A Cry

I am used to leave-takings without farewell, but there are limits.

I am used to leave-takings without farewell, but the Captain wasn’t supposed to be one of the ones who left.

I kept playing it over in my head, what he had said. That he didn’t need any provisions because if he couldn’t get what he needed along the way, he’d die.

He’d said it the way a person might say, I don’t need to take anything because I’ll be back in time for supper.

Part of what made our calling him the Captain a joke is that he could be—not foolish. But careless of practicalities. There in the stableyard after the Captain rode through the gate, I wondered, Was it just his careless way that made him speak so strangely? But what he’d said next had sounded not careless at all, and had been stranger still: “For it is, fortunately, a truly immense journey.”

I stood baffled in the morning’s chill, listening to the fading clops of Genoveva’s hooves, trying to suss out the meaning of his words. Trying to understand what good fortune lay in a journey’s being immense. Trying to figure out what to do next. I listened. For what, I did not know. There was only the commonplace warble of mourning doves nesting in the eaves. The caretaker’s grunt as he lowered himself back onto the tractor seat.

Then a cry, thin as a paper cut, made me look down. I’d forgotten—I’d been carrying one of Agrippina’s kittens this whole time, ever since following the Captain out of the stable. It peered over the pedestal of my palm at the pea stones far below. For it, a distance of terrible proportions.

I raised it to my mouth, brushed my lips across its apricot fur. Whispered into its triangle ear the Captain’s strange words. Away-From-Here.

Sharply the kitten flicked its ear.

Go, I felt this meant.