Last Year Was Complicated
Part I – Trinity River
Chapter 1 – CuriosityI'd only been in the cabin for two weeks when she first appeared at my door. A pitiful little thing, just a baby really, and she was definitely looking for a mommy. Which I was never gonna be.
She, of course, was a kitten, maybe three or four months old, and how she'd survived that long out here by herself I wasn't certain. I had some fish I'd caught that morning and had just finished cooking, and I was more than happy to share it with her. She ate it daintily and with great style, like it was the best thing she'd ever tasted. Maybe it was.
I wasn't in the habit of catching my own supper; I was much better at ordering than I was at cooking. But I'd come out here, to this spot on the Trinity River, to get away from everybody and everything for a while. The river was about fifty miles southeast of my uncle's house in Little Bend, Texas, where the majority of my relatives lived. That word, majority, encompassed both my Pappy and his brother Ben, my uncle, sometimes his son and my cousin Beau, and my older brother Bret and me when we were in Texas. Where I'd been for a while now.
My name's Bart. Bart Maverick. Yes, we're distantly related to Samuel Maverick, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Second cousin twice removed or something like that. Sam Augustus gave some land to Micah, another of my uncle's, and he shared it with Beauregard (Pappy) and Uncle Bentley, his two brothers. That's why Bret and I were born in Little Bend.
Life the last year or so has been one gunshot wound after another, and frankly my head has had more than its share of ups and downs, too. Somewhere along the way a break from everything sounded like a good idea, and that's how I ended up here. Pappy has a good friend in Houston who owns this cabin and had no need of it for several months, so she suggested I take it for as long as I wanted it.
The whole family plays poker for a living, me included, and I just wanted to sit still and do nothing for a while. My shoulder's still healing from the last fight it had with a bullet, and something happened during the time I was battling the subsequent infection that I still can't quite pin down. I wanted to be alone for a bit, just to be lazy and reflect, but Brother Bret is supposed to join me here next week. I believe it'll do him some good to get away for a while, too.
Back to the kitten. We'd had dogs growing up, and we'd always had barn cats, but I'd never had a cat inside the house. And make no mistake, inside the house was exactly where she intended to stay. "Well," I finally told her, "I suppose if you're gonna live here with me you need a name. How about Miss Kitty?"
She looked at me like I required a new brain for the old head, because the one that was in there definitely wasn't working. "Puss?" I suggested next, but it was quickly obvious that wasn't acceptable either. "Fluff? Baby? Cat? Any suggestions?" She rubbed up against my arm and issued a soft and melodious 'Brrrrrrruuuppp' and I took the hint. "Melody?" She nodded her head and 'Brrrrrrruuuppped' me again. Glad that was settled. "Alright, Miss Melody, how about some water? Then you can come out on the porch with me while I smoke a cigar. And when we get bored with that there's always bed." I put some water in a saucer and set it on the floor next to the cabinet where all the necessities were kept. She followed me out onto the 'porch,' actually a small deck right on the water, and waited until I'd sat down in the rocker before jumping up in my lap. She curled up and purred herself to sleep. Obviously I was wrong. As a mommy, I'd do just fine.
She was still in the cabin the next morning, snuggled with her head up against my back in the bed. As soon as I moved around she got up and made her way to lay in front of me, more than happy to cuddle right up and go back to sleep. "Ladies are not supposed to sleep with gentlemen, you know," I informed her as I scratched her ears and listened to her purr. "Oh, I see," I told her. "Well, I'm no gentleman, either." Great, the week before Bret got here I was talking to a cat. How's that for crazy? Melody didn't seem to object, and we both drifted back off for a few more minutes.
The next time I opened my eyes she was sitting on the floor, staring at me like I'd done something wrong. I had, in a way. I'd gone back to sleep without taking care of her breakfast. I tried to chase her away with my hand, while I told her, "Shoo. Go find your own breakfast. Catch a mouse or something." She didn't move or complain, just sat and stared until finally I groaned and swung my legs around on the floor. I had some leftover salted bacon from yesterday morning, and I gave her two pieces of that, broken up into bits, and got dressed while she ate. When finished she did the same thing I'd done, groomed herself until she looked most presentable, and waited to see what my next move was.
"Sorry, Melody, nothing on the agenda more exciting than doing some reading. You'll have to amuse yourself for a while." I poured a cup of the coffee I'd made while she bathed and settled down in the rocker outside on the 'porch.' I was working on Jules Verne's latest book, 'From the Earth to the Moon,' and was fascinated by the possibilities. Melody lay down next to me, well out of the way of the rocker, and watched the sunfish jump in the river. When she got bored with that she took an early morning nap. As far as she was concerned, all was well and peaceful in this new world she'd found.
I had no objections. As a matter of fact, after being visited by nothing more than a stray cow on the far side of the river in the past two weeks, I was ready for some company, even if it was of the non-human variety. Maybe it would give me something to think about besides the empty space that existed between the time I'd slid off my horse in Little Bend and the time that I'd woken up in Uncle Ben's house, some eight days later. Bret insisted he couldn't tell me anything about that time, and everyone in the house agreed with him. Except Lily Mae, who'd inadvertently let something slip that had me curious.
On the second day after I woke up, she'd brought me some soup and some coffee and sat with me while I ate. I wasn't paying any attention to whatever she was talking about until I heard her mention 'Valpariso Road.' "What was that, Lily?" I asked as I put my spoon down.
"What?" she asked. "Valpariso Road? Ain't that the place where your head was parked while you wasn't with us?"
"I don't know. Did you hear me talk about it?"
"Well, sure, Mr. B. Far as I can recall, it was in Las Cruces. That's where you was. Least that's what you kept babblin' about."
"I did?"
"Yeah, don't you remember? You were playin' poker an everything."
"What else, Lily Mae?" She had my full and complete attention now.
"Well, there was this girl – name of Eve or Evie or somethin' like that, and her pa."
"Evy, maybe?" I prompted her.
"Yeah, that's it. Evy. Her pa's named Aiden. No, wait, that's one a the other men. Her pa's Billy. You called him Wild Bill, for some reason. And you kept talkin' about Sugar, but I don't know if that was a person or a place."
"Maybe both," I murmured, more to myself than anything. "Go on, what else did I say?"
"Well, one day you were tellin' about meetin' everybody at church, and I thought that was mighty funny, comin' from you."
"I've gone to church before, Lily Mae. It's not a foreign concept to me."
"No, it's just, well – you know what I mean. You seem to be a whole lot more God fearin' than the rest of 'em."
"I think you hit on the right words, Lily Mae – God-Fearing."
"An you took a job – workin' for Billy, at his ranch." Lily Mae had a funny smirk on her face when she told me that one.
"Me? Workin'? Doin' what, did I say?"
"Not right then, but the next day or so. Sounded like 'partner.'"
That was the end of what I could get out of Lily Mae. The next time I saw her she insisted she didn't remember any more; she'd told me everything she'd heard. I suspected more than anything that she'd had a long talk with Brother Bret.
Now, don't get the wrong idea. I didn't think Bret had done anything that wasn't in my best interest. It was just that, well, something happened during that time I fought for my life that he thought I was better off not knowing about. Or so I suspected. I could be wrong; all you had to do was tell me I didn't need to know somethin' and I immediately wanted to know. Maybe I should have named the cat Curiosity, it might have been a better moniker.