Cat Running Read online

  But whether the warning was by way of second sight or oilcan it served its purpose, and Cat was able to make her next move very carefully. Holding her breath, she tiptoed across the grotto and, as she neared the cottage, sank down to her hands and knees. Beneath the side window she rose up gradually until she could see over the sill. And there, inside her cottage, her own private, secret cottage, was the same little boy.

  Sitting on the floor beside Marianne’s crib the ragged and dirty little trespasser was rocking slowly back and forth. Cat could see the back of his bowl-shaped haircut and the bottoms of his dirty bare feet sticking out from under his raggedy backside. His hair was sun-streaked brown. There was something strangely familiar about the color—and the homemade haircut as well. A mental image of a boy’s back as he stood at the blackboard flashed in Cat’s mind and resentment flared up into anger. Jumping to her feet she jerked open the cottage door.

  As the door screeched open and banged back against the wall, the little boy jumped up, his eyes wide with fear. Still clutching Cat’s doll against his chest he retreated backward until he bumped into the wall.

  “Okay, kid,” Cat yelled, “what do you think you’re doing? This is my house and you’re a trespasser, and trespassing’s against the law. I’m going to tell the sheriff and have you put in jail.”

  The boy shook his head violently. He seemed to be saying something but his lips were trembling and his voice was very faint. Big, fat tears began to roll down his cheeks. He started edging sideways, keeping his eyes on Cat as if he expected her to jump on him at any moment, like a terrier after a rat. When he got to the crib he sank down beside it.

  Looking up at Cat he moved his lips again, and this time she could make out most of what he was saying. In a high, trembly, babyish voice he said, “I ain’t hurt her none. See, I ain’t hurt her.” He unwrapped the pink blanket and held the doll up for Cat to see. “See? She ain’t hurt a bit. I was just playing with her a little. I was just playing ... The trembly voice broke down in a rush of sobs and the kid bent his head and buried his face in Marianne’s blanket.

  As Cat stared down at the sobbing little kid she began to experience a puzzling sensation. A sinking, shriveling feeling—like an inner tube with a nail in it. All the righteous, burning anger was fizzling out, leaving in its place a strange swollen kind of ache that made it hard to swallow and that made her eyelids tight and hot.

  “Hey,” she said over the painful lump in her throat, “you don’t have to cry about it. I’m not going to tell the sheriff. At least I won’t if you promise not to come here again. Do you promise not to come here again? And not to tell anyone about this place, ever? Do you?”

  The kid cried awhile longer before he raised his face. Still sobbing and with tears streaming down his cheeks, he stared up at Cat. His lips moved but no words came out. Then he looked back down to where he was still clutching Marianne against his chest, and cried harder than ever. So hard, it occurred to Cat that he might be going to strangle and die right there before her very eyes. Then he looked up again and in a wobbly wail said, “Awright. I promise. I won’t tell nobody. And I won’t come no more.” He looked back down at Marianne and sobbed. “I can’t come back no more. Not ever no more.” And he buried his face in the pink blanket again.

  “Kid,” Cat said, and then louder, “hey, little boy!” But the kid went on crying—and on and on. It wasn’t until she practically shrieked, “Hey you!” that his head jerked up. Staring at his tear-wet face Cat said sternly, “What do think you’re—why are you—how’d you ... ?” And then a little less sternly, “What’s your name, anyhow? You got a name, don’t you?”

  He nodded, sobbed, whispered something that sounded like “Sammy,” and went on crying.

  “Sammy?”

  He sobbed and nodded.

  Cat sighed. Okay. So his name was Sammy and he was about five years old and ...

  “Sammy,” she said, “tell me something. How the dickens did you find this place, anyway? And how come you’re way out here all by yourself? Don’t you have any folks to look after you?”

  Sammy turned loose of Marianne with one hand and wiped his face, smearing dirt and tears across his cheeks. Then he sobbed again, hiccuped, and nodded. “I got folks. But my ma and pa been pickin’ ever day, so I stay with Granny Cooper. Granny Cooper don’t go pickin’ so she’s mindin’ me.”

  Not very well, Cat thought. “Well, then,” she said, “if Granny Cooper is minding you, where is she now? Right this minute. How come she’s not taking care of you right this minute?”

  Sammy stared at Cat for a moment. Then his large wet-lashed eyes looked off thoughtfully into the distance and his lips moved in a way that might be just the hint of a smile. “Sleepin’,” he said. “Granny Cooper sleeps a whole lot.” The almost smile faded. Then he looked down at Marianne and whispered something Cat only heard a part of—a part that sounded like “good-bye” and then “Lillybelle.”

  “Lillybelle?” she asked. “Did you say Lillybelle?”

  He looked up guiltily out of the tops of his eyes and nodded. “I jist calls her Lillybelle. My ma had a doll named Lillybelle onced. Not a corncob one neither. A real store-made doll like this here one.”

  “Her name,” Cat said firmly, “is Marianne.”

  He nodded. “Marianne,” he said. He looked down again, said “Good-bye, Marianne,” and then added in a whisper, “Lillybelle.” Then he put the doll into the crib and carefully tucked in the pink blanket.

  It was right then, at that moment, that something—something about the look on Sammy’s small, pointy-chinned face as he tucked in the blanket—made Cat almost certain of something she had already begun to suspect. “Sammy,” she said, “you’re a girl, aren’t you?”

  Sammy looked up, startled—and worried. “I didn’t tell,” she said. “I didn’t tell you, did I?”

  Cat grinned. “Samantha, I bet. Samantha?”

  Sammy nodded guiltily. “I ain’t supposed to tell folks, though. Not till we get back to Texas. Or when I go to school. Ma says I can be a girl agin when I start goin’ to school.”

  “Why does she say that?” Cat asked. “Why doesn’t she want you to be a girl now?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” Sammy said. She looked down at herself. At the baggy, ragged shirt and overalls. “Ma says we ain’t got no money for girl things right now. So I got to wear what don’t fit Roddy no more. And Spence too. Sometimes I get to wear Spence’s growed-out-of things too.” She ran her hand down the sleeve of the blue plaid shirt she was wearing—a much-too-big blue plaid shirt with both elbows out and a frayed collar. “This here shirt was Spence’s,” she said proudly.

  Cat started to say it was a good-looking shirt but the thickness in her throat suddenly returned, making it hard to talk. She’d found herself remembering the boxes of old dresses she’d run across in the attic when she was looking for things for the grotto. Dresses that she’d outgrown long ago and that were, for the most part, pretty old and faded, but a lot better for a little girl than the ragged scraps of a boy’s shirt.

  After a moment she swallowed hard and asked, “You got two brothers? Spence, and what did you say the other one’s name was?”

  “Roddy,” Sammy said. “Roddy’s the littlest one. And the meanest.” Then she suddenly smiled. A full-out shining smile that showed white baby teeth and dented her dirty tear-streaked cheeks. “And Zane too,” she said. “I got a big one too—name of Zane.”

  Cat felt a kind of collision somewhere in the middle of her chest, as if a swallow had tangled with a breath going the other way. “Zane?” she said, and as she said the name she could feel the anger rising up, burning away the swollen softness in her throat. She stared down at the ragged little Okie for a moment before she said, “You better get out of here, right now. You get on home and don’t you ever come back.”

  The little girl edged around her and out the door. Halfway across the grotto she turned and looked back.

  “Go on. Get!�
� Cat yelled. “Scat! And don’t you ever come back or I’ll call the sheriff.”

  Sammy turned and ran.

  FOURTEEN

  WHEN THE LITTLE OKIE reached the tunnel she galloped down it on her hands and feet like a monkey, instead of crawling the way a larger person had to do. No wonder she’d gotten away so quickly that other time when she’d seemed to disappear as if by magic. In no time at all she was out of sight. Cat turned back toward the cottage—and noticed the pail again.

  The beat-up old oilcan pail was still sitting just outside the cottage door. Inside the pail were three walnuts, a small shriveled orange, and a chunk of very stale bread. Cat poked at the stuff with the tip of one finger. The kid’s lunch, no doubt, or maybe—Cat smiled ruefully—some more gifts for Marianne. For Marianne-Lillybelle. Suddenly Cat ran toward the tunnel.

  It was slow going crawling through the narrow passageway carrying a pail, and when Cat got to her feet outside the thicket there was no one in sight. But the kid couldn’t have gotten far. “Sammy! Wait a minute!” Cat yelled, and started to run. She’d only gone a few steps when, dodging around a large boulder, she came to a skidding stop and jumped back. But it was too late. They’d seen her.

  Leaning against the boulder, her heart thudding, she heard someone say, “Well, well. If it ain’t Cat Kinsey,” and a moment later there he was, Zane Perkins. And not just Zane. Behind him was what seemed to be a whole crowd of smaller Zane Perkinses. A regular herd of ragged, barefoot little Okies in scruffy overalls, all of them grinning in the same ornery way. All grinning, that is, except Sammy, who still looked tearful and terrified. Grabbing Zane’s hand Sammy tugged at it and whimpered, “Come on. Let’s go home. Please, Zane.”

  Cat stepped away from the boulder casually, as if she’d just happened to jump back there to look at something and hadn’t been trying to hide at all. As the mob of Okies crowded in around her (four of them, actually—it had seemed like more at first) she lifted her chin and calmly stared back into the grinning faces. Then she held the pail out toward Sammy. “Here,” she said, “this must be yours. You forgot to take it with you. You left it up there—beside the creek. Right up there by the creek,” she repeated loudly, hoping to remind Sammy that she’d promised not to tell anyone about the grotto.

  They all looked at Sammy and Sammy looked at the pail. Reaching out timidly as if she were afraid that Cat might grab her, she took it, looked in it, and started to cry again.

  Zane was frowning. “What’s the matter?” he said. “What’re you bawling about?” Then he turned to Cat. “What’s Sammy bawling about? You do something to Sammy?”

  Cat sighed indignantly. “Of course not. I didn’t do anything to her—” She caught herself and changed it to “to him.” But the damage had been done. Zane glared at Sammy and she cried louder.

  “Her?” Zane asked. “She calling you her, Sammy?”

  “I didn’t tell her,” Sammy wailed.

  “She didn’t tell me she’s a girl,” Cat said, “if that’s what you’re talking about. I just guessed.”

  But Zane went on frowning. “Sammy,” he said, “Ma told you and told you—”

  “Look,” Cat said, “it’s not her fault. And besides, it’s pretty stupid to think it’s all right to let her run around all by herself all day, just because she’s dressed like a boy. What’s she doing way out here alone, anyway? No kid that little ought to be way up here all alone, whether she’s a girl or a boy.”

  His grin was mocking. “You some kind of expert on rearin’ young-uns?” he asked. Then he grabbed Sammy, wiped her face with her shirttail, and said, “Shh. Hush up now. I ain’t going to tell Ma.” He wiped her face again and bent over her, whispering something in her ear.

  While Zane was still talking to Sammy one of the other boys came up to Cat. It was the one next biggest to Zane—the same coloring and lanky build. And the same dark-framed eyes, too, but maybe not quite so devilish looking. “Sammy warn’t left all alone, she jist run off,” he said. “This here old lady in the camp s’posed to be mindin’ her, but she ain’t doin’ too good a job, I guess. When Zane and Roddy and me got home from school jist now Granny didn’t know where Sammy’d got to. But I knowed she likes to play up thisaway, so we come a’lookin’ for her.” He grinned at Cat. “Right glad you found her.”

  Cat examined the grin for sarcasm but didn’t find any. “Who’re you?” she asked warily.

  “Spence,” he said. “Name’s Spence Perkins.”

  Cat nodded. She vaguely remembered seeing him before at school. Third grader, she thought, or maybe fourth. “And the other one. What’s his name?” She looked for the smaller boy and suddenly noticed that he’d disappeared. “Where is he, anyway?”

  “Roddy.” Spence looked around. “Where’d he git to now?” Turning in a circle he called, “Roddy!” several times. When he’d turned back around to Cat his raised eyebrows and shrug said something like That’s Roddy for you.

  Just then Zane, who’d been talking to Sammy, got back into the conversation. “Where’d Roddy go?” he asked.

  “Don’t ask me,” Spence said. “He was here a minute ago. Must of gone thataway. I’ll find him.”

  Watching Spence disappear around the boulder Cat suddenly froze. The tunnel was only a few yards away and she hadn’t taken the time to bend the sapling screen back down over the entrance. What if ...

  “Hey,” she yelled. “Come back here.” But at that moment the littlest boy came dashing back. Grabbing Zane’s arm he yelled, “Come ’ere, Zane. Come quick. Wait’ll you see what I found.”

  Cat’s heart sank. “Hey,” she said. “Don’t ... Come back here. You can’t ... But no one was paying any attention. Ignoring Cat altogether they followed the prancing, grinning Roddy around the boulder, past the first small clump of saplings, past the beginning of the thicket—and right to the entrance of the tunnel. Dropping down to his hands and knees he disappeared down the narrow passageway, and as Cat continued to protest, the others followed one by one. Zane first and then Spence and then Sammy too. Sammy, too, but not before she’d stopped at the tunnel entrance, looked back at Cat, rolled her big eyes wildly, sobbed, hiccupped, dropped to her hands and feet, and started after her brothers.

  Cat followed. There was nothing else she could do.

  Inside the grotto they were everywhere, picking up the elephant and the horses, looking at the books, and running in and out of the cottage.

  She couldn’t stand it. “Stop it!” she screamed. “Get out! Get out of here. Get out of here or I’ll tell the sheriff.”

  They stopped, but only for a minute. Roddy put the elephant back on its shelf—and then picked it up again. Spence came out of the cottage and then went back in. Zane strolled toward Cat, doing his wide, mocking grin.

  “This here your property?” he asked. “Your pa got papers on this land?”

  Cat had to consciously unclench her teeth in order to answer. “No. Not on this land. But all this stuff is mine. I brought it here and I built the house, and it’s mine. And my father knows Sheriff Dunn real well and if you don’t get out of here I’m going to tell him you’re all a bunch of thieves and he’ll put you in jail—and throw your folks out of Okietown”—Cat’s voice was getting higher and more shrill—“and expel you from school and ...

  Zane didn’t try to argue. Instead he just stood there nodding slowly and doing his insulting grin. When Cat finally stopped to catch her breath he made a kind of snorting noise and said, “Well, if you’re anywheres near runnin’ down I got a thing or two to say. First off, we got no interest in coming back here. Roddy and Spence and me ain’t got no interest in playin’ house or”—he nodded toward the shelves at the back of the grotto—“or fooling around with little-kid stuff like that. Ain’t that right, Roddy?”

  Roddy looked at the elephant regretfully for just a moment before he reached up to put it back on the shelf. Then he swaggered over to stand beside Zane. “That’s right.” He pulled himself up to his full seven-
or eight-year-old height. “We got no use for kid stuff like that,” he said. “Huh, Spence? Huh?”

  Spence was walking toward them. He was holding a book in his hands, but when Zane and Roddy turned to look at him he put it behind his back. “That’s right. We got no use for—”

  But just then Zane interrupted. “Where’s Sammy?” he said. He looked around the grotto and then at Spence. “Where’s Sammy? She was here a minute ago. Wasn’t she?”

  Spence shrugged. “In there,” he said, nodding toward the cottage, “with the playbaby.”

  She was there again, all right, just like she’d been before, sitting on the floor beside the crib with Marianne-Lillybelle in her arms. Just before he got to the cottage door Zane had been saying again how none of the Perkinses had any use for Cat’s “little-kid stuff,” but he stopped talking when he saw Sammy with the doll.

  They stood there for quite a while before Zane stopped watching Sammy and looked at Cat instead. “Hey,” he said. “Who knows? Maybe won’t none of us come back here no more, and then agin—maybe we will. You gonna sic the law on Sammy, Cat Kinsey?”

  FIFTEEN

  ON THE WAY HOME from the grotto that day Cat told herself that, of course, those Perkinses would come back again. Any kid, finding such a wonderful place not far from home, would go back again and again. And actually, Okietown wasn’t any farther from the grotto than the Kinsey house, and by way of a much flatter and easier trail, besides. They’d probably keep coming back until all of Cat’s things were stolen or broken unless ... She hated to even think of taking all her things away and leaving her wonderful private place empty and deserted and at the mercy of those thieving Okies, but perhaps that was the only thing to do. But then again, maybe it wasn’t.

  There was one slightly comforting consideration, and that was the fact that the Perkins boys were all in school. Which meant they would only be able to go to the grotto when school was out. And that, of course, was when Cat could be there too. When she could be there to chase them away or at least stand guard over her belongings. And she would too. Every spare minute after school and on weekends she’d be right there seeing that they didn’t do any damage.