Cat's Eyewitness (4 page)

4

W
hat do you think of that?” A puff of air streamed from Harry’s lips as she spoke on her cell phone, a gift from Fair on her birthday.

The horses, including the brood mares, munched in their stalls. The minute Harry reached home she had brought in the horses, thrown them flakes of hay, and topped off their water. She turned them out during the day unless the ground was covered in ice. Horses that spend most of their times outdoors, grazing and playing, are far happier than horses stuck in stalls.

She wore a tiny earpiece, phone tucked in her belt, as she swept out the aisles. Although the mercury would drop into the twenties, she knew the inside of the barn wouldn’t get below freezing. The outside air would have to stay in the teens or below for the water buckets to freeze inside. Some of this was due to the good construction of the barn, well built but still airy. A tight barn is bad for equine breathing. The warmth of those large thousand-plus-pound bodies did the rest, so the barn stayed reasonably warm—if one considers the high thirties or the low forties warm.

“The Lord moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform,” Miranda Hogendobber replied, as Harry had been telling her about the Virgin Mary.

“Oh, Miranda, you don’t believe it’s a miracle, do you?”

“Does it matter? Does it matter if it can be explained by natural causes or if she truly cries blood? If this helps someone, provides light in a dark world, then it’s a miracle.”

Harry stopped, propped the broom against Tomahawk’s stall. “I never thought of it that way.”

“You don’t think of a lot of things,” Miranda said with warmth, not rancor.

Harry moaned, “Fair says I’m more of a guy than he is, in the mind. Actually, everyone says that. Even my mother used to say that. Irritates the hell out of me.”

“I’m not saying that.” Miranda thought of Harry as a daughter, since she herself had not been blessed with children. “I’m saying you seek practical solutions. From time to time, you need to sit quietly, or take a walk, allow your spirit to roam. God’s love will find you.”

“You’re right. I suppose I’d say, ‘Take time to smell the roses.’ ”

“I am never closer to the Good Lord than when I’m in my garden.” Miranda, a gifted gardener, engaged in hot competition with Mim Sanburne, not nearly as gifted but tremendously rich. “You know Tazio and I are drawing up plans for my dream garden shed.” She mentioned a young friend and architect.

“Speaking of gardens, when I visited the monastery gardens, I found Susan there, too. I’ve never seen Susan so blue. She thinks Ned is drifting away from her. She’s questioning the marriage.”

“She needs her friends.” Miranda, not prone to gossip, was always prepared to assist a friend. “I’ll ask her to tea. This is about Ned’s getting elected to the state senate. It’s changing her whole life. For one thing, Susan is going to be on display, and that requires a great deal of discipline as well as an extensive wardrobe.”

“Expensive and extensive.”

“Yes. Political wives are judged rather harshly, you know.”

“Thank heaven Fair doesn’t have the political bug.”

“So you
are
going to remarry him?”

“That’s why I visited the monastery. I prayed for answers. There’s something about that statue of the Virgin Mary that settles my mind.” She paused a moment, then picked up the broom. “I can’t believe you didn’t ask me why I was there in the first place.”

“You’d get around to it,” Miranda chuckled.

“You know me too well.”

“I watched you grow up, sweetie pie. Takes you awhile to get to the point, especially if the point is emotional.”

“Funny, isn’t it, and Fair wears his heart on his sleeve.”

“He trusts himself.”

“Oh.” This had never occurred to Harry.

“Did the Blessed Virgin Mary answer your prayers?”

“Not yet. I talked to her about money, too. Am I going down the right path? I even talked to her about the meaning of life. Sounds ridiculous coming from me, but am I here to pay bills? Am I here to farm? Am I here to serve on the St. Luke’s vestry board, which I enjoy, actually. I asked so many deep questions I made myself dizzy.”

“The answers will come.”

Harry exhaled, real emotion in her voice because she trusted Miranda completely. “I hope so, Miranda. I do. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I’m scared to death. My heart is racing. I don’t know if I can pay my feed bills, I don’t know if I can afford to fill up the diesel gas pumps.” She mentioned the large outdoor pumps with underground tanks that she used for the tractor. “I can’t afford dress-up clothes, and I know I embarrass Susan, BoomBoom, Big Mim. I probably embarrass Fair, too, but he’s too much of a gentleman to say that.”

“Now, honey, you listen to me. I can’t speak for the Blessed Virgin Mother, but I can speak as someone who loves you. You’re pretty even without doing one thing to yourself. Yes, you do need some frocks. But there’s no point fretting over it until money starts coming in again. Let it go. You’re researching growing grapes. That takes time, soil, and sun tests. Maybe you can find a temporary job to get a paycheck for your electric and phone bill.”

“I’ve been racking my brain.”

“What about Fair’s offer of working with him?”

“I don’t want to be with him twenty-four hours a day. I don’t love him that much.”

Miranda exploded with laughter. “To tell you the truth, much as I loved George, I didn’t want to be with him around the clock, either. Now, Tracy is a different story.” She mentioned her current boyfriend, an athletic man who had been her high-school boyfriend and who moved back to Crozet two years ago after his wife died.

“Two peas in a pod.”

“Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if I had married Tracy out of high school,” Miranda mused. “Well, I have no complaints.”

“If you want to ruin a relationship, get married,” Harry said teasingly with a hint of seriousness.

“Now, Harry, you don’t mean that.”

“People get married and think they own each other. It’s the unspoken expectations that get you. Once a woman becomes a wife, society expects things of her even if her husband doesn’t. I can be a friend, a lover, a pal, but I’m not much of a wife. Fair makes a better wife than I do, all six feet five inches of him. And you make a good wife. Not me.”

Miranda thought for a moment. “Wife. Husband. Those are words and the meaning changes with the times, but marriage is a sacrament. It’s a vow before God and man. Do I think marriage can keep people together? No. But mind your mouth about this. People are peculiar.”

“Hypocritical is more like it.”

“That, too,” Miranda agreed.

As they were chatting, Fair drove to the barn. He cracked open the large sliding doors and slipped in, closing them behind him.

“Fair, we were just talking about you.” Harry kissed him on the cheek. “Your other girlfriend wants to say hello.”

Pewter, in the warm tackroom, which had electric heat, pricked up her ears. She heard the mice behind the paneled walls. Mrs. Murphy had climbed into the hayloft to visit the possum, Simon. Pewter could climb the ladder, which was flat against the wall, nailed to it, but she preferred the warmth. Anyway, Simon, a kleptomaniac, had to show his most recent treasures, which bored the gray cat mightily. Tucker stuck close to Harry. Pewter liked Tucker but thought dogs so slavish. She closed her eyes, then opened one. The mice were singing,
“The old gray mare.”
As she was gray, she knew this was directed at her.

Pewter roused herself from the toasty sheepskin saddle pad to creep over to the small opening shrewdly hidden behind the tack trunk.

“You aren’t nearly as funny as you think you are,”
she growled.

A tiny set of dark gray whiskers appeared in the mouse doorway, then a little head stuck out.
“You scared me half to death,”
came the insolent reply.

“Your day will come,”
Pewter warned.
“But you’d better shut up. If Harry comes in here and hears you, we’re all in trouble. A deal is a deal.”

The deal was that the barn mice wouldn’t get into the grain bins, chew tack, or steal the hard candies that Harry kept in a bowl on the old desk. In return they could have all the grain the horses dropped from their buckets, which was plenty. The cats wouldn’t kill them. If any human, Harry or a visitor, left food out, unwrapped, the mice could have it.

“She’s in the center aisle,”
the head mouse replied.

“Fair walked in and they’ll both be back in here in a minute, and don’t tell me humans don’t have good ears, because Harry hears almost as well as we do. It’s her sharpest sense. Kind of odd.”

“Okay, okay,”
the head mouse grumbled, then called back to the group.
“Cut it.”

Later that Thursday night, at the monastery, the temperature was ten degrees colder than down below. The wind whipped through the conifers, intensifying the howling sound. Snow swirled around.

Curiosity got the better of Brother Prescott. He trudged through the darkness, a strong-beamed flashlight in hand. He was followed by Brother Mark, a young man who had nearly killed himself on drugs when at Michigan State but now gave himself wholeheartedly to Jesus, to the discipline of the order. Brother Frank, a middle-aged, sensible man who was the treasurer, also accompanied them.

No one said anything as each man concentrated on keeping his footing. Their long sleeves and long robes furled outward, with the winds dragging them backward at times.

Finally they reached the Virgin Mary.

Brother Prescott shone the beam on her face, snow so thick he had to squint, shielding his eyes with his left hand.

The wind abated for a second.

“Holy Mary, Mother of Our Lord, Christ Jesus.” Brother Mark fell to his knees, then prostrated himself in the snow.

Brother Frank, not given to gusts of emotion, took a step back.

Brother Prescott crossed himself. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women.”

“She’s bleeding for our sins. She’s crying tears of blood to save mankind.” When Brother Mark lifted his face from the snow, he, too, was crying, the tears cold on his rosy cheeks.

“Up.” Brother Frank reached down, grabbed the young man’s hand, and pulled him up.

“She’s exhorting us to save mankind,” Brother Mark sobbed, sides heaving.

“You save mankind one man, one woman, one child at a time,” Brother Prescott evenly replied, but he, too, was moved deeply by the sight of frozen blood, which had coursed down Mary’s cheeks and spilled onto the upper folds of her robe.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Brother Frank, face framed by the hood of his robe, admonished. “We don’t know what’s going on here. It looks like tears, it looks like blood, but we don’t know and we won’t know in the middle of this snowstorm. So I advise each of us to keep his mouth shut.”

“She’s speaking to us, Brother Frank, she’s speaking to us through her tears. We can’t keep quiet.”

“For a day or two.” The older man held to his opinion. “Brother Prescott, you say two women came to you? And you and Brother Thomas followed them up here?”

“Harry Haristeen and Susan Tucker.” Brother Prescott knew them, not well, but in passing, as did Brother Frank.

“Won’t stay a secret, then.” Brother Frank pinched his lips together. “Women can’t keep secrets.”

“Men can’t, either.” Brother Prescott bridled at Brother Frank’s sexism.

“We have to tell the other brothers. We have to tell Brother Handle,” added Brother Mark. The young man’s eyes widened.

“It can wait until morning. I need to think about this.” Brother Frank took the icy cold flashlight from Brother Prescott’s hand, stepped forward, and peered intently up at the beatific face, winds renewing their assault. “Forgive me, Blessed Mother, I am a skeptic and must investigate,” he said matter-of-factly.

Brother Prescott shouted, for the wind was now a steady roar, “This could be the best thing to happen to us. You’re the treasurer, you know that.”

“It could also be the worst,” came the measured reply, as Brother Frank wondered not only what was happening but what to do about it.