It was so hot that the air she breathed into her tiny lungs felt like the steam coming out of Mama’s kettle. Holt, Florida must be the hottest, stickiest place on earth, but Lu wouldn’t know because she had never even been past the big oak on Log Lake Road. She heard her sisters talking after church one day about a man, a newcomer from somewhere in Florida where you could walk across white sandy beaches to stand in the water and when you did you were touching the whole ocean. Daddy said the ocean waves at you. She wanted to see that. The girls laughed about that newcomer later because the man had had a frog in his throat. She couldn’t wait to meet that man and ask him all the questions that raised in her mind. Like, did he take it out when he slept at night? Had he named the frog? It seems silly to let a frog go a ridin’ in your throat all the time and not give it a name. What did he feed it?
“Come on, Lullabell,” her sister Peaches called to her. “You’re laggin.” Although Peaches’ voice sounded just like all the rest of her sisters and the sun beams coming through the pines was blinding, she knew it was Peaches and not one of the others because of the affection in her voice. She loved all of her sisters except one. But she loved Peaches the best. Peaches helped her carry heavy things, was patient helping her get dressed and never called her Vilulla, even when she was cross. In spite of the heat robbing her of almost all of her energy she skipped to Peaches, not wanting her to have to wait. She listened to the conversations of her sisters and grew bored again quickly. She didn’t care about Mr. Whoever’s new horse, or what Fancy Mae Perdy’s new dress looked like or whether or not there was going to be a church supper on the grounds once it cooled off. That would be months from now. And right now she was hot. Even under the thick canopy of the oaks, pines and palm trees, she was just hot.
She wondered if Mama would remember to get some honey or Mayhaw jelly when she went to the farm stand. She sure liked honey or jelly on her biscuits in the morning. She looked down at her feet making their way along the sandy trail and wondered why it was that the sand, although a creamy white color, left her feet looking like she’d dipped them in the cold black ashes from the hearth. She swung her wide braid forward over her shoulder and looked at the different colors of brown and gold and red in her hair. Her sister Georgina called it “Audaburn?”, “Auburn?” She started thinking ahead to the chores she’d have to do when they got back home. She sure hoped her brother Eugene would help her with the chicken coop. She liked feeding the chickens and finding the eggs. She would place them gently in the basket her mother had lined with old socks underneath a kitchen towel. That way none broke while Daddy took them to the farm stand on his way to the cotton gin. But she hated cleaning out the stinky hay from the chicken coop in the heat. Just the thought of all that hay made her itch all over.
She looked ahead on the trail to her sisters, their skirts swaying, high collars loosened by only a button or two, shirt sleeves rolled up to their elbows. They all seemed so strong and grand to her. They had no idea how beautiful, how elegant they were. None of her sisters had ever cut their hair and they wore it in huge twists and buns with wispy curls that lined their faces. She’d heard of ladies that wore make-up but she couldn’t see the point of that when you were just going to sweat it off in no time. Besides, all of her sisters were beautiful without it, even the one she didn’t like. Each sister carried a basket with wet clothes and linens, and from time to time they would shift the weight to one hip or the other, or carry it in front. Possum, who was just three years older than Lu, carried the two washboards. One was wood and metal and the other was wood and glass. Every once in a while a sunbeam would catch in the glass and cause colors to dance on the trail. There was not a breath of wind and her sisters’ forearms and faces gleamed with sweat. Lu was glad to be able to wear her pantaloons and night shirt to the river on washing day. When she got older it would be long skirts, high collars and no fun. She’d have to help wash the clothes in the river instead of getting to splash around and find crawdiddies.
The soap bucket that had seemed so light this morning when she was excitedly leading the way to the river seemed to grow heavier with each step. At least the soap cakes smelled like Mama. Mama always put honeysuckle, gardenia and calendula blooms in the soap when she made it. Lu was hungry. She missed Mama. She was tired and sticky and she hadn’t gotten to play in the water as long as she’d hoped. She was barely cooled off good when they started yonder to the house.
Lu couldn’t wait to get home and ask Mama to make her a sandwich out of the fried fish they’d had the night before. White bread with butter and cold fish, maybe a slice of tomato. If she was extra sweet, maybe Mama would give her a few blackberries with her lunch and let her sit in Mama’s lap while she ate it. She just wanted to rest for a minute and then they could hurry the rest of the way home to Mama and her lunch. She thought about calling ahead to the older girls and asking them if they could take a rest. Sometimes they did that. She would have to call out to one of them by name, maybe Daisy or Cricket. If she just shouted it out, Blanche would surely answer, “No,” and scold her for asking. She had decided to not like Blanche because Blanche didn’t like her, and she wasn’t going to like anyone who didn’t like her first.
That’s when she felt it for the first time. It felt like air on the back of her neck. It was hot, moist but fleeting. She continued along, her feet finding the soft sand of the trail and stepping over roots and pinecones without needing much direction from her. They seemed to know where to step. Then she heard it, too. It didn’t sound like footsteps really as much as that patting sound her mother’s hands made when she pressed out the dough for the cobbler. She stopped. She felt the breath again on the back of her neck and between her shoulder blades and this time the hot, moist air made her blood turn to ice. In addition to the sounds of the river nearby, the crickets and a determined mosquito buzzing by her ear, she could hear the breathy wet sound of it panting, “Hhhu hhhu hhhu.” Her heart began to race. She knew it had been following her and she knew it saw what she saw, all of her sisters talking and swaying around the bend and out of sight. She clutched the handle of the soap bucket in her tiny shaking hand, bit her lip and slowly turned.
She was at first shocked by how close she was to the big cat, she could see the beads of perspiration on his pink nose, stare right into the glassy depths of his golden brown eyes that were lined with a dark brown that looked painted on. She felt his hot breath full in her face now and looked passed the bright pink panting tongue, rough with thorny bumps to the teeth that seemed to have shreds of meat stuck in them. She realized how beautiful the golden fur was, except around the panther’s mouth that was stained red with fresh blood. “Maybe,” she thought, “maybe he’ll just return to his meal.” Lu spent enough time with their barn cats to know that they cleaned themselves silly as soon as they were through eating. She loved to watch them bathe and bathe after they ate, licking their paws and washing their faces. This big cat had some lickin’ to do. The mutual stare seemed to go on for an eternity. Lu was frozen. The mosquito landed on her shoulder and pricked her skin but she wasn’t about to swat at it.
The cat was enormous, bigger than any dog in Holt. She’d heard the stories about the Florida Panther, which everyone around here called Gold Cat. Mama and Daddy had thought she was asleep, but she’d heard every word about missing chickens and pets and how that little boy had been taken from out in Okaloosa County back in 06’, even though there were plenty of white-tailed deer and vermin for the big cats to eat. She had heard her Daddy talk about one that the men had strung up and how unlikely it was that the man who killed it had gotten the right one, even though he bragged and bragged on hisself for killing the “Big Catamount.” Everyone knew the story of the 2-year-old attacked in 1889 while on a picnic with his parents. The story goes that the cat brazenly attacked the boy and the father immediately began trying to wrestle the gold cat away from his boy. The panther grabbed hold of the man by the arm and there was a terrific battle. In the end, the man, who owned a store in Thonotosassa, strangled the cat and put his body on display in his store. If you asked him, he would roll up his sleeve and show you his mangled arm.
She was wondering how long he would stay this still when she got her answer. The large cat, put his ears back, pulled his tongue in and closed his enormous mouth. He stuck his neck out as far as he could seem to manage and with his nose almost touching the skin of her mouth took a long, slow, powerful sniff. Then he eyed her bucket and leaned his big head towards it and sniffed. He squinted his eyes and his head and neck shot back as though the soap had burned him. He looked at her as if to say, “what did you let me smell that for?”
As she noticed the fur on his back ripple with tension, she heard rustling leaves and panicked voices behind her. Amidst the gasps, one of her sister’s voices was saying, “Jesus! Jesus! Oh, God help us. Jesus! Jesus!” The sisters hurriedly debated a possible rescue but couldn’t decide what to do. They were talking over each other and holding Possum back who was determined to snatch up her closest sister. There were questions but no answers. The big cat’s whiskers twitched and he stared at the group of girls with an expression of anger and fear. He flattened his ears against his head, opened his mouth wide in a silent warning and picked up a paw to turn and run. But then, he looked back at Lu, sizing her up and down, planted the big paw back into the sand and squared his shoulders. His eyes seemed to turn black as his mind resolved to do what he was designed to do.
Lu’s mind was consumed with the realization of just how tiny she was. Her heartbeat was thundering in her ears. She could feel trickles of sweat down her back. Her empty stomach churned and she felt queasy. Her knees were shaking and her legs were so weak she had to concentrate to keep them from giving way. Her fingers seemed to swell and throb on her sweaty little hands. Then, suddenly, it came to her. It was a flash of her father’s words after she had woken up screaming one night after a bad dream, “Dadgummitt, Lu! Stop that shriekin’ and bellerin’ before you wake the dead!” She didn’t have a slingshot like David, or a gun like Daddy, but she could scream. So, she screamed. She screamed with all the might she could muster. She dropped that bucket of soap and flapped her arms like the banty rooster when you made him squawkin’ mad. She screamed and flapped until she ran out of air and took a deep breath and screamed and flapped some more. She could feel her throat rubbed raw from the screaming but she kept on screaming anyway. Then, she stopped. She waited. Every sister was silent.
The big cat leaned back, certainly startled, but for years Lu would remember the look on his face before he slowly padded away, shoulders rolling, his huge tail hovering an inch above the sand. It wasn’t a look of fear or defeat. It was a look that said, “Never mind.”
