The Rain and the Fire and the Will of God Read online

  “It would cost some money,” Nat said.

  “This comes as no surprise to me,” Mr. Blankhard said. “Things done for the name of humanity always does. Particularly when done by rascals.”

  You would have thought this might have made Cousin Nat somewhat angry, but Nat seemed mostly to enjoy things with Mr. Blankhard when he had finally got Mr. Blankhard to speaking out. “Sir?” he said.

  “How much?” Mr. Blankhard said.

  “There might be some inconvenience, too,” Nat said.

  “I find this no surprise either,” Mr. Blankhard said. “I suppose in the end it will be up to me to catch the beasts.”

  “You must be joking for sure,” Nat said. This seemed quite a joke to him all by itself.

  “Nathan,” Mr. Blankhard said, “I think this has went far enough.” It had already went a good deal further than I would have thought it could.

  “Well,” Nat said, “I will tell you my plan some other time.” But he stayed where he was and so did Mr. Blankhard, and I knew Mr. Blankhard would wait to hear him out. He would never have done it for anything else but the hope of seeing the last of his cats.

  “You have a plan, Nathan?” Mr. Blankhard said.

  “I need maybe twenty-four cans of cat food,” Nat said, “and five gallons of gas, and a week or so to break down them cats’ suspicious nature.”

  “That’s quite a few cans of cat food,” Mr. Blankhard said.

  “And I would have to take down a hunk of your fence,” Nat said, “so I can drive my car back under your pear trees.”

  You could almost see Mr. Blankhard standing there making a picture of it in his mind. He couldn’t have liked what he seen at all. “Why should that car be under my pear trees?” Mr. Blankhard said.

  “Because them cats will never come out to it in the road,” Nat said. “On account of Sid’s dogs. Or if they did, they would stay suspicious.”

  It looked to me like they would have been even more suspicious of the car, no matter where Nat put it, and I guess Mr. Blankhard seen it the same. “Do you mean that them cats is going to walk up and get in your car,” Mr. Blankhard said, “just because it is under my pear trees?”

  “No,” Nat said, “they will go in it for the cat food.”

  “Oh,” Mr. Blankhard said. He thought about it. “Yes,” he said, “they might at that.”

  “They would go in it if it was a Greyhound bus,” Nat said. “In fact they’re so starved they would go in after that cat food even if I never took it from the cans. They would smell it through the tin.”

  Mr. Blankhard stood there and give it his best for a time. “No,” he finally said, “you would have to open the cans and feed them. But I suppose if you feed them inside the car until finally they got tamed, then all you would have to do is go and shut the door and drive them off.”

  “That was my plan,” Nat said. “They is both starved and wild, and I see no other way to work it. And with the gas I mentioned, I will drive all them little cats of yours down to the Gulf Shores dump. And I won’t no more than break even at that.”

  In a way I could see how Nat’s plan made sense. I could see Mr. Blankhard seen it, too. He was tempted, I could tell. “They have multiplied some,” he said. “They are quite a few.”

  “No doubt about it,” Nat said.

  “Well,” Mr. Blankhard said, “to tell the truth this comes as quite some surprise after all. I will talk it over with Mrs. Blankhard. She might have some fear for it being cruel to the cats.”

  “They are starving,” Nat said.

  “That’s true,” Mr. Blankhard said. “I will tell you yes or no tomorrow.” I thought for a minute he was going to reach across the fence and shake Cousin Nat by the hand, but all he done was test the fence, and then he turned and went back to discuss it with Mrs. Blankhard, I suppose.

  Whether he actually done this or not I don’t know, as I had never heard of any big discussion between them before, but if he did, then she must have agreed, because the next morning Rodney come out and went to work taking down a hunk of Mr. Blankhard’s fence. He made it look like quite a job. Took him half the morning. I could have done it myself in about ten minutes.

  And when Cousin Nat drove up that evening and seen that the fence was down, all he done was swing up over our cattle guard and then back that big old car of his back on across Mr. Blankhard’s yard and park it under his pear trees. Then he honked his horn. He sat there and later honked it again. Then Mr. Blankhard come out and went down and talked to him. Probably told him first not to lean so heavy on his horn.

  But whatever they said, Mr. Blankhard went up to the house and come back down with a number of opened cans of cat food. Then Cousin Nat put them out in the back of his car and lifted up the lid in back so the cats could find a way in—there weren’t no trunk in back, just an open baggage place behind the seats—and then he come away and left it. Never waited to see if them cats would come up or not.

  I had went to sleep when he left that night, but I guess the cats must have found it all right. The next night he done the same thing, backing out across Mr. Blankhard’s yard and stopping under the pear trees and then honking for cat food. Mr. Blankhard come and give it to him, and Nat come over to our place again. Then I seen they had found it. Where they come from I never really saw, but finally I knowed they was there. You could hear them. There was so many, they was fighting over it, and every once and a while one of the smaller ones would get throwed up past a window by the fuss, where you could see it.

  The next night it happened the same, except with less fighting. I guess the edge had been took off their starving by then. But they was still plenty wild. Mr. Blankhard went up quiet once just to look, and they come pouring back out of the back of that car the minute he stuck his face to the glass. They was too quick to count, but there must have been more than a dozen.

  A bit later he come over and stood on our steps and talked to Nat through the screen. “Nathan,” he said, “they will never be tamed.”

  Nat had been drinking some, as usual. “Don’t you worry none, Charley,” he said. “They are as good as down at the Gulf eating garbage this minute. I will take them off this Sunday for you.”

  “That’s tomorrow,” Mr. Blankhard said.

  “Is it?” Nat said. “Well, I will do it tomorrow then.”

  Mr. Blankhard said nothing but only went back home.

  Sunday, Nat come over just before dusk and backed the car across Mr. Blankhard’s yard like he usually done. Then he blowed his horn a good one and got out and went around behind his car and propped the lid open with a stick he had brought. By the time Mr. Blankhard got there with the cat food Nat had tied a rope to the stick and brought the end of it all the way out to the road. His plan had come clear to me at last. It wouldn’t matter much now if those cats had tamed or not. They was as good as trapped.

  When the rest of us seen what was up, we come out and hung around with Cousin Nat in the road. He was dressed like he had went to church, which I doubt, and give signs he was well along with his drinking for the day. He stood there holding the end of the rope and talking with Pa and Ma—Ma had come, too, and Ellen, and finally even Rodney and Mrs. Blankhard—and it was like all Nat had on the end of that rope was a top or something, the way he kept giving it little jerks and twists and so forth.

  “Wait,” Mr. Blankhard said. “Get them all.”

  But then after some time Mr. Blankhard got nervous and said, “Nathan, please don’t forget what you’re holding that rope for. Them cats will not sit in that car and eat forever.”

  Nat seemed to pay him no mind at all. Then finally when I was beginning to wonder myself if Nat had forgot what he come for, he looked around and said, “Jack, will you give this rope a good hard jerk for me?” and handed me the rope. So I backed a little until I had drawed it tight and then I jerked.

  It worked. It couldn’t have shut nicer if I had stood there and slammed it shut. And then for a minute I figured them cats had
just went on eating, but what they was doing was crouching down. Then they sprung, all of them. You have never seen such a thing in your life. One moment there was just that big yellow car sitting back there quiet under the trees, and the next thing there was cats plastered up against half its windows clawing for toe holds in the glass and setting up such a bunch of sounds as I had never even knowed that cats could make. You would not believe it but they was shaking that car of Nat’s side to side. It just stood there without even the motor running and shook.

  “They is not such little cats after all,” Pa said.

  “Maybe they want some air,” Ma said.

  What they wanted was out. You could tell by the noises they was making. They was not so much scared as mad. I guess they had never run up against glass before. Couldn’t figure it out. Wham, they would hit it. You would think it had stunned them, just by the sound of it. But instead they would only back up and spit a few times and give a howl and then take a run at another one.

  Long as that car was, they could really get going, too. And with as many of them as they were, it looked like now and then one of them made it from front to back all the way in the air, although probably what it was was one cat taking off from where another one come down.

  Finally there come a lull. “Well, I better drive them creatures on down to the Gulf,” Nat said, “before they figure out they’re trapped and get alarmed,” and then he walked over to the car and opened the door and got in. Then all the cats sprung again, worse than before.

  I wouldn’t have got in that car like that for nothing. Nat ground away on the starter some and finally the motor took hold and he put it in gear and come out from under them trees like it was something he done every day. It was like he never even noticed there was cats in there with him.

  He come up slow and we got back to let him pass. I seen a cat take off from the back of a seat two seats behind and just catch Nat’s shoulder enough to give itself another push and then, wham, it hit the windshield alongside of Nat’s head, and spread out flat, and then before it could even fall back, another one hit spread-eagle beside it. Then they was gone, and another one come and took it from the side, catching the window on Nat’s side first and then the windshield and then the window on the other side, running on glass all the way and never getting a solid toe hold once. Done it on speed alone, I guess.

  Then Nat turned and seen Mr. Blankhard and dipped his head and waved, and I looked and seen Mr. Blankhard lift his hand like he didn’t even know he done it and give a wave back. It was the closest I ever come to seeing him do a thing he never meant to do.

  “They will tear him to pieces,” Ma said, but so far the worst that Nat had got that I could see was his hair mussed some. Then he drove on out into the road and up the hill, and the last we seen of him those cats was still flying back and forth past the windows of his car like they meant to keep going like that all the way to the Gulf.

  According to Nat that was what they done. After he had left we stood around and talked about it some, and Rodney and me was even talking again for a while until it come to his mind that I had let him get walloped by that oak limb, and then he walked away and went home and I done the same. Later, I could hear Pa laughing to himself before he went to sleep. And the next evening Nat come back and said they never once even seemed to get tired. Claimed there wasn’t a scratch on him, though. And as far as I could see there wasn’t.

  The next morning Rodney come out and started putting the fence back up, and I went over and would have give him a hand but he seemed to want to do it his self, so I let him. He got it back up, all right, but I could see it would probably fall down again the first time a few potato sacks was hung out to dry on it, though I suppose Mr. Blankhard never would put it to such a test.

  12

  I guess you could say in a way that with that business between Nat and Mr. Blankhard and the end at last of Mr. Blankhard’s cats, something had finally happened on the Hill. Maybe it wasn’t much, but it happened and it happened on the Hill and it was something.

  But in another way, of course it was nothing. I mean, you can not go from the middle of August to the end of it just remembering the picture of them crazy cats in that crazy car. And Mr. Blankhard, of course, never give it another reference again. He stayed himself, unchanged in any way. Glad as he may have been to be rid of the cats, it done nothing for him visible to the eye. Not that I could see, anyhow. With a man like that there is nothing more to be thought or done about him than there is with a day like August the twenty-four or twenty-five or twenty-six. They stay the same, the days and Mr. Blankhard, I mean, like they have somehow even got outside of time and are chiefly lined up with stones and bones and other odds and ends of things that go on and last forever for no good reason except that they do.

  What was worst, though, was the heat. You would think by the middle of August you would just not care any more, but times would come when I would feel like I had not woke up for days but just walked around asleep, and I would get tired of the heat all over again. And the nights was no better. I had already sat on our porch most of the day as it was. To sit there some more at night is not much different. You are either looking out at the dark and listening to Ma and Ellen and sometimes Pa, or you are looking out at Mr. Blankhard’s house in the moonlight listening to the same. With a moon, though, you can also watch the moon.

  I have done a good bit of watching it at that. It will go from big to small as it rises, and change the looks of things on the ground, moving shadows around and lighting the slant of a roof and showing up Mr. Blankhard’s wheelbarrow left sitting out in his yard like it was floating there on the tops of the grass. If you try hard enough you can call this something to do, I suppose.

  So one day I took a spell and decided that like it or not I would go have a talk with my old friend Rodney and maybe then go up to the Bays’ and see if Jimmy had ever woke up yet, and if nothing come of all that then maybe drop by at the Holmeses’ and see how all my old friends over there was making out. It was quite a spell I took. It come on me about two in the afternoon, and for all I know it was nothing but the heat. But I come up from the chair I was sitting in and jumped to my feet and went back to the kitchen and drunk up all the water I could hold and then left. It was like I had taken ahold and settled some things. All of a sudden, heat or no heat, friends or no friends, I had woke up and come alive.

  I went looking for Rodney, hoping for the best, but actually I hardly cared. Rodney was gone from the house, Mr. Blankhard said, which was all he knowed about it. I could have told him Rodney had probably gone somewheres to smoke, but I left it as much a mystery to me as it was to him. He was not at the creek or the barn, so I followed the cow path down through the pasture to the branch, and I smelled the smoke before I seen him. I crept up on him. He was sitting on some roots and leaning back against a tree and swatting mosquitoes and smoking. His guitar was hanging from a limb. The place where he was had the look about it of a place he had come to before, cleared out and trampled down somewhat. I come up from the side and he never seen me until I said hello.

  I had give him a surprise. He took it good. He just sat there. “Hello,” he said.

  I looked around but there wasn’t no place I could have sat except on the ground, so I stayed standing. “Mr. Blankhard could never find you here in a million years,” I said.

  “So far as I know,” Rodney said, “he ain’t been looking for me.”

  “I had trouble finding you myself,” I said.

  Rodney smoked some, not even bothering to look my way. “I would have thought for you it was easy,” Rodney said.

  “Once I smelled the smoke, it was,” I said.

  “You should be a detective and get rich,” Rodney said. I had come to be friends, but Rodney just sat there acting like he hardly knowed me. If he had acted like he knowed me he would not have acted so smart. Not still sitting down.

  “I would rather get rich from fighting in the ring,” I said.

  H
e smoked some more but nothing smart come to his mind for a change. He give me a look and I looked back and then he got up and took his guitar down from the limb and started strumming on it. He had got pretty good at it, but finally I got tired of standing there. I have no ear for music much, anyhow.

  “Well,” I said, “I come to see if your bump on the head had got well yet, but I guess it is still swoll up some. Maybe some day it will finally get healed and you can forget it.” Rodney stopped strumming his guitar, but I turned and went back out of the branch.

  The whole thing had took about half an hour and was hardly worth it. I went back through Mr. Blankhard’s lot and up his path and through his back yard and front yard and out his gate. I met Mr. Blankhard coming back from the mailbox. He looked like he was not expecting me, coming out of his gate like that. “Have you not found Rodney yet?” he said.

  “I have found him and lost him again already,” I said, “but I will look for him some more tomorrow.”

  We stood there face to face on the path looking at each other, which is about the only thing that can happen that will make me and Mr. Blankhard say more than hello.

  “It looks like your catalpa tree has died for good,” I said.

  “You never can tell,” he said. “Things grow or they don’t.”

  “You are right with that, all right,” I said, and then seeing I had been as polite as I had, I give Mr. Blankhard a nod and walked around him like you would a stump and went on up the road toward the Bays’. I would never argue with a man like Mr. Blankhard, but his catalpa tree was all the way dead. All he was right about was saying things grow or they don’t. That catalpa tree don’t. Not any more it don’t. I could tell. I guess with people like Mr. Blankhard, before he would know it it would have to first fall down.

  I walked on up the road to the Bays’, still feeling good, but when I got there there was nobody home, so I figured Jimmy had either waked up or died, and I turned around and come back.

  I come home and had supper and after supper I sat on the porch until the moon come up, and then I asked Ma could I go to the Holmeses’ for a while.