Page 61 of Guitars and Cages

That just made me laugh more. “Yeah, kid. There are far, far too many rules.”

He reached out and placed his small hand on my neck, above the collar of the flannel I’d pulled on. “You got hurt. What happened?”

“Enraged elephant,” I muttered.

His eyes widened so big at that he was back to doing his owl impression again.

“Really?”

“No, not exactly; just a misunderstanding.”

“Oh, I thought you went to the zoo without me.”

“Nah, it wouldn’t be fun to go to the zoo without you.”

“Can we go back again soon?”

“Yeah, we’ll go back again soon. But, ahh, I have to talk to you about something.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“Nope, you’re not in any trouble. It’s just that, because of all the yelling earlier, Uncle Cole has to go find somewhere else to live, and I need to go with him.”

“Am I going, too?”

I put my arm around him, pulling him close. “No, you can’t go with us because your mom says you need to stay here with Uncle Morgan. That’s good, though, ’cause he’s great with kids.”

Rory smiled. “He’s fun.”

I couldn’t help but grin, too. “Yeah, he is.”

I tried not to think about the games of pool I was gonna miss, or the chance to talk to Morgan over darts, or the nights we might have hung out and played jukebox bingo until the sun came up, sketching out designs for bikes as the music played. It’s funny how I’d had so many reasons not to move here, and yet now that I was gonna leave, I could only think of all the things I was gonna miss. Life’s weird that way.

“Why can’t you stay, too?” he asked suddenly.

“It’s not that I can’t stay, but I don’t want Uncle Cole to be all by himself when he leaves.”

“Will you come see me?”

“Of course; I’ll see you every day. I’m still going to work here, I just won’t be living here.”

“I guess that’s okay.”

He still didn’t look too happy, but I figured it wouldn’t take him long to get used to the idea. “I have to go to the store; would you like some more comics and some crayons or something?”

He grinned and nodded.

“All right, I’ll be back in a bit. Why don’t you go downstairs and have some lunch.”

“Okay.”

I watched him put his things away and turn off his music before he headed down. For a moment I stood there in the empty room, proud of how resilient he was and how clean he’d managed to keep his room so far. He was a good kid; I was gonna miss him when his mom came to take him home. I stuffed my hand in my pocket and headed down the back stairs to the street, pausing on the sidewalk to get my bearings. The store was only a couple blocks away, no need to waste gas; I just needed to remember if it was to the left or the right of here. I finally decided on right.

The day had started out sunny, and now all that bright light was making my head pound. I fished my sunglasses out of my pocket and put them on, hoping for some relief. The Tylenol I’d taken hadn’t done much for the headache I’d had since hitting the floor. The impact had pretty much decimated the stitches, but at least there was no new injury. Oh well, stitches pulled and itched as wounds healed anyway, and I’d always hated getting them.

I was almost to the store when I heard a pitiful meow coming from the alley. I took my sunglasses off and looked, but didn’t see anything. The meow came again, and I stepped into the alley, looking around as I worked my way toward the back. The meow got louder next to a dumpster, and I squatted down and looked beneath it, trying to ignore the smell. A fluffy gray, or what looked like gray, cat lay curled around itself. It saw me and meowed again, and I reached for it carefully, talkin’ low and slow the entire time. It must have been used to people, or hurt bad enough that it didn’t care, because it didn’t try to scratch me.

I gently drew the cat out from beneath the dumpster, cringing at its harsh cry when I touched its back legs. I was as gentle as I could be as I tucked the cat close and ran my hands over its body. It was thin, but not skin and bones; its eyes were bright and clear, but its left hind paw looked twisted and its right one was torn and bleeding in places. It needed a vet far more than I needed to get a journal, so the journal was going to have to wait.

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