The Spirit of Lana Jones: page three

Her pa couldn't see how unhappy she was because the only kind of life he knew was his own, and she couldn't really blame him for that. Her ma pretty much kept to herself these days, and hadn't really been much of a talker as long as Lana had known her. Maybe she wasn't happy with the life of a woman in Olney, either.

A gray blur streaked across the yard and for a moment Lana thought it was a rabbit. Then the blur hopped onto the porch, shook itself off, and turned out to be the cat, Pinky. The cat had come to their house looking for food a few weeks ago, and Lana had been feeding him table scraps since then. She called him Pinky because of all his ten toes, nine were black--and one was pink.

"Got caught in the storm, did you Pinky?"

Pinky looked up at the sound her voice and cried.

"I reckon Sam King is caught in it, also. He should have been here by now."

Pinky didn't respond to this. Instead, he went to work licking the rainwater off his fur. This operation lasted for a few minutes, and then the cat stretched out next to Lana's chair and closed his eyes.

"You could sleep through anything, I guess," Lana said, and at just that time a clap of thunder shook the frame of the house. Lana herself jumped a little at the sound, but Pinky didn't so much as twitch his whiskers.

She wished that the porch was on the other side of the house so that she could watch the storm coming. Sure, the rain would probably soak her, but it looked like Sam might not be coming after all. Punctuality was one of his virtues, and he was known for preferring to not show up to a place if it meant he would be late.

The rain came down harder and harder. The little dirt road now resembled a smaller version of the Red River. The wind was screaming around the house and swaying the trees this way and that. Lana had never seen such a storm. She kept watching the yard, wondering when she might see a few pellets of ice bounce off the ground, and was suddenly rewarded with a hailstorm much more impressive than she could have imagined. The first chunk of ice she saw was easily an inch across, and hundreds more soon followed. Lana watched, amazed, as the hailstones grew larger and larger--now some were at least two inches across. They pounded on the roof as if a rain of stones had decided to sweep across the plain. There would be leaks to fix when all was said and done, and her ma would certainly relish that task. Always the chores first with Ma. Nothing was more important than the gosh dern chores.

"I don't see you doing any work," Lana said to Pinky, having to shout over the roar of the hailstones pounding away at the roof. "You get plenty of table scraps every day--which is only a dessert compared to the meals you round up in the pasture, I imagine--and you don't have to do a thing to earn 'em." Pinky's ears twitched at the sound of her voice, but he didn't look up from his sleep. Lana kept talking anyway. "I wish I had your life, because all you do is eat and sleep. People are supposed to be superior over animals, I guess, because of our big brains. But too much thinking can get you into trouble. I should know; I'm a prime example. All I do is get sad when I think."

Pinky still didn't move, and Lana supposed that was all the answer she needed. The cat might as well have said, "Quit thinking if it bothers you and go to sleep. What do you think I'm trying to do?"

Except Lana was fairly sure that Pinky didn't think anything like that at all. He was a cat, after all, and cats weren't particularly bright animals. Their life consisted mainly of sleeping (probably sixteen hours a day or more, she guessed) and eating. Pinky sometimes went out into the fields to catch mice or rats, but he didn't have to. The table scraps she fed him were enough food to keep him alive. Lana was jealous of Pinky in this respect, because his life was the kind of life she longed for. Lots of resting and no thinking whatsoever.

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