Wild Things Read online

  Thirty, maybe forty drawings and paintings were tacked up one after the other—and sometimes one on top of the other—from the ceiling to the paint-spattered floor. They were good, too. Many were of the same woman with long brown hair—a drawing of her face and hands, one of her glancing over her bare shoulder, one of her in profile, looking thoughtful—all sketched with just a few lines. There were other pictures without her: painted blocks of colors that seemed to float off the wall into the air and pictures of overlapping circles, triangles, and squares done in bright, thick paint. And sometimes the pencil, crayon, or brushstrokes went off the paper right onto the wall.

  On the second-floor landing outside my room a shiny silver mobile floated above me like indoor clouds. Up the stairs to the third floor dozens more pictures cluttered the walls on both sides. I touched the actual marks and felt the rough surface of the paint. If my blood relative had drawn and painted these, I might have ability myself. Henry’s pictures were full of color and life. Maybe some of that life might rub off on me.

  On the third floor I opened the door to Henry’s room and stood amazed at what I saw. It was one humongous space. Each long wall had a bank of four arched floor-to-ceiling windows, pointed at the top like the windows in a church. Near me stood a huge drawing table, its slanted top cluttered with taped-down notes and sketches. Beside it was a rolling chair, an empty easel, a table with sets of oil paints and pastels in wooden boxes, and jars of brushes, their handles covered with dried colors but their upended bristles clean. Above the drawing board were dozens more pictures, sketches of sculptures I’d seen in the yard, and more pictures of the woman—though in these she looked thinner, and her hair was cropped short or covered with a scarf.

  Overhead, a dozen mobiles dangled and swirled from hooks in the high ceiling. A mobile of butterflies and silver birds spun over the drawing table. Another one of red, blue, and yellow circles and triangles whirled above my head.

  At the far end of the room was an enormous bed that looked like something from a fairy tale. Its four posters reached nearly to the ceiling, each one made from metal into the trunk of a slender tree from one of the four seasons. Autumn’s and summer’s branches intertwined to form a headboard with Henry loves Mandy written along it in silver script. Mandy must be the woman in the pictures. I wondered where she was now.

  The bed was unmade and the room messy in a comfortable, lived-in way, though clean and cared for underneath. Books were everywhere. They littered the bed and floor, teetered ten and twelve high on the two bedside tables, leaned against one another on the windowsills and the dresser, even spilled out of the open dresser drawers. Wobbly stacks sagged an old sofa that couldn’t have been sat on unless you were a mouse. For sitting, there was a single armchair and a footstool, but even there, books lay open over the chair’s armrests and back.

  Even more wonderful, there weren’t any library markings on the spines, no red-inked Property Of stamps on the closed pages, no Due Back in 14 Days stickers inside the back covers. Henry owned each and every book. Most were about artists. I admired their covers, whispered the titles, and tried to work out the artists’ strange names: Picasso, Gonzales, Man Ray, Rothko, Archipenko, Serra, Klee, Kapoor, Arp, Giacometti, di Suvero, Bontecou, and Miró.

  I stood in the middle of this magic for a long while, taking it all in. Maybe this room was why the people in town looked at Henry like he’d gone round the bend. Folks were probably thinking: Who’d be crazy enough to give up being a rich and famous doctor to live like this? But I knew about crazy. I’d lived with true craziness all my life, and nothing this beautiful or joyful had ever come from it. This was the total opposite of crazy.

  A drawing pad rested beside a box of pencils, erasers, and charcoal on the bed. I fingered the pencils, suddenly itching to draw pictures of my own. I lifted the cover of the pad and saw a drawing of an upside-down face. I turned it right side up, thinking to see another picture of the woman Henry was forever drawing. When I saw who it was, an ant could’ve knocked me over, easy. There, drawn in pencil, in eight or ten perfect lines, was a picture of me.

  I closed the cover on the pad and went down to the second floor. My own room seemed disappointing now, though it was the best of the three rooms on the floor. There was a small wooden sleigh bed that had belonged to Henry when he was a boy, a mirrored dresser, an empty old steamer trunk that smelled like mothballs, and a walk-in closet. Four high windows overlooked the backyard and had a roomy, cushioned window seat underneath. I’d opened all the windows to let in air, but I’d left my suitcase—a Piggly Wiggly paper bag—packed, just in case. Not that I had much: an extra pair of jeans, three T-shirts, a jacket, four pairs of socks, some raggedy underclothes, and a skirt with the last of my emergency fund—a rubber-banded roll of fifty-three one-dollar bills—stuffed into a pocket. I set my drugstore notebook and pencils on the window seat, and put my old brown bunny, missing an ear, on the covers of the bed. Enough moving in. Odds were I’d be moving out before long.

  I headed downstairs to Henry’s study, which I’d saved for last. Walls of books rose from the floor to the old tin ceiling, and there was a ladder on wheels for climbing up to the topmost shelves. I inhaled the musty, leathery, old-papery scent and a shiver passed over me. If I had any idea of heaven, it was this: shelves and shelves of books, ten times as many as were upstairs, each with stories or pictures more exciting and beautiful than the next, and two overstuffed chairs big enough for me to sleep in.

  In every place Mama and I had landed, I’d made the town library my true home. Summers and weekends were the best times, because I could spend the whole day there in heated or air-conditioned quiet. During the school year, I took care not to show up before three in the afternoon, so nobody would know I played hooky. But after three, I could stay till closing time, usually eight or nine o’clock. No matter how sick Mama got or what low-life she took up with, no matter what worried my mind, books made me feel better.

  In Henry’s library, I counted ten shelves from floor to ceiling on each long wall, one bookcase on each side of the three tall windows on the sunrise side, and two more on either side of the double doors to the hall. I tested his big leather chair, leaning way back, then twirling and twirling until I was dizzy. Dust motes danced on the sunrays that shone slantwise across the room. I whirled in the warm light and breathed the book-scented air.

  The shelves held titles I knew: Treasure Island, Robin Hood, Rascal, The Animal Family. I touched the familiar spines but lingered a longer time on books I’d never seen before, taking out one with pictures about a Japanese boy who drew cats. Inside the front cover it said: Henry Royster, age 8. I slipped the small book into my waistband and felt a sudden sinking in my stomach as Ray’s creepy, naysaying voice started up in my head. “Who you kidding, little girl? You ain’t nothing. You ain’t never going to be nobody. Gimme a dollar,” he’d sneer every time he caught me reading or writing in my notebook. Then he’d laugh and laugh. Suddenly I felt like a street kid looking in a candy-store window, watching other kids with mamas and daddies buying them whatever they liked. “Give it up, darling,” Ray snickered between my ears. “Ain’t none of this ever gonna be yours.”

  I shook off the feeling and looked at the things on Henry’s desk: a laptop computer, the screen dark; two open magazines about doctoring; piles and more piles of papers and files; a heap of opened and unopened mail; more sketchpads with doodles all over them, drawing pencils, and pencil shavings. On one corner and about to avalanche was a foot-tall stack of magazines with names like Sculpture, Artforum, and ARTnews.

  On top of the pile was the latest issue of Art International magazine with a cover picture of a younger, scowling Henry and the headline WHERE’S ROYSTER? The Disappearing American Master. I was reaching for it when I spied a large checkbook lying open in the middle of the desk. The last entry jolted me like an electric shock: Rose Hill Hospital, $5,450. Rose Hill was the hospital where they rushed Mama in the ambulance, the place where she died.
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  “I knocked, but nobody answered,” said a voice from the doorway.

  I jumped, and the magazines and my empty coffee mug fell to the floor, the mug shattering. A silver-haired man with milk-chocolate skin as wrinkly as a walnut shell peered around the open door. He had a wide, friendly face and wore overalls with all manner of tools spilling out of the pockets.

  “I’m Fred, Fred Montgomery. You must be Zoë.”

  “You scared the spit out of me,” I said.

  “Teach you to go nosing.” He shot me a sly look and nodded at the papers on Henry’s desk.

  “Just investigating my new circumstances. You gonna tell?”

  Fred looked insulted. “Heck no. Relief to know somebody around here’s nosier than I am.”

  I waited, not sure what to say. He seemed nice enough, but so had every one of Mama’s friends at first, even Ray.

  “My wife, Bessie, and I live a mile or so on,” he said. “Walking distance for those with young legs.”

  “Henry said you help him.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Like a handyman?”

  “Handyman. Cook. Bottle-washer. Assistant lifter, hauler, welder, and grinder. Henry calls me his right hand, but that’s too high-sounding for me. Had your breakfast?”

  I nodded.

  “Want more of what was in that cup?” he asked, glancing at the pieces on the floor.

  “I guess.”

  “Juice? Milk?”

  “Coffee.”

  He smiled, shook his head. “Well, you pick up the pieces while I fire up a fresh pot.”

  By the time I was done, Fred had the coffee brewing and two mugs waiting on the counter. “I’m real sorry about your mama,” he said as I came in the kitchen. “Your daddy, too. Sorry for the whole mess.”

  “Thanks,” I told him, looking away, not wanting to talk about it.

  He leaned back on the counter and turned to look out the window. “I hear we have a trespasser.”

  “Trespasser?”

  “A fifty-dollar trespasser.”

  “The cat!” I pulled a chair over to the sink, climbed up, and squinted out the window at the front yard, but Fred’s candy-apple-red pickup truck blocked my view. I whistled.

  “That’s my office,” he said proudly. “Like it?”

  “I can drive,” I said, cutting my eyes his way.

  “So I hear.” He poured the coffee and handed me a cup, then watched as I took it to the table and added my eight sugars and some milk. “You were saying? About the cat.”

  “I haven’t actually seen him, so Henry doesn’t believe me. But he’s out there. He’s been out there a while.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Lester called it a sense I have for animals. My seventh sense.”

  “Who’s Lester?”

  “One of Mama’s friends.”

  “Friends?”

  I sat on my knees in a kitchen chair, elbows on the table, stirring my coffee, watching it swirl. “That’s what she called the men who liked to take her out, took care of her when she didn’t feel good, and minded me when she was in the hospital. Mama was real pretty, so she made friends easy, but she was real crazy, so they didn’t last long. Lester worked nights at a vet place and let me sit with the boarded animals while he cleaned up.”

  Fred turned to wash the dishes. I offered to help, but he said it sounded as if I’d been cleaning up after grown-ups since the day I was born and I’d earned a rest. “You got other talents besides your gift with animals?” he asked.

  “Manny taught me to pay Mama’s bills and figure out her checkbook. And Charlie taught me how to prune and mow.”

  “Those aren’t talents, those are chores!” Fred said over his shoulder.

  “What do you mean? I’m good at them!”

  “Well, fine, but there’s a difference between a chore and a talent. Chores are what you have to do. Talents are your natural abilities, what believers like Bessie would call your gifts from God. Things you’re good at without knowing why.”

  I’d never considered the difference.

  Fred saw my confusion. “You know Henry used to be a doctor?”

  “I read about it at the library. He operated on the President.”

  “That’s right. A heart surgeon. He operated on Bessie’s heart after he moved back here. Did it for nothing, too.”

  “I thought he quit doctoring.”

  “Mostly. He still keeps up his license, though, looks after Bessie and a few others at the free clinic in town. But don’t say where you heard that.”

  I zipped my lips.

  “Anyway,” Fred went on, “Henry was a good doctor, but that’s what Henry’s daddy, Augustus, wanted him to be.”

  “My grandfather?”

  “That’s right. Stern fella, Augustus. Not a man you said no to.”

  “You knew him?”

  Fred nodded. “Bessie and I grew up here, same as Henry. Everybody knew Augustus and his temper. That man would fuss if you hung him with a new rope.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Somebody who complains about everything, even things that don’t matter.”

  I saw now. Born griping. Like Ray.

  “Anyway,” Fred went on, “when he was growing up, everybody could see Henry was good at art, except Augustus. To please his daddy, Henry joined the Navy, went to medical school, and became a fine doctor. But it didn’t make him happy. So after a while he left doctoring and went back to making art. Good art, too. Had people lined up clear to China to buy it. He fell into a little slump, but he’s coming back.”

  “What kind of slump?”

  Fred’s voice softened. “His wife died.”

  So that’s who was in all the drawings and paintings.

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  I shook my head.

  “When Henry first came back, I hadn’t seen him since we were kids. Doc Wilson was out seeing Bessie, and he said he didn’t know why I’d called him when I had one of the country’s best heart specialists living right next door. I drove over and found Henry raging over a flat tire on his trailer, throwing things and cursing to wake the dead. I turned my truck around and hollered, ‘Give me a call when you’re civil!’”

  “Over a tire?” I asked.

  “He was wound tight after his wife passed. He’s not easy under the best circumstances, but that put him over the top. Can’t say I’d be different if anything ever happened to Bessie. Scares me to think.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He called the next day to apologize and said he’d do whatever he could for Bessie, though aside from a transplant he couldn’t do much. Bessie was really the one who took care of Henry. She saw how he was and hired him to make a sculpture for the church. Or, as she says, ‘to do what he was born to do.’”

  Fred set the broom and dustpan in the closet and eyed the cat-food bag. “So what else were you born to do besides feed stray cats?”

  “Gosh, we got to talking and I forgot!” I grabbed the bag and raced outside, toppling my kitchen chair. I ran across the lawn to the crate. Both bowls were empty. I studied the weeds. I couldn’t see him, but I felt him watching.

  I filled his food bowl and ran back into the house to get water. Fred pressed himself flat against the wall to keep out of my way.

  “Wait!” he called, and I stopped. He walked to his truck and took a small foil-wrapped package off the front seat. He parted the foil and handed it to me. “We had catfish for supper. Saved a little piece after Henry called.”

  I filled the moat and water bowl and set the catfish on top of the food while Fred waited for me by his truck. He squinted at the weeds, trying to see. “You think he minds me being here?”

  “Not as long as you keep your distance.”

  “Like certain people,” Fred said, giving me a sidelong look. “Shall we go to town and give him a little space?”

  I took the cat food back in the house and then climbed in the pass
enger side of the truck. I put on my seat belt and looked up, but Fred wasn’t moving. He sat still as stone, staring out the driver’s window at the crate, his index finger to his lips.

  “Don’t slam your door,” he whispered. “Your friend is taking our bait.”

  He could taste her kindness in the sweetness of the water.

  Usually he drank from the creek or puddles, from the natural bowls of ditches or stumps. Each had its particular flavor, some strong, others bitter, some gritty, some chalky with mud. He hadn’t tasted water this delicious in a long time. How long? He had vague memories from long ago of the crazy old woman and the nearer time of the boy’s mother, but like his rippling reflection in the creek water, they wouldn’t come clear.

  The bowl beside him was a complete strangeness. He sniffed at the still little creatures inside it. Some smelled like bird, but weren’t bird; some smelled like fish, but weren’t fish. He kept his eyes on them as he sniffed, expecting one to wriggle or scurry any second. He tried batting them with his paw. Nothing. He batted harder, tipping the bowl, and some spilled on the ground. He crouched, waiting to pounce if one ran for cover, took wing, made a game of it, but they all stayed put.

  He glanced up at the girl’s window. He saw her shadow there, unmoving but unmistakably her. Without taking his eyes off her, he bent down to the bowl and took one of the strange creatures in his teeth, bit it, chewed, and swallowed. Then another and another, until the bowl was empty.

  The next morning she left him something more delectable. There were fish in the creek below the man’s house, but this was different, firm-fleshed, aromatic, savory.

  He licked the last of it from his nose and whiskers and remembered the boy’s mother. She had left him such tidbits before the boy was born, nearly the cat’s whole lifetime ago. But the day she’d died bearing the boy, the cat had sworn off humans. Taking food from the girl was risky, he knew, but at his age he wasn’t the hunter he used to be. He could always leave the food tomorrow or the next day, if it was even there at all. With humans, you couldn’t count on anything. For now, though, he let himself be persuaded.