Рита Браун - Sour Puss

Hy, in his element—surrounded by women—flattered them. "I don't see how you girls can jump those big fences."

"We don't, Hy, the horse does," Harry answered as she held up her forefinger, which meant one cup of orange pekoe tea.

Kyle nodded as he foamed the whipped cream on Susan's hot chocolate, since she was perishing before his very eyes for want of it.

The door swung open and Toby stomped in. "Hy, what were you doing in my vineyard today?"

Hy, surprised, swiveled around on his stool. "I wasn't there."

"The hell you weren't. I saw your white truck. No one else has a gold fleur-de-lis on his truck."

"Toby, if I were going to see your vineyards, I'd call on you first. I wasn't there."

"That was your truck." Toby's face reddened.

"The fleur-de-lis is small. Did you drive up to this alleged truck of mine?"

"No. I saw it from a distance, but I know your truck."

"And from that distance you determined it was my truck?"

"Liar! It was your truck. You were on my property and I damned well want to know why!"

Hy, out of deference to the ladies, stood up, stepping away from the counter as everyone held their breath. "I told you, I was not at your farm. I don't think anyone who works for me was at your farm, but I will check as soon as I return home. If they were, I will tell you immediately as well as why. Give me your cell number."

"What I'm giving you is fair warning. If you so much as put a foot on my land I will shoot you. I know why you're there. You want to ruin my grapes. You can't stand that I'm growing better grapes than you are. Stay off my land or I'll put you under it!"

"You're utterly deluded." A look of apprehension crossed Hy's face.

Toby yanked back his right fist, slamming it hard into Hy's jaw. Hy had a glass jaw. He sank like a stone, coldcocked.

Kyle flew around the corner, but that fast Toby ran out the door.

"Goddammit!" Kyle cursed.

"I'll take care of him." Karen called for one of the waiters to throw her a clean towel. She poured her water on it and knelt down, placing the wet towel on Hy's forehead.

Both Harry and Susan knelt down with her.

Kyle called the sheriff. Deputy Cooper just happened to be near the new post office. She pulled a three-sixty, hit the siren and lights to cross the road without waiting for the endless traffic.

When she opened the door, Hy was coming to, blood seeping from his mouth for he'd bitten his tongue when he was hit.

"Hy. Hy. Can you hear me?" Cynthia bent over in front of him.

"Uh-huh," he weakly replied.

She passed her hand in front of her eyes. "Follow my hand."

His eyes followed the motion of her hand as everyone in the coffee shop talked at once.

"Come on, Hy, let's put you in a booth." Kyle searched for an empty booth.

As there wasn't one, he was about to ask people to move, when Hy stood up unsteadily.

"I'm okay. Hurts, but I'm okay."

"Let me look at your tongue." Karen reached to hold open his jaw as if he were a horse.

Hy saved her the trouble by sticking out his tongue.

"Not too bad," Susan remarked, and Karen concurred.

"Are you dizzy?" Coop inquired. She wanted to make sure he hadn't suffered a concussion.

"No."

"Headache?" she asked.

"No. What I am," he dabbed his bleeding tongue, "is mad."

"Would you like to press charges?" Coop never assumed anything.

"Yes. Throw the book at the bastard." Hy's face flamed crimson.

"Why don't we go outside in the fresh air and you can sit in the car with me, windows down. We'll go over everything." Coop then told Harry, Susan, Karen, and Kyle she'd take statements from them in time. But they didn't have to stick around. She'd find them.

As she put her hand under Hy's elbow, he said, louder than he realized, "He's been furious at me ever since I won the best new entry at the wine-tasting last year. He can't stand it."

Coop walked to the door with Hy. "Sure you don't want some ice in a towel?"

"No," Hy growled. "Toby is dangerous. I want him locked up."

"Hy, that's easier said than done, but come out in the fresh air. I'll do what I can."

"Why is it difficult? Assault and battery. Straightforward."

"Toby is clever." Coop left it at that as she opened the door.

Harry hoped to hear more of the conversation, but the door closed.

Karen Osborne shrugged. "Certifiable." She didn't say whether she thought Toby was nuts or Hy or both.

15

"Warm winters." BoomBoom leaned over the paddock where Keepsake nursed Burly.

"1990 to 1995 were especially warm. Had the drought years in there, too." Fair, having come from Big Mim's to Boom-Boom's farm, rubbed his stubble.

His thick beard irritated him because it grew so quickly. He kept an electric razor in his truck to try and keep up with it. If he had time, he shaved in the morning with a safety razor and then again when he came home from work. He felt his wife was entitled to a smooth face at night.

"It really hasn't been that cold since 2000 either. We've had a lot of snow and ice but not long periods of cold. Strange."

"Guess there really is global warming. I don't know if I read it in The Wall Street Journal or The London Financial Times, but there was an article about hybrid vehicles. Said those emissions would be just as hot as gasoline."

"Since you get more miles to the gallon, maybe it would slow global warming," BoomBoom, a true gearhead, replied.

Fair smiled as Burly left Keepsake to run a few circles, buck, then stop to stare at the two humans, only to repeat the process. "Personality."

"To burn." She laughed. "I've fallen in love with the little guy and I don't care if he does have big ears."

"So did Clark Gable." Fair laughed, then said, "Driving so much gives me time to think. I think we don't have any choice but to be done with the internal combustion engine."

"God, all those beautiful engines." BoomBoom's hand involuntarily flew to her breast. It didn't have to fly far. "I do love engines." She sighed. "But we can't very well destroy the planet because of it."

"It's kind of like if President Rutherford B. Hayes had declared the future of America was the whale industry because of whale-oil lamps. I expect some technology will replace the internal combustion engine, but I can't imagine what or if it will happen in my time. You know, Boom, I think the proliferation of some of the equine disease we see is the result of the warming."

"You mean West Nile?" She named a disease, often fatal, that infected horses and humans.

"That. What gives us some wiggle room there is that the virus has to go from the crow to the possum—usually a possum— and then the horse. People can get it directly from crows but not from horses. Fortunately, the fragility in the transfer of the virus means if we break the cycle in just one jump between species, we ought to knock it. But there's something coming down the pike every day, it seems." He shook his head.

"It's odd, too, that so many of these new diseases—or what seem to be new to our hemisphere, anyway—evolve so quickly." BoomBoom, a highly intelligent woman, read widely and often.

He nodded in agreement. "AIDS wins the prize there. But the old standbys are making a comeback: tuberculosis, syphilis, even measles. They return more resistant to treatment."

"No one can blame those diseases on animals. Human-to-human transmission."

"Actually, there's not much that can be pinned to animals, because so few humans in the developed nations live close to them. 'Course it's different in Asia, Africa, and parts of South America. Every time a new disease appears on the horizon, I have to laugh, because the medical profession is in such a hurry to trace it to a monkey or a snail or a lemur. It's as though humans still can't face the fact that we are perfectly capable of being agents of disease." He checked his watch. "Didn't mean to take up so much of your time."