The Litter Of The Law

Although two hundred and twenty years old, the organ at St. Luke’s sounded as good as the day it was installed, twenty years after the church’s cornerstone was laid, and possibly even better, for time had enriched the sounds. The early small congregations had worked tirelessly to afford such a wonderful organ. Subsequent generations of worshippers continued to give thanks.

This Sunday morning, even Cazenovia, Lucy Fur, and Elocution luxuriated in the deep reverberations of the low notes, the sparkle of the high. While Reverend Jones delivered his sermon, the three cats sat in the balcony along with the organist and the robed choir. Occasionally the choir would sing down below, but somehow their voices always sounded better from the balcony. As the cats often attended services, none of the choir members paid them any mind.

Lucy Fur listened as her human’s deep voice filled the church. “Poppy worked so hard on this sermon.”

“He likes any story about people helping people,” said Elocution. “I don’t think there are Bible stories about people helping animals.”

Cazenovia added her two cents: “There’s lots of stories about us helping them. All the animals in the stable, and how about the donkey that carried Jesus on his last journey?”

“We helped build Christianity,” said Lucy Fur. “I mean, how about all the disciples? They had to travel. Donkeys and mules carried them or carted them, too. Dogs protected them and cats kept the grain supply free from pests. All the saints would have died young if it weren’t for us.”

“That’s too long ago and far away,” said Elocution. “How about all we did to create the United States? We saved the colonists time and again, and then when we went to war against Great Britain, animals fought and suffered, too. Cats are perfect spies. The problem was the humans didn’t listen. We could have shortened the war.”

Cazenovia smiled. “Poppy reads aloud, and remember when he read about those battles lost in South Carolina? But it all turned out all right. We’re here.”

As the Reverend Jones preached about humans seeing beyond one another’s superficial differences and helping others, the cats convinced themselves of their own superiority.

Once the service ended, Reverend Jones walked down the center aisle to the door at the back of the church. As the congregants exited, he shook the hand of each one, chatting with them a few moments.

Harry had always liked this part of the service.

As this was the eleven o’clock service, the crowd of worshippers poured out onto the grounds a bit after twelve noon. The temperature had risen to sixty-two degrees; it was a gorgeous October day, the leaves in flaming color.

BoomBoom and her partner, Alicia, chatted with Susan and Ned. Groups formed and re-formed as different folks caught up with one another.

Neil Jordan moved from group to group, selling tickets to the Halloween Hayride. Whether they intended to go or not, everybody bought one.

“Harry, Fair,” he greeted them. “Tickets?”

“We bought five,” said Harry. “I bought them from Hester.” She thought about that for a moment, then recovered. “But tell you what. If you give me a handful, I’ll sell them this week.”

“Harry, I only have twenty left.” He beamed.

“Ah. I’ll get more from the library, then. That’s wonderful, Neil.”

“Eighty tickets.” He couldn’t resist telling the number he’d sold. “I’ll have these twenty sold in no time.”

“You’re a big success.” Fair slapped him on the back.

Before he left them, Neil said, “Harry, I want to bring you materials on some different kinds of fertilizer I have. If you fertilize now in the fall, it’s perfect. And if you’ve planted winter wheat or cold-resistant rye, you will be amazed at the yield. I know you’re busy, but I’m really high on these new types of fertilizer applications. The normal corn yield in a good year is about 207 bushels per acre without irrigation. My fields yielded 250 and my irrigated fields averaged 320 per acre. And this wasn’t a particularly good year. If you like my products, we can work out a payment plan.”

“Sure. I’ll call you.”

He persisted. “I rented two thousand acres in Nelson County to show what these fertilizers can do. I numbered the strips just like you do with corn varieties. You just wait. Next year’s numbers will soar.” With that and a big smile, Neil left.

Walking with her husband toward BoomBoom and Alicia, Harry remarked, “He’ll soon have as many acres under cultivation at Buddy Janss.”

Fair shrugged. “Neil seems to thrive on competition, on a task, I guess.”

“Hey, wasn’t that a great sermon?” Alicia, a former movie star now in her fifties, hugged Fair.

The old friends all started talking at once as soon as Susan and Ned joined them.

“My wife told me you’ll start on the roof tomorrow,” Ned said to Harry.

“Be done before nightfall.”

“Susan said that Seth has old slate shingles,” said the Richmond politician, with respect.

“Ned, I think he has everything. He doesn’t even bother with the salvage yards. He has lines to those small companies dismantling old buildings or rebuilding historic ones that can be saved.”

“Smart. I think there’s a real niche for that kind of business. It’s not all big companies. I keep trying to push in the House for the small businessman, the artisans, and little by little some of my colleagues are getting it.”

Fair smiled. “You can’t always shoot the stag, but you can still eat if you bring home a lot of rabbits.”

The group smiled and nodded.

BoomBoom then said, “Sometimes I think small is better. I go to the bank now, the same bank I have used for twenty-five years, it’s been bought up and amalgamated so many times that even though the tellers all know me, I have to go through hoops! I can’t even transfer money from my personal account to my business account without paperwork. My money!”

Alicia put her hand on BoomBoom’s forearm, since she knew a tirade was dangerously close. “If it’s too big to fail, it’s too big to exist,” she said.

That got them all going.

On the way home in Fair’s vet truck, Harry fluffed her plaid wrap skirt. “Don’t you love our friends? We can talk about anything and I always learn something. And I love that we can agree to disagree.”

“Me, too.”

“Yesterday at a meeting in the chancery, Neil described Hester as a wacko. Well, maybe he didn’t put it that strongly, but we let him know in the nicest way that, yes, she was a little strange, but she was part of Crozet and she did much good. Now he’s hawking those tickets. Maybe this is atonement.”

“Well, that would be nice,” said Fair. “My experience of Neil is he assumes we’re all dumb rednecks.”

“If he wants his fertilizer business to thrive, he’d better get used to it. And you don’t go into fertilizer if you want to discuss Raphael,” said Harry, an art history major at Smith.

Fair laughed. “You have a lot to answer for.”

“Oh,” she mused, “Mother thought whatever I did was fine, but Dad sure was surprised. He’d say, ‘How can you make a dime being an art history major?’ And I’d say, ‘Dad, this is the only time in my life when I can study, when I don’t have to make money. I’ll come back to the farm.’ ” She paused. “Little did I know they’d both be gone by the beginning of my junior year.”

“You never know. I loved your parents. We all did.”

They drove along in silence, then Harry thought out loud, “Do you think anyone ever loved Hester like that?”

A long silence followed. “No,” he answered at last. “But she was part of all of us, she was valued. That counts for something.”

Turning down the long gravel driveway, Harry added, “Alicia was telling me to read a book about the environment. And then she told me to pick up one that’s a few years old, The Great Warming.”

“She’s always been a big reader,” said Fair.

“She said that back in her acting days, there was so much downtime on the sets that she made up for not going to college with one book after another.” Harry saw a redheaded woodpecker dart along the fence line. “I hope our fences don’t have bugs.”

“I doubt it. That pesky fellow is heading for the next tree. You know, sometimes I look at Alicia and I think what a terrific vet she would have made, or a professor. She does read all the time and she wants to learn. A real passion for knowledge.”

“She always told me she hated Hollywood. She felt like a piece of meat. The money was great, but through her, I learned about the sorrows of great beauty.”

He turned to look at her. “You don’t have any?”

At this she let out a war whoop.

Sunday afternoon, Harry and Fair, accompanied by Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, tackled laying out all the heavy-duty extension cords, hooking them up at various places, and running them out to large water troughs in the smaller fenced pastures. The water troughs had heaters in them, and though conditions were mild, it was best to do this before heavy frosts arrived.

The largest pasture, seventy good acres, lay along the creek between Harry’s farm and Coop’s, so it didn’t need a trough.

The horses happily drank from the clear flowing mountain waters, for Harry had extended some fencing onto Coop’s side so they could easily wade around, which they enjoyed. Coop thought that was just fine. Most country people worked at accommodation. The trouble began when an outsider bought an old farm and for whatever reason felt no need to share. They seemed to think that people wanted to take advantage of them and that boundary lines were sacrosanct. Naturally, this created problems and often the newcomers found they had few friends except for other newcomers. Then something awful would happen and their neighbors would show up to help out. It usually changed their attitude. They figured out why their neighbors, whom they had usually disturbed or offended in some fashion, showed up to help. It was the country way. Most learned to be a little country themselves. A few did not and returned to where they had originated or moved on, looking for the next wondrous place. Perhaps this happened all over the country, but it happened in Virginia a lot, probably due to the state’s great beauty. People wanted to live there.

Harry thought all this as she checked her lines. If Coop couldn’t eventually buy the old Jones place and if Reverend Jones one day had to sell, she could be facing this problem.

There were problems enough for now.

She and Fair finished the day’s work, ate supper, then took a sunset walk all the way back to the vast walnut groves Susan owned on this side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

A barred owl flew from one tree to another.

“So silent,” Harry noted.

“And such an efficient hunter,” Fair added.

“I’m just as good,” Pewter bragged from below, never one to tolerate compliments of others.

From a perch high above, the owl looked down at this groundling. “Dream on.”

“I’ll show you,” Pewter sassed, “and furthermore, you don’t come around the barn because Flatface is bigger than you.”

Flatface, the great horned owl, lived in the cupola. She was two and a half feet high. The barred owl was about a foot and a half, with a wingspan just under four feet, impressive enough on his own terms.

“Pewter, I wouldn’t start a fight with an owl, even a screech owl,” Tucker wisely admonished.

“Hoo!” the barred owl replied.

And down below, Harry, once again thinking of who could have killed Hester, thought, “Who, indeed?”