Sometimes, in early June, the twilight on Whisper Mountain fell so clear and blue that Ernestine Truheart, whose lungs were the mushy remains of a three-pack-a-day habit, could stand on the porch of her old farmhouse and watch shadows shift across what was left of her barn and drink in air so nourishing that she imagined her thirst for oxygen had been slaked.
At seventy, Ernie was suffering from emphysema, chronic bronchitis or lung cancer — and maybe all three. She'd stopped going to the doctor six months ago. Someone dying as slowly as she was didn't need it all spelled out. And in early June, especially toward evening, she could almost convince herself she was well.
Out back, her garden had perked up from a shower that had left the leaves of the squash and cucumbers fresh and springy. Here in front, a handful of cats lazed on the porch and a couple more sat between the house and the barn, any place that wasn't still damp. Fortified by the clear air, invigorated by the shadow of the blue-tinged mountain in the distance, Ernie forgot her health long enough to pluck a cigarette from her pocket and put it in her mouth — not intending to light it, only meaning to let it hang between her lips, where it could call up all the pleasures of her youth.
From below, at the bottom of the hill, she heard a car pull off the blacktop onto the gravel lane and ascend toward the fork that veered right toward Ernie's house and left toward Marshall Banner's. Most times she craved company, but not now. She would have enough company later. This was probably Marshall's son, Owen, going to check up on his father. But then she heard the vehicle bear to the right and, after a moment, watched it emerge from the trees, a massive brown SUV that ground to an angry, skidding stop not five feet from the porch where she stood. On the side of the vehicle, emblazoned in orange, were the words Sovereign County Animal Control.
The driver's door opened, and a short, heavy figure slid out. At first, Ernie thought it was a man, but it was a woman with a butch haircut and puffy arms jutting out from the short sleeves of her khaki-colored shirt. Ernie removed the cigarette from her mouth and coughed for the first time in an hour.
The woman stood on the gravel, clipboard in hand, surveying the scene. Encased in a tight, scratchy-looking uniform that stretched around her lumpy curves, she looked like a dwarfed, ill-dressed version of the Pillsbury Doughboy. The name tag on the blouse, pinned above her heart, read Netta Brabham, Animal Control Officer.
"If it isn't the dogcatcher," Ernie muttered.
"You got any dogs?"
"No."
"Those your cats?" The woman swept her hand to include the cats on the porch and another three or four cleaning themselves over by the barn.
"They spend time there, if that's what you mean."
"You feed them, don't you?"
Ernie set the cigarette between her lips again and let it hang there.
"Well?" the woman asked.
Taking a drag of her unlit cigarette, Ernie inhaled deeply. The clean air that poured into her was supremely unsatisfying.
"If you feed them, then by law you're the owner," the officer explained.
"You think so?" Ernie exhaled, coughed a little. "The way I see it, cats don't belong to anybody. They belong to themselves."
"Cats in Sovereign County are required by law to be vaccinated against rabies," the woman went on. Then, when Ernie did not reply, "How many of them are there? Ten? A dozen?" she asked.
"I couldn't say." There was certainly not a dozen. Ernie thrust her free hand into her pocket. "A farm always has cats hanging around."
The animal-control officer directed her gaze at the ruined barn and fallow fields beyond it. "Not really a farm anymore," she sniffed.
Holding her cigarette between thumb and index finger, in the way her late husband, Knox, used to do, Ernie flicked it as if to shed ash. Maybe it wasn't a farm, maybe the barn was falling down, maybe the house needed paint. Ernie was falling apart, too. The house and grounds suited her. She did what she could: tended her garden, washed her supper dishes, let Marshall Banner mow the acreage that led down to the lake. Inside her pocket, her fingers discovered a sprinkling of cracker crumbs and a pack of matches. Something occurred to her. "You're the animal-control folks who put down the Nelson dog."
"It was a pit bull. Pit bulls are illegal in Sovereign County. Too vicious to keep."
"I see. Guilty by virtue of breed."
"Beg your pardon?"
"Never mind." Ernie pulled the book of matches out of her pocket.
"Name?" Netta Brabham asked.
"What?"
"Your name. You're the dowser, aren't you? The one who spots wells?"
"What is it you want with me, exactly?"
"These animals of yours, they're required to be vaccinated and wear their rabies tags."
"They're not my animals. They couldn't wear rabies tags even if they were." Ernie wouldn't put a collar on a cat. A cat would scratch and drive itself crazy, trying to get out of a collar. She remembered something else. "What about those dogs that had to be put down twice?" she asked. "The ones left in the gas chamber three hours before anybody discovered they were only half-dead?" The story had been in the Whisper Springs Mountaineer. "You the one who was supposed to be watching that gas chamber?"
"That was a year ago. We don't use gas anymore." Netta Brabham's face remained impassive, a pale sphere punctuated by a small lump of nose, narrow mouth, tiny slits for eyes.
"What do you do then? Give them shots?" Injections were supposed to be more humane. "Or do you slit them open and pull out the vital organs one by one?"
Netta Brabham didn't flinch. "We have an air-extraction chamber." She readjusted the clipboard in her hand, propped it against her ample stomach. "It's Emmeline, isn't it? Emmeline Truheart?"
Ernestine opened her matchbook and read the cover: Earn Big Money At Home. "When did you start going from house to house after hours? Bothering people eating supper? Don't you have enough to do, chasing animals that bite somebody?"
"Part of our function is to canvass the county for rabies-tag infractions," Netta Brabham said.
Until the ski resort was built ten years ago and brought tourists from D.C. and Baltimore, nobody had cared how many cats anybody had or whether they were vaccinated. Nobody had ever died of rabies, either. Now the resort was failing, but the rabies hunt went on…the government…death and taxes.
"Like I said, the cats aren't mine. Not anybody's. Nobody owns a cat." Ernie counted five of the animals preening on the porch or in the distance. A sixth had disappeared. One big, gray tabby was stretched out belly-to-ground in front of them, as if to call attention to itself. Ernie lit a match and watched it blow out in the breeze while the other woman scribbled on her clipboard.
Continues...
Excerpted from Daughters Of The Sea by Ellyn Bache Copyright © 2005 by Ellyn Bache. Excerpted by permission.
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