The Two Detectives

“I told you we were close, Bobby! Patience is a virtue, my friend.”

The old man anxiously rubbed at the gray stubble on his chin. He lived for these moments—when a solution to a confounding problem suddenly revealed itself. He had spent most of his adult life chasing this feeling.

The man sipped from his coffee mug gloatingly and prepared to make his move. He felt a sudden pang of melancholy knowing that his work was nearly finished.

“Let’s get on with it then.”

He worked slowly, his hands shaking more than usual. His doctor had lectured him about his caffeine intake but the elderly man had few vices left to enjoy. After several minutes of careful work, he leaned back in his chair and considered his adversary one final time. He picked up the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle and placed it firmly in its home.

“Case closed.”

Bobby squawked his approval from the cage across the room. The white cockatoo hopped off his wooden perch and tapped politely on the empty food bowl. The old man looked up at the clock. Midday.

“Thank you for the reminder. Let’s eat.”

The man lifted himself out of the chair, his sore back protesting every movement. The stiffness was worse lately and he considered the stretching exercises his doctor had recommended. Less caffeine. More stretching. What did these doctors know anyway?

He ambled toward the kitchen and grabbed the oversized bag of pelleted food from the cabinet. He scooped precisely two tablespoons of feed from the bag and transferred it into Bobby’s bowl. “Bon appétit, my friend.”

With his avian companion catered to, the old man retrieved the ingredients needed for a turkey sandwich for himself. After ensuring that the turkey passed the sniff test—he would need to visit the supermarket soon—he constructed his sandwich and took his usual lunchtime seat by the kitchen window.

He had yet to swallow his first bite when there came a knock from the front door. The man used a napkin to dab a speck of mayonnaise on the corner of his mouth. He pushed up carefully from the table. He was not expecting company and hadn’t been for the better part of a decade. In his experience, a knock at the door typically meant a salesperson. He was eager to tell the unfortunate soul on the other end of the door exactly how he felt about this interruption.

The man turned the silver lock, releasing the deadbolt with a satisfying click. He flung open the door expecting to behold a smug-looking fellow on the cusp of a sales pitch. He could not have been more wrong.

The young boy before him wore a blue baseball cap with blonde locks of hair peeking out the sides. He could not have been more than seven or eight years of age. The boy had a determined look on his face and spoke before the man could even open his mouth.

“Hello,” said the boy.

“Can I help you?” asked the man, not bothering to return the boy’s greeting.

“My name is Henry. I live down the street. We just moved in last week.”

“How wonderful,” responded the man dryly. He thought impatiently about his uneaten sandwich on the kitchen table. “Can I help you?” he repeated.

“I’m looking for my cat, Felix. He didn’t come home last night and I was wondering if you had seen him around.” The boy spoke with confidence, as if this lost cat was a matter of national security.

The elderly man let out an exasperated sigh. Children now days had no respect for others! When he was a young boy he would have never knocked on a stranger’s door over something as trivial as a lost pet. This boy, on the other hand, showed no signs of remorse and stared at the man waiting for a response.

“No,” said the man curtly. “I haven’t seen your cat. This isn’t Animal Control. This is a private residence. I ask that you kindly leave my property.”

The old man shut the door and left the child standing on the porch. “Lost cat!” he scoffed as he returned to his unfinished lunch. “Can you believe that, Bobby?” If Bobby could believe it, he did not say.

The next morning, the man was up bright and early, thankful to see the sun shining outside his window after another night of sleeplessness. He dreaded the nighttime hours when his mind, sharp and alert during the day, felt foggy and sluggish. Most evenings he laid restlessly in bed with nothing but his fragmented memories to keep him company.

After enjoying a cup of coffee and working his way through a sudoku puzzle, the man slipped into a light jacket and headed out the door for the short walk to the supermarket. The air outside was cool. Winter was on its way out and spring was quickly approaching. The old man could feel the change of seasons in his bones—his joints softening each day the temperature warmed.

As he paced the cracked sidewalk, making a mental list of all the items he needed to procure from the market, his thoughts were interrupted by a soft tapping sound in the distance. The man looked ahead, shielding his eyes from the bright sun, and saw a small figure standing next to a telephone pole. As the man walked closer to the source of the noise, he recognized Henry from the day previous. The boy held a stapler in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. Not wishing to engage in further conversation with the youth, the man briefly considered turning in the opposite direction. But the thought of an empty pantry continued him forward.

“Hello again,” said Henry, looking up as the man approached. The boy was affixing one of the papers to the telephone pole. The words LOST CAT were crudely written in crayon at the top of the page.

“Morning,” mumbled the old man in return.

“Felix is still missing,” said Henry. He nodded to the stack of papers in his hand. “I made these flyers last night.”

“How resourceful,” replied the man. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get to the supermarket.”

“I’ll walk with you.” The man let out an irritated grunt, but mentally conceded he had no way to stop the boy.

So they walked together. When the man sped up his pace, Henry did as well. When the man slowed down, the boy followed suit. Henry was like a second shadow for the old man. He could see the supermarket in the distance and focused on it with the intensity of a racehorse with blinders on.

“How long have you lived here?” asked the boy, kicking a small rock across the sidewalk. When the man failed to answer, the boy continued undeterred. “My dad said there would be kids my age to play with, but I haven’t seen any. Do you have any kids?”

“No,” lied the old man.

“Are you married?” Henry looked up at the man with genuine interest.

The man stopped walking and looked down at the boy. He had neither the time nor the patience for this incessant questioning. “Where are your parents? Won’t your mother be worried about you?” Shouldn’t you head home? It wasn’t lost on the man that he was the one now asking questions.

“My mother is gone,” said the boy matter of factly.

“Well, best go home and wait for her.”

“She’s not coming home,” said Henry softly. “She died when I was a baby.”

The old detective noted that for the first time since they had met, the boy was not looking him in his eyes. The man opened his mouth to speak, but quickly stopped himself. He turned and walked away, leaving the boy on the sidewalk.

That afternoon, the old man laid in his recliner, the sounds of John Coltrane floating from his record player. Like regular sleep, naps were elusive, but sometimes, if he closed his eyes and thought of nothing but the smooth melody of his albums, he could drift off peacefully.

The man was close to such a result when a sudden crack of thunder rang out in the distance, startling man and bird alike. He removed himself from the chair and approached the window for a peek outside. Bobby squawked nervously.

The sky was an angry shade of gray, the thunder a warning of what was to come. The man was about to step aside from the window when he noticed heaps of white trash littering the street in front of his home. One of the loose articles blew closer to the window and the man instantly recognized the writing on the page.

LOST CAT.

Henry wasn’t far off from the mess, desperately trying to collect his flyers as the swirling wind worked against him. The man thought of his earlier encounter with the boy on the sidewalk. She’s not coming home.

The old man was suddenly six-years-old again, clinging to his father at the hospital, while his own mother lay lifeless in the next room. A heart attack had taken her from him. She did not come home that day.

The man turned to look at Bobby in his cage. The bird eyed him disapprovingly.

“So what, we’re some kind of kindred spirits all of a sudden?” he said defensively. “Life is hard. He’ll get over it. I certainly did!”

The man returned to his chair with a huff and picked up the day’s newspaper. As he tried to focus on an article about a local city council race, he heard a cacophonous deluge of rain hit the roof of his home. Bobby screeched angrily.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” The man marched to the door and flung it open. Henry was still outside, retrieving the now-soggy papers that peppered the street.

“Forget them!” the man yelled. The boy looked up toward the sound of the man’s voice. “Unless you enjoy being thoroughly soaked, you can wait out the storm on my porch!”

The boy glanced at the man and then up at the dark sky. His decision quickly made, he ran toward the porch and took a seat in one of the rusty chairs.

“Thanks,” said Henry, wiping his rain-soaked brow his equally rain-soaked shirt. The man took the other chair and the two sat quietly and listened to the patter of the raindrops. Finally, the man spoke.

“Don’t bother with the flyers.” The boy looked up, clearly confused.

“Most people won’t read them. If you want to find your cat, you’ll need to be proactive, not reactive.”

“Proactive?” asked the boy.

“Take the initiative. Don’t depend on strangers to help you find Felix.” A slight grin appeared on the boy’s face.

“You remember his name.”

The old man ignored this. “Cats are territorial and very intelligent. Did you care for Felix? Did you feed him regularly?”

“Yes, of course,” said the boy proudly.

“Then he didn’t go far. He’s probably just lost.” The man looked toward Henry. The boy’s eyes were wet and the man suspected it wasn’t from the rain.

“If he’s lost then how will he find his way home?” The boy sniffled.

The old man let out a long exhale, hoping he wouldn’t come to regret what he was about to offer. “Come back here first thing tomorrow morning. We’ll look for Felix.”

The boy beamed at the man and nodded his head excitedly. “Yes, sir! Thank you!” The man huffed.

“Don’t thank me yet,”

The following morning, the old man opened his front door to find clear blue skies and Henry sitting on his porch. The boy had clearly been waiting for some time and though he did not say it, the man was impressed the boy had resisted the urge to knock on the door.

“Tell me about your dear cattus,” said the man earnestly.

This made Henry giggle. “My what?”

“Don’t you kids still take Latin in school?” The man knew perfectly well that they did not, but he couldn’t resist bantering with the boy. “Let’s go.”

For the second time in as many days the pair walked together, but this time the man was in no hurry to outpace his young companion. He pulled out a small notebook from his back pocket. A black pen was affixed to it.

“Back when I was a detective, my notebook was my most important tool. I wrote down every detail of a case, no matter how big or small.” The boy eyed the notebook sadly.

“I don’t have a notebook,” he said. The old man looked at the boy and handed the cheap notebook to him.

“This one is yours then.”

The two strolled up and down the neighborhood streets. Henry spoke lovingly about his cat and the man listened intently. The boy had adopted the cat one year ago, his father allowing him to pick his choice from a litter of kittens. Henry’s father had lectured the boy on the importance of caring for the animal. It was clear to the man that losing the cat had caused Henry great stress. He was desperate to not disappoint his father.

“Felix is my best friend,” said the boy at one point. “Is that weird?”

“I wouldn’t know,” responded the man. “My best friend is a bird.” That made Henry giggle.

As the two made their second pass of the neighborhood, the boy began asking questions of the man. He inquired about the man’s family and this time the man was forthcoming. He was surprised to find himself telling the boy about the separation from his wife forty years ago and how he could not remember the last time he had spoken to his daughter. The old man regaled the boy with detective tales—bank robbers and heists—real cases he had worked as a determined young man.

They went on like this for hours, retracing their steps up and down the sidewalk, enjoying the fresh air and conversation with each other. The man couldn’t remember the last time he had been on his feet so much. He was exhausted, but it felt great. He had forgotten the wondrous effects that sunshine and exercise could have on the mind and body. Henry, on the other hand, showed no signs of slowing down.

“I want to be a detective one day,” the boy announced as they rounded a street corner. The old man smiled down at the boy. He had done a lot of that today.

“Being a detective is about observing and listening,” he responded. “If you can master those two things, you’ll make an excellent detective.” The boy considered this and wrote it down in his notebook.

Eventually the pair walked down the street that would take them back to where they began—at the man’s home. The man knew that he would need to stop and rest soon. His back would be in a world of pain tomorrow.

As the two approached the house, the old man eyed the large oak tree in his yard. Its thick limbs were beginning to sprout green leaves for the spring season. In summers past, the man would sit in the shadow of the tree and read a book. As they walked, the man could sense movement from the branches. A flock of birds flew from the tree, shrieking in irritation. The old detective had a hunch—a feeling deep in his gut. This sensation had served him well for decades. “Why don’t we sit under the tree and have a rest?” The boy shrugged in agreement.

They sat down in the grass, legs stretched out in front of them. “I don’t think Felix is coming home,” said Henry sadly. The man looked up at the tree, searching the branches above.

As if on cue, a soft cry came from the branches above. The man’s eyesight wasn’t what it used to be, but his hearing worked just fine. The boy had heard it too and jumped to his feet excitedly.

Felix, now recognizing his owner, came trotting happily down the branches of the tree. Henry squealed with glee and reached out for the orange tabby. Felix leapt into the boy’s arms and began purring agreeably.

“How did you know he was here?”

The old man laughed. “You know what is better than listening and observing?”

Henry was unsure.

“Dumb luck.”

The three of them sat there in the grass—man, boy, and cat. The old man was suddenly exhausted. He lifted his aching body off the ground, his spine clicking with the movement. Henry sensed it was time to go home. “Thank you for your help,” he said. He turned to walk away, Felix snug against his chest.

The old man called out to the boy. “How about another walk tomorrow? You never know when a cat will need saving.” He smiled brightly. “What do you say, detective?”

The boy returned the smile, cat and notebook in hand.

“Sounds good, detective.”