IT WAS MOSTLY JUST a feeling that warned Cat that the trespasser was right there in the grotto, a mysterious feeling that something was wrong. Almost as if she had suddenly developed mystical powers, like clairvoyance or second sight. Clairvoyance, most likely.
Of course, the fact that there was a strange object sitting there in plain sight just might have helped too. But she’d definitely started getting the mysterious feeling before she even noticed the pail. A stained and rusted pail made out of an old Shell oilcan with a makeshift baling-wire handle that was sitting just outside the cottage door.
But whether the warning was by way of second sight or oilcan it served its purpose, and Cat was able to make her next move very carefully. Holding her breath, she tiptoed across the grotto and, as she neared the cottage, sank down to her hands and knees. Beneath the side window she rose up gradually until she could see over the sill. And there, inside her cottage, her own private, secret cottage, was the same little boy.
Sitting on the floor beside Marianne’s crib the ragged and dirty little trespasser was rocking slowly back and forth. Cat could see the back of his bowl-shaped haircut and the bottoms of his dirty bare feet sticking out from under his raggedy backside. His hair was sun-streaked brown. There was something strangely familiar about the color—and the homemade haircut as well. A mental image of a boy’s back as he stood at the blackboard flashed in Cat’s mind and resentment flared up into anger. Jumping to her feet she jerked open the cottage door.
As the door screeched open and banged back against the wall, the little boy jumped up, his eyes wide with fear. Still clutching Cat’s doll against his chest he retreated backward until he bumped into the wall.
“Okay, kid,” Cat yelled, “what do you think you’re doing? This is my house and you’re a trespasser, and trespassing’s against the law. I’m going to tell the sheriff and have you put in jail.”
The boy shook his head violently. He seemed to be saying something but his lips were trembling and his voice was very faint. Big, fat tears began to roll down his cheeks. He started edging sideways, keeping his eyes on Cat as if he expected her to jump on him at any moment, like a terrier after a rat. When he got to the crib he sank down beside it.
Looking up at Cat he moved his lips again, and this time she could make out most of what he was saying. In a high, trembly, babyish voice he said, “I ain’t hurt her none. See, I ain’t hurt her.” He unwrapped the pink blanket and held the doll up for Cat to see. “See? She ain’t hurt a bit. I was just playing with her a little. I was just playing ... The trembly voice broke down in a rush of sobs and the kid bent his head and buried his face in Marianne’s blanket.
As Cat stared down at the sobbing little kid she began to experience a puzzling sensation. A sinking, shriveling feeling—like an inner tube with a nail in it. All the righteous, burning anger was fizzling out, leaving in its place a strange swollen kind of ache that made it hard to swallow and that made her eyelids tight and hot.
“Hey,” she said over the painful lump in her throat, “you don’t have to cry about it. I’m not going to tell the sheriff. At least I won’t if you promise not to come here again. Do you promise not to come here again? And not to tell anyone about this place, ever? Do you?”
The kid cried awhile longer before he raised his face. Still sobbing and with tears streaming down his cheeks, he stared up at Cat. His lips moved but no words came out. Then he looked back down to where he was still clutching Marianne against his chest, and cried harder than ever. So hard, it occurred to Cat that he might be going to strangle and die right there before her very eyes. Then he looked up again and in a wobbly wail said, “Awright. I promise. I won’t tell nobody. And I won’t come no more.” He looked back down at Marianne and sobbed. “I can’t come back no more. Not ever no more.” And he buried his face in the pink blanket again.
“Kid,” Cat said, and then louder, “hey, little boy!” But the kid went on crying—and on and on. It wasn’t until she practically shrieked, “Hey you!” that his head jerked up. Staring at his tear-wet face Cat said sternly, “What do think you’re—why are you—how’d you ... ?” And then a little less sternly, “What’s your name, anyhow? You got a name, don’t you?”
He nodded, sobbed, whispered something that sounded like “Sammy,” and went on crying.
“Sammy?”
He sobbed and nodded.
Cat sighed. Okay. So his name was Sammy and he was about five years old and ...
“Sammy,” she said, “tell me something. How the dickens did you find this place, anyway? And how come you’re way out here all by yourself? Don’t you have any folks to look after you?”
Sammy turned loose of Marianne with one hand and wiped his face, smearing dirt and tears across his cheeks. Then he sobbed again, hiccuped, and nodded. “I got folks. But my ma and pa been pickin’ ever day, so I stay with Granny Cooper. Granny Cooper don’t go pickin’ so she’s mindin’ me.”
Not very well, Cat thought. “Well, then,” she said, “if Granny Cooper is minding you, where is she now? Right this minute. How come she’s not taking care of you right this minute?”
Sammy stared at Cat for a moment. Then his large wet-lashed eyes looked off thoughtfully into the distance and his lips moved in a way that might be just the hint of a smile. “Sleepin’,” he said. “Granny Cooper sleeps a whole lot.” The almost smile faded. Then he looked down at Marianne and whispered something Cat only heard a part of—a part that sounded like “good-bye” and then “Lillybelle.”
“Lillybelle?” she asked. “Did you say Lillybelle?”
He looked up guiltily out of the tops of his eyes and nodded. “I jist calls her Lillybelle. My ma had a doll named Lillybelle onced. Not a corncob one neither. A real store-made doll like this here one.”
“Her name,” Cat said firmly, “is Marianne.”
He nodded. “Marianne,” he said. He looked down again, said “Good-bye, Marianne,” and then added in a whisper, “Lillybelle.” Then he put the doll into the crib and carefully tucked in the pink blanket.
It was right then, at that moment, that something—something about the look on Sammy’s small, pointy-chinned face as he tucked in the blanket—made Cat almost certain of something she had already begun to suspect. “Sammy,” she said, “you’re a girl, aren’t you?”
Sammy looked up, startled—and worried. “I didn’t tell,” she said. “I didn’t tell you, did I?”
Cat grinned. “Samantha, I bet. Samantha?”
Sammy nodded guiltily. “I ain’t supposed to tell folks, though. Not till we get back to Texas. Or when I go to school. Ma says I can be a girl agin when I start goin’ to school.”
“Why does she say that?” Cat asked. “Why doesn’t she want you to be a girl now?”
“I don’t rightly know,” Sammy said. She looked down at herself. At the baggy, ragged shirt and overalls. “Ma says we ain’t got no money for girl things right now. So I got to wear what don’t fit Roddy no more. And Spence too. Sometimes I get to wear Spence’s growed-out-of things too.” She ran her hand down the sleeve of the blue plaid shirt she was wearing—a much-too-big blue plaid shirt with both elbows out and a frayed collar. “This here shirt was Spence’s,” she said proudly.
Cat started to say it was a good-looking shirt but the thickness in her throat suddenly returned, making it hard to talk. She’d found herself remembering the boxes of old dresses she’d run across in the attic when she was looking for things for the grotto. Dresses that she’d outgrown long ago and that were, for the most part, pretty old and faded, but a lot better for a little girl than the ragged scraps of a boy’s shirt.
After a moment she swallowed hard and asked, “You got two brothers? Spence, and what did you say the other one’s name was?”
“Roddy,” Sammy said. “Roddy’s the littlest one. And the meanest.” Then she suddenly smiled. A full-out shining smile that showed white baby teeth and dented her dirty tear-streaked cheeks. “And Zane too,” she said. “I got a big one too—name of Zane.”
Cat felt a kind of collision somewhere in the middle of her chest, as if a swallow had tangled with a breath going the other way. “Zane?” she said, and as she said the name she could feel the anger rising up, burning away the swollen softness in her throat. She stared down at the ragged little Okie for a moment before she said, “You better get out of here, right now. You get on home and don’t you ever come back.”
The little girl edged around her and out the door. Halfway across the grotto she turned and looked back.
“Go on. Get!” Cat yelled. “Scat! And don’t you ever come back or I’ll call the sheriff.”
Sammy turned and ran.