There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at
least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the
road.
A calico cat, about to have kittens, hears the lonely howl of a
chained-up hound deep in the backwaters of the bayou. She dares to
find him in the forest, and the hound dares to befriend this cat,
this feline, this creature he is supposed to hate. They are an
unlikely pair, about to become an unlikely family. Ranger urges the
cat to hide underneath the porch, to raise her kittens there
because Gar-Face, the man living inside the house, will surely use
them as alligator bait should he find them. But they are safe in
the Underneath...as long as they stay in the Underneath.
Kittens, however, are notoriously curious creatures. And one
kitten''s one moment of curiosity sets off a chain of events that is
astonishing, remarkable, and enormous in its meaning. For everyone
who loves Sounder, Shiloh, and The Yearling, for everyone who loves
the haunting beauty of writers such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,
Flannery O''Connor, and Carson McCullers, Kathi Appelt spins a
harrowing yet keenly sweet tale about the power of love -- and its
opposite, hate -- the fragility of happiness and the importance of
making good on your promises.
1
THERE IS NOTHING lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least
for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road. A small
calico cat. Her family, the one she lived with, has left her in
this old and forgotten forest, this forest where the rain is
soaking into her soft fur.
How long has she been walking? Hours? Days? She wasn''t even sure
how she got here, so far from the town where she grew up. Something
about a car, something about a long drive. And now here she is.
Here in this old forest where the rain slipped between the branches
and settled into her fur. The pine needles were soft beneath her
feet; she heard the water splash onto the puddles all around,
noticed the evening roll in, the sky grow darker.
She walked and walked, farther and farther from the red dirt
road. She should have been afraid. She should have been concerned
about the lightning, slicing the drops of rain in two and
electrifying the air. She should have been worried in the falling
dark. But mostly she was lonely.
She walked some more on the soft pine needles until at last she
found an old nest, maybe a squirrel''s, maybe a skunk''s, maybe a
porcupine''s; it''s hard to tell when a nest has gone unused for a
long time, and this one surely had. She was grateful to find it, an
old nest, empty, a little dry, not very, but somewhat out of the
rain, away from the slashes of lightning, here at the base of a
gnarled tupelo tree, somewhere in the heart of the piney woods.
Here, she curled up in a tight ball and waited, purred to her
unborn babies. And the trees, the tall and kindly trees, watched
over her while she slept, slept the whole night through.Copyright
2008 by Kathi Appelt
2
AHH,THE TREES. On the other side of the forest, there is an old
loblolly pine. Once, it was the tallest tree in the forest, a
hundred feet up it reached, right up to the clouds, right beneath
the stars. Such a tree. Now broken in half, it stands beside the
creek called the Little Sorrowful.
Trees are the keepers of stories. If you could understand the
languages of oak and elm and tallow, they might tell you about
another storm, an earlier one, twenty-five years ago to be exact, a
storm that barreled across the sky, filling up the streams and
bayous, how it dipped and charged, rushed through the boughs. Its
black clouds were enormous, thick and heavy with the water it had
scooped up from the Gulf of Mexico due south of here, swirling its
way north, where it sucked up more moisture from the Sabine River
to the east, the river that divides Texas and Louisiana.
This tree, a thousand years old, huge and wide, straight and
true,would say how it lifted its branches and welcomed the heavy
rain, how it shivered as the cool water ran down its trunk and
washed the dust from its long needles. How it sighed in that
coolness.
But then, in that dwindling of rain, that calming of wind, that
solid darkness, a rogue bolt of lightning zipped from the clouds
and struck. Bark flew in splinters, the trunk sizzled from the top
of the crown to the deepest roots; the bolt pierced the very center
of the tree.
A tree as old as this has a large and sturdy heart, but it is no
match for a billion volts of electricity.The giant tree trembled
for a full minute, a shower of sparks and wood fell to the wet
forest floor. Then it stood completely still. A smaller tree might
have jumped, might have spun and spun and spun until it crashed
onto the earth. Not this pine, this loblolly pine, rooted so deep
into the clay beside the creek; it simply stood beneath the
blue-black sky while steam boiled from the gash sixty feet up, an
open wound.This pine did not fall to the earth or slide into the
creek. Not then.
And not now. It still stands. Most of its branches have cracked
and fallen.The upper stories have long ago tumbled to the forest
floor. Some of them have slipped into the creek and drifted
downstream, down to the silver Sabine, down to the Gulf of Mexico.
Down.
But the trunk remains, tall and hollow, straight and true. Right
here on the Little Sorrowful, just a mile or so from a calico cat,
curled inside her dry nest, while the rain falls all
around.Copyright 2008 by Kathi Appelt
3
MEANWHILE, DEEP BENEATH the hard red dirt, held tightly in the
grip of the old tree''s roots, something has come loose. A large jar
buried centuries ago. A jar made from the same clay that lines the
bed of the creek, a vessel with clean lines and a smooth surface,
whose decoration was etched by an artist of merit. A jar meant for
storing berries and crawdads and clean water, not for being buried
like this far beneath the ground, held tight in the web of the
tree''s tangled roots. This jar. With its contents: A creature even
older than the forest itself, older than the creek, the last of her
kind. This beautiful jar, shaken loose in the random strike of
lightning that pierced the tree''s heart and seared downward into
the tangled roots. Ever since, they have been loosening their
grip.
Trapped, the creature has waited. For a thousand years she has
slipped in and out of her deep, deep sleep, stirred in her
pitch-black prison beneath the dying pine. Sssssooooonnnn, she
whispered into the deep and solemn dark, my time will come. Then
she closed her eyes and returned to sleep.Copyright 2008
by Kathi Appelt
4
IT WASN''T THE chirring of the mourning doves that woke the calico
cat, or the uncertain sun peeking through the clouds, or even the
rustling of a nearby squirrel. No, it was the baying of a nearby
hound. She had never heard a song like it, all blue in its shape,
blue and tender, slipping through the branches, gliding on the
morning air. She felt the ache of it. Here was a song that sounded
exactly the way she felt.
Oh, I woke up on this bayou,
Got a chain around my heart.
Yes, I''m sitting on this bayou,
Got a chain tied ''round my heart.
Can''t you see I''m dyin''?
Can''t you see I''m cryin''?
Can''t you throw an old dog a bone?
Oh, I woke up, it was rainin'',
But it was tears came fallin'' down.
Yes, I woke up, it was rainin'',
But it was tears came fallin'' down.
Can''t you see I''m tryin''?
Can''t you hear my cryin''?
Can''t you see I''m all alone?
Can''t you throw this old dog a bone?
She cocked her ears to see which direction it came from. Then she
stood up and followed its bluesy notes, deeper and deeper into the
piney woods. Away from the road, from the old, abandoned nest, away
from the people who had left her here with her belly full of
kittens. She followed that song.Copyright 2008 by Kathi
Appelt
5
FOR CATS, A hound is a natural enemy. This is the order of
things. Yet how could the calico cat be afraid of a hound who sang,
whose notes filled the air with so much longing? But when she got
to the place where the hound sang, she knew that something was
wrong.
She stopped.
In front of her sat a shabby frame house with peeling paint, a
house that slumped on one side as if it were sinking into the red
dirt. The windows were cracked and grimy. There was a rusted pickup
truck parked next to it, a dark puddle of thick oil pooled beneath
its undercarriage. She sniffed the air. It was wrong, this place.
The air was heavy with the scent of old bones, of fish and dried
skins, skins that hung from the porch like a ragged curtain.
Wrong was everywhere.
She should turn around, she should go away, she should not look
back. She swallowed. Perhaps she had taken the wrong path? What
path should she take? All the paths were the same. She felt her
kittens stir. It surely wouldn''t be safe to stay here in this
shabby place.
She was about to turn around, when there it was again -- the
song, those silver notes, the ones that settled just beneath her
skin. Her kittens stirred again, as if they, too, could hear the
beckoning song. She stepped closer to the unkempt house, stepped
into the overgrown yard. She cocked her ears and let the notes lead
her, pull her around the corner. There they were, those bluesy
notes.
Oh, I woke up, it was rainin'',
But it was tears came fallin'' down.
Yes, I woke up, it was rainin'',
But it was tears came fallin'' down.
Can''t you see I''m tryin''?
Can''t you hear my cryin''?
Can''t you see I''m all alone?
Can''t you throw this old dog a bone?
Then she realized, this song wasn''t calling for a bone, it was
calling for something else, someone else. Another step, another
corner. And there he was, chained to the corner of the back porch.
His eyes were closed, his head held back, baying.
She should be afraid, she should turn around and run, she should
climb the nearest tree. She did not. Instead, she simply walked
right up to this baying hound and rubbed against his front legs.
She knew the answer to his song, for if she could bay, her song
would be the same.
Here.
Right here.
Ranger.Copyright 2008 by Kathi Appelt
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