Cat Chase The Moon

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The old man didn’t want to wake up, he didn’t want to get out of bed, he felt so heavy he longed only to drop back into sleep. Through the curtain of the east window the first smear of fog-dimmed sun sulked lifeless and depressing. Even the hens outside sounded dreary, as if they had no desire at all to lay an egg or peck at the scattered grain. The world was without joy, no smallest pleasure awaited him, no sound of Mindy running and laughing and talking to her pony, or galloping across the field.

It was two weeks since her parents had left, taking the child with them, taking his little granddaughter away to live in town, Mindy shouting, “I don’t want to go! You can’t make me go,” crying so hard she nearly threw up. But of course they had taken her. Mindy was a brat when she was around her parents. She was nice as pie when she was just with him, or with her pony; she was full of life and fun. Why couldn’t Nevin and Thelma have left her here? Now, every day, every hour that she was gone the emptiness grew worse. He’d thought it would get better, but it hadn’t. No more than two weeks earlier he had begun to come to terms with Nell’s death. Then the last of their three grown sons left so soon after his mother’s funeral, taking Zeb’s only grandchild away and not giving a damn if he was alone, never caring if he was still filled with pain over Nell’s passing, never caring if Mindy might have been a solace to him. Never even wondering if he could manage the farm without a little help from Mindy.

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