“No. Doesn’t the church provide you with a car?”
“They do, and it’s a big help.” He swept his hand toward the triple-sash windows, wide open. “What a beautiful place to work, to live. Can’t put a price on that, and what preacher is in it for the money?”
An eruption of laughter roared from Latigo. “All of them on TV.”
Reverend Jones smiled at the corners of his mouth. “I don’t consider them ministers. I think of them as hucksters. Revealing my prejudice here, but I am an ordained Lutheran minister, so I have high educational standards. Plus, I don’t think one should use the Good Lord for profit.”
“I do.” Latigo smiled. “I pray daily.”
This time it was Reverend Jones’s turn to laugh uproariously. “I’ll pray for you.” He patted his pocket wherein he had slipped the check. “You’ve got one good deed fresh in St. Peter’s book.” Then he smiled again. “And I’m sure many, many more.”
Latigo surreptitiously checked the Napoleon clock on the mantel. “I’ve got to run. Let me know what you do buy. I certainly hope you’ll continue to insure with Safe and Sound.”
“I will.”
As Latigo left, Lucy Fur raised her head. “Poppy’s happy.”
“A new truck,” Cazenovia purred. “New leather seats to scratch. Heaven.”
Herb dialed ReNu.
“ReNu Auto Works,” Kyle intoned.
“Kyle, this is Reverend Jones. You have my 1994 Chevy half-ton there. I’d like to come down tomorrow and clean it out thoroughly. I didn’t do that when it was towed. Just too upset about it. Will that be okay?”
A short pause, then Kyle replied, “Sure. I’ll tell the boys to leave it alone.”
“What would they do with it?”
“Strip it. There will be good parts in it even though it’s old. The boss sells the older stuff to specialty houses.”
“Specialty?”
“Places that work on old vehicles, trucks. Plus there are warehouses for old parts.”
“I see.”
“And then the boss sells the truck for scrap. Scrap metal’s up right now, so he’s happy.”
“Well, you don’t stay in business if you don’t find ways to make the money, beat the tax man.”
“Right.”
As Reverend Jones hung up, he thought to himself that the few times he’d seen or spoken to Kyle, no sliver of enthusiasm ever disturbed the young man. The other thing was, Kyle never said good things about ReNu. He didn’t say bad things, either.
He dialed again. “Harry.”
“Rev.”
“Will you go down to ReNu with me tomorrow?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“I need to clean out the old truck before they trash it. I was so mad when the truck went out on me, I didn’t think to take all my stuff. I don’t even know what I left in there.”
“Glad to help.”
“I don’t want to go there alone, truth be told.”
“I understand. I really do.”
“Okay, then. Mmm, ten too early?”
“No. I’ll pick you up.”
Relieved? Reverend Jones enjoyed the smooth ride of Harry’s Volvo station wagon as they left the church to go into town.
A silence followed this. “Yes. I was sure I was fine, but yes.” Harry waited another moment. “I have gained even more respect for doctors and nurses who deal with cancer.”
“It’s all around us. Our various church groups provide comfort. The men’s group surprised me.”
“You didn’t think they’d talk about how cancer affected them?”
“I thought the men who had been afflicted with cancer would. But the new group, the one for men whose spouses, family members, have cancer or have had it, that’s been the surprise. And your husband holds it all together.”
“He never talks to me about it.” Harry wasn’t offended by this.
“Sometimes, Harry, there are things a man can only say to another man, especially in a situation like this. To tell your wife, daughter, sister, best friend, of your fears while she’s in the middle of battling this disease, well, most men feel this would make it worse. They feel their job is to hold you up, not focus on fears.”
“I believe that. But Fair’s helping?”
“He has a knack for getting other men to open up.”
“Maybe because his patients can’t talk, he’s learned to read the signs. I think he can read people as well as he can read horses.”
“Can’t read me,” Pewter called from her snuggle bed behind the driver’s seat.
“Sure he can.” Mrs. Murphy, next to her, contradicted the gray cat. “All you want is tuna and catnip.”
“Mom,” Tucker whined from the back, “they’re at it again.”
Harry heard the slight snarl between the cats. “If I have to stop this car to break up a fight, there are going to be two unhappy cats. Do you hear me?”
There was not a peep, but Herb laughed loudly. “My three run the church and run me.” He paused. “They’re very faithful cats.”
“That’s because you don’t have a diva like Pewter.” The tiger couldn’t resist.
Harry looked at the rearview mirror just in time to see a gray paw swat the tiger on the side of the head. “Damn.”
Herb turned around, booming in his deepest preacher register, “That’s enough.”
The two culprits froze, deciding to call a temporary truce. Pewter was already plotting her revenge for when they got home.
“Thanks,” said Harry. “You even scared me.”
“Takes a lot to scare you, but you sure scare the rest of us. We never know what you’re going to get into.”
“The truth,” Pewter agreed.
Harry pulled onto the back ReNu lot, cruised the parked vehicles yet to be repaired. “Sure are a lot of accidents in Charlottesville. Look at all these cars and trucks.”
“Inattention. People take their eye off the road constantly. There’s cellphones and texting, but I actually think the worst is those maps.”
“What maps?” Harry’s eyebrows moved toward the middle for a moment.
“What do you call it? My truck’s so old, doesn’t have it. You know, a screen and a map pops up.”
“Navigation system. GPS.” Harry found Herb’s old truck and parked at the end of the row wherein it sat. “Each carmaker gives it a special name. BMW calls it iDrive, which performs more functions than a visible map. Mercedes has their name. Some makers call it a driver interaction system, which takes too long to say.”
The reverend unbuckled his seat belt. “Well, I say they’re responsible for a lot of accidents. If you don’t know where you’re going, pull over and look. Don’t do it while driving.”
“You’re right, but people aren’t going to do that. They’re going to look at that screen and bam! It only takes a split second.” She lifted the back door to let air in.
The animals stayed, since the asphalt was hot. Heat caused more pain than bitter cold. They did move to the rear of the back to watch as Reverend Jones and Harry—one carrying a large garbage bag, the other a carton—approached the 1994 Chevy half-ton.
Herb had brought his extra key. He unlocked the driver’s door, then walked around to unlock the passenger door. “Shouldn’t be too much work.”
It wasn’t. Harry removed his gloves, maps, a small air-pressure gauge from the compartment on the driver’s door.
Reverend Jones opened the glove compartment to take out papers, leaving the manual behind. He put the extra key in there. His good sunglasses greeted him. “Ah, thought they might be here.”
“You lose more gloves and glasses.”
“Doesn’t everyone? Why do you think children’s mittens are attached to their coat sleeves?”
“Got a point there, Reverend.”
Within fifteen minutes, they’d cleaned out both the debris and the more-useful items. Harry, alert per usual, pulled down the visors, removing a few papers and one bright goldfinch fea
ther. She held it up, the light hitting the brilliant yellow edged in deep black.
“Ah.” Herb took it from her fingers.
“Think he killed it?” Pewter asked, eyeing the reverend. Was he a bird killer?
Tucker replied, “He can’t even kill a cockroach. He found it on the ground.”
“Maybe Cazenovia killed it.” Pewter grinned, ever hopeful for avian murder.
“Possible.” Mrs. Murphy nodded. “What could he have left in the engine?”
Harry, leaning into the engine, was carefully studying the old but good V8. For decades, General Motors had manufactured sturdy, long-lasting truck engines. In the old days, the rap on the GM truck motors was they were more complicated to fix. You had to pull out the Chevy engine, because things were hard to get to. The Fords proved less difficult; hence, the service bills were lower. That, however, had changed toward the end of the twentieth century. With today’s computer readouts, all any mechanic had to do was hook up to the mobile unit. Ninety-nine percent of the time, a precise diagnosis made the task of repairing the fault much easier and the engine no longer needed to be removed to identify the malfunction. That one percent of the time when it did was when a garage needed someone’s special talents, like the late Walt Richardson’s feel for an engine.
Harry lacked that feel, but she possessed mechanical sense and some real ability.
“Dead?” Reverend Jones sighed.
“The engine? No. It’s your radiator that’s done for. Let’s take your stuff back to the Volvo. I brought my toolbox. All I want to do is lift out this radiator.”
“Why?”
“Won’t take long. I’m curious as to what’s behind the radiator. I can’t see that anything has pierced it from the front. It’s rare, but a part can dislodge or something could be stuck behind the radiator. A radiator is easy to pierce compared to an engine. The radiator is exposed. Your pistons are not.”
Reverend Jones didn’t give a fig about the radiator, but he assented.
Within minutes Harry was half in, half out of the engine. Standing on a broken concrete block she’d found, she had unbolted the radiator. Lifting it up, she put it on the ground. Then she checked the bolt holes. Next she examined the radiator. Didn’t look smashed.
Jason Brundige had seen her from the garage, its bay open for the cooling breeze. He hadn’t been informed by Kyle that Reverend Jones and Harry would be cleaning out the truck.
He placed his large screwdriver on his toolbox and strode out purposefully.
Sammy Collona observed this. Went back to work.
Jason walked up to Harry. “What in the hell are you doing?”
“We cleaned out Reverend Jones’s truck.”
“What’s that got to do with the radiator?”
Herb, ever the gentleman, came to Harry’s rescue. “I informed Kyle that I had left personal items in the truck and told him when we’d be here.”
“Like I said to her, what’s the radiator got to do with it? I put that radiator in your truck two years ago.” A note of defensiveness crept into Jason’s now-too-loud voice.
Sammy, hearing this, hurried inside to Victor’s office. Fortunately, it was a day when Victor was in the Charlottesville shop.
“I’ll take care of this.” Victor dismissed a now-worried Sammy and quickly walked back to the parking lot. “Apart from his mouth”—he indicated Jason—“is everything all right?” Victor apologized to Reverend Jones and Harry.
“Fine. I didn’t mean to cause upset.” Reverend Jones’s voice soothed.
“I know that. Jason’s a watchdog type and everyone’s a little edgy.” Victor glanced at the radiator on the ground. “You’re not taking that, are you?” He laughed.
“No.” Harry took a step toward him. “My curiosity got the better of me. It’s a two-year-old radiator, so I just wanted to look it over. Looks okay, but I’d need to study it better.”
Victor knelt down. “It does look okay. Well, I’m sorry for your inconvenience, Reverend Jones. Latigo told me he wrote this off as totaled so you might be able to buy a newer truck. Good as these old babies are, this one’s been hard used.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry said. “I really did seem to get under Jason’s skin.”
“No apologies necessary.” Victor stood up. “Reverend, tell me what you buy. CarMax down in Richmond has very good deals on used cars and the histories of every vehicle. Now, if you want a new truck, there are a lot of choices right here in Charlottesville.”
“Yes, there are. I’ll be sure to let you know.”
Victor walked back, stopped in the garage. “Jason, don’t ever embarrass me like that in front of Reverend Jones.”
“How was I to know?” he moaned. “She’s a nosy bitch. She’ll cause trouble.”
“First of all, Harry Haristeen is not a bitch. Nosy, she is. Causing trouble?” He shrugged. “I hope not, but she’s one of those people who can’t leave well enough alone once her curiosity is triggered.”
“Right,” Jason mumbled as Sammy looked on.
Victor returned to the front of the building.
Sammy said, “Jason, all you did was call attention to the damned radiator. That was pretty stupid.”
After the cold front passed through over the weekend, everyone enjoyed the perfect weather. But then on Monday, the heat shot back up. The stifling temperature and the close, humid air dispirited one and all.
Harry, bush hogging on her repaired tractor, stopped in the middle of the large pasture behind the crops, the smell of the new-cut hay field filling her nostrils. Cursing herself for saving the big pastures for later, she turned off the motor, stepped down—hand on what she always called the “Jesus bar”—and swung to the earth. Her soaked T-shirt clung to her. She might have won a wet-T-shirt contest, although Harry’s mind never worked that way. If someone else brought it up she might make a crack about it, indulge in a little sexual innuendo, but she wasn’t a person who thought a lot about erotic things. It’s doubtful she would have been different if born male. “Tunnel vision” best described her way of seeing her day.
Focusing now, she lifted off a long polo whip that she affixed by the tractor seat with two welded small “U”s. She’d slip the whip through them and secure it with rawhide.
The cats sat high in the hayloft. The upper hayloft doors were open, as were all the downstairs doors and every stall door, just in hopes of catching the hint of a breeze. They watched as Harry walked through the mid-thigh orchard grass, with white clover underneath.
The hay wasn’t the finest horse quality, but it would do okay for cattle. She’d sell out of her seven-hundred-pound round bales by February. The quality was good, but Harry, fussy about nutrition, only square-baled her alfalfa—orchard-grass mix for the horses. She also had twenty acres in timothy and alfalfa. Perfect hay. Naturally she’d cut and baled that first, having gotten half of it up before the hydraulic pump expired.
Susan, happy to be outside, was running the spider-wheel tedder, turning cut hay to dry while Harry mowed down the cattle hay. Susan had always loved farm work. When they were kids, she’d often begged Harry’s parents to let her help.
Harry and her friends were bound by hoops of iron. It wasn’t just the years, it was the accumulated births, passings, victories, defeats—the sheer intensity of the experiences they’d shared. They knew one another’s weaknesses and strengths. Observing the various generations, they noticed downright peculiarities popping up again and again, parent to child, and so on. Even if there was a Nobel Prize for intelligent farming and Harry had won it, it wouldn’t mean as much as what she felt for her friends and what they felt for her. Naturally, she believed that her friends had more peculiarities than she did. They felt the same way about her. Never was there a shortage of laughter.
Even with her husband. Sometimes the two of them would laugh so much they’d fall out of bed. Fair’s motto was “If you can’t laugh while making love, you aren’t making love.” Well put, Harry agreed.
&n
bsp; “She’s methodical.” Mrs. Murphy admired Harry’s system.
Pewter observed Harry, who was now off the tractor and swinging the polo whip, the grasses bending over. Carefully, Harry covered much of the field she intended to cut. She did this in sections. Her whistle carried even to the hayloft.
“She is. Humans learned to be patient and precise from us. They watched us hunt, stay still, figure out where the quarry is. They’re alive because of us, you know.” Pewter puffed up.
“Hoo. Hoo. Hoo,” Flatface, on her nest in the cupola, called down. “Cats aren’t as important as owls. The Egyptians carved beautiful friezes of us. The Greeks put us in their myths, and I remind you, Fatty Screwloose, that we are sacred to Athena—an owl accompanied her. No cat traveled to Mount Olympus.”
Pewter, voice low, grumbled, “I hate it when she calls me Fatty Screwloose.”
Mrs. Murphy whispered, “Keep it to yourself. She’s strong enough to pick you up in her talons. Flatface is powerful and smart—very, very smart.” The tiger cat then called up to the huge owl, “You’re right, but there was a tiger cat in baby Jesus’s cradle. It was so cold we kept the baby warm.”
“Might could be. Human stories interest me. Some of them are beautiful. With others, you can tell right away they’re off their nut. Leda and the swan. Now, I tell you, why would Zeus seduce a woman as a swan?”
“Bet you’re right.” Pewter decided to humor the big girl.
“He would have come down as an owl.” Flatface issued this judgment with absolute conviction.
The owl looked through the slats in the cupola.
The cats, too, saw the doe and fawn run away from Harry.
“Good she did that,” Mrs. Murphy said.
“The fawn so often gets killed.” Flatface turned her head at that odd angle that birds can. “They hear that fearsome racket, but the mama has told the baby to stay. She runs away, thinking she might well divert the danger, and, wham, the fawn is ripped up by the equipment. If Harry had killed that fawn, she’d be a wreck for all this week.”
The Big Cat Nap Page 16