Cat's Eyewitness

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Brother Thomas knocked off his perch,” Tucker said.

  “Birdbrain,” Pewter added.

  “Brother Thomas, or are you still referring to the cardinal?” Mrs. Murphy sat up to stretch.

  “Both,” Pewter succinctly replied.

  “That’s mean, Pewts,” Tucker said. “Brother Thomas wasn’t a birdbrain.”

  “Well, he was stupid enough to pray in that bitter cold and blinding snow and then get choked to death or strangled.” Pewter, despite her thick gray fur, hated cold.

  “He wasn’t strangled. The cardinal said a monk put his hand over Brother Thomas’s mouth; he saw it through the blowing snow.”

  “Mmm, if he was strangled it would have shown. Apart from the marks on his neck, his eyeballs would have been bloodshot.” Mrs. Murphy, having killed many a mouse and mole, although never by strangulation, had a sense of what happened according to type of death. And being a cat, she didn’t shy from this as a human might.

  “Could have covered up the marks with makeup,” Pewter thought out loud.

  “Not really. There’s nothing anyone could have done about his eyeballs. Whatever was done to him worked quickly. Remember, too, he didn’t fall over. He stayed kneeling, with his hands resting on the boulder base.” Mrs. Murphy was becoming intrigued by this strange death.

  “Probably half frozen already,” Pewter saucily tossed off.

  “Maybe so, maybe so.” Tucker moved a foot away from the fire, since she was getting hot.

  “Does the cardinal live near the statue?” Mrs. Murphy asked.

  “On the ravine side. Lots of bushes and enough open spaces, too, to keep him and his mate happy. That whole place is full of birds.”

  “Birds stink.” Pewter made a face.

  “Chickens, turkeys, and ducks stink if they’re in pens. Wild birds aren’t so bad,” Mrs. Murphy replied.

  “You can smell them, though,” Pewter replied.

  “We can smell them. Humans can’t. Humans can only smell a hen house.” Tucker couldn’t understand how any animal could live without a highly developed sense of smell.

  “Smoking,” Pewter said.

  “Doesn’t help them, but they aren’t born with good noses. Look how tiny their noses are. Can’t warm up air in that.” Tucker laughed.

  “Yeah, but look how tiny our noses are and we have excellent olfactory powers.” Mrs. Murphy gave Tucker pride of place in the scenting department, but feline powers were very good. “It’s their receptors—they don’t have many. Nothing they can do about it.”

  “Harry uses her nose a lot for a human.” Tucker studied Harry. “I think it’s because she pays close attention to what’s going on around her, so even though she doesn’t have the equipment we have, she catches scent before other humans.”

  “She ought to pay attention to what’s going on inside her,” Pewter complained, as Tucker had filled in her friends concerning Fair’s deadline.

  “Not her way.” Mrs. Murphy accepted Harry as she was. The cat had learned a long time ago that she couldn’t change anyone. She didn’t have much desire to change Harry, who was, after all, a less evolved species than herself. If she could change one thing, though, it would be to improve Harry’s ability to understand the cats and dog. “She hasn’t told Susan or Miranda about her Thanksgiving talk with Fair. Who knows when she’ll work herself up to that?”

  Tucker switched back to the statue. “The cardinal said the blood smelled coppery, which it does, you know.”

  “Very odd.” Mrs. Murphy sat straight up with both paws in front of her like an Egyptian cat statue.

  “Why kill Brother Thomas?” Tucker hated all this.

  “Maybe his murder has something to do with his life before becoming a monk,” Pewter sensibly replied.

  “Brother Thomas took his vows before most of the other monks were born.” Mrs. Murphy heard the refrigerator door open and close. “Who would even know about his life before he became a Greyfriar?”

  “Maybe he molested boys and they’ve killed him.” Pewter knew about the troubles in the Catholic Church.

  “How? They hardly ever see boys and girls up there, unless a parent brings a child into one of the shops. It’s not a destination for kids.” Mrs. Murphy kept an ear tuned to the kitchen. “The only monks who see kids are the two doctor monks, and I could be wrong but I’d bet you ten field mice there’s no way either Brother Andrew or Brother John would be abusing children.”

  “Maybe they’re abusing one another.” Pewter relished the sex angle.

  “If they are, who would care?” Tucker began listening to the kitchen, too.

  “I would!” Pewter stoutly replied.

  “No one’s abusing you, Pewter.” Mrs. Murphy laughed.

  “If I were a monk, I’d care.”

  “Those are grown men. They can defend themselves.” Mrs. Murphy didn’t believe sex was the issue.

  “Not if two ganged up on you.”

  “She’s right about that,” Tucker agreed with the gray kitty, “but it does seem unlikely.”

  “So does murder,” Pewter fired back.

  “True enough.” Mrs. Murphy half-closed her eyes.

  “It’s either something Brother Thomas did way back when before he was a monk that’s caught up with him, you know, like ‘vengeance is mine’—” Tucker, having listened to the Bible-quoting Miranda for years, cited this brief sentence fragment from Deuteronomy, Chapter 32, Verse 35.

  “Or he knew something, something big.” The tiger cat suddenly shot off the wing chair and raced into the kitchen.

  Tucker immediately followed.

  “Hey!” Pewter yelled at them, then the aroma of beef reached her nostrils. She hightailed it off the wing chair.

  Harry placed cooked beef with crunchies and broth in three bowls. Tucker ate a different kind of kibble than the kitties. Dog crunchies usually contain less fat than cat crunchies, which meant if Tucker could filch cat crunchies, she did.

  Harry fried herself a small steak while the asparagus heated in a saucepan. Fair wouldn’t be coming over tonight. Monday nights he stayed at the clinic, catching up on paperwork. They tried to spend Tuesdays, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays together.

  Late November and December gave him a breather, as Fair’s specialty was equine reproduction. In January and February breeders hit high gear and so did Fair. Thoroughbreds’ foaling season overlapped part of breeding season. Foals appeared when they felt like it, like human babies, so Fair endured days with little sleep. The season finally stabilized around the end of March.

  Tucker finished first, since she gobbled her food. The cats ate with more decorum, although Pewter sported food bits on her whiskers. This would be followed by a grooming routine that would put a cover girl to shame.

  “The cardinal is full of himself because he’s the state bird of Virginia.” Tucker liked the bird despite his attitude. “Goes to their heads.”

  “State dog is the foxhound. I don’t think it’s gone to their heads.” Mrs. Murphy liked foxhounds; she generally liked all types of hounds since they are good problem solvers.

  “Should be the corgi.” Tucker exhibited a small flash of ego.

  “Queen Elizabeth has dibs on that.” Mrs. Murphy laughed.

  “Yeah, Tucker, you belong in Buckingham Palace or Sandringham or wherever.” Pewter bit into a delicious warm bit of beef, the fat still on it making it extra sweet to her tongue.

  “I do, don’t I?” The sturdy animal smiled. “Well, you know the only reason the foxhound won out is because Virginia is the center of foxhunting in America. I mean, it’s practically the state sport.”

  “Yeah,” both cats laughed, “and the fox always wins.”

  Pewter quickly hollered, “Jigs for a bite.” Then she stuck her face in Mrs. Murphy’s bowl, grabbing a juicy chunk of beef.

  “Damn,” Mrs. Murphy cussed.

  “Hee hee.” Pewter chewed with delight.

  “I know. I wished I’d said it first.”
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  “Ever notice how a cardinal’s beak changes color?” Tucker, observant, edged closer to Pewter’s bowl, some food still inside.

  “Hey, I see you. Forget it.” Pewter growled.

  “In case you’re full, I’ll help you out.”

  “Tucker, you liar.” The gray cat hunched over her bowl.

  “The cardinal’s beak is black when he’s a juvenile; he’s grayish brown with color on his wings then. Sometimes people who don’t pay attention to birds confuse the young males with females.”

  “Oh, how can they do that?” Pewter, mouth full, slurred her words. “The female has an orange bill, orange on her crest, and pretty orange-red on her wings and tail. And she has a blush of color on her light gray breast. Can’t miss her.”

  “Sometimes they’re yellowish. There’s a lot of color variation. One time I was talking to a female cardinal who was poking around in Harry’s rhododendrons and I thought she was a cedar waxwing until I realized she didn’t have the black mask.” Mrs. Murphy finished her delicious dinner.

  “I think what they eat affects their color. What we eat affects the gloss on our coats.” Pewter finally gobbled the last mouthful, to Tucker’s dismay. “Greedy,” she said under her breath.

  “Fatty,” Tucker fired back.

  The cat, lightning-fast, swatted the dog, who scooted backward.

  “Ugly. I don’t expect my friends to be ugly.” Harry flipped her steak in the frying pan.

  “It’s Tucker’s fault.”

  “Sure.” Tucker shrugged. “To change the subject, I think our mother is on the trail again.”

  “But how would she know? She can’t understand what the cardinal is saying.” Pewter had already gotten over being angry at Tucker.

  “The tears of blood.” Mrs. Murphy cleaned her face.

  “Huh?” Pewter began her grooming, too.

  “She saw the tears of blood. Originally she wanted to go back and double-check, but Brother Frank cooled her with his phone call. Then Susan called and told her Brother Thomas died in front of the statue. Set her off. You know how her mind works.” Mrs. Murphy knew her human very well.

  “Or doesn’t.” Pewter moaned. “More treks in the cold.”

  “You don’t have to go,” Tucker airily said.

  Pewter gave her an icy stare as Harry sat down at the kitchen table.

  “We’d better be extra vigilant.” Mrs. Murphy leapt onto an empty kitchen chair.

  “Is there a state cat of Virginia?” Tucker asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Pewter thought this a terrible oversight.

  Virginia license plates carried various messages. Some had a ship with the date 1607, the year Jamestown was founded. Others had a yellow swallowtail butterfly, the state butterfly. Some had a horse on them, others a school logo. Harry’s old license plates were simply white with blue letters, but she liked the ones with a cat and dog on them, signifying the driver as an animal lover. Pewter thought there should be a license plate devoted exclusively to cats, using her slimmed-down image, of course.

  “How can that be?” Tucker wondered. “If we have a state butterfly, a state flower, a state tree, how can there not be a state cat?”

  “Certainly it should be a tiger cat.” Mrs. Murphy smiled.

  “No, it should be a gray cat just like me.” Pewter jumped onto another kitchen chair, peeking over the tabletop.

  “I see you and you’re not getting one morsel off my plate.” Harry squinted at Pewter.

  “We want you to start a petition so we can be the state cats.” Pewter used her sweetest voice.

  “And if we don’t get selected—good old everyday cats—then I say we call on all alley cats in the state to descend on the state house, shred furniture, pull out computer plugs, and pee on papers!” Mrs. Murphy gleefully imagined the state house overrun by rioting cats.

  “Bet the governor would have a fit and fall in it.” Pewter laughed.

  “He’s seen worse, but this would be a first, a first for the whole nation.” Tucker liked the idea.

  “You all are chatty.” Harry glanced at the newspaper. “Hmm, we still haven’t gotten all the money the federal government promised us for security.”

  The animals as well as Virginia’s humans knew if anything went wrong, they’d be on the front line. The image, ever-present in their minds, was the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Also, much of the Revolutionary War was fought in the state as well as sixty percent of the War Between the States.

  “Why do people believe their government?” Pewter asked.

  “Because they have to believe in something. They get scared without a system. They’ll accept a system that doesn’t work rather than create a new one; they’re lazy. They’re like a pack of hounds that way,” Mrs. Murphy, a cat and therefore a freethinker, remarked.

  “I’m a canine.” Tucker tilted her head upward toward the tiger cat.

  “Of course, you are,” Pewter said soothingly, “but you spend your time with us. Our habits have rubbed off on you.”

  Mrs. Murphy laughed. “Maybe. But Tucker, it’s like this: if you or I are scared there’s a real reason—you know, the bobcat has jumped us behind the barn. We fight or run and then we’re over it. They carry their fear all the time. It’s what makes humans sick, you see. And it’s why they have to believe in things that can’t be true.”

  “Like a bunch of men sitting on top of a mountain with no women, no children, and thinking a statue of the Virgin Mary is crying tears of blood.” Pewter let her tail hang over the edge of the chair.

  “You don’t believe in miracles?” Tucker hoped that there were miracles.

  “Every day you’re alive and someone loves you is a miracle,” Mrs. Murphy wisely said.

  “If Brother Thomas is resurrected, I’ll believe in the tears.” Pewter giggled.

  Brother Thomas had been resurrected in a manner of speaking. The smooth stone with his name, birthdate, and death date beautifully incised marked an empty grave. Who would notice since it was a fresh grave? And it was a grave dug with difficulty since the ground was frozen. A backhoe had been used, and it was still a chore. The earth was replaced and tamped down. The next snow squall would obscure even the lovely stone that Brother Mark had labored to make perfect.

  17

  On Tuesday, November 29, a crowd of two hundred people gathered before the closed iron gates at the monastery. Brother Handle refused to unlock the tall, wrought-iron barriers. But by Friday, December 2, when the crowd surpassed one thousand people, many of them holding candles while reciting the rosary, he relented. The people walked slowly, in an orderly manner, to the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mother. Many, like the late Brother Thomas had done, fell to their knees. Some people prayed, immobile, for hours in the frigid air. When they tried to rise, they found they could not and other supplicants had to help them. During the afternoon, when the mercury nudged up to thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, Mary’s tears began to melt and fresh ones slid down her cheeks, dripping onto the folds of her robe, onto the base of the statue. People dabbed handkerchiefs into the blood as it slid onto the base.

  Fearing excessive devotions—perhaps a few pilgrims might be unbalanced—Brother Handle hastily organized a watch of brothers. These groups of four men took three-hour posts—one by the statue, the other three at the edges of the crowd. Another monk was stationed down at the open gates should anyone need assistance. In a concession to the cold, Brother Handle allowed them to wear gloves. Brother Mark, a month earlier accompanying Brother Thomas to a plumbing supply store, had cleverly procured heat packs from the mountain sports shop on the east side of Waynesboro. While others experienced shooting pains in their feet and hands, he stayed toasty.

  Nordy Elliott tried to get a TV crew up to the statue, but Brother John, down at the gate, adamantly refused. This ultimately worked to Nordy’s benefit, because he interviewed the faithful as they returned to their vehicles. Many people cried, others couldn’t speak, but all believed that the Virg
in Mary had sent them a sign. Nordy’s cameraperson, Priscilla Friedberg, used a lens almost as long as she was tall. She shot footage of Mary in the far distance, which made the statue and the crowds appear ethereal in the soft winter light.

  The piece, which aired on the six o’clock news, looked terrific. Much as people would like television to transmit news, in essence the medium can’t do this. It can only transmit images, with a splattering of words. The fact that millions of Americans believed they were informed because they watched the news was both ludicrous and frightening. To understand any issue or event, a person must take time, time to read well-written, well-argued positions about same.

  Pete Osborne knew this. He read magazines and newspapers because he truly cared about government, world affairs, and the arts. To his credit he understood TV, tried to get the best images possible given the budget constraints of his small station. He checked all on-air copy. The material was cogent, concise, and packed with as much information as possible in the proverbial two-minute sound bite.

  The tears of blood had a big bite.

  Nordy’s career kicked into a higher gear, as did Pete Osborne’s, since NBC affiliates again took the feed from Channel 29. The difference between the two men was that Pete knew there would be a price to pay. He couldn’t, of course, have known how very high, but he did know that success was demanding. There was a reason the great bulk of humanity elected to be mediocre.

  That evening at Alicia Palmer’s dinner party for the vivacious Maggie Sheraton, this topic was on all lips.

  Alicia originally had envisioned a small dinner party where Herb could meet Maggie. BoomBoom brought up the fact that that looked like a setup. What if they didn’t take to each other? Better to protect them by having more people.

  More people turned into Harry and Fair, Miranda and Tracy, Bo and Nancy Newell, Susan and Ned Tucker, Tazio Chappars and Paul de Silva (now dating), and Big Mim and Jim Sanburne. Little Mim and Blair Bainbridge were in Washington attending the opera. Little Mim still had not told her parents that she was engaged. Her father knew it was coming because Blair, quite properly, had asked him for his daughter’s hand, but the handsome male model did not indicate exactly when he would be asking for her hand, her foot, and other parts. The father was a bit nervous, which he prudently did not share with his wife. Big Mim had the skills to run the country, but she couldn’t run her daughter. This did not prevent her from trying, nor did it prevent the attendant resentment from Little Mim.