Ghost Cats of the South by Randy Russell

Author:Randy Russell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Folklore
ISBN: 9780895874238
Publisher: Blair
Published: 2010-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

“You have to do something, you know,” Henry Williston said, leaning his bicycle against a shrub along the pathway to Laura Peasy’s house.

Henry was eleven. He was dressed as a pirate. His long underwear sported tattoos in black felt marker. A skull and crossbones were on his chest. He wore a magic-marker mustache.

“Like what?” Paula Andrews asked.

She was his nine-year-old neighbor. Paula hadn’t been to Laura’s before. Henry’s mother made him take her along.

“Sing or dance or tell a story.” Henry adjusted his father’s necktie, which was tied around his head like a bandanna. “If she likes what you do, you get a special bag of treats. She has them done up in advance.”

Paula didn’t know a song she could sing to a stranger except the one she’d learned for the Christmas program at church. She was dressed as a fairy princess, and she worried that a fairy princess wouldn’t ever sing a Christmas song. She wore her jeans under a red felt skirt decorated with glitter. She carried a magic wand of aluminum foil wrapped over a cardboard star on a stick. Paula liked Halloween because she was allowed to wear her mother’s lipstick and have rouge on her cheeks. Maybe she could tell the lady she was an angel.

The only other song she knew was “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town,” because it was on the radio. And she knew only part of it.

“Maybe just answer questions,” Henry said. “If you get them right, you get the special treats. They’re like the other treats, except you get one of each, and something added to that.”

Laura’s little brown bags of treats were special indeed. This year, she had six of them. Each one contained a cat cookie that matched one of her porch cats that needed a home. Even the whiskers were the right colors. She mixed her icing colors like Michelangelo mixed paints.

“Here,” Henry said, “hand me the flashlight and hold my hand. You go first.”

“Oh, my,” Laura said when she answered the door. “You must be a fairy princess with a magic wand!”

A cat from the porch walked to Paula and rubbed against her jeans. It sat and looked up at her glittering skirt, then watched the aluminum-foil stick in her hand. Paula leaned down and petted the cat with her free hand, trying all the time to see around Laura, to see what things were in her house.

“Do you have a kitty at home, dear?”

Paula shook her head.

“I only know one song,” the little girl said.

The cat walked around her feet and rubbed the other leg. Henry took a step backward on the stone porch.

“You are Sarah Andrews’s girl, I bet. I knew your mother when she was your age. She looked just like you.”

Paula took a deep breath. The song, “Silent Night,” was a hard one. Paula started it, holding her magic wand and moving it with each syllable. The cat sat at her feet and stared straight up, its head moving with the aluminum-foil star.

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