Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [42]
when they arrived. I listened to their voices in the parlor and knew Lily was trying to conciliate them. I was lurking in the second-floor hall in my red bathrobe and the Wellingtons from the barnyard. Subsequently when Lily tried to discuss it with me I said to her, "It's your headache. I never wanted strangers around anyway." I believed that she had brought them on the place to make friends of them and I was opposed. "What bothers them? Is it the pigs?" "No," Lily said, "they haven't said a word against the pigs." "Hah! I have seen their faces when the mash was cooking," I said, "and I can't understand why you have to have a second house fixed up when you won't even take care of the first." The second and last time they came much more determined to make their complaint, and I watched from the bedroom, brushing my hair with a pair of brushes; I saw the smoky torn cat following them, bounding through the broken stalks of the frozen vegetable garden. Broccoli looks spectacular when the frost hits it. The conference began below, and I couldn't stand it any more and started to stamp my feet on the floor above the parlor. Finally I yelled down the stairs, "Get the hell out of here, and move off my property!" The tenant said, "We will, but we want our deposit and you ought to foot the moving bill too." "Good," I said, "you come up and collect the money from me," and I pounded in the stairwell with my Wellingtons and yelled, "Get out!" And so they did, but the point is they abandoned their cat, and I didn't want a cat going wild on my place. Cats gone wild are bad business, and this was a very powerful animal. I had watched him hunting and playing with a chipmunk. For five years once we had suffered with such a cat who lived in an old woodchuck burrow near the pond. He fought all the barn toms and gave them septic scratches and tore out their eyes. I tried to kill him with poisoned fish and smoke bombs and spent whole days in the woods on my knees near his burrow, waiting to get him. Therefore I said to Lily, "If this animal goes wild like the other one, you'll regret it." "The people are coming back for him," she said. "I don't believe it for a minute. They've dumped him. And you don't know what wild cats can be like. Why, I'd rather have a lynx around the place." We had a hired man named Hannock, and I went to the barn and said to him, "Where's the torn those damned civilians left behind?" It was then late in the fall and he was storing apples, tossing aside windfalls for what pigs there were left. Hannock was very much opposed to the pigs, which had ruined the grass and the garden. "He's no trouble, Mr. Henderson. He's a good little cat," said Hannock. "Did they pay you to take care of him?" I said, and he was afraid to say yes and lied to me. In actuality they had given him two bottles of whisky and a case of dried milk (Starlac). He said, "Naw, they didn't, but I will. He ain't no trouble to me." "There's going to be no animal abandoned on my property," I said, and I went over the farm calling, "Minnie-Minnie." Finally the cat came into my hands and didn't fight when I lifted him by the scruff and carried him to a room in the attic and locked him in. I sent a registered letter special delivery to the owners and gave them until four o'clock next day to come for him. Otherwise, I threatened, I'd have him put away. I showed Lily the receipt of the registered letter and told her the cat was in my possession. She tried to prevail on me and even got all dressed at dinner time, with powder on her face. At the table I could feel her tremble and knew she was about to reason with me. "What's the matter? You're not eating," I said, for she normally eats a great deal and I have had restaurant people tell me they never saw a woman who could put away the food like that. Two plank steaks and six bottles of beer are not too much for her when she's in condition. As a matter of fact, I am very proud of Lily's capacity. "You're not eating, either," was Lily's answer. "That's because I've got something on my mind. I'm extremely sore," I said.