Sour Puss Page 2

  BoomBoom reached out to grab her, but Pewter eluded the bejeweled hand, as did Mrs. Murphy. The two crazed felines headed straight for the nuptial pair.

  Tucker had sense enough not to stop either cat. She watched with fascination, as did Mildred.

  “You’re a good doggy,” Mildred crooned between her laughs.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I will kill you. I will kill you on Harry’s wedding day!” Mrs. Murphy shouted.

  “Gotta catch me first.” Pewter, realizing she was the center of attention, was loving the limelight, quite oblivious to the discipline that might follow.

  Herb bravely continued, and as he was pronouncing Fair and Harry husband and wife he rolled his eyes skyward, imploring the Lord not only to bless those two humans but to bless the two cats in quite a different way.

  Pewter ducked under Harry’s train. Mrs. Murphy wiggled right under. Pewter then emerged from the back of Harry’s train with such force that Fair held on to her as Herb ended the ceremony with “. . . that in the world to come ye may have life everlasting. Amen.”

  Before Fair kissed his bride, they both watched Pewter land on the altar. She crouched behind the large gold cross. Mrs. Murphy landed on the altar, as well, the two towering floral displays on either side of the cross swaying unpredictably. The cats fought each other on either side of the cross.

  Fair whispered, “Honey, let me kiss you before they wreck the place.”

  He kissed her and she kissed back, and when they broke the kiss, they just laughed until the tears came to their eyes. By now everyone was mesmerized, and it was dawning on Pewter that as much as she adored all these eyes upon her there might be hell to pay.

  “She started it!” Pewter bellowed.

  “I did not, you fat fat water rat!” Mrs. Murphy aimed a precise blow across the top of the cross.

  Rushing in from the back to the side of the altar were Herb’s cats, Elocution, Cazenovia, and Lucy Fur.

  “What are you doing?” Cazenovia called to the warring kitties.

  “You’d better stop or there will be blue murder,” Lucy Fur, a sensible type, admonished.

  “I’ll kill her for sure!” Mrs. Murphy, livid, agreed to the murder rap.

  The three church cats positioned themselves in front of the altar.

  Elocution very sweetly pleaded, “If you don’t stop, Poppy will get awfully upset. Come on.” She loved Herb.

  Mrs. Murphy, her back to the congregation, turned to look down at the three cats. Then she looked at all the people. She’d forgotten about them.

  “Holy shit!” She leapt down.

  “See, not only did she start it, she’s a blasphemer.” Pewter rejoiced in this moment.

  With three strides of his long legs, Fair walked up and scooped Mrs. Murphy, ears flat against her head, into his arms.

  “Pewter, you get out from behind the cross,” Fair commanded.

  Harry lifted her train, joining her husband. “Pewter, come on now. We’ll forgive you if you come off the altar. Remember, forgiveness is Christian.”

  “Do it.” Cazenovia added to Harry’s plea.

  Pewter slunk out from behind the cross. “I am innocent.”

  “That’s what they all say.” Fair laughed as though he understood Pewter’s meow.

  Bride and groom, each carrying an extremely naughty cat, walked down the center aisle as Mildred hit the keys.

  Miranda, the lead singer in the choir of the charismatic Church of the Holy Light, said as the bride and groom walked by, “My delight is in the Lord; because He hath heard the voice of my prayer.”

  “Happy that they’re finally married, honeybun?” Tracy held her hand.

  “Yes, but my prayer was those two bad cats would get caught,” Miranda replied.

  The reception, held at the farm, exceeded everyone’s expectations for a perfect April day. Small tables set up under the trees each had a lovely spring-flower arrangement. The food was truly superb, and Patricia Kluge and Bill Moses supplied all the wines from their Kluge Estate Vineyard. Over two hundred guests came to celebrate this glorious day. Even Mrs. Murphy and Pewter were forgiven as Harry fed them bits of turkey, ham, roast pork, and salmon.

  She said to Fair, “No one will forget our wedding day.”

  He’d just given Tucker a whole sweet potato as people toasted the bride and groom. “I know I won’t.”

  It was all seemingly perfect.

  2

  The heaven-sent warmth and sunshine of Sunday, April 16, Harry and Fair’s wedding day, evaporated on April 17 as a cold front swept down from Canada, bringing glowering skies, a drop in temperature, and cool showers.

  T. S. Eliot wrote, “April is the cruelest month.” It is doubtful he had agriculture in mind when he penned that immortal line, the beginning to one of the most famous poems in English letters, but any farmer in Virginia can tell you he was right.

  A sixty-eight-degree day can be followed by a blizzard. This Monday, while not blizzard weather, proved cold enough for scarf, gloves, Barbour coat, and Thinsulate-lined work boots, all of which Harry wore as she checked the mares and foals. The mares, bequeathed to her and Fair by a friend who died quite young, unexpectedly, each delivered beautiful foals. Harry could never have afforded the stud fees. She marveled at how correct the three fillies and one colt were as they nuzzled up to their respective mothers.

  Most couples marry in June; October is the second-most popular month, and the Christmas season is also popular. Since Harry worked the farm and Fair, a vet, specialized in equine reproduction, April was the best choice. The crush of delivering foals at two in the morning abated for him; the press of farm chores remained relatively light.

  Harry walked the paddock fence lines. So many horse injuries are fence-related. Checking the fences every day was part of her routine. The health of her animals came first.

  Tucker trotted behind Harry. Mrs. Murphy and Pewter stayed in the barn, the excuse being that the mouse population had mushroomed out of control. The reality was that Pewter didn’t like cold and Mrs. Murphy wanted a good gossip with Simon, the possum living in the hayloft.

  Also living in the hayloft was Flatface, a great horned owl, and Matilda, a huge slumbering blacksnake.

  In Pewter’s defense, she did perch on the tack trunk in the heated tack room, peering down at the cleverly hidden mouse hole behind the trunk. Her whiskers swept forward in anticipation of seeing a mouse snout appear. So far, the mice, smelling her, elected to stay put.

  In the hayloft, Simon, a kleptomaniac, displayed his latest treasure for Mrs. Murphy.

  “Doesn’t it sparkle?” He proudly pushed forward a little clear tube of iridescent sunscreen.

  “Where’d you find that?”

  “In the old bucket full of the natural sponges.”

  “Hmm, Harry must have dropped it last summer. She rarely uses sunscreen. She should but, well, she gets busy and forgets those things.”

  “How was the wedding?”

  Mrs. Murphy declined to relate her participation in the ceremony. “Harry was a beautiful bride. Just seeing her in a dress was worth the trip, and Fair wore a morning suit, which makes him more handsome, if that’s possible.”

  “He is a handsome fellow. How come they didn’t take a honeymoon?”

  “Ha,” Mrs. Murphy laughed. “Harry told Fair that every day with him was a honeymoon, besides which they’d been married before so why not just press on? I think they’ll take a little vacation midsummer. Anyway, Simon, it was pretty good. I’m surprised you didn’t come out for the party yesterday. Lots of little tidbits on the grass.”

  “Too many people. And so many people are afraid of possums. They think I’m ugly.”

  “Nah,” Mrs. Murphy lied. She thought Simon looked as he should.

  “Well, is there anything left out there?”

  “With Tucker and Pewter on patrol?” She laughed.

  “Pipe down!” came a stentorian voice from the cupola.

  “Sor
ry, Flatface.”

  The huge owl ruffled her feathers, looked down. “Chatterers. I never met two creatures who could run their big flannel mouths like you two. I had a busy night.”

  “Okay.” Simon didn’t want to get on the bad side of his frightening roommate.

  “If she had little owlets, she’d be nicer,” Mrs. Murphy whispered, her lustrous green eyes bright.

  Simon whispered back, “If she had owlets, then we’d have the daddy to deal with, too. They raise them together, you know. One owl is bad enough. At least she’s a great horned owl and she sings so beautifully.”

  “True.” Mrs. Murphy admired Flatface’s melodic deep voice, a dark alto.

  “Think Harry’s happy?”

  “Yes. She’s struggled so long over these years, you know, just making ends meet, and now she has his help, they’ve bought Blair’s two hundred thirty acres, and those pastures are really good, plus she’s reviving the old Alverta peach orchard. Rev. Jones bought the house and ten acres, so it worked out. Blair’s farm was the Jones home place, remember? Harry and Susan are timbering Susan’s land, the old Bland Wade tract. She gets a commission for that, and the girls have started their sunflower business. They’re going to start a small tree nursery, too.”

  “What about the grapes?”

  “Well,” Mrs. Murphy lowered her voice as she realized she had raised her level to a normal tone, “she’s put in a quarter acre of Petit Manseng. A white kind. It will take about three years to really produce. She’s being cautious. Too cautious, I think.”

  With all the preparations for the wedding, Mrs. Murphy and Simon hadn’t had a good jaw in weeks.

  Simon remarked, “Will be pretty easy to grow.”

  “You know last fall when Harry was in such a crisis over what to do after leaving the P.O.—”

  Before Mrs. Murphy could finish, a bloodcurdling scream of triumph wafted out the animal door of the closed tack room.

  Simon, not the bravest fellow, shrank back into his nest in the hay bales. “A dragon!”

  “A gray one.” Mrs. Murphy, the bravest of all tiger cats, leapt to the edge of the hayloft, then backed down the ladder fastened flat to the wall. She burst through the animal door to behold Pewter, mouse between her paws.

  “Triumph!” Pewter, mouth wide open, eyes wild, bellowed.

  “Brute!” The mouse wasn’t going down without a fight.

  “Pewter, how’d you do it?”

  “She cheated, she lied!” the little mouse, Martha, accused the cat in whose front paws she was securely imprisoned.

  “Bull!” Pewter drew her up to eye level.

  “You haven’t kept the bargain,” Mrs. Murphy reminded the mouse. “So she’s within her rights to snap your neck.”

  “We are keeping the bargain!” Martha defended herself.

  “Then why is there so much noise back there and why do I see you all running around?” Mrs. Murphy coolly surveyed the back of the tack trunk.

  Many little noses were poking out of the rather grand entrance to their living quarters.

  “Sugar high,” Martha stubbornly replied.

  “Oh, come on, there isn’t that much candy left in here,” Pewter said disbelievingly.

  “You’re right. It’s the food from the wedding reception. First, remember all the preparations? And then goodies were left behind after the reception and dinner; do you have any idea how much we’ve eaten? That’s why you nabbed me, Pewter, I can’t hardly move.”

  “It’s true, it’s true,” came the chorus from behind the trunk.

  “Well.” Mrs. Murphy considered the evidence.

  The cats heard a conference. Within a minute, ten little mice came out from behind the tack trunk, led by Arthur, Martha’s spouse.

  “See,” Arthur, robust, pointed to his stomach. “Icing from the wedding cake. We’re so full of sugar that if Pewter ate Martha, she’d be on a sugar high, too, and as I recall, cats don’t like sugar.”

  “True.” Mrs. Murphy inclined her head toward Pewter.

  “I didn’t say I was going to eat her. I said I was going to break her neck. Crack!” Pewter gleefully threatened.

  “Pewter, I think they’re telling the truth.”

  Simon peeped through the animal door, the flap comically resting on his head. “No bloodshed. Please.”

  “Oh, Simon, for Christ’s sake.” Pewter, disgusted, let Martha go.

  Contrary to expectation, Martha didn’t scamper off. Instead, she lifted her small paw, the black claws glistening as she was a well-groomed mouse, and she patted Pewter’s paw. “We would never break our contract with you and Mrs. Murphy. It’s a good deal, and we mice respect a good deal.”

  “Yes!” the other mice agreed.

  “All right.” Pewter, terrifically pleased that both Mrs. Murphy and Simon had witnessed her prowess, was now magnanimous.

  As the mice returned to their home, the cats and Simon heard Harry come into the barn just as the phone rang.

  She hurried into the tack room and picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

  “Harry, I’m a mother.” BoomBoom Craycroft laughed. “Keepsake delivered a mule.”

  “No!”

  “Your husband has just delivered a mule. You know, I had hoped when Keepsake jumped her paddock last year that she had run over to Smallwood Farm and gotten bred by that son of Castle Magic, but, no, as I feared, she visited the donkey two farms down the road. Oh, well.”

  “Mules are pretty smart.”

  “I know. They can jump, too, so I’m going to work with my little fella and one fine day he’ll be in the hunt field. Don’t you think it will give Big Mim fits?” BoomBoom mentioned the Queen of Crozet, a superior rider, passionate foxhunter, and breeder of winning steeplechase horses. She was also rich as Croesus.

  Mim could be imperious.

  “She’ll get over it.” Harry liked the sexagenarian and especially liked Mim’s Aunt Tally, who was closing in on one hundred.

  The Urquharts, Mim’s family, lived forever, it seemed.

  “Is Alicia there?”

  “No, she’s coming over for dinner. She’ll see him then.”

  “Name?”

  “I’m going to call him Burly since he’s the color of bright burly tobacco leaf. Burl, for short.”

  “Good name. Names are important, you know. I wonder about women named Candy or Tiffany. It’s hard to imagine calling a woman in her eighties Candy. ’Course, it will be some time before the Candys and Tiffanys of the world achieve eighty.”

  “You come on over and see Burly when you can. Oh, almost forgot, I ordered Italian sunflower seed. You should have it in a few days. Thought you might try a few different varieties.”

  “Great.”

  After Harry hung up, she sang and whistled to herself. Most barns have radios blaring, but Harry loved silence, broken occasionally by her singing. She only turned on the radio for news or, more important, weather. Truth be told, popular music gave Harry a terrific headache, whether it was from the 1920s or current.

  That evening, when she and Fair ate their first quiet supper as renewed husband and wife, they caught up on the day’s events.

  “He’s a perfect specimen.” Fair smiled as he related Burly’s entrance into the world. “He’s truly a little beauty.”

  “I’ll swing by tomorrow.”

  The two cats and dog, having eaten, snuggled in the sheepskin bed in the kitchen. Tucker didn’t mind cuddling with the cats, but she had heard quite enough about Martha and the largesse of Pewter.

  Fair, paper opened to his right as he drank a cup of hot green tea, peered more closely. “This ought to be exciting.”

  “What, honey?”

  He handed her the paper, opened to the state section, pointing to a column with a photo.

  Harry read aloud, “Professor Vincent Forland, a Virginia Tech world expert on various fungi, especially black rot, Guignardia bidwellii, a fungus devastating to winegrowers, will join a panel on agriterrorism.” She
paused. “Poor fellow, looks like a worm with glasses.”

  “You should see all the material I get concerning safety procedures in veterinary bacteriological laboratories. The other panel member is an expert on anthrax. Let’s go.” He took the paper back as she handed it to him. He again checked the photo. “Forland does kind of look like a worm with glasses.”

  3

  As luck would have it, Fair got to meet Professor Forland before the evening presentation. He’d been at Kluge Estate to check on a mare, and Patricia Kluge and her husband, Bill Moses, asked him to please stay for the small luncheon that would include the professor and a few local vineyard owners.

  Leaning forward across the mint-green tablecloth, Professor Forland held the guests at the informal luncheon spellbound. “We have knowledge that mycotoxins have been used in warfare and are probably being used now. Substantiating the information proves difficult, as there is much at stake politically.”

  “What? Arousing the nation, you mean?” Hy Maudant, a transplanted Frenchman, asked, his English enlivened by a seductive accent.

  “Not just the United States, but verifying chemical-warfare attacks calls an entire complex of international relations into play. There are those who will deny that Iraq used them and those who simply sit the fence. Naturally when all is resolved the fence-sitter wants the best deal on oil and wants to rebuild Iraq.” Bill Moses wasn’t cynical, just realistic.

  “But did Saddam use mycotoxins?” Toby Pittman, a former student of Professor Forland’s, now proprietor of Rockland Vineyards, asked earnestly.

  “I believe he did.” The diminutive professor pushed his thick glasses further up on his nose, as they had a habit of slipping down. “On January nineteenth, 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, I believe an Iraqi aircraft penetrated our defenses and sprayed aflatoxin over Seabees and the Twenty-fourth Naval Mobile Construction Battalion near the port of Al Jubayl in Saudi Arabia.”

  As an undergraduate at Virginia Tech, Toby displayed such brilliance that he secured a teaching fellowship as a graduate student. His thesis adviser was Professor Forland.