Both women had just begun their first terms, which lasted three years.
"I'm learning a lot," Harry said.
"Me, too."
"Look at these little angels." Harry knelt down to pet all the cats and Tucker.
"If she only knew." Elocution giggled.
"Don't be so smug," Cazenovia chided her. "Humans don't know what we're talking about but they know smug."
"I don't know what I'd do without those two." Herb smiled benevolently. "They help write the sermons, they keep an eye on the parishioners, they leave little pawprints on the furniture."
"I'm sure they've left them on the carpets, too." BoomBoom liked cats.
"Well, that they have but I can hardly blame them for wearing those carpets out. Fortunately we are a well-attended church, but it does put wear and tear on the building." Herb checked his watch. "Game's in an hour. You all going?"
"Yes," the two women said in unison.
"Well, I'll see you there. I'd better go through the building and shut some of the doors. On these cold nights it saves on the heat bill. Gotta save it where I can."
As he headed down the hall, Mrs. Murphy urged Harry, "Come on, Mom, let's get out of here!"
Cazenovia and Elocution hurried into the meeting room, flopping themselves on the sofa with a great show of nonchalance. Too great a show.
"See you, Rev," Harry called out as she tossed on her coat, opening the door for her pets and BoomBoom.
"Whew," Pewter breathed as she stepped outside into the nasty weather.
2
The soon-to-be-replaced basketball stadium loomed out of the sea of asphalt like a giant white clam. That such unparalleled ugliness could be part of the University of Virginia, one of the most beautiful sites in America, was a dismal curiosity. Good thing that Mr. Jefferson was dead, for if he caught sight of the Clam he'd perish on the spot.
Harry had a new wool blanket which she fluffed up on the seat of her old truck with another older blanket for the cats and dog to snuggle in. The three friends would curl up together, burrowing in the blankets and keeping one another toasty, but not before they complained.
"I hate this!" Mrs. Murphy's eyes narrowed as Harry sprinted through the sleet to the stadium.
"I'd rather be here than there. I can stand the stomping and hollering. It's that buzzer." Pewter completed two circles then lay down.
Tucker, ears forward, listened as people laughed in the bad weather, opened umbrellas, slipped in the sleet which was beginning to accumulate. "It must be hard not to have fur. Think of the money they have to spend on raincoats. Gore-Tex stuff costs a fortune. Barbour coats, too. That's the stuff that really works. But think how awful it must feel to get cold water on naked skin. Poor humans."
Fred Forrest, the county building code inspector, walked by the truck. His hands were in his coat pockets, his perpetual frown in place.
"Think Herb found the desecrated communion wafers yet?" Pewter giggled, a high-pitched little infectious giggle.
"Can you imagine kneeling at the communion rail and being given a wafer with fang marks in it?" Mrs. Murphy joined in the giggles.
"I ate all mine. Did you two really just bite some?" Tucker snuggled in next to the cats who loved her thick fur.
"Oh sure. That's half the fun." Pewter's sides shook.
Tucker laughed, too. "Gee, I wish I could take communion."
"Have to go to catechism first," Pewter saucily replied. "Of course, we have already done cattychism."
They nearly fell off the bench seat laughing.
"Know what else?" Mrs. Murphy, in the spirit, said. "Have you ever noticed how when they say the Lord's Prayer it sounds like 'Lena shot us into temptation'?"
"You're terrible." The small but powerful dog pretended to be horrified.
"God gave us a sense of humor. That means we're supposed to use it," Pewter resolutely declared.
"Yeah, Miranda has a sense of humor and she's religious. I mean, she was pretty close to being a religious nut there for a while," Tucker thoughtfully said of the older woman whom she dearly loved.
"She needs it. Working at the post office you'd be loony tunes without a sense of humor," Mrs. Murphy said.
"Why?"
"Tucker, it's a federal building. That means it belongs to the American people and anyone can come and go. If you work for the post office you have to deal with whoever walks through that door. It's not like a lawyer's office or doctor's office where they can throw you out if you don't belong," the pretty tiger cat explained.
"They can throw you out if you're a nuisance," Tucker rejoined.
"There go half the people in Crozet." Pewter led the others in another giggle fit.
Inside the Giant Clam, whose real name was University Hall, usually referred to as "U-Hall," people settled down to enjoy themselves. Perhaps they wouldn't get giggle fits like Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, but they were primed for a good time.
Just coming in out of the weather produced a feeling of well-being.
Tonight's opponent, Clemson, was in a rebuilding year so the UVA women's basketball team wasn't too stressed. Yet those were the very opponents that Coach Ryan worried about. Never take anyone for granted. Prepare for each and every game.
Harry believed in Coach Ryan and her philosophy, as did many of the season-ticket holders. Harry sat behind the home team's bench about halfway up the first section, a seat she renewed every year. Harry had little in the way of discretionary income and her three horses took up most of that, but her basketball seat meant a great deal to her.
Her ex-husband and friend, Fair Haristeen, DVM, sat next to her in his seasonal seat. Next to him sat Jim Sanburne, the mayor of Crozet, and his wife, Big Mim, the Queen of Crozet. On Mim's other side sat her aunt Tally, well into her nineties and fanatically determined not to miss a basketball game-or anything else for that matter.
In the row directly behind them sat Matthew Crickenberger and his family, his wife and two boys aged ten and twelve. To the left of Matthew sat the Tuckers: Ned, Susan, and Brooks. Danny, their son, was in his first year at Cornell, so his seat had been taken by Hayden McIntyre's new partner in the practice, Bill Langston. However, Bill was just moving into Crozet, so he wouldn't be at the games until next week. Hayden, a thoughtful man despite his directness which is never seen as thoughtful in the South, had purchased the seat from the Tuckers, hoping it would help ease the young, unmarried doctor into the community. He'd asked Deputy Cynthia Cooper to the game tonight but she had to work the late shift at the Sheriff's Department.
Tracy Raz, Miranda's beau, reffed the game with Josef P. The P stood for Pontiakowski-a bit difficult for the inhabitants of such an English place as Charlottesville, so everyone called him "Josef P."
Miranda sat opposite her friends on the other side of the basketball court. She had a very good seat provided by the school for the spouse or friend of the referee. She particularly enjoyed it because she could observe her buddies.
She watched them screaming and hollering because Clemson pulled themselves together and it turned into a tight, fast-paced game. She saw H. H. Donaldson, his wife, Anne, a professor at UVA, and their twelve-year-old daughter, Cameron, who sat in front of Harry, H.H. being one seat to her right, all stand up and clap and stomp in unison to cheer on Virginia. Fred Forrest bellowed the loudest. As he was rows behind Harry and friends, his volume disturbed them little. His assistant at work, Mychelle Burns, a petite, pixieish African-American, was with him. She hollered as much as Fred.
In his late thirties, H.H. was a driven man. Like Fred, H.H. plumbed new depths at sporting events. If Hayden McIntyre was direct, H.H. was plain rude at times. Everyone chalked this up to the fact that he had been born on the wrong side of the tracks and had a chip on his shoulder. Anne and Cameron were lovely, which helped to mitigate H.H.'s mouth.
"Go inside! Go inside!" H.H. yelled at the top of his not inconsiderable lungs.