The Big Cat Nap

Standing in the equipment shed where the big tractor sat, as well as the smaller, thirty-horsepower unit, Harry took off her ball cap, throwing it on the crusher run. “I am bullshit mad.”

Fair burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it.

“Oh, boy, she’ll really get hot now.” Tucker stepped farther away from the humans.

Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, perched on the high tractor seat of the eighty-horsepower John Deere, watched, big-eyed.

“What’s funny? What’s so damned funny?” Not a woman given to profanity, Harry was losing her composure.

“Baby, you’re acting just like your father.” Fair put his hands in his pockets.

A long pause followed, then Harry laughed. “Daddy did have a habit of throwing his cap down, didn’t he?”

“Hey, when his Orioles cap hit the dirt, you knew to clear out.” Fair laughed. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Her voice lightened. “Well, I am mad. I shouldn’t swear about it, but, Fair, if you could have heard that twit. Sanctimonious twit.”

“He’s not my favorite, but I only see Yancy Hampton in passing.”

“Fair, he gave me a decent price for the sunflowers per hundredweight. But I just don’t know if I can do business with him. I really don’t.”

“Why don’t you wait a few days before making that decision? An early purchase is a hedge against a drop in prices. Then again, it’s a loss if prices rise—but you know that as well as I do, honey. Mother Nature can and does throw plenty of curveballs. Plus, Hampton’s money might help pay the tractor repair bill.”

“I know.” She leaned against the big tractor, unaware that the two cats looked down at her from the seat. “I canceled the tractor pickup. Too much money. I’ll try to get Dabney Farnese to fix it. It will take longer, but he’s reasonable.”

Fair picked up her faded, worn red ball cap, handing it to her. She clapped it back on her head. “I shouldn’t let it get to me. Guess I’m tired and maybe still upset over finding that body. Tara Meola’s funeral service got to me, too.”

“All of us. You never know.”

“No, you don’t.” She looked up at him, wondering what would happen if he died first.

For all their former troubles, Harry couldn’t imagine life without Fair. For one thing, he was much more attuned to emotions than she was. She blocked emotion, even while being aware that sooner or later those stashed-away pains and troubles would inevitably leak out.

“Sounds like he was impressed by your sunflowers and the ginseng.”

“It’s still early in the season, but so far so good, and I have laid them all out properly.”

“You’re good at what you do, honey.”

She smiled at him, loving the praise. “Here comes the good part. Hampton asked me about when and how I fertilize. I said I use turkey or chicken poop and I put it down usually in the fall. I always read The Farmer’s Almanac, though, and if they predict a drought for the fall, I wait until spring.”

“And?”

“You would have thought I said the earth was flat. The Farmer’s Almanac. He cited all the studies I should read, all the computer-generated statistics, and then—oh, this is what really fried my two remaining brain cells—he excoriated me for using chicken and turkey poop, because who knew what parasites might be thriving in the poop? I just about lost it.”

Fair breathed a mock sigh of relief. “But you didn’t, so he has his front teeth, thank goodness. You have a mean right cross, sugar.”

“I counted to ten. A few times. I replied that my father used natural fertilizer and it has always served us well. Actually, when I was little, Papaw used to get muck from the Chesapeake as well as crushed seashells. Can’t do that anymore, but each year Papaw and Dad would vary which field received what. Well, he didn’t want to hear any of that. He lectured me on the proper nitrogen, phosphorus, selenium, you name it, balance in soil, depending on crops, and why commercial fertilizers are better. Yes, and right now they are three hundred dollars per ton more than last year, too. So I just said I would continue to use natural fertilizer, which reduces my reliance on foreign oil.”

Fair clapped his thighs with his hands and laughed. “Good one.”

“Hey, it’s the truth. All that stuff has a lot of gunk in it, for lack of a better word. Given that Yancy is the type that uses curly lightbulbs and feels superior to the rest of us, he had to shut up. Ass.”

Fair laughed again, moved over to the tractor, and gave his wife a big hug and a kiss. “Have I told you today that I love you? I never quite know what you’re going to do and say, but I’m never bored.”

She kissed him back.

As this heated up, Mrs. Murphy leaned way over to try to snatch Harry’s ball cap off her head.

Pewter, whose bulk was an impediment, coached, “A little to the left. You got it.”

Mrs. Murphy hooked the cap, tossing it on the crusher run.

Harry didn’t notice.

The three friends observed the two oblivious humans.

“Aren’t they odd creatures?” Tucker commented.

“One minute she’s ready to kill Yancy Hampton, and the next she’s wildly in love with her husband. One extreme to the other.”