Рита Браун - Cat's Eyewitness

"Thought of that, too. I say we go in from behind the Inn at Afton Mountain just before dawn. Work up to within sight of the Virgin Mary, then work around in a southwest arc. Since it's Sunday the brothers will be in service and prayer, at least early in the morning. We have a shot at it, and we can be out of there before attracting notice. We'll have to work in sections. We can't do it all in one day."

"Great idea." Harry paused a moment. "But, Susan, if we do find him, do you really want to see old Uncle Thomas like, well, like however we find him?"

"I tell myself the soul has left the body. Whatever we find is a husk. And I tell myself that he deserves better. He deserves a decent Christian burial after a lifetime of service to the best of Jesus' teachings."

"You're right," Harry agreed.

"I feel this foreboding. Harry, I feel like he's calling to me. I have a debt to clear, but I don't know what it is."

28

Looking east from the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a thin gray line separated the horizon from the frozen earth. The band expanded until the faintest touch of rose diffused the bottom to cast a pinkish glow on the dark earth.

Harry, Susan, Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, Tucker, and Owen, Susan's corgi, paused to watch the blush of dawn before they plunged into the ravine behind the monastery.

The early morning, still as the tomb and clear, promised a cold day but a bright one. The winter solstice, ten days ahead, brought soft light.

Harry marveled at how the light changed with each season. Winter's light, soft and alluring, offered a contrast to the cold.

The two dogs scrambled down the ravine. The cats picked their way over the fallen branches and the jutting rocks. Pewter, never one for vigorous exercise, grumbled with each obstacle.

"You could have stayed in the car up at Afton Inn." Mrs. Murphy tired of the stream of complaints.

"And miss everything! If we find Brother Thomas you'll need my powers of observation."

"If we find Brother Thomas, you'll throw up. It will be like one big hairball," Mrs. Murphy said as she leapt over a large oak branch, the place where it had torn from the tree a different color.

"I will not." Pewter elected to go around the tree branch. "I don't rejoice in these things. Not like the dogs. Carrion eaters. They love it."

"Dogs can be gross." Mrs. Murphy couldn't imagine eating anything decayed or rolling in it.

"And Tucker brags about her nose." Pewter wrinkled hers.

"She has a good nose. Rot smells like an enticing dinner to her. I don't get it, either. I mean, you and I have good noses, but that's one scent we don't like. Humans, either. I guess buzzards like it, though."

"Ever notice how birds who tear flesh have upper beaks that curve down—sort of? Think of Flatface, not just buzzards." Pewter mentioned the large horned owl living in the barn at home.

"Yes. Ever notice how buzzards don't have feathers on their necks?" Mrs. Murphy answered her own question. "They can stick their entire head inside some really dead animal, but their necks won't get sticky, weighted down. They can keep clean that way, I suppose, and they can fly, too. If a buzzard was pasted over with goo, it'd be harder to fly."

"Practical. Crabs are carrion eaters, too. So why do they have eyes on stalks?" Pewter liked crabmeat, so long as she didn't think about what the crab had eaten.

"To look goofy." The tiger laughed.

Harry's eyes followed the dogs. On the one hand, she hoped they did find Brother Thomas. On the other, she didn't. She had a strong stomach, but still.

Susan, silent, trudged along. The snow shone deep blue in the boulder cracks and fissures. The rim of the sun crested the horizon, but down in the deepest part of the ravine neither she nor Harry could see it.

"How upset is she?" Tucker asked her brother.

"Pretty upset, but once she made up her mind to do something about it, she settled down," Owen replied. "She can't understand why he would disappear. She fears the worst, too."

"Murder," Tucker flatly said, as she slid down an icy bank, then nimbly jumped over a narrow rivulet feeding into a strong running creek.

"Ever notice how humans have to find reasons for things? They can't relax unless they invent a reason. Susan couldn't accept that one human kills another just to kill. Has to be a reason."

"Usually is. In civilian life. War's different. A human gets used to killing then, I guess." Tucker hoped she'd never face a war. "They get used to killing and it doesn't matter. If it's a religious war, then they really want to kill one another." She sighed. "If this thinned the herd it might be good, but all they do is turn around and breed in more and more numbers. They don't learn much."

"Don't learn much from their own history and don't learn doodley-squat from us."

"I don't care. I care about Harry, but since there's nothing I can do for the rest of them, they'll hang on their own hook."

"It's strange to love an animal that's so stupid, isn't it?" Owen stopped, lifting his nose. "Mmm."

"Could be deer. Far away" Tucker, too, inhaled the faint, very faint, sweet odor of decay.

The cats joined them as Mrs. Murphy, feeling full of herself, dashed along, zigzagging, leaning over anything in her path, sending ground-nester birds and little finches in bushes skyward.

Pewter, not to be outdone, also hurried down the slopes. She jumped over the rivulet and bounded up the steep side of the ravine.

Within minutes the four animals reached the top.

Tucker lifted her head, her nose skyward, then dropped it, facing southeast. "Down there."

Owen repeated his sister's motions. "Stronger now."

Pewter hesitated a moment, looked at Mrs. Murphy, who giggled at her. Without one peep, she followed the dogs. Damned if she was going to be called a wimp.

The two humans lagged a quarter of a mile behind, the rough terrain more difficult for them to negotiate. Both women sweated although the mercury clung to twenty-eight degrees in the ravines, nudging upward on the ridges as the sun was climbing. The eastern horizon was a flare of pink, peach, and scarlet, quickly fanning out westward. The colors of sunrise never seemed to linger as did those of sunset, or so Harry thought.

As Harry and Susan reached the top of the ridge, they heard the two dogs barking. Startled buzzards flew overhead.

"Hope no one hears that," Susan fretted.

"We're far enough away from the monastery," Harry reassured her. "And they're in services, so hopefully they'll be chanting or singing or doing whatever monks do." Harry swept her eyes along the line of the ridge, then down. The sight of Tucker and Owen gleefully pulling on a dismembered arm stopped her cold. "Susan, you might want to stay up here."

Susan, reaching her, saw the same spectacle. "No."

"Mine!" Tucker raced with Brother Thomas's arm, which she'd found behind a large boulder.

"You didn't find it, I did." Owen raced after her, both dogs enjoying the game, oblivious to how awful this appeared to the humans. The cats didn't much like it, either.

"One arm. Where's the rest of him?" Pewter asked.

"Mmm." Mrs. Murphy sat, watching the dogs carry on, one at each end of the arm now. Tucker had the hand; Owen, growling, pulled on the bone sticking out from the other end where the forearm once connected to the elbow.

"Coyote?" Pewter noticed that what remained of the flesh was gray.

"Or dogs. Wild or domestic. Chances are they've torn poor old Brother Thomas all to hell. Buzzards got at him, too. We'll be picking up pieces until the cows come home."

"Be funny if someone's beloved golden retriever brought home a foot, wouldn't it? That's one human who would pass out." Pewter couldn't resist thinking of the shocked person.