Beware of Cat by Vincent Wyckoff Read Free Book Online

summer long her windows were wide open, emitting the sounds of a local news station on an AM radio.
    For several days in a row I came by with her mail and heard the radio inside. As it happened, I usually arrived on her block around lunchtime. She had a mail slot that went directly into the house, so I didn’t see the mail accumulating. It never occurred to me that anything was wrong. I figured she was eating lunch, or perhaps taking a nap. Then one day the neighbor told me what happened. After trying to sleep with his windows open, and hearing that darn radio all night long, he had finally gone over to ask her to turn it off. When she didn’t come to the door, he called the police. They found her on the kitchen floor. She had been dead for a week.
    I felt bad about it for a long time. It wasn’t as though we were friends; she hadn’t wanted that. But the thought of her dying alone, and lying there for so long, just wasn’t right. After that, I decided to be more vigilant for the welfare of my older patrons.

    BUT THEN THERE WAS the time my vigilance backfired. A lifelong bachelor once lived on my route. With curly white hair hanging over his ears and a long, thick, gray beard, he could have been an extra in a Civil War documentary. Tall and lean, with a wrinkled, weathered face, he was an eccentric character disguising himself as an intellectual. He didn’t have a garage, so he parked his old Cadillac in the yard beside his house. The interior of the car was piled high with papers and junk, leaving just enough room for a driver to squeeze in behind the wheel. His house was the same way. On one of the rare times I peeked inside, I saw books, magazines, and newspapers stacked hip-high everywhere. Narrow passageways allowed navigation from room to room.
    I saw the old guy often. Sometimes in the winter he sat in the old Cadillac working a crossword puzzle. The car would be idling, heater on high, the window open halfway. He always wore a distinctive white fur hat in cold weather. He couldn’t have known—or cared about—what his neighbors had to say about his lifestyle.
    He was very aware, however, of the schedule for delivery of his social security and retirement checks. He often met me in the yard on those days, wearing no coat or jacket; the familiar fur hat was always perched high on his head. So I thought it odd one spring day when he didn’t show up to take his government check from me. The Cadillac was parked in its usual position. I considered knocking on his door, but he was a cranky, independent sort, and I didn’t want to invade his space.
    The next day, though, when I added his retirement pension check to the social security check in the mailbox, I did knock. No answer. A neighbor had once mentioned that they belonged to the same VFW post. He had seen the old bachelor having a beer there from time to time. I walked over to this neighbor’s house and inquired after my lost patron.
    “Haven’t seen him,” the man replied. “That piece-of-crap car hasn’t moved in days, either.”
    I explained that his neighbor hadn’t picked up his checks. “Do you know his phone number?”
    He laughed. “The old coot didn’t pay his phone bill, so they disconnected him. He hasn’t had a phone in years. Hell, who’d ever want to call him, anyway?”
    This sudden absence nagged at me, though. I swung by at the end of the day to find the checks still there. I returned to my station and related my concerns to the supervisor. He immediately called the local police precinct. The authorities assured us we had done the right thing. They dispatched a squad car and I rushed back out to the house.
    When I arrived, two officers made quick work of breaking in the front door. I waited as they entered, watching them file through the cluttered passageways. Finally, one of them emerged from the shattered doorway.
    “He’s not in there,” he said. “Of course, I suppose he could be hidden somewhere in all that junk,” he