Killin Machine Read online

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  I was outside trimming the bushes in my yard and listening to Mr. Druckerman talk about the past. Somehow the cat had gotten up on the lower part of the roof. I asked her if she wanted me to get her down but she just said, “Mao,” and made herself comfortable so that she could watch me work.

  “If you were in search of a reasonable pair of underpants for the young lady of the home our store was just fine, but if you were on a quest for an extraordinary pair of bloomers, then Feingold’s was your final destination. It was rumored that Feingold’s bloomers were woven with gypsy tears that provided a magical tender feel for the most delicate derriere.

  “Those sound so nice that I would’ve even bought a pair for myself,” I told him while squatting down and clipping the base of a bush that was starting to straggle. He suddenly went silent and stared at me strangely. Soon he was talking again.

  “My cousin Joan had dated a boy that was also bony and a bit of an odd duck. He too enjoyed Feingold’s and had a penchant for dressing like the dames.”

  It was nice to know that he still heard me occasionally. My brother Frank’s minivan pulled up and kids started flooding out of the side door.

  “Hey, Uncle Jake!” shouted my niece Gemma, her four siblings and my brother Frank ran past her. Her siblings then ran past me waving and saying hello as they headed to the tire swing that hung behind my house from an old maple tree Gemma remained with her father. “We just went and looked at a farm. Dad says that we might buy it. And then I could milk a cow. Did you know that milk comes out of cows?”

  “I heard something about that once, Gem.” She reached out and gave me a hug.

  “I think me and Erica are going to do it. We’re going to buy a farm,” said Frank as he clapped me on the shoulder.

  “What does a computer programmer know about being a farmer?”

  “What’s there to know? You milk a few cows. You collect a couple of eggs every morning. The Internet can tell us what we need to know.”

  “All of those animals. That’s a lot of responsibility.”

  “I asked mom if I could have a goat sleep in my room with me,” said Gemma.

  “Seems pretty reasonable,” I answered while looking at my brother.

  “Mao,” said the cat from the roof.

  “Hey, you’ve got a cat,” said Gemma.

  “Mao,” the cat said again.

  “Sounds like a communist.” Frank walked up closer and looked at her.

  “Can she come down from there?” asked Gemma.

  “She can but she won’t. She only seems to like me,” I told Gemma.

  Suddenly the cat leapt down from the roof and sidled up next to Gemma and purred. She scooped her up.

  “She likes me. See?”

  I was surprised. “She does. You’re right.” Frank reached toward her and she tried to slash him. He yanked his hand back.

  “That’s what she normally does to anyone else.”

  I visited with Frank and his kids for the rest of the afternoon while the cat played with Gemma.

  The tiny cat just continued to get stronger. I would often see her dragging things back to my house. She had a bit of a problem with proprietorship. One day I watched her dragging some kid’s BMX bike along the side of my house and trying to hide it. She had also become remarkably agile. I watched her leap far up into a tree when the neighbor’s dog Bingo came by, with very little effort. She continued not to let anyone else touch her other than me and Gemma, clawing at any of my neighbors that reached for her, and for some reason, I kind of liked that.

  One day, I heard a commotion, a man shouting angrily and banging at the cat’s little house. When I came out he was poking into the opening with a long cane that had a green serpent’s head for a handle. The cat was inside, scared for her life.

  “What are you doing?” I yelled at him.

  “You’ve got a black cat in there!”

  “I know that,” I said, walking up and getting in between the old man and the tiny house. The cat came out and cowered behind me.

  “Don’t you realize that those damn things are evil? Them black ones are just shapeshifting witches. That’s all they is.” He tried to push around me and get after the cat again but I held him off. He hit me on the head with his cane, opening up a small wound on my forehead. Blood trickled on to my shirt and the ground around me.

  “Ow! You bonked me on the head with your crazy snake stick!” I yelled at him, covering my head. I grabbed him firmly, yet gently, because he was old – but kind of wiry so I wasn’t certain whether I could take him or not. I walked him back off of my property. “Don’t you ever set foot in my yard again,” I told him, and he cursed me quietly as he walked away. I dabbed at the wound on my forehead with the bottom of my shirt while the cat licked up the blood on the ground. “How do I taste?” I said, annoyed and a little insulted. She stared up at me. “Go ahead and eat it. What difference does it make?”

  I started having problems with the neighbors down the block. They let their dog Bingo roam outside without a leash and everyday he was chasing the cat from one side of the neighborhood to the other. Bingo was so much bigger than the cat that I could only imagine what he’d do to her when he eventually caught her. I went to my neighbors and appealed for their cooperation, explaining to them that I’d like the cat to remain alive, but they laughed in my face. They finally agreed to put a bell on Bingo’s collar to alert the cat when he was coming. I asked them to also contain Bingo on a leash when not accompanying him and they slammed the door in my face. So, after that, I left the door to the crawlspace under my house open, just enough for the cat to squeeze through so that she could find refuge when she was being pursued. I was sitting in my kitchen editing The Smell of Duty when I heard the most horrific noises coming from the side of my yard. It sounded like a baby wailing as it was being beaten with a bell. I jumped up and looked out of the kitchen window. Bingo had the cat down with her head in his teeth and he had mounted her. It took me a moment but I figured out that Bingo was trying to have sex with the cat. I raced out of my house and dropped down on Bingo from behind, prying his jaws open and setting the cat free. The cat darted under the crawl space. I was blind with rage. I started bouncing up and down on Bingo while I kept his head squeezed between my arms, humiliating him for a change.

  “How do you like that, Bingo, huh? You like that? And Bingo was his namo,” I sang mockingly. “Now you know what it’s like. You like being humiliated?” Just then, I looked over my shoulder and Mrs. Hankowitz was standing on the sidewalk, staring at me in horror. She rushed off without saying anything. I jumped off of Bingo and pointed at him. “Remember that. Don’t chase that cat anymore.” He sauntered away with his tail between his legs. I chased after Mrs. Hankowitz.

  “Mrs. Hankowitz. I didn’t see you,” I called after her, as I walk-hurried down the sidewalk in pursuit. As soon as the words left my lips I knew that I’d chosen them poorly. “I wasn’t doing anything weird with Bingo. He was after my cat.” She was getting farther away as she bordered on running. “Don’t tell people that I do weird things with dogs, okay? I stopped following her. I really didn’t want to be known by my neighbors as the bizarre loner that they didn’t trust around their dogs. “Darn it,” I mumbled quietly to myself, as she disappeared from sight.

  The cat stopped using the miniature house and opted to live under my house from that point on. She could tell whenever I was leaving by following the sound of my footsteps through the floorboards. One day as I opened the front door, she stood proudly on the walk waiting for me. Just as I was stepping out on to the porch, I looked down and saw nearly twenty mice laid out neatly. An offering. She was showing me that she could pull her own weight and contribute a little something back to the house too. I jumped over the mice offering, down to the grass beside her, and we both stood silently, admiring her work. She butted her head up against my ankle and I rubbed her ears. “Good job, cat. You’ve really done well. I’m proud of you. But for now on you
can keep all of them.”

  “Mao,” she said.

  She was surviving, living out in the wild, taking care of herself. I saw her running from a murder of crows one day with one of theirs proudly dangling from her teeth. And on another occasion, I saw a group of kids chasing her with sticks because they had watched her kill a bunny and were seeking retribution for the death. I would’ve intervened but the cat didn’t need my help. She had gotten even stronger, more agile. She was fast too. They had no chance of catching her, and they might’ve been sorry if they had.

  I got a call from Raymond. He wanted to get together and discuss the characters in the manuscript he was working on. I agreed to meet him as long as I could bring Anna along. He reluctantly agreed and so after I got off of the phone with him I called Anna and made arrangements. She insisted on picking me up at my house. She arrived the next day. I went out to her car but she got out when she saw the cat.

  “Oh look! How cute.”

  “She’s super smart too. Watch this.” I knelt down beside the cat. “Hey, cat, what famous communist dictator was responsible for the deaths of seven hundred million Chinese by starving them to death?”

  “Mao.”

  “See.”

  She reached down to pet her but the cat swiped at her and hissed. Anna jumped back and nearly lost her balance.

  “I’m sorry, Anna. She doesn’t know how nice you are yet.”

  “Oh, that’s okay.” Anna tucked her hands under her arms protectively and stepped back. The cat hissed at her again.

  “She’s only used to me.” I petted the cat for a minute. Anna reached out to pet her again and the cat managed to slash her hand. It bled profusely. I dropped the cat and looked at her hand. “Hold still.” I rushed inside and grabbed some first aid supplies. I hurried to her and cleaned the wound. I looked down at the cat as I did so. “Bad kitty. Don’t hurt Anna.” I applied an antibacterial ointment and carefully wrapped her hand.

  “That thing’s a little monster.”

  “No. She’s sweet. You just have to know her.”

  “No thank you.”

  I patted the cat on the head. For a moment I actually thought that Anna was going to try to kick her but she backed up when the cat hissed at her again. I must’ve been wrong. Anna was a good person. She would never do something like that. We got into the car and left.

  The whole arrangement with Raymond turned out to be really awkward. I tried to talk to Anna. She ignored me and tried to talk to Raymond. And Raymond ignored her and asked me questions that I ignored. When she dropped me off she said, “Thanks for the shitty evening.” And then she screeched her tires as she tore down the street. The cat came around the corner of the house to console me. I picked her up and sat on the porch.

  “That didn’t go well at all. I really like her.” I petted the cat’s head. “You know, you’re probably the only girl that has ever liked me. I guess my mother liked me, sort of.”

  “Mao,” said the cat.