Рита Браун - The Big Cat Nap

“We cleaned out Reverend Jones’s truck.”

“What’s that got to do with the radiator?”

Herb, ever the gentleman, came to Harry’s rescue. “I informed Kyle that I had left personal items in the truck and told him when we’d be here.”

“Like I said to her, what’s the radiator got to do with it? I put that radiator in your truck two years ago.” A note of defensiveness crept into Jason’s now-too-loud voice.

Sammy, hearing this, hurried inside to Victor’s office. Fortunately, it was a day when Victor was in the Charlottesville shop.

“I’ll take care of this.” Victor dismissed a now-worried Sammy and quickly walked back to the parking lot. “Apart from his mouth”—he indicated Jason—“is everything all right?” Victor apologized to Reverend Jones and Harry.

“Fine. I didn’t mean to cause upset.” Reverend Jones’s voice soothed.

“I know that. Jason’s a watchdog type and everyone’s a little edgy.” Victor glanced at the radiator on the ground. “You’re not taking that, are you?” He laughed.

“No.” Harry took a step toward him. “My curiosity got the better of me. It’s a two-year-old radiator, so I just wanted to look it over. Looks okay, but I’d need to study it better.”

Victor knelt down. “It does look okay. Well, I’m sorry for your inconvenience, Reverend Jones. Latigo told me he wrote this off as totaled so you might be able to buy a newer truck. Good as these old babies are, this one’s been hard used.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry said. “I really did seem to get under Jason’s skin.”

“No apologies necessary.” Victor stood up. “Reverend, tell me what you buy. CarMax down in Richmond has very good deals on used cars and the histories of every vehicle. Now, if you want a new truck, there are a lot of choices right here in Charlottesville.”

“Yes, there are. I’ll be sure to let you know.”

Victor walked back, stopped in the garage. “Jason, don’t ever embarrass me like that in front of Reverend Jones.”

“How was I to know?” he moaned. “She’s a nosy bitch. She’ll cause trouble.”

“First of all, Harry Haristeen is not a bitch. Nosy, she is. Causing trouble?” He shrugged. “I hope not, but she’s one of those people who can’t leave well enough alone once her curiosity is triggered.”

“Right,” Jason mumbled as Sammy looked on.

Victor returned to the front of the building.

Sammy said, “Jason, all you did was call attention to the damned radiator. That was pretty stupid.”

A fter the cold front passed through over the weekend, everyone enjoyed the perfect weather. But then on Monday, the heat shot back up. The stifling temperature and the close, humid air dispirited one and all.

Harry, bush hogging on her repaired tractor, stopped in the middle of the large pasture behind the crops, the smell of the new-cut hay field filling her nostrils. Cursing herself for saving the big pastures for later, she turned off the motor, stepped down—hand on what she always called the “Jesus bar”—and swung to the earth. Her soaked T-shirt clung to her. She might have won a wet-T-shirt contest, although Harry’s mind never worked that way. If someone else brought it up she might make a crack about it, indulge in a little sexual innuendo, but she wasn’t a person who thought a lot about erotic things. It’s doubtful she would have been different if born male. “Tunnel vision” best described her way of seeing her day.

Focusing now, she lifted off a long polo whip that she affixed by the tractor seat with two welded small “U”s. She’d slip the whip through them and secure it with rawhide.

The cats sat high in the hayloft. The upper hayloft doors were open, as were all the downstairs doors and every stall door, just in hopes of catching the hint of a breeze. They watched as Harry walked through the mid-thigh orchard grass, with white clover underneath.

The hay wasn’t the finest horse quality, but it would do okay for cattle. She’d sell out of her seven-hundred-pound round bales by February. The quality was good, but Harry, fussy about nutrition, only square-baled her alfalfa—orchard-grass mix for the horses. She also had twenty acres in timothy and alfalfa. Perfect hay. Naturally she’d cut and baled that first, having gotten half of it up before the hydraulic pump expired.

Susan, happy to be outside, was running the spider-wheel tedder, turning cut hay to dry while Harry mowed down the cattle hay. Susan had always loved farm work. When they were kids, she’d often begged Harry’s parents to let her help.

Harry and her friends were bound by hoops of iron. It wasn’t just the years, it was the accumulated births, passings, victories, defeats—the sheer intensity of the experiences they’d shared. They knew one another’s weaknesses and strengths. Observing the various generations, they noticed downright peculiarities popping up again and again, parent to child, and so on. Even if there was a Nobel Prize for intelligent farming and Harry had won it, it wouldn’t mean as much as what she felt for her friends and what they felt for her. Naturally, she believed that her friends had more peculiarities than she did. They felt the same way about her. Never was there a shortage of laughter.

Even with her husband. Sometimes the two of them would laugh so much they’d fall out of bed. Fair’s motto was “If you can’t laugh while making love, you aren’t making love.” Well put, Harry agreed.

“She’s methodical.” Mrs. Murphy admired Harry’s system.

Pewter observed Harry, who was now off the tractor and swinging the polo whip, the grasses bending over. Carefully, Harry covered much of the field she intended to cut. She did this in sections. Her whistle carried even to the hayloft.

“She is. Humans learned to be patient and precise from us. They watched us hunt, stay still, figure out where the quarry is. They’re alive because of us, you know.” Pewter puffed up.

“Hoo. Hoo. Hoo,” Flatface, on her nest in the cupola, called down. “Cats aren’t as important as owls. The Egyptians carved beautiful friezes of us. The Greeks put us in their myths, and I remind you, Fatty Screwloose, that we are sacred to Athena—an owl accompanied her. No cat traveled to Mount Olympus.”

Pewter, voice low, grumbled, “I hate it when she calls me Fatty Screwloose.”

Mrs. Murphy whispered, “Keep it to yourself. She’s strong enough to pick you up in her talons. Flatface is powerful and smart—very, very smart.” The tiger cat then called up to the huge owl, “You’re right, but there was a tiger cat in baby Jesus’s cradle. It was so cold we kept the baby warm.”

“Might could be. Human stories interest me. Some of them are beautiful. With others, you can tell right away they’re off their nut. Leda and the swan. Now, I tell you, why would Zeus seduce a woman as a swan?”

“Bet you’re right.” Pewter decided to humor the big girl.

“He would have come down as an owl.” Flatface issued this judgment with absolute conviction.

The owl looked through the slats in the cupola.

The cats, too, saw the doe and fawn run away from Harry.

“Good she did that,” Mrs. Murphy said.

“The fawn so often gets killed.” Flatface turned her head at that odd angle that birds can. “They hear that fearsome racket, but the mama has told the baby to stay. She runs away, thinking she might well divert the danger, and , wham, the fawn is ripped up by the equipment. If Harry had killed that fawn, she’d be a wreck for all this week.”