Catch as Cat Can (14 page)

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.

26

Tucker blasted through the animal door at the post office with such velocity that her feet skidded sideways and she fell over, sliding. A bump into the mail cart stopped her unusual progress.

Scrambling to her feet she shouted,
“I found it! I found the truck.”

Mrs. Murphy, who watched the dog's slide with mirth, hopped off the table.
“Where?”

“At Booty Mawyer's.”

“What?”
The cat couldn't believe her ears.

Pewter, roused from yet another slumber, shook herself, stuck her head up from the mail cart in which she was sleeping.
“Tucker, what are you talking about? And you woke me up.”

“I'm telling you that the GMC truck is parked at the old tobacco-curing shed at Booty Mawyer's place.”

“How do you know it's the right truck?”
Pewter, skeptical, asked.

“Has the Cowboys jacket on the seat. Like Sean said. Remember?”
The dog's eyes shone with intelligence.

“He did say that, didn't he?”
The gray cat pulled herself up and out of the mail cart using her front paws.

“What's the commotion here?” Harry smiled down at her friends.

“Oh, Mom, I wish you could understand me.”
The corgi's ears drooped a bit, then perked back up.

Harry handed the dog a Milk-Bone. For good measure she gave the cats a few bits of Haute Feline, then returned to her task of reorganizing the carton shelves.

“I think we'd better check this out. This just doesn't sound right.”
Mrs. Murphy brushed her whiskers with her paws.
“For one thing, Tucker, Rick Shaw and Coop could have traced the truck to Booty Mawyer easily enough. License plates alone would do that and even though Sean didn't get the number all they would have to do is tap into the Department of Motor Vehicle computers for 1987 GMC trucks in the county. So something's amiss.”

“That's just it, Murphy, there are no license plates. ‘Farm Use' is painted where the plates should go. This truck is long off the records.”

“Well, why didn't you say that in the first place?”
The cat was already heading for the door.

“You didn't give me the chance. And you know, Murphy, ‘Farm Use' trucks aren't supposed to go out on the roads. Who would remember this old truck?”

“Tucker, I'm sorry. Come on.”
She disappeared through the door, her tail swishing through last.

As Tucker hurried after the sleek tiger, Pewter wailed,
“I smell rain. I'll get wet.”

“Stay here, fatso.”
The corgi couldn't resist a parting shot.

“Don't leave me! I hate to miss anything.”
Under her breath the gray cat grumbled,
“I know I'm going to regret this.”

“What is going on?” Harry scratched her head as Pewter's gray bottom vanished through the door.

“Must be a good party somewhere.” Miranda laughed. “Here, let me hold that package or you'll tip the shelf over.”

The three animals streaked along the lawns. Tucker held other dogs at bay, declaring they were just crossing and would be off that particular dog's property soon enough. The corgi also advised other dogs they would probably be returning that way and she was sorry to disturb them but important business was at hand.

The other domesticated animals behaved reasonably, except for one Australian shepherd who mouthed off so abusively that Tucker told the cats to run on. She advanced on the medium-sized dog, who, seeing the determination of the corgi plus the bared fangs, decided that passage through his lawn might not be so offensive.

Tucker caught up with the cats as they entered the rye field.

“Guess you shut him up.”
Murphy brushed the slender rye blades.

“For now.”

“How much farther?”
Pewter sneezed as pollen tickled her nose.

“I told you to stay at the post office,”
Tucker chided her.

“I'm not complaining. I just want to know how far,”
she snapped back.

“Ten minutes.”
Tucker pushed through the rye.

They journeyed in silence until emerging on the farm road. The ruts seemed even deeper to Tucker this time. In the near distance they could hear a tractor whine.

“Doesn't sound right, does it?”
Pewter noted.

“No.”
Tucker, spying the tobacco barn up ahead, put on speed. She rounded the structure, the long-distant whiff of decades of smoke still pungently perceptible.
“What!”

The two cats almost collided into her.

“Where's the truck?”
Pewter caustically asked.

“It was here. I swear it!”

“That tractor sounds stuck. Let's find it. Maybe Booty's using the truck to pull it out,”
Mrs. Murphy suggested.

Finding Booty proved easy enough not only because of the whine of the tractor but because he was cussing a blue streak. The animals heard words they'd never heard before.

The tractor had sunk into a soft pothole that must have been deceptive from the driver's seat. The rear wheels were mired a quarter of the way up the large yellow hubcaps. Booty, overalls shiny with fresh mud, placed stones, anything he could find, in front of the wheels, then he'd swing back up into the seat to try again.

Abraham, a bluetick hound, mournfully watched his human have fits. Abraham, two years older than God, endured some loss of hearing, stiff hips, and fading sight, but his nose stayed keen.

“Abraham,”
Tucker called loudly to him as they approached.
“How are you?”

“Tucker? Who's with you? Are those Chihuahuas?”
He squinted.

“I resent that,”
Pewter flared up.

“Pewter, he's nearly as old as Booty.”
Mrs. Murphy bumped the gray just to put her in her place.

“Mrs. Murphy and Pewter are with me,”
Tucker answered.

“Hello, girls,”
Abraham greeted them, his manner courtly.
“I apologize for my human but as you can surmise, he's struggling with the elements and if my nose is any good at all, we'll be wet within the half hour. He'll need another tractor to pull out this one. Oh, me.”
He let out a long, long sigh.

“No need to ever apologize for a human.”
Tucker laughed.

“He's right about the rain,”
Pewter whispered to Mrs. Murphy.
“I feel it coming. If I get wet it will take me hours to dry. I can't stand it when my hair gets matted down. Murphy, are you listening?”

“Stop worrying.”
She edged up to Abraham, then rubbed against his chest.

“Mrs. Murphy, you smell like nutmeg.”
He chuckled.
“Pewter.”

“Here I am.”
Pewter rubbed against him also.

“We're hoping you can help us.”
Tucker sat down as Booty cursed to high heaven.
“There's a farm truck parked behind the curing shed. I chanced by not an hour and a half ago and now on my return, it's gone. Might you know of its whereabouts?”

“No. I didn't hear the truck being driven off but then I don't hear so good anymore.”

“Do you recall Booty driving the truck to town?”
Mrs. Murphy spoke up.

“Farm truck. Don't know how it would make it to town and back, really,”
Abraham answered.

“I thought when I came by that Booty was out with his team of horses,”
Tucker wondered.
“And I thought he didn't own a tractor.”

“What a memory you have, Tee Tucker. He worked the little field, the garden patch field, I call it, with the horses but Dimples threw a shoe. So he unhitched the horses and he was going to hitch up the second pair, you know he has the young ones he's bringing on, fine matched pair, ah, but I digress here. Well, he checked the weather and thought he'd return Marcus Durant's tractor to him. He'd borrowed it to dig fence holes. Marcus has every attachment made in the U. S. of A. and Booty's getting on in years, he just didn't feature digging fence holes with the hand digger. Luckily he finished that job, earth's soft, has to set the fence posts, of course, so he wanted to return the tractor. Now he's got to hitch up the young horses to pull out the tractor and he'd better wash off the tractor, too. Rain'll help.”
He exhaled and his flews fluttered out with his breath.

“Abraham, would you do me a great favor?”
Tucker's pink tongue hung out slightly.

“If I can, I would certainly not like to disappoint a lady.”

“Will you walk over to the curing shed with us and work the ground where the truck was parked? Your nose is better than mine.”
Tucker flattered the bluetick hound but in truth hound noses were the best of the best.

“Why, I'd be delighted although I'm sure your nose is keen as can be.”
He stood up on all fours, stretched, and moved toward the shed, happy to be useful. Hounds need to be useful or they sink into a torpor.

Booty turned around and beheld the four animals leaving. “Abraham, Abraham, you are useless as tits on a boar hog.” He sputtered, needing to take out his anger on someone.

“Going deaf has its advantages,”
Abraham chuckled. Once at the shed, he put his nose to the ground, working in small circles around the spot where the truck had been parked.
“Grease. Gas. Now, that's odd. Pump's down by the shed. And—”
He lifted his head, sniffed in fresh air to clear his nasal passages, then put his nose to the ground again.
“Something, something, a chemical? Tucker, get over here.”

Tucker also put her nose to the ground as the cats watched. A stiff breeze came up quickly, blowing their fur toward their heads.

“It's not fertilizer yet it smells organic. The man-made chemicals are harsh. This is—h-m-m, familiar.”
Abraham inhaled another deep draft.
“Acidic. Natural. Ah, I have it. Yes, tannic acid. Yes. Use it sometimes on the backs of new Oriental rugs to make them look old. Use it on skins. That's it.”

“Any association with a human?”
Mrs. Murphy asked as she lowered her head, the wind picking up considerably.

“Don.”
Abraham nodded slowly.
“Guess he borrowed the truck. Funny, though, he didn't leave his car. I can't think of anyone else with that scent. The moisture's holding it down pretty good. I don't know if Don did take the truck but I'm sure this is tannic acid.”

“Forgive me, Abraham, I'm not an initiate into the mysteries of scent.”
The tiger smiled, her green eyes glittering.
“But isn't it possible that the odor could be from the leather on the bottom of shoes or from the leather upper? It's muddy enough here for a shoe to sink in.”

“Wouldn't be this pungent.”
Abraham's deep voice reverberated. He lifted his head south, to the wind.
“Going to be another blow. You'd better head back or stay here if you'd like. Booty will get over himself.”

“Thanks. We'll go back. Oh, one more question.”
Tucker also lifted her head.
“I don't recall Booty being a Dallas Cowboys fan. I thought he was Redskins all the way.”

“Is.”

“There was a Cowboys windbreaker on the back of the truck seat,”
Tucker said.

“No one in our family roots for any team but the Redskins. I'm not a football fan myself but I can tell you that. Go on now. You haven't much time.”

“Thanks again, Abraham,”
Tucker said.

“Yes, thank you,”
the cats replied.

“Glad to be of service.”
Abraham turned, ambling back to the house. He'd given up on Booty and the tractor.

As the three hurried back the first raindrop splattered down behind the grade school.

“I knew it. I just knew it,”
Pewter railed as Mrs. Murphy and Tucker forged ahead, and as the storm worsened her volume level rose.
“I should have never left the post office. I should have trusted my first impulse. When am I going to learn to do that? What do I care about an old truck? I mean I don't care about Wesley Partlow. I didn't know Wesley Partlow. I wouldn't care if half the human race vanished. All they do is make a mess. I should have never let Tucker talk me into this. I hate those two. I hate them. Really!”