June

Mary Anne Czarniki stood on the porch of her house calling into the still night air, “Salem. Salem, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

She was extremely worried. The stray cat she had been feeding for over a year had not eaten his food now for several days. The cat had shown up several months after the death of her husband and, if truth be told, some days was all that kept her going. She had tried to get it to come into the house, but he was feral and would not stay inside the building for any length of time. His fear of being inside had not stopped him from taking over the front porch, however. Mary had finally lured him into sleeping on the porch in a large wood box that she had lined with an old comforter and on the warm summer nights he had taken to sitting on her lap, purring, as she petted him. She had come to treasure the gentle companionship of those nights. Now he was missing, and she was distraught beyond belief.

“Salem, please, kitty, come here,” she called ... her voice broke with a sob as she tried in vain to hold back her tears.

A dark form was standing in front of Mary’s house, out by the street. It heard Mary’s calls and the sadness and desperation tinging each word touched something inside. It began to drift around, up and down the street, until it saw a planting of roses half-way up the yard of a neighboring house. Gently moving some of the thorn covered stems aside, it discovered a cat sitting beside a crumpled heap. The cat looked up with a forlorn expression upon its face.

The darkness sat down across the pile from the cat and said, “Were you playing too close to the street?”

The cat answered, “No. I was in my own yard. The car turned right at me. I couldn’t get out of the way.”

The shape reached out and shook several of the roses, knocking their petals free. The petals landed gently on the crumpled mound, covering it with a fragrant, red shroud.

“The car aimed for you?” it asked.

“Yes,” said the cat. “It is hard to be a black cat. People misunderstand.”

“My name is John, by the way,” said the form. “Who are you?”

“My name is Salem,” replied the cat. “That’s Mary calling for me.”

The darkness stood up and looked across the yards to where Mary was still calling for Salem, between her sobs and tears.

“She is your friend?” it asked.

“Yes,” said the cat. “And now she is alone. She will never find me over here. She will never know what happened to me.”

Looking down at the cat, John asked, “Would you like to come with me? I can take you where you are supposed to go. It’s nice there and no one will ever try to hurt you again.”

The cat looked up at the darkness and asked, “You can do that?”

“I can,” said the form. “Or, I can make it so that you can come back and be with your friend. The choice is yours.”

The darkness stood next to the cat as they watched a broken Mary stumble back into her house. They watched the front door close and then one by one, the lights in the house went dark.

The cat’s ears were curled forward and down. His body spoke of the sadness he felt as he watched his friend suffer with her pain.

“Can I say good-bye to her?” he asked the darkness.

“Of course, buddy,” said the shape as it bent over and picked up the cat.

The shape entered Mary’s bedroom to find her laying in a broken sleep having cried herself out. Even in her dreams she was sad as marked by her tossing and the tears still leaking from her eyes.

The form extended an arm and gently touched Mary’s face. Mary initially tensed but as the form whispered, “Sleep” she relaxed into a peaceful slumber.

Setting Salem down beside Mary, the shape showed him how to enter Mary’s dreams so he could say his good-byes.

As Salem the cat was talking to his friend, the shape moved into Mary’s living room. As he perused the bookshelves, his eyes were attracted to an old Prince George “Royals” High School Year Book. Exerting the effort required to remove the book from its place on the shelf, he began to leaf through the pages searching for an idea. He had just finished reading several of the handwritten notes left in the margins of the Year Book’s pages when he noticed Salem had rejoined him and was sitting with his tail curled around his paws staring at him with the typical inscrutable gaze of a cat.

“Are you ready to go?” John asked.

“Yes,” replied the cat.

“Have you decided what you would like to do?”

“Yes. If you can do as you said, I want to be with my friend.”

John bent over and picked up the cat. Holding him against his chest, with the cat’s head nestled under his chin, John whispered, “Good, kitty. Let’s get you back to where you need to be.”

The shape ghosted along through the woods and yards until it came to the farm where his quarry lived. Putting Salem down beside the sleeping pregnant queen, he jostled a few of the other applicants already waiting so as to place HIS cat first in line.

Crouching down, he whispered, “Wait here until it is time.”

After kissing the cat on its head, he rose to his full height and began slipping back into the darkness.

Salem the Cat yelled, “Thank You!” at the retreating form of his benefactor and as there was no reply thought he had not been heard. The darkness had already enveloped the form so Salem never saw the tears, caused by those simple words, running down its face.

July

David price was having a very bad day. Ever since his wife of thirty-eight years died the previous spring, he hadn’t been able to reintegrate with life. He had “worked at” his job for a bit after she passed but his will was not into it. His boss, while understanding, had finally needed to push him into the retirement category.

Since then, he had not done much more than wake up in the morning because he hadn’t died in his sleep, shuffle through the day, and then go to sleep. The only thing he religiously did was every Wednesday, he showered, shaved, and drove the forty miles from his home in Dinwiddie County to the small cemetery in his old hometown where his wife was buried.

Today had started out okay but ever since he visited his wife, things had gone downhill. First, he got lost driving home; something he never did. He made a wrong turn going along a path he had driven hundreds of times. Then he couldn’t seem to find his way back to his normal route; every time he turned onto a road that should have taken him back it just made it worse. He was lost somewhere in the hinterlands of Prince George County, which was embarrassing as he’d grown up there.

Finally, his car’s engine had started to sputter and surge, only to stop running at all. Luckily, he’d been able to pull over to the side of the country road he found himself on before it had failed. Now his stupid cell phone, which he KNEW was fully charged when he left home that morning, was totally flat-out dead.

Looking around, he saw that he was in front of a rather nice, if somewhat older, Federal style farmhouse set a bit further back from the road than was normal for houses nowadays. Maybe, they would let him use their phone to call Triple-A, he thought. With a heavy sigh, David levered himself up out of his car and trudged up the gravel drive to the house.

As he approached the front of the house, he admired the full porch that wrapped the entire first floor of the structure. Climbing the steps, he crossed the porch and rang the bell. A few minutes later the front door opened a fraction and an older woman peered through the crack and said, “Yes, can I help you?”

David began to explain he predicament. The longer he spoke the more he thought he recognized the lady hiding beyond the partially opened door. For him, those eyes were unforgettable.

“Mary? Mary Reppenhagen?” gasped David.

“Yes,” Mary replied. “Reppenhagen was my maiden name. Oh, my God, David, is that you?”

“Yes! It’s me! Jesus, what are the odds that my car would break down in front of your house? How are you?”

Mary held the door open and said, “Come in, David. Of course, you can use my phone to call a tow truck. I can make some coffee and we can catch up while you wait. That is unless you need to get home quick to your wife?”

“No,” David said sadly. “No wife or anybody waiting for me. My wife passed away almost a year ago and I have no family to speak of. In fact, most people would say that I am a lonely old man.” He chuckled a bit to take the bitterness out of his words, but Mary’s heart reached out to this man who at one time meant the world to her.