The topic of the sermon must be juicy tonight. Britt couldn’t hear the substance of it, but the preacher kept landing with impassioned emphasis on the wordsin.
So all Britt heard was, “SIN”...mumble mumble...“SIN”...mumble mumble... “SIN!”...mumble...“SIN... SIN!”
All in all, it sounded more like encouragement than an admonishment.
These past few months she’d been taking her sketchbook out onto the porch in the evenings, after packing it away for more than two years. She’d stopped drawing altogether, because nearly everything about her old self had stopped for a time. As it turned out, her stubbornly silent muse was no match for Glenn’s mustache. It was justthere, fluffy and immense. The friction to her imagination was like a burr under a saddle, until she finally sat down and drew him.
As a walrus.
Big and kind and gruff and exquisitely detailed. But a walrus.
She’d been mildly astonished, but it felt right, even though it wasn’t close to the sort of thing she used to draw. She had a friend whose long straight hair had fallen out after a bout with a brutal illness, and it had grown back curly, startling everyone. But it was lovely. Maybe it was a bit like that: she’d lost or jettisoned nearly all of the things she thought defined her before she’d found her way to Hellcat Canyon. It made sense that they would return as changed as she was, if and when they returned.
She wasn’t going to sketch tonight, though. Something else seemed to be reasserting herself. It started with anLand ended with anOand had anibidin between.
“.... SIN!” the radio preacher enthused.
She took in a long breath and exhaled it, but it didn’t help. Her heart was hammering the way it had when she’d looked up the phone number of a boy she liked in the first grade. Which was absolutely ridiculous, given that her thirtieth birthday had been two years ago.
Into her browser window she typed: “Tennessee Mc—”
“Britt, are you out there, dear?”
Britt jumped and her hands flew so guiltily from her keyboard she almost smacked her own face. “Yeah, Mrs.Morrison. Everything okay?”
“I just wanted to tell you there’s a coyote in the neighborhood. I saw him with a cat in his mouth.”
“Holy shi—I mean, yikes!”
“Well, half a cat,” Mrs.Morrison clarified placidly.
“Jesus, Mrs.Morrison!”
“Britt, honey,” she reproached. Coyote snacks she discussed with equanimity, but the Lord’s name in vain was something else altogether.
“Sorry. Slipped out. Thanks for the warning. Phillip sleeps inside when he’s not out here with me, so we should be okay.”
Phillip, her old and enormous, fat orange fluffy cat, was sprawled on a cushion in front of her. He spread his toes happily at the sound of his name.
Britt dropped a hand down on him and he heaved a contented cat sigh.
“You should get married, dear. Then you wouldn’t have to give your cat a man’s name.”
“Good advice, Mrs.Morrison.”
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Your cat is about as big as a deer, anyway.”
“And at least as fierce.”
Mrs.Morrison chuckled happily. Britt heard the tinkle of ice cubes in a glass. Mrs.Morrison ended all of her days with a little glass of DrPepper and a splash of rum on the rocks. She attributed her longevity to this. Britt thought it might have a little something to do with all her naps, too, but the woman was ninety-two. She was entitled to a vice or two.
“You need me to pick up your prescriptions tomorrow, Mrs.Morrison?”
“If you wouldn’t mind, dear.”
“No trouble at all.”
“Well, good night, Britt. You don’t let the bedbugs or anything else bite.”