“Special interest for good works,” Harry teased him.
“You all should get deals, then, with all you’re doing. And, Harry, you said you’d come back Friday and mow, so everything will be perfect for Saturday.”
“I’ll be here with my magic zero-turn mower.”
“So what are you going to buy?” BoomBoom wanted to talk trucks.
“Something big enough so you all can haul more plants.” He laughed.
“Come on.” BoomBoom smiled and winked at him. “What do you want?”
“Well, now, I have to take this slow. Check around, check what I can pay per month. I like the new Dodge. Really like the interior. I don’t know. You girls can help me when things settle down.”
Susan watched as the cats leapt off the wall to chase butterflies and one another. “When do things ever settle down in Crozet?”
Saturday, cool at 6:00 A.M., promised to turn up the heat and humidity as the hours wore on. Rising at her usual 5:00 A.M. in the summer, Harry patted herself on the back for mowing and weed-whacking at St. Luke’s yesterday morning, as the day was cooler.
After drinking her first cup of coffee and feeding Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, she returned to the bedroom. Fair, on his side, head nestled in a goose-down pillow, remained sound asleep.
“Poor guy,” she whispered to herself.
He’d gotten a midnight call from a frantic horse owner. The big expensive dressage mare she’d purchased a month ago was colicking. He finally got back home at 2:00 A.M. She heard him take a shower. When he crawled into bed, she’d rolled over and he told her all was well.
Tucker, always wanting to be beside Harry, said, “He’ll be awake in a little while.”
Harry looked down at the small dog she loved so much and smiled. Although she hadn’t a clue as to Tucker’s prediction, she knelt down, kissed her friend, then returned to the kitchen.
Tucker really did know when Fair would awaken. As Fair’s skin cooled down or heated up, the dog detected changes in his scent. No matter the season, Fair usually woke up sweating slightly.
“How come you got the beef?” Pewter paid no attention to Harry returning to the kitchen.
“I don’t know. How come you got chicken?” Mrs. Murphy responded to her peevish friend.
“I want some.”
“Pewter, go ahead.” The tiger cat backed away from her dish, and Pewter dove right in.
“Hey! Hey, what are you doing?” the gray cat yelled, mouth full so she dropped food on the counter.
“You’re eating my food. I’m eating yours.”
“I didn’t say that you could eat my chicken!”
Early it may have been, but Mrs. Murphy’s patience was already thin as a bee’s wing. She hauled back, giving Pewter a real swat—claws out, too.
Pewter, no wimp, stood on her hind legs to box. Terrible words were spoken. Neither cat would back down. Tufts of fur flew all over the kitchen counter.
Harry fed them breakfast up there because, when she turned her back, Tucker would steal the cat food. Good as Tucker was, she loved cat food. It contained a higher fat content than did dog food. Supper, however, was different. They all ate a light supper on the floor because Harry, preparing food, remained in the kitchen. Mornings had the pretty woman rushing all over the place.
Now it looked like a fur blizzard.
“Stop it!”
The opponents ignored Harry.
Fair, with a towel wrapped around his waist, bed head, and slippers on his feet, more or less stumbled out. “Jesus, sounds like the cat house at the zoo.”
“I am a lion.” Pewter whacked Mrs. Murphy on her side as the tiger whirled around.
“A lion of lard!” Mrs. Murphy shot back.
The combat escalated. Harry grabbed the kitchen broom. With a sweep over the floor, she caught the tiger cat under the butt, pushing her out the door to the screened-in porch.
Pewter flew after Mrs. Murphy, but Harry stood in the doorway, greeting her with the broom face. Pewter, moving fast, smashed right into it.
“Ha!” Mrs. Murphy gleefully observed.
Once back on her feet, Pewter leapt over the bottom of the broom. Mrs. Murphy blasted out the animal door in the outside porch. Pewter got caught with the flap swing back and fell backward. This so enraged the gray cat that she spit like a llama.
Tucker, dumbfounded at the vehemence of the fight, sat on her rear end.
Even Fair was impressed. He walked to the screened-in door.
Harry joined him. “They’re totally nuts.”
“I’m not going out there to stop it,” Tucker declared.
The two cats ran in big circles. Then they ran through the barn. The horses stopped eating in the pastures to observe the kitty NASCAR races.
Shortro, hay still in his mouth, said, “I didn’t know cats could move that fast.”
Tomahawk shook his gray head. “Especially the fat one.”
The fat did tell on Pewter. Finally, she slowed down. Mrs. Murphy sat about thirty yards distant from her on a fence post. They glared at each other.
At the top of her lungs, Pewter bellowed, “I hate you. I hate everybody. I hate the whole world!”
She turned, thumping back to the house, each determined step heavy on the ground. She reached the walnut tree, paused for breath, and saw Matilda hanging by her tail, looking straight down at Pewter.
“You don’t hate me, do you?” The blacksnake laughed mischievously.
Pewter’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. She hit her turbo, zooming into the house, where she collided with Fair, his towel falling off.
“Speaking of being nuts.” Harry put her hand over her mouth, laughing so hard her sides hurt.
“I am not nuts. I just happen to have them.” He laughed, too.
“For which I am grateful.” She handed him his towel and, as he wrapped it around his waist, she gave him a hug.
Still laughing, they sat down at the table. She poured him coffee.
“Eggs, cold cereal? This short-order cook is taking orders.”
“Hmm, cold cereal.” He smiled at her. “We’ve had our entertainment. Flag Day can’t possibly top the cats.”
Later, the cats managed a truce. If they hadn’t, Harry would not have taken them along for the day. They sat in the back of the Volvo station wagon. Silent.
Tucker curled up in her riding bed. She, too, shut her mouth, feeling that sooner or later the feline tinderbox would explode.
As they approached the church, Fair noticed the hydrangeas along the drive. “Honey, the place looks beautiful.”
“We all did it. St. Luke’s needed a pick-me-up. Dee Phillips created such a lovely plan.”
“Isn’t she Episcopalian?”
“Kissing cousins, Episcopalians and Lutherans.”
Fair twisted around and checked on their passengers. “Not a peep.”
“Good.” Harry parked on the lower level.
As the humans walked up the terraced path to the interior quad, the two cats and Tucker followed. The Very Reverend Jones loved animals, so anyone’s animals who behaved were welcome.
Once inside the inner quad, both Harry and her husband stopped.
“Fabulous!” Harry exclaimed.
As promised, Craig had hung the flags from the roofs. The various numbers of stars bore evidence to our growth as a nation. At one end of the quad—the administrative end—he’d also hung flags from the nations that first gave us colonists: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France. Since Germany did not become one nation until under Bismarck in the nineteenth century, there wasn’t room to hang the flags of all the various small German states. Craig did, however, hang the flag of the Austrian dual monarchy, as well as the flag that now represented all of Africa to African Americans.