It's Up To Jack Fredrick Hudgin   © Copyright 2024 by Fredrick Hudgin

Photo courtesy of the author

 “John,” I whispered, looking up, “it won’t be long before we’re finally together again. Did you wait for me, too?”

He died twelve years ago, right after our forty-first anniversary. His doctor detected it during a routine annual checkup. Then he had an MRI, a CT scan, and his pancreas removed. It didn’t stop the cancer. The chemo and radiation did nothing but make him even sicker. Six weeks later, he died as I held him. My soulmate, my companion for forty-two years—stolen from me before our “golden years” had even begun.

Sometimes I still talked to him like he was in the room. Other times I just thought my end of our conversations. The older I got, the fuzzier that line became. In the years before our retirement, we planned the trip of our lifetime: Ireland, Paris, and New Zealand—the bucket list adventure that never happened. Instead, we sat together, holding hands in the oncologist’s office, while he gave us John’s death sentence.

Reality elbowed its way back into my thoughts.

Hospice, John. Remember hospice? Well, here’s the thing. Tomorrow I’m moving to the same one you were in. This time it’s my cancer that’s winning. Chemo didn’t help me, either. But I didn’t fight very hard—certainly not as hard as you did. So, I guess I’m just ready to go. The doc says I can’t live alone anymore. I suppose he’s right. I can’t even hold down Ensure. I’m leaking out of every orifice, and my clothes just hang on me like sacks.

Jack, the cat, jumped onto my lap, landing as gently as a feather. He was a gray and tan tortoiseshell, medium-hair cat—my companion since John died. My brother, Nathan, brought him over a week after the burial. That little, six-week-old fur ball was just what I needed to help me heal after losing John. Five years later, Nathan joined my husband on the other side, cut down by a stroke in the middle of the night.

And get this, John, remember how his brat kids fought over the largest piece from those apple pies I made? They descended on our house like locusts when I told them I had cancer. All they wanted to know was who got what. Now they’re fighting over where the money from the house sale goes. I’m gonna give it all to cancer research instead of those bastards!

Jack got comfortable, a soft meow, his head on my thigh with a sigh of contentment. His purr engine started up. I refused to call him “my cat.” He stayed with me because he wanted to.

“What would I have done without you, Jack? Without you depending on me for meals, water, and a clean litter box?”

OK, John—you put the idea in Nathan’s head, didn’t you? I missed you so much. And now hospice is waiting for me, and they don’t allow pets.

Despair filled me again. I lost John, and now I’m losing Jack. I figured Jack had saved my life; yeah, saved it so I could die of cancer twelve years later.

I scratched Jack behind the ears, then between his eyes. His eyes became slits of pure kitty pleasure, and his purring went up about thirty decibels.

“What do you want to do, Jack” I whispered.

Why do people talk to their pets like they’re people? What would they do if the poor thing actually answered: “Gee, I’d like about a million mice to chase, all the Tender Vittles in the world, and catnip—lots of catnip.”

Jack looked up at me and said “Meow” rather forcefully, as though he agreed with my thoughts.

I stood up, making him jump off my lap, and opened the front door, holding it for him. In the twelve years we’d been together, he had never wanted to go outside.

“Jack, do you want to leave? Maybe find another lonely old woman who needs you to help her through some personal nightmare.”

Slowly Jack walked over to the open door and looked out, his head going from side to side and then up into the limbs of the trees next to my house. He turned to stare at me with his head cocked to one side as if he were asking, “Why are you doing this?”

“Go on, my friend. Make a life for yourself. It’s a cat Heaven over there on the other side of that fence. There are more mice than you could ever eat in that wheat field.”

Jack turned his back on the open door without a second look and jumped onto the seat of the maple ladder-back chair I’d gotten from Grandmother’s estate. He curled up in the sun coming through the window, continuing the purr-solo he began in my lap.

I could take him to the shelter. They said they never put down unwanted pets. I still had the phone number on my cell phone. I hesitated, then pulled out the phone, my thumb hovering over the “call” button, when a knock sounded on my front door. Through the cut glass, garden-filled center of the door that John HAD to have when we built the house, I saw Stan Wilson, the real estate agent I had hired to sell the house.

“Hi, Stan,” I said, opening the door. “What’s up?” There would be plenty of time to make the call after Stan left.

“Good morning, Janice. I’ve got a family in the car. They want to take a look at your house. Is this a good time?”

I laughed, holding up my hand like it was an appointment calendar. “You’re in luck. All I have today are good times.”

“I’ve got to warn you,” he whispered. “They have a little girl who doesn’t speak.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Don’t know. What’s the difference? I think she’s adopted.”

“Depends on the kid. But thanks for the warning. Bring ’em in.”

Can’t speak is one thing, but kids who won’t speak have usually been abused. I looked past him to his car. I saw a man in the front passenger seat and a woman in the back.

Stan walked back out to the car and returned with the couple. A child dawdled behind them—maybe ten years old, with light brown skin and nappy hair—very different from her parents’ white skin and blonde hair. The girl looked around at the trees and flowers. I still planted flowers in the raised beds in front of the house every year, just like John had done. It just didn’t seem like home without them.

“Come on, Marie.” Her mother urged gently. “Keep up.”

Before she walked up to join us on the porch, the little girl reached out to touch the firecracker petunias and stroked them almost lovingly.

“Those petunias were my husband’s favorite,” I told her.

She didn’t respond to my comment or even acknowledge she had heard me.

Her parents went off with Stan to tour the house. Marie sat on the porch swing without saying a word, waiting for them to finish.

Stan called out to me. “Janice, could you come upstairs for a second? They have a question.”

Stairs were a lot of work these days, even when I didn’t fill my diaper as I struggled up them. I found them in the master bathroom.

“What’s the history of this tub?” the woman asked.

I had to catch my breath before I could answer. “John bought it from a contractor tearing down another farmhouse about a mile from here. He told me the tub was at least a hundred years old. He must have spent fifty hours cleaning all the paint from those ball-and-claw feet on the bottom. When he finished, we had it powder coated so it would stay pretty.”

“It must have worked,” the man said. “It still looks brand new.”

“Most comfortable tub I’ve ever sat in. John put in a larger water heater so I could fill it up and soak.”

“Marie?” the woman called out, walking to the bathroom door. “Marie, where are you?”

“She was on the front porch swing when I came up here,” I told her.

Everyone went downstairs with me, bringing up the rear. Marie was still on the swing. Jack lay on her lap, purring. I had left the front door open when I went upstairs.

“What’s his name,” Marie asked. She had a fluid, almost musical voice with a slight Hispanic accent.

The world was swirling around me from descending the stairs. I collapsed into the chair beside the swing. “Jack.” I finally managed. “He’s been my companion since my husband died twelve years ago.”

Her parents were still staring at Marie in shock. I don’t think they would have been more surprised if the Red Sea had parted in front of them.

“Marie, do you like Jack?” I asked into the silence.

She scratched him behind the ears. He arched into the pressure from her hand. “He’s my friend,” she answered. “If we buy your house, will Jack stay here?”

Her mother reached out to her husband; both had tears in their eyes.

“Could you p-possibly … part with Jack … as part of the deal, ma’am?” her father asked, his voice breaking a little when he said the words. “If you could, I promise you; he will get a good home. I think it would mean a lot to Marie and us.”

I watched Jack in Marie’s lap, then painfully leaned over to them so I could scratch him under his chin. “Jack, is this what you want?”

He closed his eyes and put his head down on Marie’s lap.

“OK,” I said, looking up. “That was pretty clear. Jack wants to stay.”

I studied the couple, imagining them living here, where John and I had loved each other for over forty years. Could I turn over this house, our home, to these strangers? My emotions swept over my self-control like a tsunami. Stepping to the edge of the porch, I reached out to the one person I could count on for guidance when all else failed. What should I do, John? Should I let them replace our dusty old memories with their shiny new ones?

John’s hand squeezed my shoulder, and his voice whispered in my ear as clearly as if he were standing next to me. “Our memories will always belong to us, Janice. They are the ones.”

I spun around, expecting, praying, to see him one more time, but of course, he wasn’t there. Instead of John, four hopeful faces stared back at me.

The decision became permanent. “I’ll leave his vet history on the kitchen table with all the papers about the house. My husband and his brother built it and the barn about forty years ago. We used to have horses in the pastures, but I gave them away after he passed. The barn’s still all set up for them. Anything else you want to know about the house or the property?”

Marie’s eyes lit up even more when I mentioned the barn and horses. She looked back and forth between her parents with excitement. Her parents were still clutching each other’s hands, their eyes fixed on Marie in disbelief, boarding on euphoria.

Her father finally answered. “Nope. I think we need to sign some papers at Stan’s office. When could we move in?”

“I’ll be leaving tomorrow. The house is available any time after. Everything inside goes with the house, as the advertisement said. Do with it what you want, but Jack is particularly fond of that maple ladder-back chair. Be great if you could put it where the sun can hit the seat.”

“We’ll make sure it’s there,” her mother promised, her eyes not leaving Marie with Jack on her lap.

I turned to Marie, finally gaining peace, even a little excitement, from knowing that I’d be with John soon and that Jack would have a loving home after I left. “I won’t be able to feed or care for Jack after I leave tomorrow. So, I will count on you to take over for me.”

Marie stroked Jack’s head and smiled. “I will take care of him.”

I had the feeling it had been a long time since she smiled at anything. If Jack could have smiled, his would have been ear-to-ear.