We leave most every year for the 4th of July to get away from the city and out east to the quiet Wallowa Valley, where the Nez Perce spent holy summers and cherry bombs aren’t popping as you drift to sleep. The only firecrackers are over the lake, lest all else burn, and the booms rattle off the moraine and channel sound into the mountains and the kokanee dive and the elk and marmots and wolves flee for a while into the deeper wilderness to escape our reenactments of Fort McHenry’s siege.
Our only family member who stays home is Lily, and she hates Independence Day so much there is a special place we build for her on the second shelf of our bathroom closet, a cocoon of towels and tissue rolls, tucked in the center of the house, with the most surrounding walls. That’s where she goes when the booms shudder, passing big, invisible waves through her body.
She is old. One eye is cloudy, her back legs lack strength, and she meows louder than she used to, possibly so she can hear her own voice. Sixteen years is a long time to be a cat, to be stuck in one house with the same two humans who spend so much time on those screens. I see now why she took walkabouts, leaving for days to live outside, away from the role of pet. Or why God would cordon off a Holy of Holies, where only one priest could reach Him.
Such a good piece, Jordan. Our old boy fortunately isn’t too concerned, but I imagine it is petrifying.
<3 Lily <3