Northern_Lights_2019

34 this, and her back grumbled and popped in protest. She stood slowly and carefully, then shuffled into the kitchen and retrieved a black garbage bag. She returned to the living room and hefted the sweater-bound carcass into the bag with an annoyed grunt. Lord’s mercy, was Mimsy ever a fat creature. She cinched the garbage bag securely shut and sniffed thoughtfully at the front door. Reaching the door and exiting the apartment without tracking blood into the stairwell beyond was going to be a heck of an ordeal, she thought. Bettie eventually decided to carry her orthopedic sneakers over to the door and put them on there, instead of her bedroomwhere she usually did. She did her best to step in places where there was no blood, but that ended up being impossible. Most people would be utterly amazed by the amount of blood contained in a single cat, but not Bettie Carson. She had worked in an abattoir for a year in her youth, so she knew the deceptively ample capacity of blood hiding in animals. Bettie finally conceded that there was no way to save her sneakers from being stained with blood, but at least the stains would all be inside the shoes, so they wouldn’t be visible. Her bones creaked as she slid her arms into her green parka. She checked to make sure she had her keys, her purse, and her cane, then picked up the garbage bag. She remembered she hadn’t double-bagged Mr. Mimsy, considered the shiny crimson swamp that barred her way to the kitchen, and decided one bag would have to do. Bettie’s building was an ancient brick cube, older even than her, so it had no elevator. Fortunately, she only lived on the second floor; poor Abigail Kemp lived up on the fifth. How that old bat managed to leave the building for her Pinochle group every Wednesday completely mystified Bettie. She struggled down the stairs to the front entryway and shouldered her way out the smudged glass door. The bright afternoon sun and sharp January air blurred her vision and sucked her breath away. She squinted until her sight returned, then hobbled to the right side of the building. The alley joined her building with its neighbor, a tall, gaunt olive house with boards over all its windows, and weeds up to Bettie’s shoulders clawing their way through the rusted chain-link fence surrounding the property. Bettie turned away from the eyesore and approached the dumpster. Fat gray clouds rolled ponderously across the sky, blotting out the sun as Bettie arrived at the end of the alley. She set the bag down and propped her cane against the dumpster, then used both arthritic hands to heft up the weighty black plastic lid. She hobbled toward the wall, using her legs as much as possible. It wasn’t quite enough, because a streak of hot pain shot briefly up her spine. Oh, Nelly. She stood still a moment, waiting to see if the agony would pass or if she would collapse. Her knee buckled once, twice, then . . . Then the new, hot pain was cannibalized by the myriad old pains, absorbed into the cacophony of age, and Bettie took a long, steadying breath. She was going to feel that in the morning. Bettie finally managed to heft the dumpster lid all the way open, and with a heaving grunt, hurled the heavy garbage bag into the opening. It landed at the bottom with a wet thump. She sighed mournfully; a rusty dumpster was hardly a fitting burial for her dear Mimsy. She heartened herself with the knowledge that it was only for a day. Why this one had to be so messy, she couldn’t understand. Why couldn’t it be a heart attack, like last time? So much easier to clean up. Cats were such odd creatures. With a satisfactory nod, she plucked up her cane and hobbled out of the alley, then turned left and headed down the street toward the Quick- Mart. Lord knew, she was going to need an awful lot of baking soda. *** Bettie Carson glanced up from the blaring wail of the wet-vac she’d rented that morning, working to suck up the grim scene of her living room. She hadn’t had the energy to deal with it the day before, aside from coating everything in a healthy layer of baking soda, but now was as good a time as any. Jeopardy played on her ancient little television, though she could hardly hear it over the din of the wet-vac. After several minutes of working her way across the mushy red lumps of soda in her carpet, Bettie shut the wet-vac off and paused, listening. There it was again—a faint scratching on wood. She made her way to the front door and opened