Florie Mae Harkins, when she got up at night to nurse the baby, would hear that cat yowling outside the window, a-wallerin' after her two girl cats that was locked up in the main part of the feed store. James said if that cat didn't shut up he'd have to shoot it, and Granny said the same, glancing toward the closet where she kept her old shotgun. But much as Florie Mae disliked the big brindled beast and feared for her girl-cats, she didn't want James or Granny to kill it.
She wasn't sure why that was so.
Florie Mae got up a couple times ever' night with the baby, but not only to suckle little Robert. No matter how tired she was, with helping James take care of the nursery, and with their three little ones, she hadn't been sleeping real well. She'd been fidgety as a chigger-bit young'un; and the true cause of her wakefulness fretted and shamed her.
Florie Mae knew well enough that her James was the best of husbands. He'd built the Feed and Garden from nothing, for her and the big family they wanted around them, and he was set to lay-by all he could for them. Worked from before sunup till long after cockcrow and never looked at another woman ...
Trouble was, he seldom looked at her, neither, no more, in just that way he onc't had. Except it was time to make a baby. In between, James's thoughts ran to the bookkeeping and the government forms he had to fill in and the nursery orders and feed orders, how many bales of straw and bags of fertilizer they'd be wanting to tide them to the next delivery. His mind was on the business he was building for her and the young'uns—as it should be. But Florie Mae was only twenty-three. And sometimes her needs was powerful.
It wasn't like she'd growed ugly and let herself go. She didn't stay fat between the babies. She washed her hair and brushed it shiny, and mended and starched her clothes and tried to keep herself dainty. But most times James hardly saw her.
She'd wake at night, in the dark when he was sleeping, and lay a hand on his shoulder and whisper to him, maybe even nuzzle his neck a little, but James most never stirred.
So she'd take up the hunger-crying baby, and she'd sit in the window nursing him, looking out at the feed sheds and at the greenhouses that was her province during the day. And always, her night-thoughts were on another, and that did shame her.
Florie Mae and James and the three children and Granny lived above the big store; their four bedrooms and James's office were up there. But their big old kitchen with its couch and easy chairs and TV and pantry and nice big wood stove, that was downstairs where it opened right into the store. They could see from the kitchen windows into the back part of the property, the big open space that was all concrete, where customers could drive on back behind the store to load up from the storage sheds that ran on two sides, or from the fenced nursery on the third side where they kept the bedding plants and vegetable sets and herbs.
From upstairs, from their front bedroom windows, Florie Mae could see down Maple Street three blocks to the little shack beside the mercantile. Sometimes Grady Coulter's light would be on, there, and she'd watch it, and she'd wonder if he was in there alone. She'd see his face in her mind, his laughing green eyes, his hair as red as the first turn of sourwood leaves in the fall. Red curly hair, such ruddy cheeks, and those knowing green eyes. She'd see his face, close-like, and could smell the clean, male scent of him, and she'd turn away from the thoughts that filled her, and pull the wrap closer 'round herself and the baby, huddle down with the baby, her face burning.
Then on those summer nights, caught in her shameful dreams, she'd hear that big ole tomcat start in a-wallerin' out back, and all her heat would turn to disgust—Granny was right when she likened Grady Coulter to a tomcat. Florie Mae, roaming the upstairs, staring out at the grassy side yard where the children played, she'd see that tomcat slinking through the shadows under the old jungle-gym and around the play-toys, moving low and sneaky, his shredded ears held low, his eyes glinting hard and hungry in the night, wanting her girl-cats. And his mean male lust would jerk her right back to good sense.
Pacing the upstairs rooms carrying little Robert sweet and warm against her, looking out to the back lot where the hired boy Lester had left some kerosene cans stacked against the fence, she'd see that big ole tomcat creeping along there staring toward the closed back door of the store, hungering to get inside. Wanting at her own cats and at their little kittens. He'd kill the kittens if she didn't keep the little families locked inside the feed store, kill them to make the lady cats come in season again. Granny Lee threatened ever' day to shoot him, Granny loved the sweet girl-cats and their endless litters of kittens near as much as Florie Mae did, though the old woman would never let on. She never liked James to see her pet the kittens, but now they were getting bigger and playful and trying to climb out of the box, Granny was out there ever' chance she got, a-pettin' on them kittens.
It was some after this second litter of the season came along, that tomcat got even louder and more troublesome, trying to sneak into the store in the daytime when no one was tending the counter, slip in and kill the kittens. That was when Florie Mae and Martha decided to trap him.
Martha knew how to trap a cat, she'd done a lot of trapping with a group of folks who done nothing else, down in Atlanta, trapped 'em, did what they called neutered 'em, and turned 'em loose again. Martha said if they could trap that tom and take him to Dr. Mackay to get him "fixed," that would be the end of the trouble, that cat would stick to hunting rats and wouldn't bother with nothing else. So Florie Mae had picked up a "humane" trap from Martha's garage, taken it home in their stake-sided truck, and put it out by the sheds. It was the biggest cage-trap Martha had, with a trigger on the floor at the back that would make the door spring shut when the cat went inside to get the food-bait.
She set it up just the way Martha'd showed her, tying the door open with bungee cords to begin with, putting a little bit of food way at the back, past the spring trigger, to get the cat used to it. When the tomcat started to take the food regular, then she'd set the trap for real, take the bungee cord off and set the door to fly closed. It was the first evening she set out that trap with a bit of fried chicken for bait, sometime after supper, that the sheriff stopped by. She came back inside to find him sitting at the kitchen table talking with James, both of them looking as glum as a pair of beestung bears. Two tall, lean men, brown and muscled. Sheriff Waller was a big man who'd once had a big belly, too, bulging tight over his uniform pants. Now, since he'd went to dieting, he was as slim as James himself. He'd lost his beer belly, but his jowls hung sort of loose where his face'd got thinner.
"You been outside." James said, looking at her yard boots. "Out in the back?" His brown hair was all mussed, standin' up the way it did when he was botherin', but his green eyes was clear on her, and caring.
She nodded. "Out by the sheds."
"You stay inside now, Florie Mae. Something's happened. You're not to go out again for anything. Not after dark."
When she heard about Rebecca, she'd gone all shaky. She had gathered her two little ones close to her, sat holding them warm and safe against her, and the baby in his cradle right next to her, there in the hot kitchen, and she feelin' scared even inside her own home. Even with James and the sheriff right there with them. Granny sat across by the stove, her face all hard lines and her mouth pinched. Granny had thought a heap of Rebecca Duncan, Granny always said Rebecca looked just like a hothouse daisy, with her pale gold hair and white skin. Rebecca still had a rag doll that Granny had made for her, a tiny doll with a daisy-print dress that Granny had give Rebecca when she was a tiny girl. Now, growed up, Rebecca kept that doll sitting on the dashboard of her car, kept it right where she could see it for good luck. Granny claimed that foreigners could say what they liked about the town of Greeley being small and backwoods compared to Birmingham or Atlanta, but folk had to behold that Greeley's young women were lookers, and most of 'em as sweet as the day is long.