GLORIA

The yellow cat growled deep in her throat. Gloria dropped her book and pushed aside the thick fabric curtain to look outside. Two men walked past the car, talking loudly and letting their dogs run free. People using the dog park often ignored rules about leashes, so surprise canine visits, followed by their humans, were common. Thus, the benefit of a guard cat.

The cat had showed up three months earlier, making a nonstop racket until Gloria opened the car door and let her in. She hadn’t planned to let the cat stay though. How could she, when she barely could feed herself? But the cat had looked up from devouring the crumbs of her turkey sandwich, leapt to the window, and made that warning growl in time for Gloria to turn off the radio and lie down under the blanket. She heard voices, but nobody bothered her.

“If you warn me when anyone’s coming close,” Gloria had told the cat, “you’ve got the job.” She named her Canary. That night she discovered the pleasure of a small warm body tucked next to her chest in the sleeping bag. Gloria had never heard the cat meow, but learned her unique repertoire of sounds: contented chirps, rumbling purrs, and guttural growls of warning.

Gloria couldn’t stop thinking about the missing woman. It was different than her own situation, of course, but it made her anxious to think about anyone wandering around lost, unable to go home or having nowhere to go. If the woman had dementia, would she have the sense to find a warm place to shelter, or would she freeze to death among last year’s broken corn stalks?

How ironic to end a long and useful life in this place, where so many poor souls lived and died and were buried in unmarked graves because no one knew how to silence their screaming internal voices or calm their demons. She had once applied for a nursing position at the state hospital, and images from her tour still gave her bad dreams: communal toilet rooms without doors, a rack of housedresses in garish designs, a warning by the interviewer to always check the chair before sitting down, because some residents liked to empty their bladders in a pool on the plastic seat. When her mother forbid her to accept the job, she was relieved.

Now, sometimes she would walk the overgrown path by the river, its entrance mostly hidden by thick laurel bushes. An ancient weather-beaten sign announced in hand-drawn letters that this was Rebecca’s Way. Who was Rebecca, Gloria often wondered, and what happened to her?

On sunny days if she felt especially safe, Gloria would leave the security of her car and sit on the new bench at the edge of the burial ground. She’d think about all the nameless patients interred there a century ago. Not only the ones who were mentally ill, but also the inconvenient people, the unwed mothers and disobedient wives, the homosexuals, the strange ones, the lost and homeless.

Like her.

If the state hospital were still open, she herself might be swept up and incarcerated. She could end up buried in that field.