PREY

The Literary Review (Summer, 1973)

 

Mr. Harding is leaning on a rake as the car pulls up to the mailbox. It is morning in an Oregon spring, the trees are green, pink and white, the earth is chocolate, the sky is light blue. There is no wind. Although the tips of the firs can be seen to sway gently from time to time, there is no wind below, where Mr. Harding leans on his rake. It is April, and the snakes are coming out of hibernation.

The stray cat, the one Helen called Butch, was sunning on the mailbox until moments ago, which is why Mr. Harding stopped raking to wait for the car to come into view from behind the cluster of trees up the street. With a sense strange to him, the cat is able to pick out the mailman's car; or at any rate, it never scampers off its sunning perch when the passing vehicle belongs to a neighbor. When Mr. Harding saw the cat jump to the ground and run across the yard, coming toward the mound of mulch in back, he figured the mailman was near. He stopped working to lean on the rake and wait.

And sure enough the car pulls up and George, the mailman, calls, "Letter for you Emil!" Mr. Harding makes a waving motion with the rake, a gesture to let George know he heard. He didn't have to hear; he saw George put a letter in the box. The mailcar pulls away, making a cloud of dust, and Mr. Harding thinks, George is late again.

He has been expecting no letter this week and so pauses to consider whether the walk to the mailbox is worth the effort. His decision comes shortly, to take care of first things first, and Mr. Harding sets back to raking. From time to time he stops to watch the cat, which is low in the grass ahead of him. The stray has picked up the trail of something, probably of a garden snake recently out of hibernation, a sluggish snake which won't have a chance. The early spring snakes are all the cat can manage to catch any more.

Mr. Harding rakes at a slow but steady pace. He keeps a groomed yard and the storm last night cluttered it with twigs ripped from the firs and blossoms blown off the fruit trees and, of course, leaves from everywhere. He rakes the debris toward the mound of mulch, his pile of compost in the back corner of the yard. When it is time to fertilize the garden again, he will shovel compost from the bottom of the mound, where the decay has been greatest. But since he has planted only corn and tomatoes this year, he has much more compost than he needs.

The stray is circling the mound, its ears perked, body hunched low and as tautly sprung as a mouse trap. Mr. Harding still thinks of the cat as a stray, although Helen fed "Butch" from the morning it first appeared on the property, some six or seven years ago, to the day she died. Sometimes the cat would disappear for days at a stretch but whenever it returned, as it always did, Helen would welcome it with a bowl of warm milk. And this morning he gave milk to the cat himself, though only because Helen would have wanted him to. She never told him so but he knows. Mr. Harding also knows that the cat has homes all over the neighborhood, the reason it can disappear for days at a stretch.

As he rakes, he begins to wonder what the letter in the mailbox could be. He heard from Mary, his daughter in California, last month, so if the letter is from family, it will be from Bruce in New York. Bruce and Peggy haven't written since Christmas, when they sent him the pictures of his new grandson. Of course Peggy, and not Bruce, does the letter writing for the family. Then the letter will be from Peggy.

He pulls along a growing pile of branches, blossoms and leaves to the compost. Hearing a scratching sound that comes from the other side of the mound, Mr. Harding decides that the cat is on a snake's trail for sure. The snakes love it in the compost. He has never looked but he feels certain that the snakes spend each winter there, hibernating. In recent weeks they have been coming out one by one, sluggish and shiny, their skins looking wet. The stray has been getting its share of them, too, but somehow enough snakes manage to get away that come summer Mr. Harding will be able to rouse out a snake just by poking along the edge of the compost with a shovel.

He is making slow but certain progress through the debris. The storm last night was the worst blow since the big Columbus Day wind in 1962. That one blew down one of the oldest firs in the yard and last night Mr. Harding wondered, sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark and listening, if another tree would fall this time. The storm kept him awake much of the night, waking hours he spent listening and wondering. Going out into the yard this morning, he expected to find damage more serious than debris but debris was all he found and debris he can rake up.

He can still hear the cat in the compost, making scratching noises. The stray isn't as quick as it used to be, and the snake may have gotten away by slithering under the mound out of reach. The snakes will have no chance in the grass until warmer weather makes them active but in the compost they can always give the cat a contest. Most of the snakes are in there, Mr. Harding thinks. And the cat keeps trying, keeps digging away. Raking slowly, working a section of the yard at a time, he moves debris to the mound. Perspiration beads his brow, his breathing becomes heavy and he begins to feel a little lightheaded but Mr. Harding works on at the same steady pace, never one to leave a job unfinished. He will have cleaned up his yard before any of the neighbors get to theirs. Those, he should say, who don't wait until the weekend before cleaning up the mess.

Mr. Harding keeps at it. Finally he is pulling the last bit of debris across the yard when the cat jumps out in front of him. When it sees him, the cat growls and takes off across the lawn with a snake dangling from its jaws. The snake seems to offer no resistance, perhaps is dead. Mr. Harding watches the cat maneuver across the yard. Periodically it stops to toss the snake aside so it can pounce on it again, then lift it in its jaws and dart away. If the cat were close enough, Mr. Harding would hear it growl.

He goes to the garage and puts away the rake. At the end of the driveway is the mailbox and he decides to fetch the letter before taking his morning nap. He starts off slowly, walking with a slight limp. The limp is a result of weariness rather than of injury, for Mr. Harding has no injuries, he has remained in good health through all his years.

He opens the mailbox. The letter turns out to be a greeting card, a greeting card by the feel of it, being heavier and thicker than a letter would be. He can make out hints of color through the envelope, the colors that would be on a card. The return address is in his daughter's hand, so it is from Mary after all and not from Bruce, from Bruce through Peggy.

Suddenly Mr. Harding knows what it is. He has a birthday coming up in two weeks and the card is Mary's early best wishes for the occasion. He doesn't have to open the envelope to be sure of this. His daughter never was one to remember dates, she often has been early with his birthday cards. Better early than late, he can hear her say. Carrying the envelope in one hand, he starts back toward the house. The cat is in the driveway ahead of him, playing with the snake. Mr. Harding sees that the snake is badly mutilated now, its long body shredded and nearly torn in half. Give me that!, he thinks; he is silent. But as he approaches the cat, this thought leads him to take a few quick steps forward, after which he grabs down at the snake to pull it from the cat's jaws. The cat easily scurries out of reach, growling, and Mr. Harding stops dead. He feels a sharp pain in the small of his back, a stab of pain. He waits a motionless moment, then slowly makes himself erect. He takes several deep breaths but the pain stays, a stabbing sensation in the small of the back, as though something were biting him there. He rubs the area, rubs it and waits.

Still in pain, he starts again towards the house. His hand is shaking and he feels instinctively that soon he is going to drop the envelope, so he manages it into a pocket. It's a birthday card, he remembers, an early birthday card from his daughter. He must jot himself a reminder to remember to open it in two weeks. He must remember to remind himself.