Catch As Cat Can

25

Although the ground remained soggy, the next day the sky, a robin's-egg blue, presaged a spectacular spring day. The late-blooming dogwoods covered the mountainside. Earlier blooms had their petals knocked off by the storms but fire stars still dotted banks with their brilliant red.

Tucker inhaled the heady fragrances of spring as she sat on the back step of the post office.

Harry often walked the four miles to work but given the rains of the past week she drove. On the way to work she'd swung by the small lumberyard outside of town. Luckily, there was enough sawdust to shovel into the truck bed. Usually by Wednesday or Thursday there was enough sawdust for the horsemen to drive down and load up. She'd filled up her truck, pulled a tarp over it, and arrived at work by seven-thirty A.M.

Tucker told the cats, once they arrived at work, that she was going on a jaunt alone.

“Suits me,” Pewter declared.

Murphy, a little miffed, said, “Why alone?”

“Want to check in with my dog friends. Not all of them like cats.”

“Get new friends.” The tiger turned her back to her.

With anticipation and a heady sense of freedom, Tucker took another deep breath, then trotted merrily down the alleyway behind the post office. She turned north, which meant she would swing past private homes, past the new grade school, and then she'd be in the open countryside. Despite her short legs, the corgi moved at a fast clip. In fact, she could run very fast, and on occasion she enjoyed the delicious victory of outrunning a hound, a spaniel, or once even a Great Dane. It should be noted that the Great Dane had a splinter in its paw. Still, Tucker was a confident, cheerful dog. She edged along well-manicured lawns, dogs in the houses barking empty warnings. In no time she was in farmland.

Early corn, tiny shoots just breaking the furrows, gave the red clay fields a green cast. The hay in other fields already swayed over her head. She pushed through a field of rye and timothy mix. Tucker could identify any grass crop by its odor. She reached a rutted farm road and thought she'd go down to the old Mawyer place. Booty Mawyer, seventy-seven, farmed his three hundred acres pretty much as he always had. A shrewd fellow, he sank no money into large purchases like tractors, manure spreaders, hay balers, and the like. He kept four Belgian horses and worked them in teams of two. The cost of feeding and shoeing his horses proved far less than tractor payments. And he managed to get everything done. His grandson, Don Clatterbuck, helped him in the evenings, and during hay-cutting time, Don worked full-time with him.

Tucker could hear the old man and his horses in the distance. A faint whiff of onion grass floated across the light southerly breeze. Tucker stopped and sniffed. Wind from the south usually meant moisture and lots of it, yet the day was achingly clear. Still, the dog trusted her senses. She figured she'd better get back to the post office by lunchtime.

She hurried down the road, eager to visit anyone at all, first coming to the old tobacco-curing sheds. Booty Mawyer, like many central Virginia farmers, once upon a time made a good profit from his tobacco allotments. After World War II the business slacked off, the cost of labor zoomed upward, and many farmers allowed their allotments to fall into disuse. But the accoutrements of a lively tobacco trade still stood—curing sheds, storing sheds, and in town, the old auction house.

Foxes especially like curing sheds. Just why, Tucker couldn't understand, except that having a burrow under a nice structure was always a plus. There were lots of sturdy outbuildings, yet the tobacco-curing sheds held a fascination for Vulpes vulpes. Tucker didn't mind foxes. Mrs. Murphy hated them and hissed with the mention of a fox's name. From time to time the cat would declare a truce, but the real reason Murphy loathed them was that they competed for the same game.

The milk butterflies flitted upward along with Tucker's thoughts as she reached the shed. She walked around the side of it and stopped. Sitting right in front of her was the 1987 GMC pickup, the faded Cowboys football team jacket jammed up on the top of the seat.