“I’d need a machete to get through there,” I said.
“Please,” said Sharon.
“I’m going to get all cut up.”
“‘All in green went my love riding,’” she whispered in that special way, “‘on a great horse of gold into the silver dawn.’”
“Cummings wrote the poem, and I’m in love and gone,” I said and made my slow way down the creek side. I didn’t want to save the cat; I wanted to preserve Sharon’s high opinion of me. If she hadn’t been there to push me down the slope, I never would have gone after that cat. As it was, I cursed the world as I tripped over ferns and pushed blackberry branches out of the way. I was cut and scraped and threatened by spiders and wasps, all for a dumb cat.
“It’s like Wild Kingdom down here,” I said.
“Do you see him?” she said, more worried about the cat. I could hear the love in her voice. I was jealous of that damn cat!
I stopped and listened. I heard the cry from somewhere close.
“He’s right around here,” I said.
“Find him,” she said, her voice choking with fierce tears.
I leaned over, pushed aside one last fern, and saw him, a black cat trapped in blackberry branches. He was starved, too skinny to be alive, I thought, but his eyes were bright with fear and pain.
“Man,” I said. “I think he’s been caught in here for a long time.”
“Save him, save him.”
I reached in, expecting the cat to bite or claw me, but he remained gratefully passive as I tore away the branches and freed him. I lifted and carried him back up the bank. He was dirty and smelly, and I wanted all of this to be over.
“Oh my God,” said Sharon as she took him from me. “Oh, he’s so sad, so sad.” She hugged him, and he accepted it without protest.
“What are we going to do with him?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“We can’t keep him,” I said. “Let’s let him go here. He’s free now. He’ll be okay.”
“What if he gets stuck again?”
“Then it’ll be natural selection. Come on, he doesn’t have a tag or anything. He’s just a stray cat.”
“No, he’s tame, he’s got a home somewhere.” She stared the cat in the eyes as if he could tell us his phone number and address.
“Oh, wait, wait,” she said. “I remember, in the newspaper, last week or something, there was a lost cat ad. It said he was black with white heart-shaped fur on his belly.”
Sharon had a supernatural memory; she could meet a few dozen new people at a party and rattle off their names two days later. During an English department party our sophomore year, she recited by memory seventy-three Shakespeare sonnets in a row. It was the most voluminous display of erudition any of us had ever witnessed. Tenured English professors wept. But I was the one who enjoyed the honor and privilege of taking her home that night and making her grunt in repetitive monosyllables.
Beside the creek, Sharon gently turned the cat over, and we both saw the white heart. Without another word, Sharon ran back to her dorm room, and I followed her. She searched for the newspaper in her desk but couldn’t find it, and none of her floormates had a copy of the old paper, either, so she ran into the basement and climbed into the Dumpster. I held the cat while she burrowed into the fetid pile of garbage.
“Come on,” I said. “You’re never going to find it. Maybe you imagined the whole thing. Let’s take him to the shelter. They can take care of him.”
She ignored me and kept searching. I felt like throwing the cat into the wall.
“This is it,” she said and pulled a greasy newspaper out of the mess. She flipped to the classifieds, found the lost cat ad, and shouted out the phone number. She jumped out of the Dumpster, grabbed the cat, ran back to her room, and quickly dialed.
“Hello,” said Sharon over the telephone. “We have your cat. Yes, yes, yes. We found him by the creek. At St. Junior’s. We’ll bring him right over. What’s your address? Oh God, that’s really close.”
Sharon ran out of the dorm; I ran after her.
“Slow down,” I called after her, but she ignored me. Maybe Sharon wasn’t a good Apache or Catholic, but she was religious when she found the proper mission.
We sprinted through a residential neighborhood, which may or may not have been a good idea for two brown kids, no matter how high our grade-point averages. But it felt good to run fast, and I dreamed about being a superhero. Fifteen minutes later and out of breath, Sharon knocked on the front door of a small house. An old couple opened the door.
“Lester,” shouted the old man and took the cat from Sharon. The old woman hugged the man and the cat. All three cried to one another.
“How’d you find him?” asked the old man, weeping hard now, barely able to talk, but unashamed of his tears. “He’s been gone for a month.”
“I heard him crying,” I said (I lied) and stepped into the doorway. Sharon stood behind me and peered over my shoulder.
“Oh, thank you, bless you,” said the old woman.
“I pulled him out of some blackberry thorns,” I said. “And then I remembered your ad in the newspaper, and I found the paper in the garbage, and I called you, and here I am.”
The old man and woman hugged me, holding the cat between us, all of us celebrating the reunion, while Sharon stood silently by. I think I lied because I wanted to be briefly adored by strangers, to be remembered as a handsome and kind man, a better man, more complete, even saintly. But it was Orwell who wrote that “saints should be always judged guilty until they are proved innocent.”
All during this time, Sharon never spoke. I can only guess at her emotions, but I imagine she was shocked and hurt by my disloyalty. Standing in the presence of such obvious commitment between two people and their damn cat, she must have lost faith in me and, more importantly, in herself.
“How can we ever repay you?” asked the old woman.
“Nothing,” I said. “We need nothing.”
“Here, here,” said the old man as he opened his wallet and offered me a twenty.
“No, no,” I said. “I don’t need that. I just wanted to be good, you know?”
He forced the money into my hand; I accepted it.
“You’re a good man,” said the old woman.
I shook my head, took Sharon’s hand, and walked away, leaving those grateful strangers to their beloved pet.
“Why did you do that?” Sharon asked as we walked.
“I needed to,” I said. That was the best answer I could give her. It wasn’t enough.
“You lied to me, you lied to them, and you took their money,” she said. “How could you do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Sharon broke away from me and ran.
I didn’t see her that night as I got ready for graduation, and I didn’t see her the next morning.
“Where’s Sharon?” asked my mother as she adjusted my cap and gown.
“She’s with her parents,” I said, which was a true statement, I suppose, but hardly close to the truth.
I went through the ceremony alone; Sharon went through the ceremony alone; we sat ten chairs apart.
The day after graduation, Sharon was still missing. I didn’t know where she was. When my mother asked me about her absence, I said she was on a spiritual retreat.
“One month of silence,” I said, lying to my mother, to another woman who loved me. “After a big event, like a graduation or birth, the Apaches leave for a month. It’s an Apache thing.”
“I wish I could do that,” she said. “I think everybody should do that. Make it a law. Once a year, everybody has to be silent for a month. We’d all rotate, you know? You have to be quiet during your birth month.”
“It’s a good idea, Mom, I’m sure it would go over well.”
“Sarcasm is a sin, honey.”