The Iron Cat
In the beginning, I was seduced by fruit.
Shopping for a house, my first, I found a little white bungalow,
two bedrooms, in the heart of the city but next to a creek,
on a pie-shaped lot that hosted an orchard:
four apricot trees, five varieties of apples, two wedded peaches,
pear and plum trees, raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries,
red and black currants, as well as asparagus and a
huge horseradish that guarded the kitchen door.
Now, when I say wedded peaches, I mean just that.
One male, one female, each tree without its mate would be
barren.
Side by side, in a protected corner facing south, each giving
the other what it needed, they produced a bumper crop,
peaches bigger than softballs, so big the branches needed propping.
Antique peaches, not the bland stuff of supermarkets, not a product
of corporate agribusiness, difficult peaches
whose fruit clung stubbornly to the stone, so juicy so sweet so rich
a hundred-year-old dream of how a peach should be.
And the apples, too, were equally esoteric, some
big red ones ripening in July and fading within a week
so delicate the skin would bleed red into the flesh when bit
apples to be picked and eaten today, and today only
apples that could never ride in a truck, sit on a shelf.
All this fruit kept me busy
pruning and culling, keeping the insects at bay
picking and processing
every summer an orgy of eating the very best fruit ever tasted
in a place that gathered the sun, drew from the soil, and
manifested fruit magic.
After a time, I became curious
about those who had created such bounty
but they were gone, dead, with no relatives to question
and I could only speculate, from certain clues revealed to me.
The first clue came early on,
during an inspection of the crawl-space attic. Popping the hatch, I
found it surrounded by a ring of garlic bulbs. Funny place
to store garlic, I mused, as I cleared it away.
The second clue was under the front doormat,
moved to sweep the porch - a pentagram, carefully drawn beneath.
The third clue came several years into my residence,
in the spring, while turning over the garden, when my spade struck
something I first thought was a rock.
A little iron cat with a whiskery smile burnished on,
lying on its back, paws in the air, belly indented and
just large enough to hold a candle. Etched on its back, a message:
Karol
666.
Robert Douglas Hickey |
