| Dickens had chosen the roof of a
garage upon which to roost. It had a broken weather vane, rusted
away to stillness. Once it'd been fashioned recognizably in
the shape of a bird. There was some small comfort in that. Wooden houses, three stories tall, rose on every side. Windows were alight in the kitchens, and Dickens could hear the sounds of people, their murmurings and laughter. he shuffled his feet on the wooden shingles of the garage roof, scrabbling up one side until he'd reached the spine where he crouched weary almost to death. His purpose flickered in his breast, but the great fatigue he suffered threatened to swamp it altogether. He started sharply, his senses awakened by some warning. Listening with every nerve end as hard as he could seemed to drain the last pitiful shreds of his energy. There was nothing be could identify and he shuddered again to warm himself, settling to the rest be hoped would heal him. The smell of overflowing garbage cans rose sickeningly to his nostrils, but be had no will to move away. The cat was commonplace in appearance, a nondescript orange and white, the markings undistinguished. He showed evidence of a dozen battles fought and won. Scars across his muzzle gave him a look of permanent disdain, and one ear had nearly been chewed off in some old conflict. He was unprepossessing, but he was a survivor and knew the back alleys of his quarter of the town better than the humans who shared them with him. He stalked along, picking his way as delicately as a lady afraid for the cleanliness of her skirts, head raised for the scent of some special treat that may have been thrown out at the end of someone's meal. Suddenly he paused in miid step. There was the odor of a warm living creature, a bird near by. Standing so, stock still, a statue among the shadows, he fancied be could hear its pulse beat. He raised his head, the great yellow eyes blazing and deep. He saw the shape of Dickens crouching darkly against the sky on the spine of the garage roof. The cat moved again, without haste but without any particular attempt to be stealthy. He knew his footfalls couldn't be heard above the low racket of the city. He reconnoitered the field and found his way to a fence that lay beside the low, squat building. He was on top of its slender width in one leap, all four feet well placed like a wire walker in the circus. Dickens shook himself awake. There was danger close. He felt it nearing but couldn't move to fly away. The cat stalked along the fence until it reached the lowest point of the eaves. He shifted his head from side to side, gathered himself close about his hind legs, and launched himself up high. He landed on the roof at Dickens's back, with scarcely a whisper of sound. The cat stepped daintily across the space. Dickens felt the presence behind him, hopped into the air and turned himself around before landing again. The cat struck in the moment, one foreleg reaching out for his prey, claws unsheathed. He stroked the air, trying to capture Dickens, who tumbled away. The clawed paw caught his eye and tore it from its place. Blood streamed down the side of Dickens's head. He saw a terrible scarlet blaze and screamed out in pain. He rolled, flapping and scratching, down the long slope of the roof and fell to the ground. The cat raced along behind him and poised on the edge, peering down with his night probing eyes. Dickens rolled away, finding a space beneath a plank of rotten wood. It was darker still inside the garage. The smell of gasoline clawed at his throat and tiny lungs. But he was safe for the moment. He heard the cat clawing at the hole in the wall. It screamed out in anger. Moments later it cried out again. A window slammed open. There was a shout and the cat fled away.  The telephone rang at our house at nearly three o'clock in the morning. I didn't hear it, but I did hear the hushed but urgent sounds of my father getting dressed in the next room and whispering to my mother that she wasn't to get up. There was no need or no use for her to come to the hospital with him. I got up and went into their bedroom. He turned and saw me standing there and repeated to me in a normal voice that we weren't to come with him. He smiled to reassure me, but it looked weak and tried to slip from his mouth. I think I started to cry then, because the next thing I knew my mother had me in her arms as she lay back on the pillows, treating me like the small boy I thought I no longer was. The next day we went together to join my father at the hospital. He walked toward us down the harsh white hallway, his hair tousled, eyes heavy with lack of sleep, but smiling now in a stronger way. "He's out of the woods. It was another stroke but he's out of the woods," he said. I thought of the time I'd been lost in the woods and wanted to go to my grandfather right away so that I could tell him how brave I knew he'd been. But I did as I was told and went off to sit in a chair in the waiting room when Dr. Sand came in and took my father and mother aside to speak with them. I learned then something of the way in which adult decisions are made. After much thought and discussion, deliberation and analysis, a final crisis comes and all the talk is seen to be no more than hopeful delay. The hope that all the prudent, serious consultation, proof that we are all responsible people while secretly believing that fate won't strike the hammer blow if we at least appear busy addressing our own problems, is swept away. Within moments the disposition of the emergency is settled. It was decided that Da wouldn't be kept in the hospital much longer. The nursing demands to come would be more than the institution was designed to handle. Nor was it practical for him to be taken home. There wasn't enough money to buy nursing care around the clock. And clearly too, be couldn't, at least for some long while, be taken to his son's house because both my mother and father needed their jobs more now than ever. He would have to go to a nursing home, a place of convalescence. I feared that for Da more than I'd ever feared anything in my life until that time. We went in to see him at last. He lay against the pillows much diminished in the early morning light. His eyes were on me, begging me to remember a promise. Perhaps it is the fact that two human beings or more sometimes make a pact between them meant to confound and outwit the forces of expediency to do that which is right and proper against all odds. Anyway such a covenant was made between Da and me. |
