The signs were all still up, on telephone poles and in the windows of the shops that lined the sidewalks along the corner a few streets down. The bar, the accountant’s office. The bulletin board in the laundromat. The signs showed what these signs always showed. Scrawled, desperate lettering; a phone number; a snapshot that reproduced badly in Xerox machines, of a generic poor creature in presumably happier times. A plea for help. The signs outside were browned by sun and the few September rains. Most were at least a little torn. The ones inside were dusty.
The body was almost hidden by leaves which had blown in swirls down the alley the last few weeks. If I hadn’t stopped to do some irritating but urgent business, I never would have walked this far down the alley, never would have looked for a corner that was as hidden as possible this time of the evening, never would have seen it. But it was Shadow, alright. The fur was dirty and there had been a lot of bugs, but the black fur that swung across the nose and down the cheek, like a reversed Phantom of the Opera mask, was unmistakable, even though the photo Xeroxed badly. The whole thing had shrunk, and it was a miracle that it had been kept so dry, and so sheltered from those few rains that it had kind of mummified, but we live in a dry climate. Perhaps there wasn’t all that much there to begin with. Even in the photo, she looked old.
She was several feet away from where the garage wall opened onto the alley, between the brick wall and the brick foundation of a cedar fence protecting the mysteries of the family next door. The space between was well covered by the eaves of the garage roof and the mess of Virginia Creeper that strangled the fence and was dropping shriveling blue berries everywhere. Maybe a kid would have been able to walk through there years ago, but lumber and bricks had been tossed there for “storage,” trash had blown in. There was a glass bottle with its bottom broken off, as if someone had discarded a makeshift weapon. I don’t think anybody had really gone back there for years. Except for that cat.
I finished my business and carefully avoided the trickle in the dust that I had created, believing that I was somehow protecting my shoes from contamination while I fixed my clothes. I walked back down the alley, and looked both ways along the flagstone sidewalk. There: to the right, down at the corner, a telephone pole, with paper stapled to it. And as I got closer, the number got bigger, Shadow’s grainy face peered obliquely out from the curling paper of some other homemade advertisement, and I decided that her eyes had been green. I got out my phone and dialed the number.
A woman answered. I was surprised that anyone answered their phone anymore, and I stuttered. “Uh, I’m calling about Shadow.”
Silence.
“…What? Oh, my god… wow, really?”
“Yeah.” I tried, and succeeded, to banish all hope with how I said “yeah.”
“Oh… Where?”
I looked up at the street signs; I honestly wasn’t keeping track of exactly where I was when I dodged into the neighborhood. “In an alley… between Pike and Washington. Off of Laurel.”
“Oh. Wow. That’s not far.” I had no answer for that.
“I can, uh… try to tell you where to find her.” I headed back up the sidewalk toward the alley. I I didn’t really know how to give directions, which garage it was, exactly.
“OK.” I guessed that she was in her 30s or 40s; there was a measure of experience in her voice. This was not her first surprise, her first defeat.
I turned up the alley. “It’s uh… the third garage on the left, if you’re walking, uh…” I had to shake my head to figure out the basic direction. “South. From Laurel.” I felt I was not being helpful. “It’s, uh, between the garage and the fence next door. The garage door is” (…checking) “Dark green. The fence is covered in vines.”
“OK.”
“She’s… she was… back there.” I was definitely not being helpful.
“Are you there now?”
“Yeah, actually.” I quickly looked down to make sure I hadn’t stepped in my own trickle. I hadn’t.
There was a short silence, then: “How does she look? I mean, are you sure it’s her?”
“Uh, yeah. I’m sure. She looks…” And this is where I stopped, because I did not want to talk about the dirt or the bugs. I did not want to talk about the trash and leaves, or the dangerous-looking old lumber. Or the closed eyes, the exposed canine. The desiccation.
I crouched down to see if I could get a closer look, in the dimming evening light. Shadow was on her side, her head on the hard clay, and her front legs tucked up in front of her ribs. I reached in to clear some of the leaves that were covering her ears and neck, trying not to touch the fur. She looked…
“Are you still there?”
“Oh… yeah. Sorry.” I cocked my head to see if I could tell anything from the angle of the body. “Honestly, Ms…” and I realized I didn’t know the name, or anything else, of the woman I was talking to.
“Heather.”
“Oh. Hey, Heather.” She laughed a little, and my cheeks warmed with the awkwardness.
“Hey.”
I tried to laugh, but just stuttered, really. “She, uh…” I looked a little closer at Shadow, how she was curled, and what the curl might have meant. “Honestly, uh, Heather, she looks… rested. She doesn’t look distressed, or anything…”
And she didn’t. She looked like she had curled there intentionally. Like maybe she had crept into that space between the bricks, and just fallen asleep.
“She looks like she kind of just fell asleep here.”
Heather sighed into the phone. “Oh. Well.” I had no answer for that, either. “You know, she was… pretty old.” Heather sounded relieved, almost. I was glad, and then felt guilty that I felt glad. My cheeks warmed again. “Well, thanks, uh…”
“Stephen.” I said, like I’d stupidly left out that crucial information.
“Thanks, Stephen.”
“Sure.” I managed to avoid saying “My pleasure.” “Will you… uh, you know where to find her?”
“I think so. Thanks.”
“Yeah. OK. So…”
“Yeah. Thanks again, Stephen. Bye.”
“Bye.” And there was the faintest of clicks on the phone line, and then the unmistakable, essential silence of the space after a call.
I stood up, put my phone back into my pocket, surprised now at how dark it was getting, and stepped backward into the alley. A tiny breeze curled past and rippled the leaves that had been moved from rest on Shadow’s neck and were now hanging off each other like defeated flags. She somehow looked more rested now that she did before, more content. Like she had wanted to be there when she died. I thought I had heard of cats doing that sometimes. That they know their time has come, and they go off somewhere private, to let it just happen.
Or maybe I was just making it up. Maybe it was me who was making the decision that she had crawled here intentionally, that this neglected gap was somehow her preferred spot, someplace where a cat could feel that enclosure that they liked, that protection. That I wanted Heather to feel better, to think that Shadow was taking care of herself and of Heather, too, not burdening her with this discovery. And then that maybe I had betrayed Shadow by calling and telling Heather where she was. But then I was obviously making up Shadow’s mind, again, and trying to make a storybook ending for a cat and a woman I would never know.
And then I didn’t know what to think.
©2020 by Nick Trotter. All rights reserved.