The Leaving Kind
/Martha Keller
Someone had hurled Purcell’s body off the old Catawba Bridge and left it raw and open to scavengers and the late summer heat. Lucinda Durand’s habit of keeping her head down when she walked meant she couldn’t pass by the swirl of orange and white fur without taking special notice. Particularly when she had come to admire the brightly colored hair on Purcell’s left hind leg — a limb that was now immobilized and half-hidden by a mess of thimbleweeds. She dropped her book bag and hiked up her school jumper. Then she clambered down the craggy edge and dug her patent leather heels and pink fingertips in the warm, fecund mud.
“Purcy?” She whispered. But only the wind rustled a reply.
Lucinda hoped the old tomcat would stretch his paws towards the sunlight and lift his head off the ground once more. Since arriving at her grandmother’s house in Alyssum County a year ago, Lucinda had passed countless lonely hours on the sun porch staring out at overgrown hydrangeas and a decaying trellis. Late one morning in the steamy hours after a spring storm, she had looked up from a tedious reading assignment on the New Deal to see Purcell strutting along the perimeter of her grandmother’s garden. He paused to survey his territory before perching at the edge of the porch to tend to his paws and his underbelly. She studied the whorl of orange on his ears and his long whiskers until he darted behind the trellis and disappeared.
In the weeks that followed, Purcy’s visits became routine. Each day she sat a little closer to him and he stayed a little longer. When she finally told Granny about the tabby with a ratty collar and a nametag that read “Purcell” in old English scrawl, Granny looked unimpressed. Purcell had belonged to the Widow Hargrove before she passed on two years prior. Since then, Purcell had lived paw-to-mouth, stealing from trashcans and gardens. Granny said Old Man Hargrove was not much of a hunter when he was alive — a defect the man had passed down to his sons and three generations of cats.
Purcell’s failings as a hunter did not dissuade Lucinda from opening up to him during his daily baths. Like Purcell, Lucinda understood the deep pangs of sudden loss. She knew how long bouts of loneliness could hollow any creature out from heartache to numbness. Granny said the world had two kinds of people in it: the staying kind and the leaving kind. Lucinda and Purcell were the kind that stayed put until the last stretch and the last bellyache. Most of the people Lucinda had loved in her life had been the other sort. Now a nest of flowering weeds covered her friend’s tender middle. Purcell’s neck was broken in at least two different places. His head twisted unnaturally away from the rest of his body and his eyes bulged as if to catch a final glimpse of his killer.
The ratty collar that once hung around his neck, however, was missing.
Purcell was a proud, handsome creature who deserved a far more dignified end than he had received. Given his status in the community as a thief and a ne’er do well, Lucinda doubted that his death would command a thorough investigation. The case required a detective with a fine mind and a finer heart. Some old-fashioned ornery stubbornness wouldn’t hurt either. Lucinda wiped the tears and mud off her face with her clean sleeve as she pulled the biggest clump of flowers away from Purcell’s body so that she could survey the extent of his mortal wounds.
She steeled herself for a gruesome display of blood and entrails. Other than an occasional patch of mud, Purcell’s lanky body was untouched. She reached out to stroke the mottled orange and white fur one more time and recoiled at the hardened corpse beneath her fingertips. Purcy had been dead long enough for the warm wriggle of life and mischief to vanish from his veins. All that was left was a small broken body in the weeds. Lucinda knelt down and inspected the ground. No blood pools or torn earth. His body had hardly made an impression in the grass beneath him.
In her peripheral, Lucinda caught sight of underbrush twitching against the wind.
“Who’s there?” She shouted. The twitching stilled.
Lucinda spotted a pair of human eyeballs blinking between the shadows and the branches. The forced whispers of a cornered animal counting the last seconds to his execution grew more audible with each passing moment.
“I can see you,” Lucinda said. “I can hear you too.”
The eyeballs stared back at Lucinda for a split second before the branches snapped and Ronald Barnett, a small-boned boy with a stutter and a cowlick, burst forth and ran for heaven.
***
Ronald Barnett counted to two-hundred-and-twenty-seven before stopping to catch his breath. He enjoyed counting because he never stumbled over numbers. He counted footsteps, tiles, stairs, cracks in plaster walls, ladybugs, and the reddish-brown curls on the back of Lucinda Durand’s head. He’d counted forty-two curls on Wednesday and made it as high as sixty-one on Thursday. He had planned to pursue the matter on Friday, but now he wondered if he’d live to see another sunrise.
He had already counted to one-hundred-and-twenty-one — the number of steps he had taken from Rutherford Academy — when he caught sight of the orange tabby crumpled on the side of the road. Ronald knelt down for a closer inspection and recognized the striations along the cat’s front legs. Purcell Hargrove was a known thief and romancer of felines. In the years since the Widow Hargrove died, Purcell had taken refuge in any number of back alleys and garages like a common tramp. Guilty or not, Purcell had come under suspicion for shredded azaleas, overturned trash bins, and unwanted pregnancies. As to the last charge, Ronald had to admit that an unusually high number of kittens in Alyssum had been born with a familiar orange and white pattern on their fur in recent years.
Besides Ronald and his older brother Easton, only two other students from Rutherford crossed the Catawba on their way home: Grady Jones and Lucinda Durand. Since toddlerhood, Grady Jones had spent most of his time home sick with a persistent respiratory infection. Lucinda Durand was the new girl with fine curls who said even less than Ronald and doodled in her notebook. Lately, he’d seen her sketching whiskers, pert ears, and parti-colored tails. As he crouched over the cat’s body, Ronald wondered if Lucinda Durand had fallen under the spell of Purcell’s charms.
If Ronald’s calculations were correct, then Lucinda Durand was less than eighty-seven steps away from certain heartbreak. He cradled Purcell in his arms and hurried down the embankment. With each passing second, Lucinda Durand drew closer. The sight of Ronald holding her dead sweetheart was sure to invite the kind of blood-cursing recrimination he preferred to avoid. Though a weaker man might have hurled the dead cat over old Catawba Bridge, Ronald believed that all creatures deserved a proper burial and a respectful send-off to the hereafter.
Ronald spied a moist mound of earth in the shadow of a rotting oak tree, but there was no time to dig a shallow grave. He tucked Purcell behind a small patch of wild flowers and took cover in the underbrush.
Slow deliberate footsteps pressed against the planks above his head. But the footfalls stopped short when they should have kept going.
In the discomfiting stillness, Ronald snuck a peek at Purcell. A flash of white paw shown bright against the deep green stalks of the flowering weeds. Purcell’s corpus had been discovered.
Lucinda scrambled down the embankment and inspected Purcell while Ronald resumed counting the curls on Lucinda’s head. He got as high as forty-three this time before he lost his balance and exposed his hiding place.
Now Ronald kept running towards the horizon. If he made it home alive, he’d say three prayers at bedtime and sleep with two Bibles under his pillow. Tomorrow was Friday. No doubt Lucinda would approach him about this Purcell business at recess. He dreaded facing her and discussing the deceased partly because the letter “P” was a peculiarly troublesome sound to make.
Alone in his room, Ronald practiced saying the name again and again.
“P-P-Purcell Hargrove. P-P-Purcell Hargrove.” That night he drifted off to sleep with the late tomcat’s name still skittering across his lips.
***
“Two-hundred-and-twenty-six,” Ronald whispered. “Two-hundred-and—”
“Did you kill him?” Lucinda asked.
Ronald shook his head and backed away. She had watched him standing near the jungle gym all by his lonesome since the beginning of recess. While the other children swung from the monkey bars, Ronald stared up at the brick wall of the school as if in a trance.
“I know it was you in those bushes yesterday,” she said. “You’re counting now just like you were back then.”
At this last observation, Ronald inhaled down to his tailbone and puffed out his cheeks for good measure. Lucinda inched closer.
“You know who killed him?” she asked.
Ronald, all puffy-cheeked and red-faced, shook his head. The two had attracted the attention of a small pack of children. Whispered taunts of “Ron-Ron-Ronald” whipped through the crowd, and Ronald’s eyeballs followed each echo. Lucinda leaned up next to Ronald’s ear.
“I’m gonna find out what happened to Purcell,” she whispered. “And if there’s any blood on your hands, you’ll be the sorriest boy in all of Alyssum.”
Mr. Hagan, the gym teacher, rang the bell to end recess. The other children dragged themselves away from the playground drama with curious stares and murmurs.
“P-P-Purcell Hargrove,” Ronald shouted, much louder than he had expected.
The pack of children sniggered at Ronald’s outburst, but Lucinda Durand only studied Ronald’s frantic eyes and small quivering lips.
***
That afternoon Ronald saw her crouched over the tangle of wildflowers at the banks of the Catawba. He stood on the bridge for a moment, mouthing the words he planned to say.
“Somebody took his body,” Lucinda shouted.
Ronald startled at the proclamation. She pulled back the wildflowers and pointed to the empty spot where he’d deposited Purcell’s body a day ago.
“How come you don’t speak?” she asked.
“I sp-sp-speak,” Ronald answered, inwardly cursing the troublesome “P.”
“Fine,” she sounded unconvinced. “He was still here this morning when I came by.” Her eyes returned to surveying the ground. “Could’ve been the State Highway Patrol.”
Ronald marveled at the thought of the State Highway Patrol coming as far west as Catawba Bridge. He dropped his book bag on the ground and shimmied down the hill.
“I have to find his collar,” Lucinda said. “The killer probably held onto it as a souvenir.”
She squatted on all fours to inspect the wet depressions in the mud.
“I saw a whole television program about serial killers and their souvenirs with my granny a while back,” she said. “Purcell’s killer is probably a bed wetter.”
Ronald froze.
“I’m looking for footprints by the way,” she said. “You don’t have to talk. You could just point if you see anything.”
Ronald pointed at a slick patch close to her head.
“Those are mine.”
Ronald pointed double-quick.
“L-L-Look!”
Lucinda followed his finger to a man-sized print of a boot heel.
“Wouldja look at that!” She said, poking her fingers in the damp mud. “You know, I could use an assistant with all this investigation.”
Ronald counted six horizontal ridges in the boot print.
“If you’re interested.”
***
Granny was smoking a Pall Mall in Granddaddy’s recliner, watching her afternoon shows. Lucinda waited for a contestant to make another “damned fool’s choice” that stirred up Granny’s blood and drove her to swear. Then Lucinda snuck Ronald from the kitchen to the sun porch through a violent storm of “chicken-shit-dumbasses.”
“We need to keep this investigation purely confidential,” Lucinda said. “That means it’s just between us.”
Ronald nodded.
“Too much talking could tip off the killer,” she said. “All the best detectives stay quiet until they figure everything out.”
Lucinda made a list of their clues: a collar with Purcell’s name on it, a muddy boot print, and a missing cat corpus. She folded the slip of paper down to a tiny triangle and handed it to Ronald. The two vowed to follow up the next morning during daylight.
“All we have to do is find a cat-hating, boot-wearing, chicken-shit-dumbass, and we’ll find Purcell’s killer.”
“Is your friend staying for supper?” The question came from kitchen. “I’ll put on another plate. Could do with the company and conversation.”
But before Lucinda could answer yes or no, Ronald grabbed his book bag and lit out through the back door.
“Is that little Ronald Barnett?” Granny squinted at the window.
“You scared him off,” Lucinda said. “He’s not the talking type.”
“He’s the leaving kind,” Granny answered. She and Lucinda watched Ronald haul across the neighboring field. “At least he’s making good time.”
Granny and Lucinda sat down at the table to say grace. Lucinda spent most of the meal poking at her cornbread and nibbling the edges of her fried chicken.
“When are you planning to unpack those boxes in your room?” Granny asked.
Lucinda shrugged and jabbed at a stray corn kernel.
“You know your mother’s not like us, sweetheart. She’s not coming back.”
Lucinda shoved a forkful of cornbread in her mouth to keep from talking or crying. From her kitchen chair Lucinda could see the towering trellis rotting at the edges and the untended tomato plants. Less than a week ago, Purcell spent a whole afternoon sleeping in a sunbeam on the porch beside her. Now, in his absence, there were only shadows and silence.
***
When Ronald made it all eight-hundred-and-thirty-three steps home, his brother Easton grabbed him by the collar before Ronald could open the front door.
“Where in the hell have you been?”
Easton smelled like tobacco and aftershave. He’d started using a razor the year before and still went to school most mornings with blood streaking down his neck and dollops of Old Spice behind his ears.
“She sent me looking for you,” Easton said. With each syllable, his hands grew bigger and tighter around Ronald’s neck. “I’m supposed to drive around this county hunting your bony little ass.”
Ronald clawed at Easton’s hands, but they only dug in deeper.
“Ronald?” Their mother called from inside. “Easton? Do I hear voices?”
Easton pushed his face against Ronald’s. “I got better things to do tonight,” he said, “than waste time on some L-L-Loser!”
Easton threw Ronald in the mum bushes and left him in a breathless, teary-eyed heap of shamefulness.
“Where’s your brother?” Their mother was standing in the doorway.
“Went around back,” Easton called out, halfway to his souped up Torino.
Ronald stayed still.
“Make sure you’re here when your father gets home.”
“I’ll be back before then,” Easton answered. “Long before.”
***
The next day was Saturday, and Lucinda would not let Purcell’s murder investigation get cold. She planned to hitch a ride with Granny when she headed to town for her “Saturday errands and conversation.” Lucinda would use the time to pump Granny for information without her noticing.
Granny drove with less urgency than Lucinda would have liked. She nearly pulled the car to a full stop in front of the Nelson house to admire the garden.
“Would you look at those roses!” Granny gasped. “It’s all the rain that makes them bloom.”
“Did the Widow Hargrove have any enemies?” Lucinda asked.
“Virginia?” Granny tapped the gas pedal. “No. Not that I can think of. There were bad feelings after a Christmas pageant some time ago—”
“How long ago?” Lucinda scribbled the words “Virginia” and “Christmas pageant” down on her scratch paper.
“Twenty-five? Thirty years?” Granny said. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s for school.”
“I see.”
Lucinda soon exhausted the limits of Granny’s knowledge about Virginia Hargrove’s relationship with Purcell and the felines of Virginia’s youth and middle age. Other than church gossip and the knowledge that Purcell had earned a reputation as a “tail chaser” Lucinda had not uncovered much of obvious use.
“This is an awfully unusual ‘school project,’” Granny said.
“I need to be thorough,” Lucinda answered. “If I aim to earn an ‘A.’”
Lucinda considered breaking her vow of confidentiality to confide in Granny. Too risky, she thought. Granny might tip off the killer, and she knew Ronald Barnett would keep his word. Other than counting and pointing, Ronald hardly ever spoke to anyone. Granny dropped Lucinda off near the Catawba Bridge and told her to be back by supper.
“I’ll make enough food for three mouths,” Granny told her. “In case that Barnett boy gets hungry.”
***
He waited an hour before Lucinda scooted down the bank in a pair of overalls with her hair tied back.
“Been here long?” Lucinda asked.
Ronald shook his head.
She outlined the plan. There were a handful of houses within easy walking distance from Catawba Bridge. Lucinda would do all the talking. Ronald would steal inside to “use the wash room,” but his real aim was to search the place for boots and cat collars. Lucinda would ask old people questions about the past and young people questions about the future. Whenever Ronald came back from the “wash room,” she’d thank them for their time and they’d move on to the next house.
The two spent the morning talking to three sisters who refused to drive again until the price of gasoline dropped to under a dollar, a girl who knew Ronald’s brother Easton and sang gospel, and a man who was still mad as hell about Nixon and the Russians. They had not, however, located any cat collars or muddy boots.
Ronald counted as high as six-hundred-and-seventy-three under his breath.
“How come you’re always counting?” Lucinda asked.
Ronald shrugged.
“Anybody ever tell you it’s awful strange to be counting all the time?”
Ronald shook his head. His eyes drifted to three curls clinging to the nape of Lucinda’s neck.
“I’m real g-g-good at c-c-counting,” he whispered. “Helps me think.”
The two walked the twisty street in silence for a few awkward moments before Lucinda reminded Ronald that he had stopped counting at six-hundred-and-seventy-three. Ronald knew he should be as high as six-hundred-and-ninety-four, but he would amend the matter in private after he and Lucinda parted ways.
“This is the next place,” Lucinda said. They’d come to a driveway shaded by a weeping willow. The mailbox was in the shape of a black cat.
Lucinda knocked on the front door and a woman with bobbed hair appeared in the window. When she opened the door, Ronald noticed her form-fitting day dress and her long slender hands.
“Afternoon, ma’am. We’re interviewing our neighbors for school,” Lucinda told her. “We’d like to ask you questions about events of historical significance.”
Ronald did his best to stay hidden behind Lucinda, but the woman with the bobbed hair fixed her eyes on the back of his neck.
“You’re Jessup Barnett’s boy, aren’t you?”
Ronald nodded.
“Come on in.”
A hateful black cat pranced around the living room and eyed Lucinda and Ronald with suspicious rage.
“Don’t mind Hellfire,” she told them. “She hates everyone.”
“Who’s this?” Lucinda picked up a framed picture on the mantel and held it up to the woman while Ronald snuck off to the “wash room.”
The hallway branched off to two bedrooms and a pink bathroom. Ronald cracked the first door open and eyeballed the dressers and bookshelves. Every corner was packed with feline knickknacks and photographs. Ronald spotted orange tabby pictures on the night table in the bigger bedroom. He crept closer and peered deep into a smug pair of eyeballs.
Purcell Hargrove.
Purcell had charmed the short-haired woman for love and a meal. No sign of a cat collar or men’s boots. Ronald scanned the other pictures of Purcell, the short-haired woman, and Hellfire. That tomcat had built himself a life with these women, Ronald thought. Poor Lucinda Durand was no more than a side dish.
Then Ronald spotted a photograph of the short-haired woman kissing a much older, smiling man on the cheek. Ronald snatched the photograph and bolted out the front door double-quick.
***
Lucinda chased Ronald all the way to Catawba Bridge before he stopped to breathe.
“What did you find?” Lucinda pressed. “Did she kill Purcell?”
“Three-hundred-seventy-two d-d-days,” Ronald stuttered between tears.
“I need you to stop talking crazy.”
Ronald produced a picture of the short-haired woman kissing Purcell and another picture of her kissing an older man.
“So she loved Purcy,” Lucinda said. “You think it was a crime of passion?”
Ronald turned the second picture over and pointed to the date on the back written a little over a year ago.
“Three-hundred-seventy-two d-d-days,” he repeated. Lucinda studied the man in the picture. She’d seen his face before. His nose and lips were wrinkled but familiar.
Of course.
She was staring at a younger, sniveling version of them now. No wonder the woman had known Ronald was Jessup Barnett’s son.
Ronald grabbed the picture and tore it to pulp in a cyclone of counting and ripping the likes of which Lucinda would never see again.
“Let’s talk to her,” Lucinda said. But Ronald wiped his face, surveyed the damaged photograph, and lit out for the horizon on two small bony legs.
“Ronald!” Lucinda shouted. “Ronald, wait!” But it was no use. Granny was right. Ronald Barnett was a leaving kind of man.
***
Ronald set up camp in the downstairs coat closet and counted hangers, shoes, sleeves, buttons, anything to take his mind away from the real and the inevitable. His daddy hadn’t been working late or visiting his sister in Boonesville. He’d been playing house with some short-haired lady and Hellfire. His daddy was no better than a tomcat. Worse still, Ronald had to break the news to his mama, and he didn’t know if he had the heart or the tongue for that kind of work. His eyes raced over piles of high heels and wing tips before settling on a pair of working boots tucked in the far corner. Ronald crawled over the detritus to count the ridges on the heel of the boot — all six of them — caked in mud.
Was his daddy a philanderer and a cat murderer? The shame of bad blood weighed heavy on his small shoulders and flushed his face to crimson. Then he looked up and saw Purcell Hargrove’s cat collar dangling from the left pocket of his mother’s raincoat.
***
“Did you love Granddaddy?” Lucinda asked Granny over forkfuls of squash and pork tenderloin.
“Of course I loved him,” Granny answered. “You asking ‘for school’?”
Lucinda kept nodding and chewing.
“People have different ways of loving a person. Sometimes leaving is an act of generosity and tenderness.”
“Is that why mama left me?” Lucinda pressed. Granny reached out her hand.
“I think your mama knew how much we needed each other. Your mother takes after her father, but we both have staying kind of hearts.”
“You think a staying heart and a leaving heart could ever be happy together?” Lucinda asked.
“For a while,” Granny admitted, “but not forever. You know there’s a dignity in leaving a person when it’s time, and there’s a dignity in letting a person go.”
Lucinda wasn’t interested in “dignity.” She wanted to find a way to anchor Ronald Barnett’s bony legs to the ground and get him to talk past his tears and his counting.
“Finish your supper,” Granny said. “And your schoolwork.”
***
During recess that week, Ronald Barnett hid in the boys’ bathroom.
He couldn’t face lying, and he couldn’t face the truth. His mama had wrung Purcell Hargrove’s tiny neck because she couldn’t wring his daddy’s. She’d even kept Purcell’s collar like some common killer. Ronald shuddered at the thought of his mama stroking the cat collar with satisfaction, taunting his daddy with lurid descriptions of her cold-blooded killing.
Daddy had come home later and drunker every night that week. His mama spent most nights on the phone with her sister in Clarkson. Easton wanted to finish out his schooling in Alyssum but his mama had fixed on taking Ronald back home to her people.
Ronald knew down in his bones what had poisoned the heart of a good woman. Ronald blamed his mama, but he blamed her loneliness more. He’d rescued Purcell’s collar from the left pocket of his mama’s raincoat and hidden it in his lunchbox for safekeeping. Purcell’s tattered collar was the last tie of that small life to this great earth. The rust-bitten tags with the faded letters belonged in the hands of a creature who’d loved him. As a gentlemen, Ronald was honor bound to deliver them.
Lucinda tapped on the boys’ bathroom door every day. Ronald didn’t answer. He counted the tiles and stayed still and invisible. He traced the edges of Purcell’s collar in case he found the courage to say the words that needed saying. On Friday Ronald stopped running, and Lucinda found him at the Catawba Bridge.
“I heard you were leaving,” Lucinda said.
Ronald nodded.
He unlatched his lunchbox and held out the collar. Lucinda’s eyes grew big.
“My m-m-mama done it,” he said. “My m-m-mama killed P-P-Purcell.”
Lucinda reached for the collar and stroked the name on the tags.
“We’re g-g-going tonight,” Ronald told her. Though he still wondered if the law would permit a hasty departure with cat blood on his mama’s hands.
He took one last look at the reddish-brown curls on Lucinda Durand’s head.
“One-hundred-and-sixty-seven,” he whispered. Then he turned tail and walked away.
***
Lucinda watched him until he was nothing but a small speck in the distance. She’d never bothered to count the number of steps from the Catawba to her Granny’s house before. But she’d count them today.
She’d count them every day — for a long time to come.
Martha ("Marty") Keller's work has appeared in Bridge Eight, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Wraparound South, and elsewhere. She is a reader for Flash Fiction Magazine, and she was also a 2019 Pitch Wars Mentee. Over the years, she’s worked in strip malls, skyscrapers, and high school classrooms. She lives at the end of a long narrow road somewhere outside of Chicago.
