Beware of Cat by Vincent Wyckoff Read Free Book Online Page A

added with a snicker.
    For several days thereafter I noted the deserted car, the plywood barricade the city had screwed on over the broken front door, and the mail filling up the mailbox. Then one morning his neighbor from the VFW met me. “Well,” he began, an I-told-you-so smirk playing across his face, “the old geezer finally came home.” He nodded up the street toward the old bachelor’s house. Chuckling now, he told me, “One of his World War II buddies came to town, and they went off on a week-long bender. All the way down to Iowa and back.”
    After my initial sigh of relief, I had to laugh at the image of the old warrior carousing around the countryside with an old comrade-in-arms. I was still grinning as I approached the plywood doorway. The old man came stalking around the back corner of the house, and his look wiped the grin off my face.
    In a voice way too loud for the short distance between us, he bellowed, “You know some son-a-bitch called the cops on me? They broke my damn door down.” His language startled me, and as I met his glance head on, the scales in my mind tipped from eccentric intellectual to complete lunatic. Spittle clung to his beard and red veins glowed in his eyes. “If I ever find out who did it, I’ll rip the prying nose right off their face.”
    I feigned ignorance, and since then, I’ve fine-tuned my vigilance, understanding that each situation is unique.

    THE WAVING ARRANGEMENT that Evelyn and I used had served us well for years. I had never seen so many cars parked in front of her house, though, and as I approached I vividly recalled seeing her the day before. She had held her head canted to one side to better hear the television set, giving me her bright-eyed smile and a quick wave.
    When I climbed the front steps, the door opened and a well-dressed young man met me. “Hi,” he said, smiling. I dared to hope that everything was okay inside.
    In an effort to confirm it, I asked, “Is Evelyn home? I have some mail for her.”
    “She’s right here,” he replied. Reaching out his hand, he introduced himself as her grandson. Behind him, I could see Evelyn talking to a room full of relatives.
    “Grandma?” he called in a voice loud enough to be heard over the din in the room. To me, he said, “It’s her birthday. Ninety-nine years old today.”
    Evelyn scurried over to the door. Her smile was wonderful to behold.
    “Happy birthday,” I offered, at a loss for anything better to say in front of a room full of strangers. Then, overcome with relief and the obvious pleasure in her smile at seeing me, I wrapped an arm around her frail shoulder and gave her a hug.
    “Oh,” she tittered, drawing back when I released her. “Is that all I get? A hug? You know, it isn’t every day a girl turns ninety-nine.”
    Amid laughter from her gathered family, I planted a big kiss on her cheek. “Happy birthday, Evelyn!”
    On her one-hundredth birthday we repeated the ritual, and again for her one hundred and first. After that, she moved into an assisted-living housing complex, and the married grandson took over the house.
    It’s wonderful to watch new life being restored to the neighborhood. After all, it’s the younger generation that has the energy to update and maintain the old houses. Now great-grandchildren play where Evelyn once sat watching for my arrival. And I can see her twinkling eyes in theirs.

My Brother’s Brother
    For a short time a young mother, with her son and daughter, rented the first floor of a two-story duplex on my route. I didn’t get to know them all that well because they moved on again in just a little more than a year. From change-of-address labels I knew they arrived in Minneapolis from the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota, and they returned to the reservation when they left.
    The six-year-old boy caught the school bus on the corner where I parked when delivering mail on their block. His thick black hair sprouted out in wild tufts, and