Ebenezer

Folks west of the Pecos call me Ebenezer, and if one were to believe half the stories told about me, I am the most irascible, evil-tempered, ring-tailed feline to be seen prowling this country in living memory. Of course, such belief would qualify the believer as the biggest fool within the same territory, so judge carefully.

I am of the Folk, and of the Clan of Cat, and am not in the least bad tempered. It is true I have no patience at all with fools or those who don’t like my kind, but that is a product of my increasing age, and too many lives lived in close proximity to the Clan of Man. That’s another story altogether, anyway.

I have been foreman of the Dos Santos ranch for the last ten summers, which is to say I watch over six scrawny longhorns, two milk cows, and a twenty year old horse for a retired human named Roy Jackson. I don’t mess with the new herd Tillie brought in; that’s for the hired help. My payment is all the rodents I can catch.

“Ranch” may be a bit of an overstatement: Roy has just over a section of dry pasture a few miles west of the Pecos.

“Retired” means Roy’s chief employment before I came to live with him was sitting on the porch with his tin cup of Arbuckle’s, smiling at the world with his cracked brown teeth, as if he owned it. When the sun had passed the meridian, the coffee was replaced by his jug of whatever nondescript liquor he was able to get.

His only other activity was spitting, for which he had a rare talent. It didn’t pay to underestimate his range, either. I have seen him hit a running chicken with a stream of brown juice from across the yard. I learned early to duck under the porch when I saw Roy getting ready to let fly; a cat is not that much harder to hit than a rooster.

He had an old tin badge he always wore, but it didn’t mean anything, not in this century anyway. There are stories that claim he was a Ranger, a long time ago. Then again, he might have just found it. No one seems to know for sure.

I’m actually a city cat, born in El Paso, Texas. My mother was employed in a sort of combination bar and bawdy-house, where she kept the various rodentia down to manageable numbers. They had enough mousers without her latest litter so Juanita, the owner, gave me to Roy when I was old enough to leave my mother.

With a pretty señorita on his lap and his head full of mescal, I expect she could have given Roy a puma. He had it bad for Juanita, and was convinced that she fully returned his affections. Half the men in the Trans Pecos were under that delusion, but you could never convince Roy of it.

The Spirit Above gifted the Clan of Cat with nine Life-Walks, upon the earth and under the sun; so it has been remembered and so it has been sung. I had seen ten weeks of my seventh Walk, that night in 1924, when an infatuated Roy accepted me from Juanita’s hands.

I reserved judgement on him for the moment; I have had good human companions, and some who were less than satisfactory. It was too early to tell about this wrinkled old cowboy.

He kissed her goodbye, set me on the seat of his rusted out T-model Ford truck, and cranked up its motor for the long drive back to the Dos Santos. He wanted to get as many rattling, jolting miles behind him as he could before his mescal headache hit. Then, as the rising sun began to glare in his eyes, he shut her down, climbed in the back and rolled up in a blanket to sleep it off.

I occupied the time with a bit of exploration, and breakfasted on a half-dozen crickets. They like to sleep through the day under the rocks, but I could scent them, and quickly discovered how to push the rocks over. Scant fare, but better than nothing.

The dry rustle of a snake’s scales gliding over sand disturbed my meal, followed by the distinctive buzz of a rattler. My excavations for hidden crickets had disturbed his slumber as well, and now I was in a very bad position, for a cat of my size.

I had gotten too far from the Ford, and now the venomous creature was between me and its dubious safety. I briefly considered a leap to the seat, but it was just a bit too distant.

I knew next to nothing about the Clans of the Snakes, and didn’t want to dispute with this one. I might have been about as quick as the scaly reptile, but I knew I had neither the experience nor the size to take him on. I needed another answer, quickly.

I got one, as Roy’s old Peacemaker blasted the quiet air, and the snake’s ugly head exploded into a sort of red mist. I made it back to the truck seat in two leaps, as Roy rolled out of his blanket and stretched.

“Stay up off the ground, young’un,” he said, and spat into the sand. “You ain’t big enough to eat a snake.”

That was undoubtedly true, I reflected to myself. But neither was a prairie rattler big enough to face a .45 Long Colt. That made me the winner: Sam Colt’s law.

Roy had to crank for a while before he could get the Ford to start; it had at least one coil going bad, and was being stubborn. The sound of his cranking was punctuated by mumbled curses as he began to get tired.

I wanted to tell him to advance the spark some more and check to see that it was switched to “battery,” but he didn’t ask, and it was none of my business, anyway. At last it caught, stuttered, and then smoothed down a bit, and we set off once more.

The Dos Santos is six hours east of El Paso by worn out Model T, within rifle shot of the Pecos River. The way you had to go in ’24 was part dirt road, and part old wagon ruts, through some rough scrub country the locals called the Guadalupe Mountains.

Whoever named those hills had never seen the Rockies, but nobody asked for my opinion. It boasted piñon pine, mesquite, patchy short grass, snakes, jackrabbits, and coyotes. Those and the usual desert birds just about completed its inventory.

My Clan was represented by a sparse population of bobcats and pumas, either one of whom could teach Apaches a thing or two about remaining hidden. For our purposes, they might just as well not have been there.

We made the trip back in early winter, so it was merely hot, not lethal. Anyone who could find shade could get fairly comfortable, and the old “T” only boiled dry twice along the way.

Both times, Roy filled a jar-lid with water for me from the canvas pouches he carried to replenish his radiator, so I was fine, just bored. It was midafternoon when we finally rattled to a stop in the front yard of Roy’s place.

There was another car there ahead of us, a nearly new Chevy sedan with Sheriff’s stars painted on the doors. That clearly didn’t please Roy at all. The Deputy himself was seated in Roy’s rocking chair on the porch, and with him were an irritated looking woman and two worn out kids. A strange dog poked its muzzle from under the edge of the porch, and some worn suitcases sat by the front door.

“Hello, Uncle Roy,” she said as he got out of the truck. “We thought you’d never get back. You ought to leave notice with someone when you’re going to be away.”

“Well I would Elaine, if had any family closer than Fort Worth,” Roy said irritably. “I don’t get many visitors out this way, y’know.” He indicated the grinning peace officer. “You get arrested again, woman? Maybe for disturbing the peace?”

“Let’s keep old family business private Roy, all right? We got off the train in Pecos, and Deputy Evans kindly agreed to drive us out here. I was hoping we could spend Christmas with you.”

“Christmas? The whole bunch of ya? And the dog, too?” Roy sounded a bit incredulous and high pitched. Clearly, such a visit had not been in his plans for the immediate future. An afternoon nap would have been far more welcome.

The Deputy was getting a kick out of Roy’s discomfiture at the sudden appearance of his relatives. He laughed and shook his head, then got back into his car and left them there. Roy was on his own.

Spotting that dog under the porch, a large German shepherd, I remained where I was, then I hissed and spat a couple of times, with my back arched as high as it would go. Representatives of the Clan of Dog certainly had not been in my Christmas plans, either.

The dog gave a half-hearted woof, not much interested in a pint sized cat, and came out to sniff at Roy’s boots. There were usually unidentified substances with fascinating scents on them, and those had its attention right now. Roy nudged the dog away, without trying to actually hurt it.

“Don’t you kick my dog, Mister!” That came from the older of the two children, a boy with a missing tooth and patches on both knees of his trousers.

“Tie ‘im up someplace then, Sprat. I got chickens running around here, and I don’t need any of ‘em killed. Got this here ring-tailed kitten, too.”

“It’s a she,” the boy kept on defiantly. “Her name’s Honoria.” He glared at Roy from beside his mother, as if he wanted to make an issue of it.

I classed the little human as someone who would bear watching. One of the first lessons every she-cat mother teaches her young is that where there are small boys, tails are liable to be pulled without warning. And who names a dog “Honoria,” anyway?

Roy looked at him with something closer to approval. Without knowing it, the boy had done exactly the right thing, if he wanted Roy as a friend. Roy had about as much use for cowards, and people who let bullies push them around, as I did for big dogs. But someone who showed a little backbone and stood up to him, went into an entirely different slot in his estimation.

“The name’s Roy Jackson, youngster. You can call me Uncle, or just plain Roy. What’s yours?”

“His name is Jeffrey, Uncle Roy,” the woman said impatiently. “His sister is Matilda. You know that, for pity’s sake. I’ve written to you.”

“All right Jeff,” Roy said more kindly, totally ignoring the mother. “There’s some light chain hung up in the carriage house, over there. I think it’s got a snap-hook on one end. Go get it and secure your dog.

“Mind I what I said about the chickens and this little cat. If she stays civilized around them, we can see about turning her loose later.”

He turned to the little girl. “Tillie, there’s a pitcher full of cold water in the springhouse, sittin’ in the trough where the well water runs. You can find a glass in the kitchen cupboard.”

“You and I need to talk, Roy,” said his niece, as soon as the girl had gone.

“I never seen talkin’ do any particular good with you, Lainie. Fact is, when the grits get to boilin’, you’re just goin’ to up and do exactly what you’ve already set your head to,” Roy said tiredly. “Now suppose you tell me just what that is, this time.”

“Uncle Roy,” she said, after taking a breath. “You make everything so hard. You’re all by yourself out here in the back end of nowhere, with nobody to talk to but the buzzards and scorpions. We just thought you might enjoy having some family around you for the Holidays.”

Roy squinted at that, plainly suspicious. He didn’t say anything though, and after a few seconds Elaine went on.

“After Christmas, I have some plans that I could really use your help with, if you can see your way clear.” Her last sentence came out in a conciliatory tone, almost pleading. She gave him a small smile, but it never quite reached her eyes.

“Now you want to pretend I’ve got a choice?” Roy threw both hands in the air and spluttered. “For the love of Heaven, woman! Just say what it is you want!”

“Oh, Roy,” Elaine sighed. “Why does it always have to be this way with you? A body would think I was trying to rob you.”

“No, just throttle me for the change in my pocket. How much do you need?” Roy had been down this road before, and he just wanted it over with and all the extra humans gone, so he could resume his life.

His niece rolled her eyes at that. “I don’t want any of your money, Uncle Roy. I just need for the kids to stay with you for a while, so I can go to New York.”

“New York! Why? You found another man? Somebody else who’ll leave you high and dry, soon as he fathers one more…”

“Roy!’ she almost shouted. “Why can’t you ever just let the past lie? I did meet a gentleman in Dallas, but it’s not what you think. He manages a Broadway stage company, and he says if I can get to New York City, he’ll put me in a musical. I’ll get to sing and act, Uncle Roy, what I’ve always wanted.”

From that point the conversation was long, heated, and thoroughly predictable. Roy had been right in the first place; she wasn’t giving him any real choice in the matter.

The fact was, the issue had been decided before she’d even got there. Jeff and Tillie were Roy’s blood, and the code he had always lived by was written in a different century. He could no more deny them than he could fly. The Dos Santos was acquiring two more residents; that was all.

I had seen the like before, in my many life-Walks. I stopped listening, and saw that the kids had, too. The boy sullenly wandered off to play around the barn and outbuildings, and the girl, who had come back with her glass of water, started edging toward me, where I still sat perched on the truck seat.

I sensed no harm at all in her, just a lonely little girl of perhaps seven summers. I let her approach, and began to purr when she stroked my striped coat. She just wanted a friend, and I was happy to oblige.

I’ve seen far too many lonely human children, baffled by the actions of their parents, and feeling unwanted. It is a failing of Humankind, that the adults forget what it was like to be young, or just don’t care. They expect small versions of adult behavior, and when their children can’t supply that, they get angry.

There was room aplenty in the old Dos Santos ranch house: a rambling limestone edifice with a red tile roof. It had four or five bedrooms, a big kitchen and parlor, and had once been a fairly fine residence, but was now down at the heels in the way any human house with no womenfolk eventually gets.

It hadn’t always been without them, I quickly saw. The signs were everywhere, and nor was this the first time children had lived in this house. What had become of them, and how Roy Jackson had come to be alone, was a story I never heard him tell. Some things are best left alone, I suppose.

Jeff and Tillie quietly picked out rooms, knowing that no amount of protest would change their mother’s plans at this point. Elaine put her stuff in another, and the dog, Honoria (Of all things, Honoria!) was released, having shown no animosity toward me or the scrawny poultry. She took up residence in the shade on the porch, apparently quite content to do so. I saw Roy set out a pan of water for her; she’d be fine.

I decided to move in with Tillie, and the grateful little girl picked me up and set me on the foot of the bed. That was fine by me; Roy didn’t seem to care where I slept, and I was still a bit suspicious of the boy. Truth be told, I could use a sympathetic friend, myself.

Honoria the dog was brought in for the night, as evening fell. I was glad to see that; she would have had more trouble than she could handle, with the coyotes and bobcats.

Honoria was a big dog, having seen perhaps two summers, and could probably have taken on one of either, but coyotes didn’t attack alone. They came in packs.

I didn’t want to think about that. She was a good sort for the Clan of Dog, and devoted to the boy, after the way of her kind. Jeff needed a companion as badly as his sister did. I came to a mutual understanding with Honoria, very quickly. I had my path to walk, and she had hers.

We didn’t stay up very late after the sun went down. The Dos Santos had no electricity in ’24, so Roy lit a few candles and lamps in the parlor, but after a half-hearted try at conversation with his niece, he gave it up and went to bed. We soon followed, and I laid down on the foot of Tillie’s bed, worn out by the long day.

Early the next morning Roy, trying to lighten the mood a bit, went out and cut a small piñon pine. Though it still lacked about a week until Christmas, he set it up on a stand of crossed sticks in the parlor. He got a box of dusty glass ornaments from the barn, and the kids delightedly got busy with them.

I laid my own plans while they were hanging the baubles, and as soon as no humans were watching, I quickly scrambled up the tree. Such has always been the Christmas prerogative of the Clan of Cat, since the morning of all things. Christmas trees are for climbing.

I didn’t make it to the top; the tree, having no more roots, toppled down with a tinkling crash of fallen ornaments. A squealing Tillie snatched me out of the mess, and the boy laughed, the first smile I had seen on his face.

“Your kitty don’t like Christmas, Mister Roy,” he said. “I think his name is Ebenezer Scrooge!” Tillie nodded and smiled. “Ebenezer!” she said, hugging me.

“Very well,” I thought. I had been given far worse names, in seven life-Walks. If it suited Tillie, then “Ebenezer” I would be.

One of the best qualities of human children is that they are able to have fun under almost any circumstances. They don’t let troubled times defeat them, but simply enjoy what rays of sunlight come into their lives.

Elaine made some acerbic comment about cats, which no one paid any mind to; Roy just shook his head.

The tree was soon set to rights, but I resolved to wait for chances to take my revenge upon it. “They can’t always be watching,” I thought to myself. I would get all the way to the top next time, too. See if I didn’t!

Elaine opened her baggage and took out two small, battered, giftwrapped boxes and set them under the tree. One was tied with a blue ribbon, and the other had a pink one. I observed these quietly, and would certainly investigate them later.

Roy harrumphed and sighed, then called for Jeff to come with him. They got into the Ford and went rattling off on some errand, leaving me with the womenfolk.

That was fine, too. Tillie obviously wanted to play, and I was a ten week old kitten, after all. Her mother decided to take a nap, but we had a fine time in the shade of the carriage house, all by ourselves.

Tillie was a melancholy little girl, but her heart was good. My kind were gifted with the power to see the hearts of others, and I knew that her hurts came from too many days spent playing alone, and too little understanding from the adults in her life.

“Very well,” I thought. “I am with you now, and I understand. We two will play together, and neither of us will be alone.” Back in El Paso Juanita had given me to Roy, and Jeff had named me, but it was to Tillie that I pledged myself. That bonding would last for the rest of my life.

The sun had travelled halfway down in the west when Roy and Jeff returned, the chugging Ford raising a plume of brown dust that settled slowly in the still, dry air. Honoria ran out to greet them, and they began to unload a half dozen boxes of groceries from the back, the boy chattering happily to his uncle. He even laughed a time or two.

That mood quickly evaporated as his mother came frowning out onto the porch, ready to gnaw Roy’s leg over the amount of time they’d been gone.

Roy didn’t give her the chance, though. “Lainie, get these put away in the kitchen as we bring them in,” he commanded. “Got more mouths to feed now. Just beans and bacon won’t do for the sprats. Butter goes in the blue crock, and set it in the cold water in the springhouse. Tillie knows where.”

Elaine sputtered a bit at this preemptive strike, but saved her tirade for later and got busy.

“I’ve got a spare rooster we can cook,” Roy said, “and enough here from the greengrocer in town to stir up a fair Christmas dinner.”

I followed the humans inside, intrigued by the thought of chicken dinners. The kitchen was dusty and had copious cobwebs festooning the corners, and the old iron range hadn’t been lit for years.

When it was just him, Roy preferred to boil his beans over a fire out in the yard, rather than heat up the house. Life had changed though, and he had enough sense to change with it and take things as they came.

I hoped he would remember to check the flue on the old kitchen range before he built a fire in it. Houses got burned down like that, when no one thought to look for abandoned bird nests in an old stovepipe.

There were also four more brightly wrapped gifts in the back of the truck. These Jeff got out and set carefully under the Christmas tree in the parlor. “I know what’s in ‘em!” he whispered to his sister. “But I’m not tellin’ you what you got! You got to wait until Christmas mornin’.”

“I don’t want to know anyway!” Tillie piped. “Presents are supposed to be a surprise. See, Ebenezer,” she said to me, “I’ve got three presents now! We’re gonna have a real Christmas!”

We did, too. Or as close to one as her uncle could produce on short notice. An uneasy truce held between him and his niece, the result of his laying down some firm rules about unpleasantness in the presence of the kids. Elaine remained sulky, but did as she was told, for once.

When Christmas Eve finally came, Roy lit candles and lamps in the parlor, and built up a good mesquite fire on the hearth.

There were shelves with books in that room, some of them expensive leather ones. He took down a couple and knocked the dust off them, sat in his armchair and beckoned to the children, with a sort of wistful smile on his face. They sat on the rug at his feet, while their mother stood in the door to the kitchen.

He opened one to a well-thumbed and dog-eared page, and began to read from Dickens’ beloved tale of what Christmas ought to be. He’d taken the notion to read it from the name I had received earlier that week, of course. I was nothing like the character in the book, but it was only a name, after all.

When he came to the part about Marley’s ghost and the clanking chains, Tillie’s eyes grew big in the firelight, and her mouth opened, and even Jeff looked a bit alarmed. I knew they’d heard the story before, or Jeff wouldn’t have given me the name he did, but it’s one of those few that never grow old. I was surprised their mother had ever read anything at all to them.

By the time a reformed Ebenezer Scrooge paid his Christmas visit to his nephew, Elaine had brought in a kitchen chair for herself and was listening as raptly as her children; no one tells a tale quite like Roy.

Smiling at the happy ending, their uncle closed the old book and set it aside. Then he opened the second book in his lap and read a different Christmas story. This one was about Mary and her baby, and the shepherds, and angels singing in the sky. The kids loved that one too.

When he closed his big old Bible at the end of Mary’s story, Roy began telling of other Christmases he’d known, so long ago that not even their mother had been born.

He’d been only Jeff’s age, when his uncles and older brothers finally came trudging home in their tattered grey uniforms from a terrible war. The Christmas his family had put together then from almost nothing was the most memorable of his life.

Tillie had dozed off by the end of it, and Elaine carried her to her bed. I followed, and hopped up to my place on its foot. There was more to a grizzled old cowboy named Roy Jackson than met the eye, I thought to myself. Much more.

The next morning was Christmas, and Tillie and Jeff were up before daylight, more than ready when Roy finally gave the go-ahead to tear into the packages. Gaudy wrapping paper flew both high and far, as they did exactly that.

Jeff got a baseball and a bat, and a box containing six brightly painted tin soldiers. Tillie got a Raggedy-Ann doll with scarlet yarn hair and an embroidered smile, a blue bonnet to wear in the sun, and a set of jacks with a red rubber ball.

Their uncle sat back in his leather armchair with his battered briar pipe, content to watch them at their happy play. I dove into the discarded wrappings in ecstasy, my resolve to avenge myself upon the tree completely forgotten. It was, as Tillie had said, a “Real Christmas,” for the Clans of both Cat and Man.

The day after that, Elaine was gone. Deputy Evans returned to drive her and her baggage to the train depot in Pecos, and she departed. Tillie clung to her and cried, but Jeff angrily took his dog Honoria and hid in the barn, while his mother left him behind forever.

That night Roy Jackson sat again in his armchair by the fire, and lighted his pipe. In a few minutes the children came to him as they had the night before; they had no one else now. He was the only stable anchor point in their whole frightening, chaotic world.

After a bit, Tilley pointed shyly to the rusted badge he always wore pinned to his shirt. “Were you the Sheriff, Uncle Roy?” she asked, barely loud enough to hear.

“No, silly!” her brother said. “That there’s a Ranger badge. It says so right on it! Would you tell us about the Texas Rangers, Mister Roy?”

“Just ‘Roy’, or ‘Uncle,’ will do fine Jeff. I don’t know though; those are some scary stories. Are you sure you’re brave enough to listen to ‘em?”

The kids both nodded an emphatic yes, and their uncle began to speak, in his low, rumbling old voice, there in the firelight. He told stories of outlaws and Apaches, gunfights and wild horses, things they’d never even dreamed of. He told tales that carried them far away, and backward in time.

And then, just before time to put them to bed, he said, “You sprats listen up now; this is important. After the first of the year, I’ll be gettin’ you signed up over at Miss Carson’s school. You tell her and anybody else who asks that your name is “Jackson.”

“Tillie Jackson?” the little girl asked, a bit uncertainly.

“That’s right, girl. The same as mine. You too, Jeff. A family oughta all have the same name. I’ll go to the County Courthouse and make that legal, soon as I can. Anybody gives you any trouble about it, you tell them to come to me.”

It was going to be all right, I realized. I knew there would be much more to come, some of it good, and some not so good, but the Spirit Above is kind, and it really was going to be all right.

That’s about all there is to tell. A lot has happened since that first Christmas on the Dos Santos, but it’s another story altogether, maybe several of them. I’ve seen ten summers now, and I’m getting a bit old to play, but I still sleep on the foot of Tillie’s bed, and I always will.

Jeff is gone, off to school at the University of Texas in Austin, but he writes to Roy every week and comes home whenever he can. His letters always begin “Dear Pop,” and are starting to tell of a pretty young woman he’ll most likely bring home with him in, due time.

Tillie is the mistress of the Dos Santos these days, and it’s quite a job, what with her egg business and the additions she’s made to the herd. She also takes care of Roy, since he’s seen better than eighty summers now, and doesn’t get around as well as he used to. At seventeen Tillie, or “Matilda” as she now prefers, is widely acknowledged as the prettiest girl in the Trans Pecos, and the young human toms cluster about her like bees around a rose. She’ll choose one of them soon, I expect.

Elaine never even wrote to her children, though she’d sworn she would. She was just gone from their lives. That’s all. I really hope nothing bad happened to her. Maybe she was just so successful and busy she never had time to think of them. Who knows? Roy always says there’s a home here for her, any time she wants it.

END