dust was filtering into her mouth and onto her tongue leaving a thick taste she did not like. At least the dust in her nose masked the smell of the men she had come to hate.
They fired at anything that moved, even each other. In the last moon, they had killed all the quarry in the rubber plantation so there was no more prey. They had killed her mate and driven off all the other of her kind. They had shelled the plantation and she was bruised and had lost her hearing from the explosions. And when she tried to leave she only made to the next plantation before they had somehow managed to run her back into the plantation. She was hungry, but the fighting on the other side of this plantation had driven her to the outer wire of this place during the day. The fighting was still going on, quietly now, stalking killing, the kind she liked to do. But there were too many men over there to go through and here they were asleep, so she had crept through the wire here.
When she reached this place, the day-old smell of meat from inside had overcome her fear of men and she clawed her way inside to find food. So far there had been no real meat she could get to and the frustration was driving her fear and hatred to anger. And now this dust.
She laid her ears back and her long black tail began twitching faster. She closed her eyes completely and when she opened them, the dust seemed to be cleared from them. She turned her head to look out toward the increasing light, the way she'd come in. The shock of seeing the shadow of a man in the light drew a snarl of hate and defiance.
Then the man stepped toward her, but there didn't seem to be any of the guns that men carried. She still couldn't smell anything. Then the man fell and she leaped.
////----////
I was lying in something sticky and cold. My head throbbed and I didn't want to open my eyes. I could feel someone's hot, bad breath on the back of my neck. My stomach was a little queasy and I knew it had to be the champagne. I'd never had any before. Jesus!
I had to get up and get going pretty soon. I had to catch the plane for Frisco if I was going to report in on time for my shipment to Nam. I felt someone nuzzle against my neck, warm at first and then cold as they drew away. Then I remembered, Jess, the black whore I'd picked up last night.
None of the white ones would have anything to do with an Indian. Not even for the sixty bucks I was offering. I hadn't figured she'd stay all night. I was sure I'd paid her already. If I hadn't she probably would have just rummaged my pockets, cleaned me out and left. She must have meant all she had said last night and I felt the tranquility and calm she had talked me into before we fucked and slept.
I managed to roll over on my side enough to run one hand through her hair and try to pull her down to me. She pulled back a little as I reached her and touched her. She was stronger than I had thought. I couldn't pull her down. Maybe she didn't want to take a chance on my going to sleep again.
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The pain in the black cat's hindquarters brought her up short. As the pain faded, she found the breath she'd taken as she jumped had cleared her nose of the dust. She sniffed the man lying under her. The man smell was there, but there were so many other smells it was hard to identify the man smell. Sour, sweet, mud, smoke, and many more buried deep in memory. Some smells came from the man, some were on the man. As she drew closer to the man, the hair and the skin on the back of her neck rose as she made contact with the skin on the back of the man's neck. The strength of the man smell here brought back all the fear and hatred.
Then the man moved, rolled, put up a hand and stroked her neck. She was filled with surprise and then pleasure as the man rubbed at the ache behind her ears. Then the man tried to pull her down and the fear started again and she braced herself. The man quit pulling and ran the hand up her throat to the top of her nose. She drew her lips back as the fingers ran along her gums and teeth. She did not like this. The hatred swelled her muscles, her eyes narrowed, and she dug her claws into the wood under him.
////----////
Her hair had straightened in the night. I hadn't known hair could go straight overnight. I remembered her soft skin and reached over my shoulder to run my hand around her throat and up to her chin. I couldn't seem to get my hand out of her hair, shorter than it had been last night. I ran my fingers along her jaw and the dream changed to the vision of the first time my dad had held me up to feel the bear's head on the den wall. He'd shot it when he was a kid, he'd said. And he had laughed at my giggling and clapping.
I had my hand on the bear's head again. I could feel the teeth and this time the gums were wet and I could feel the warmth of the breath in the mouth and the tensing of the muscles around the jaw.
I heard the scrape of claws on wood and I remembered the look of a puma we had hunted down the summer before I went in the army. He had been treed and as the dogs raged under him, he had stretched and raked the limb he was on with his claws. Even over the belling of the hounds, I could hear the ripping and splitting of the wood. He had shredded the bark down to the white wood, splintering it like the rocks below. He smoothly went higher into the tree as my uncle's rifle leveled at him. I got sick, I mean actually sick, when the rifle cracked and the puma crashed through the branches and crunched on the rocks among the dogs. I hadn't even seen the rending the dogs did to him.
My eyes popped open and I looked into the puma's eyes one last time. I saw then it was a black panther over me. As it raised one paw, I saw the length of the claws, saw how they were blunted from years of use, and realized that I had always thought these things were so rare that the average man never even saw one-let alone got killed by one.
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The cat saw the fear in the man's eyes, smelled it on his breath. She coughed, a grunting cough that had carried and rung through jungle and plantation before these men had come to still it. It carried the authority to rule, the right to rule. Then she tightened in the rush of images as the hatred, fear, and anger charged through her. Then the man relaxed under her, the face changed. She felt the hand move, stroking her neck again, rubbing at the ache behind her ears. Then the man began a rhythmic sound, almost a rumble in the man's chest that she felt as she crouched over him. Slowly the volume increased as the man began mouthing to the same rhythm. The panther was mystified and then began calming as long-ago images were triggered by the sound and the touch. Then memory returned, the man moved his arm around her throat toward the other side of her head.
////----////
The panther was looking me in the eyes. Watching me so close. I was the prey this time and knew it. Fear nearly overwhelmed me. Then the panther gave a hunting cough I had only heard before at night when pulling guard duty and in the bush. I felt the muscles tense and the eyes were clearer and realized the head was pulling back, mouth snarling. I knew what was coming. From somewhere deep in my mind, a place I had shut away, I heard the rhythm of the chant my mother's people, my people, had honored her with when she died years before. I began trying to hum it and as I did, the words came back. A language I thought I had locked away, as much trying to hide from who I am as hiding from the pain of her death.
The panther seemed to quiet, go still. I reached up again and stroked and rubbed at the panther as I had just moments ago. I tried to let it know I knew death was coming and I wanted it to be quick. I started to move my hand to the other side of the black cat's head.
////----////
The returning memories triggered her decision. She closed her jaws on the man's arm. And bit. A controlled bite, just puncturing the skin. Held long enough for her saliva and the blood from her bleeding gums to mix with the man's blood.
She never felt the three rounds from the M-16 rip through her chest.
////----////
I was crying when they pulled me from under the cat. They thought they understood. I had no idea why I felt as if the shots had gone through me.