Exile on Kalamazoo Street Read Online Free PDF

down, and his hands stuffed deeply into the pockets of his coat. I watched him until he disappeared into frigid darkness up the street. I was left looking at the shadowy figure of the pine tree. I wondered absently if the sparrows had burrowed into its dense branches, drawn by the illusion of warmth.
    * * *
    Another blizzard hit Kalamazoo a few weeks after the first one, but by then I had become quite used to always being in my house and surrounded by snow and having my sister drop off groceries. My life had devolved to watching my limited world from the second-story bedroom window as I drank warm coffee or tea. At first I took many naps and did not feel well at all, but after a while I did feel better, and soon I could tell I didn’t need the many naps anymore. I knew that was a sign, a good sign, but of what I was not entirely sure.
    After the snow was cleared and piled in tall, dirty clumps once again, I noticed a lean black cat across the street. It picked its way through gaps in the snow and looked for human footprints to walk in, gingerly, across the deeper sections, which the cat did with great care and grace. It would walk around the houses quickly, but always aware and wary. I couldn’t imagine where it found shelter during such bad weather, but apparently it did and had managed to survive so far. Food had to be scarce because of the weather, and so after seeing it skulk around for several days, I called my sister to see if she could catch the cat and bring it to me.
    I monitored the great cat hunt from my window. My sister was diligent and searched patiently around several houses, looking under cars and into the bare stubs of bushes, and even into the fenced backyards of two houses. But it was quite cold, and even though she was bundled snugly and wore black thick gloves and a sky-blue knit cap pulled down over her ears, I could tell from her movements that she was getting cold and tired. Because it was not a day to drop off any supplies for me, she finally shrugged her shoulders dramatically—knowing I was watching—waved and made a gesture for me to call her. I watched her stomp the snow off her boots before she got into her car and drove away, tiny gray clouds spurting from the exhaust.
    * * *
    My sister came back on another day after I called and urged her to try and catch the cat again. I’d seen it loitering around the house across the street all morning, sometimes just sitting stoically on the porch steps, where it could feel the few meager rays of sunshine as the sun, very shy, slipped in and out of clouds. The cat seemed uninterested in much of anything at all and appeared unmoved when my sister pulled up and walked slowly toward it with strips of meat from a chicken breast. She placed the morsels on the ground in a spot where there was no snow and retreated a few yards. The cat picked up the scent of the meat and started toward it, but halted, remembering, perhaps, that the choice was between food and the potential of undesirable human contact. But it quickly concluded, I suspected, that there was no choice at all. It chose food—immediate survival—and devoured the meat.
    When the cat was done, my sister, who kept cats of her own and understood the timing involved, immediately scooped the cat up with both hands. It twisted and flailed but she had a good grip. Tucking the dark bundle of fur against her side, a bit like a halfback tucking the football securely, she skipped across the street and handed the cat to me while I stood in the open side door of my house. Then she pulled the blue knit cap off her head, as though catching the cat required a victory lap in the form of freeing her long blond hair to tumble out and cascade over her shoulders, strands dancing provocatively in the breeze. Her blue eyes sparkled. She was just two years younger than me, with fifty threatening to soon appear on her horizon, but still she retained girlishness, lightness, in her broad face.
    I