A Cat of Constant Sorrow

Charlie has no money, no train ticket, nowhere to go, and a broken tail, but his spirits have never been higher. He’s getting out of Chicago, putting it all behind him. He’d secreted himself into the westbound train’s baggage compartment. There’s a safe back here and when he touches it the door pops open. Empty. Someone’s robbed it. “You’re made of water, kid,” his old partner had told him, as he slid through a window half his width. He maneuvers easily now through the luggage. The train enters a tunnel, grows dark. He opens the door to the main compartments. He moves quickly, looking for a lone passenger with an open seat. Preferably an old cat fast asleep, or someone caught up in their knitting, the intricacies of the project wrapped around all ten claws. "Look for an easy mark," his partner had said. Guess that easy mark had been him. He’d been the one duped, forced to take the fall for their last con gone wrong. He sees it! The Perfect Seat. The cat in question looks distracted, small, tired. She’s wearing a lavender felt cloche, and her ginger ears stand straight up through the ear holes. She pivots as he sits. She’d been drawing. A small doodle in the corner of a napkin. She covers it with her glass. The feeling is there, a thing honed after dozens of cons that tells him she’s not who she pretends to be. She’s someone like him. “You’re in the wrong seat,” she says matter-of-factly. “I’m in a lot of wrong places these days,” Charlie replies, shifting uncomfortably. His tail smarts. “I purchased two seats, and you are not the cat I’m expecting,” she says. “So, if you would please see fit to excise your mangy coat from my vicinity, I would be much obliged.” She smiles politely, but her eyes are sharp, and she has an equally sharp tooth near her bottom lip. Just one. Is she missing the other, he wonders? She smiles with her mouth closed. “Oh, I’m not going to stay long.” He tries his most charming smile, but his tail smarts so much it’s more of a grimace. “You’re a stowaway,” she says. “I’m no such thing.” He shifts in the seat. “Do you have worms?” she asks. “Stop fidgeting.” “Do I look like I have worms?” Last he checked, his coat had been groomed, his ears well-coiffed, and all errant hair brushed from his suit, though that had been two days ago—before everything went to hell. “You certainly smell like it.” She stands and Charlie grabs her arm. She grabs his tail, and he sees lights and hears train whistles. When he next opens his eyes, she’s looking directly at him—with not quite concern, but something infinitesimally approaching it. “You were recently in some sort of skirmish, weren’t you?” “More like a brawl,” he says. He cradles his tail close to his chest like a kitten and, embarrassed, lets it go. “I didn’t realize the extent of your injuries.” “Is the whole upper crust thing a put-on?” he says, and she only narrows her hazel eyes more. “You have a hematoma under your eye, a chipped tooth, a tail broken in probably two or three places, bruised knuckles, a torn collar—though it is a bespoke suit, if I’m not mistaken. Made at Kit and Harry’s. This year’s fashion. You have a secret pocket sewn into your jacket. And a rather severe injury to your right paw. Old, though.” “Look at Purlock Holmes, here,” Charlie says under his breath. The train goes dark and screams against the metal track as they plunge through the tunnel. “Look,” he tries, “I’m not a stowaway. I just got pickpocketed. They took my wallet and my ticket, and I couldn’t wait for the next train. I tried to put up a bit of a fight, but you can tell how that went.” “Mmm-hmm,” she says. “Like I said that seat is reserved for someone else, and you are not it.” “Who’s it for?” She presses her lips together, her eyes flicking toward the door as if expecting someone. “Does this mystery cat have anything to do with the empty safe?” Her eyes flick towards him. “Ah, so it does.” “I didn’t say that.” “Your reaction gave you away.” “Look, I don’t need the help of some street cat stowaway.” “Street cat! I’m a high-class tom that’s fallen on hard times.” “Climbing your way back to the top, I’m sure.” “So,” he waves his left paw, “you’re on a jewel heist?” “I don’t have to answer that. In the few minutes I’ve had the displeasure of knowing you, you’ve thrice acted in a manner befitting a scoundrel.” “And you accused me of having worms and smelling. I’d say you’re a real—” She claps a hand over his mouth. “Quiet.” Maybe she was in danger. He senses her fear, and he levels his eyes toward her. “You should just mind your own business and scurry off back to the brig.” “Trains don’t have brigs,” he mumbles around her hand. “Shut up,” she says, and he follows her gaze back between their shared seat. He sees the cat she’s looking at, standing out like a ripped ear in a pedigreed retreat. He looks big. He looks dangerous. Charlie doesn’t like his chances. He certainly hasn’t gotten on the train looking to get into another fight. He should be nursing his tail, relaxing. Normally, it was easy to slip into a seat, pull his coat over his head, and ride out a few train stops. “What did you do to piss that guy off?” She flops back in her seat. “I didn’t do anything to piss him off. Not yet at least.” She pulls her hat down lower. “He doesn’t really look like someone you want to mess with.” “You certainly look like you would know. Maybe take your own advice.” “I should take my own advice,” he admits with a small shrug. He wiggles his right paw. “Yeah, I noticed,” she says. She was right when she said it was an old injury. In some ways, it was a boon not having his claws—it made for a soft touch—but if given the choice, he would take them back in a heartbeat. The memory is there, an ugly yowling thing. The cat she’s worried about looks like three Maine Coon Cats in one suit. Fur sprouts from every inch that isn’t held in by the fabric. Big Cat. Wait. Big Cat. That’s him? Charlie realizes. The one that every crime syndicate in Chicago is talking about. He went by BC. “So, he took the jewels.” “No,” she said under her breath. One way to find out, Charlie thinks. Charlie waits for BC to move down the aisle and then steps into his path. Solid muscle. He catches Charlie in mid-air before he lands on his tail and sets him down. “Watch it,” he says, his accent pure Chicago. “Sorry, so sorry,” Charlie says. “I didn’t even see you there.” The cat gives a short, hard laugh, like the start of a hairball, and moves past Charlie. “He’s your thief, all right,” Charlie says returning to his seat and dropping a ruby into her lap. He had pocketed BC’s train ticket—and his wallet too—but she didn’t need to know that. “All with my right paw. No claws mean no chance of cloth getting snagged.” “Put it back right now,” she hisses into his ear. “Back in his pocket?” “Yes! You’re going to blow my cover and get us killed. For Bastet’s sake, do it right now. Charlie frowns. “I lifted the ruby. That’s what I do.” Her claws twitch. “You don’t understand.” His ears flick forward. “Care to explain?” "I sold it to him!” “Oh," he mutters. "Oh.” BC already bought the ruby—from her. And now Charlie stole it back. BC was going to think she had played him. That she had set him up. Charlie swallows. “Well, that’s unfortunate.” Her claws dig into his wrist. “Put. It. Back. Now.” “Charlie, by the way.” He holds out a paw that she doesn’t take. He grabs the ruby from her paws. “Nell,” she says low under her breath, and he wonders if that’s her real name. “He doesn’t even know it’s gone. I’m a pro.” He feels like anything but, and she raises an eyebrow. Charlie slips from his seat. His paws are silent on the corrugated ground. The cat had trundled into the next car. Charlie pulls his tail close to his body, wincing. The ruby feels warm in his palm. He doesn’t think of taking it for himself. He feels only the fast but steady beat of his heart, the jewel at his fingertips, the excitement of a job. He’d always liked that feeling. The electric wire-lick of danger. BC has the ticket taker cornered. His paw is not quite around his throat. “I purchased my ticket fair and square.” BC pushes the receipt into the old man’s whiskers. The ticket taker is an elderly cat, gray streaks wisping through the fur around his eyes. He takes the receipt and holds it up to his thick glasses. “It proves you bought it,” he says. “But I will need to see a ticket, or you will need to purchase another one.” Let old age not rob me of my senses, Charlie thinks, sending a quick prayer to Bastet. “I already bought one.” The growl drops deeper in octave. The ticket taker takes on the stance of an old fighter. Electricity licks along Charlie’s spine, the air sparks. All his instincts say flee. Charlie is a loser of fights—Bastet’s patron saint of black eyes, chipped teeth, and missing claws. “Ah, sir,” and Charlie’s moving before he can think about it. “You dropped this?” He slips around him and puts himself in front of the ticket taker. “I’m going to need to see your ticket too,” the ticket taker says. That’s just how it goes, isn’t it? Charlie thinks and holds the ticket up to BC. “Must have fallen out when you bumped into me. I found it on the floor.” BC’s claws are much longer than regulation. His dew claws are capped with diamonds, filed to a razor’s edge. “You’re right,” he says slowly, like he’s chewing the words. “Probably what happened.” He takes the ticket and puts it in the old man’s paws and moves past him. Charlie finds himself grinning—then realizes he still has the ruby in his pocket. He’s missed his chance. The ticket taker now blocks his path, his hand outstretched, his rheumy eyes large behind his coke-bottle glasses. “I lost my ticket too,” Charlie tries with a shrug. “Then, like the gentleman in front of you, you’re going to have to pay for a ticket.” “But you saw what I did out of the magnanimity of my own heart. I could have kept that ticket.” “But you didn’t. You did the right thing like an upstanding gentleman, and an upstanding gentleman tenders and provides his own fare.” “Bastet, kick an upstanding gentleman,” he mutters under his breath, and the old cat leans in close. “What was that?” “Nothing. How much?” Charlie wonders how hard it would be to skirt past him. The man can barely see. Instead, he turns out his pockets and lint wafts to the floor. “Hard times, what can I say?” “Off at the next stop,” the ticket taker says. “And the authorities will be informed.” “Oh, come on, we don’t need to go that far. Just look at me.” “Yes, many vagabonds try to ride for free. Gentlemen don’t point out how they mingle with riffraff.” “It’s a sporting man’s injury,” Charlie says, putting his paws up in a boxing pose and bouncing back and forth on his paws. “Boxer, eh?” The old man comes to life. Charlie’d seen the hint of it there in his stance. The old cat slips into it like a cat to a tree. “Got a southpaw stance? Huh! Hard to fight a lefty.” He hesitates for a moment. “Fights been bad lately? Can I tell you a secret for hard times?” Charlie falters, rests back on his paws. “My secret is that hunger is the best kibble.” “Hunger is a real motivator sometimes,” Charlie says. “So, if I promise that I won’t ever board another train without first paying, will you let me just ride this one out? Just a couple more stops?” “Rules are rules. Never let a cat break one in all my years. Might kill me, changing a thing like that.” A shadow falls across Charlie, and he looks up to see BC. His claws are fully extended. Charlie pushes the old man out of the way. The ticket taker doesn’t budge. He stands firm, like a brick house, his scrawny few pounds a testament to elderly stubbornness. So, Charlie does the next less heroic thing he can think of. He turns and runs. Charlie dashes for the next car, hoping to find some small alcove he can duck into. The train car shakes with BC’s movements. Charlie yanks down a suitcase—it doesn’t burst open like he’d hoped, but it’s enough to trip someone. He barely leaps clear. He lands on all fours. The floor bites into his paws, something sticky clings to his fur. Arms tug him upwards, but he’s already propelling himself forward. He reaches the gangway with its rattling bellows, slams the door open, and looks quickly for a place to hide, but there’s already a couple inside, making out. They exclaim in annoyance and push him through into the next train car. He tumbles head over tail, lands on his paws, and hears them scream as his pursuer pushes his way through, his whole frame filling the small space. The train slows. The brakes squeal. The oblivious cats in front of him reach for their belongings. A kitten steps out in front of him. Charlie grabs her by her paw and throws her back up into the seat. She lets out a squeal, and then her father swings a newspaper into Charlie’s face. It hits his nose, and he almost drops on the spot. “What do you think you’re doing?” the father yells. Charlie wants to curl into himself. There’s no one behind him. The kitten is crying. His eyes are watering. His head is pounding. And he’s about ready to join her in her sobbing. He holds up his paws as the father shakes the paper menacingly. “There’s a huge cat chasing me. I didn’t want her to get hurt.” “And where is this cat?” he says, leaning into the aisle. “Got a lunatic here, not even a full bleeding moon, and you’re running through here pursued by nothing.” Charlie tries to step around him, but he’s met with the paper again. “We’re both going to get run over if you don’t move.” The door slams open behind him, and his inquisitor tilts his head up, eyes narrowing, grip on the paper tightening. “Now, look here, I don’t have time for this—” Charlie slips past him. Then there’s growling, fighting, the sound of a paper hitting fur. The window to his left is open, cracked just wide enough that he can squeeze through. He throws himself at it, pushing his upper body out. The tracks and the snowy scenery rush by below him. The frigid air is full of the sweet scent of roasting chestnuts wafting from the upcoming town. He grips the glass with the pads of his right paw and uses the claws on his left to propel himself up. The moving landscape turns his stomach, even though he hasn’t eaten in two days. He plants his back feet on the window’s ledge, kicks upward, and catches the roof of the train. His grandfather had been a train hopper. Born as one, died as one, his uncle said. But his uncle was prone to lying. Prone as fleas on a neck. Claws sink into his back leg. He almost loses his grip. Diamond-tipped claws dig into his leg. They cut to the bone. BC tries to push his body through the window. It’s so cold the pain hasn’t yet reached Charlie’s brain. He pulls the ruby from his pocket. “I’ll drop it!” he shouts, but his voice is barely audible above the wind. The claws slowly retract from his leg. Charlie yanks himself up onto the train’s roof, kicking with his good leg, pulling, tugging, whimpering against the pain. No one can hear him up here. He lies there. Breathes. Looks at the sky. Dusk looks like a bruise. Like the color of his little brother’s fur. He never made it out. Tears well in his eyes. You think of the dead on the precipice, he thinks. They’re old words. Bastet words, those words. Everything hurts. He wishes he knew someone, anyone other than himself, who might feel sorry for him. The nails had sunk right through his non-holey wool socks, and blood is pooling in his good leather loafers. The roof thumps below him, like someone checking the wall for studs. He rolls just as a hole explodes through the metal. He’s on his feet. The bullet lands somewhere on the car down the line from his. He’ll have to jump. Charlie leaps to the next car, landing hard. He crouches. The train lurches. A purple hat appears, poking out of the window on the other side. Orange ears turned toward the sound of the whistling wind. Nell waves a hand to him. There’s another gunshot. He pulls his limbs in. Tucks his tail close to his body. “Come on,” and he hears her above the slowing of the train, a low, urgent tone. “It’s safe, come in.” Inch by inch, he manages to get closer to her. His heart is beating hard and fast in his ears. When the fear sets in, there is only one path forward. Bastet’s words are in his head with him. Nell grabs his paw and he grapples down the side of the train, catching his feet against the window frame. She wraps her arms around him. He sees black spots. The train is squealing to a stop. “I’ve got you.” She smells like catmint. “Keep low.” He curls inward. The ruby is still in his pocket. Not where Nell needs it. It could feed and house him for a month. Even afford him a little catnip. The train is stopping. There is shouting outside their compartment. “You got it back in his pocket, didn’t you?” she demands. Charlie hesitates. Nell’s ears flick back. “You still have it?” She lunges for his coat. He steps back, stumbles, catches himself, and runs out of the compartment. She darts after him. The train has stopped, and the ticket taker and four other passengers—all in various states of disarray—are stopping BC from leaving. “The police are on their way,” someone shouts. BC barrels forward, his movement like a great wind off Lake Michigan. Nell grabs Charlie’s arm and he feels the cold snap of metal around his wrists. He twists, a hiss in the back of his throat. She drags him through the car and toward the exit. She nods to the officers waiting at the exit—six of them, pushing BC away from the harangued passengers. “She framed me!” BC yells. “She sold me that stolen ruby! And had that little rat steal it back!” He points a long claw toward Charlie. “Wise cat, we got here, huh?” one of the cops says. “Why do you think I’m arresting him?” she yells over her shoulder. Charlie tries to twist. He slides his left claws out, starts to pick the lock on the cuffs, but she grabs his wrist and squeezes. “I can’t let you have it.” She pulls him into an alley. “That ruby was supposed to be my way out. I was supposed to sell it, let BC get caught at the next stop.” She exhales sharply. “I wasn’t even supposed to be doing this alone. My partner was supposed to be here. Guess the coward bailed.” Charlie raises an eyebrow. “So, what, you’re a cop?” She rolls her eyes. “Do I look like a cop? I was caught. I made a deal.” Her voice dips lower, sharp and bitter. “If I help them take down bigger criminals, I get to stay out of a cell. If I fail? Let’s just say they’re not inclined to offer second chances.” Charlie exhales. He finally stops struggling. “Hell of a situation,” he mutters. “Tell me about it,” she says. She reaches into his pocket and pulls out the ruby. “Let me see your paw,” Nell says. Charlie hesitates but raises his cuffed hands. “Someone did that to you, right? Doesn’t look like a state-sanctioned declawing. A consequence of the ‘job?‘ It’s not rare for us to see a few petty thieves missing a toe here or there. Declawing is a little extreme, I think, but maybe the punishment matched the crime.” He flinches. He lowers his ears against his head. “Some of us didn’t have the luxuries of a good home life. Someone to bankroll us.” “What happened?” “A way to put a kit in his place. I was only sixteen.” Now his voice catches, and he looks away. “You don’t have to talk about it. They make prosthetics. Usable ones.” “I’m a better pickpocket for it,” he says with a grin that hurts the muscles in his cheeks. He feels raw. The knuckle on his index finger aches. She holds his paw gently. He wants to pull back. “Someone really wanted to hurt you,” she says. A sharp breath, a hitch in his throat, and suddenly, his vision blurs. “I’m sorry,” she says. She must feel the scars. “Hey, hey, hey.” Nell holds his face between her paws. “There you are. You’re not back there.” He can’t get enough air. His heart is pounding. “I’m sorry, Charlie. I shouldn’t have pried.” She holds him. He puts his head on her shoulder. He wants to stay here more than anything. “Watch after yourself, Charlie.” She unlocks the cuffs. “I wasn’t born into the right family, either. No bankrolling, no fancy upbringing. Just learned early that if you can’t beat the system, you find a way to cheat it.” Then she smirks, slipping effortlessly back into her usual demeanor. She steps out into the sunlight. “He’s getting away!” she yells and points toward the train. Charlie runs in the opposite direction, feels the sun on his whiskers, sees the bruised sky opening, knows that Chicago is forty miles gone. Only later, when he puts his paw in his pocket, does he find the three things Nell left for him. A booklet of train tickets, three of BC’s emerald rings, and a card with a phone number on it. A cat after my own heart, he thinks. She drew, in ink, on her calling card—a cartoon of herself, a cloche covering her ears, a wide smile with one sharp tooth. ∘ ∘ ∘