In case you missed it on the other page... Many moons ago, when my boys were teenagers and Julia’s girls were just starting school, we belonged to a group that met in downtown Seattle on a monthly basis. I lived farther to the north than Julia did, so we would meet at a prearranged point and carpool into the city. The meetings were held at a community college in a part of town that was only relatively safe after dark. With no on-campus parking available, we always tried to arrive early enough to find a parking spot close to the school. One winter night, when the featured speaker at our meeting was someone we particularly wanted to hear, we were unlucky. An earlier accident on the freeway left traffic hopelessly snarled and we were nearly an hour late. The only parking space we could find was several blocks from the meeting site. Uneasy but determined, we locked my car and hurried through the mostly deserted streets. We were able to hear only the latter half of the presentation. It was well after ten when the meeting broke up, and it was as dark as the proverbial inside of a cow. We weren’t looking forward to the ten-minute walk to get back to my car. A chill wind was blowing in from the direction of Puget Sound. Julia wrapped her purse strap around her arm in a double hitch and I secured mine tightly under my elbow. Both of us were on high alert for potential attackers. This wasn’t a good area for pedestrians after dark. I had a tiny flashlight on my keychain but it didn’t do much good. Five blocks away from the car, we stopped. If we cut through a long alley between two closed businesses, we would save at least five minutes, and we’d be out of the wind. But was anyone lurking in that alley? We probed the narrow area with anxious eyes. There were a few garbage cans, a pile of trash, and, near the other end, a large dumpster, but we saw no movement. We decided to risk it. I was responsible for being the pathfinder, so I walked slightly ahead of Julia. She was responsible for rear reconnaissance, so she kept looking over her shoulder to make sure no one was sneaking up on us from behind. Past the garbage cans we went. We detoured around the pile of trash without incident. I started to walk past the enormous waist-high dumpster, and stepped up my pace. The end of the alley was in sight. Suddenly I stopped so fast that Julia, who had been looking behind us, walked right into me. “What was that?” I demanded. Julia regained her balance and looked around in alarm. “What was what? Why’d you stop? Did you – “ And then it came again. A faint, tiny, shrill little sound, unmistakable to anyone who had heard it before. It was a kitten. A very young kitten. “Where is it?” Julia asked rhetorically, scanning the alley. “Do you see anything?” At that point I would have been pressed to see my hand before my nose. I shook my head. “Under the dumpster, maybe?” I ventured. Julia immediately unstrapped her purse from her arm, handed it to me, and hit the dirty cobblestones to peer underneath the dumpster. “Do you see it?” I asked. Julia replied in the negative and got up, brushing at her clothes. “We did hear it, didn’t we?” “Either we’re both nuts, or yes, we did hear it,” Julia assured me. “Where do you suppose – “ And then we heard the meow again. We looked at one another. Now there was no doubt. The kitten was in the dumpster. I was wearing a dress. Julia had on a pair of slacks. That meant she got the climbing job and I got the hold-the-purses-and-the-penlight-and-watch-for-attackers assignment. With something between a hop and a jump, Julia managed to get an ankle hooked over the side of the dumpster, hauled herself up, and swung her other leg over, preparatory to dropping into the half-full pile of trash. She was about to push off and land in the garbage when I suddenly shouted, “No! Stop! Don’t!” Julia had eased her rear off of the edge of the dumpster and nearly had to do a back bend to get herself back on to the edge. Aided by me hauling on the back of her coat, she regained her balance. “What’s the matter?” she demanded. “You can’t jump down there,” I pointed out. “We don’t know where the kitten is. You could squash it.” “Oh…yeah. Good catch. Wonderful,” said Julia glumly. “All right, grab hold of my ankles and see if you can hold that penlight where I can see what I’m doing.” So there we were, halfway down a dark alley, with my hands around Julia’s skyward-pointing feet as she braced with one hand and sifted through loose trash and black garbage bags with the other, aided only by the wobbling, jiggling beam of my tiny penlight. Every so often we would hear another meow, which prevented either of us from giving up. My shoulders were cramped, my back was protesting, and Julia was getting pretty grubby from her dumpster diving. Unlovely odors from the dumpster were being stirred up every time she moved anything. Only the tiny meows spurred us on to further efforts. I’m sure you’ve noticed that there was no discussion about whether we should rescue the kitten. Only how. We weren’t sure what we were going to do with it when we found it. The important thing was to actually locate the kitten and make sure it was safe. “Where do you think it is?” I asked, tightening my back muscles against the discomfort. “Are you close?” “Dunno. My head’s been upside down for too long. I think it’s more toward the middle and I can’t reach that very well.” Rustling noises came from the dumpster as Julia twisted around to try for the middle of the garbage. “I hear it…it’s this way…Oh! I think I’ve got -- ” “What are you doing?” The voice from right behind my shoulder startled me so much that I let out an involuntary yelp and loosened my grip on Julia’s ankles. They immediately disappeared from view, followed by a muffled thunk as the rest of her smacked headfirst into the trash. Fastening a death hold on our purses, I swung around to confront the owner of the voice. To my unspeakable relief, it was a uniformed police officer. He was looking at me in surprise, which deepened a moment later when after more rustling noises Julia’s head and shoulders poked up from inside the dumpster. Something unidentifiable was hanging from the right side of her head and she did not exactly smell like a flower garden. The officer repeated his question. “We’re looking for a kitten,” I explained. “We heard it when we walked by. There’s a kitten in that dumpster.” “No there’s not,” said Julia, swiping at the thing hanging from her hair. I stared at her, astounded at this seeming betrayal, which seemed belied by another meow. “There’s no kitten,” Julia went on, in tones of deep disgust. Lifting a hand, she extended a small book, one of those kids’ books with the stiff cardboard pages. The book meowed. “There’s a button in this book that meows when it’s pressed on,” she said. “Evidently when it got tossed in here something landed on it to make it meow. We thought it was a kitten.” The officer looked like he wanted to scratch his head in bewilderment. He stared from one to the other of us. The book meowed again. Julia offered it to him. He hastily shook his head. Julia tossed it back into the trash and prepared to climb out of the dumpster. Gingerly, the policeman extended a hand to help her, wiping it carefully on his uniform pants once she was safe on solid ground. “Thank you, Officer,” I said brightly, hoping to salvage the situation a little bit. “We appreciate your help. We’re parked about three blocks away. Would you mind escorting us to the car?” He agreed at once, and turned on his strong flashlight . He did take us to my car, and waited while I unlocked it and Julia removed her coat and stowed it in the trunk. Only when I started the engine did he turn and walk back the way we had come. “That was close,” I said. “Maybe he could have arrested us. I don’t know if rummaging around in dumpsters is illegal or not.” “Neither do I,” said Julia, “but trust me, we weren’t in any danger of being arrested.” “What makes you so sure?” I asked. “Because,” said Julia, rolling down the window, “the whole time he was with us he was careful to stand upwind of me. There’s no way he would have put us in a patrol car with him for a long ride down to the police station.” It was a good five minutes before we stopped laughing enough for me to put the car in gear and start driving home.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 05:36:48 +0000