Cat on the Scent

            Susan walked over to scratch her ear. “You were the best part of the water-commission meeting.”

            “Say, wasn’t Archie a pip?” Mrs. Hogendobber, beyond sixty, although she’d never admit her exact age, used slang from her generation’s youth.

            “Pip? He was a flaming asshole.” Harry laughed.

            “Don’t be vulgar, Harry. That’s the trouble with you young people. Cursing betrays a paucity of imagination.”

            “You’re right.” Harry smiled. “How about my saying that Archie was fraught with froth.”

            “A firth of froth or a froth of firth?” Susan kissed Murphy’s head.

            “I like that,” Murphy purred.

            “What’s a firth?” Mrs. Hogendobber asked.

            “I don’t know. It sounded right.” Susan laughed at herself.

            “To the dictionary, girls.” Miranda pointed to the old Webster’s, its blue-cloth case rubbed shiny, the cardboard sticking out at the corners.

            “Is there really such a word?” Harry wondered.

            Miranda silently pointed to the Webster’s again.

            Susan sat down at the table, thumbing through. The orange buns screamed under her nose. She snatched another. “Firth, old Scandinavian word meaning an ”arm of the sea.“”

            “The English language is a lifelong study,” Miranda pronounced.

            The Reverend Herbert Jones strode up to the big counter, the ladies on the other side. “I smell orange.”

            “Come on in,” Harry lifted the divider.

            He helped himself to an orange bun. Pewter ate one when no one was looking. It made the cat so full she couldn’t move. The humans were surprised that Pewter wasn’t begging until Miranda counted the orange buns.

            “Susan, did you eat four?”

            “Three.”

            “Uh-huh.” Miranda sternly reproached the cat with a look.

            It had no effect whatsoever.

            “This whole water business worries me.” Herb licked his fingers, then found a napkin. “I don’t know why Archie is behaving the way he is. He’s known about the old study for years.” His voice shot upward. “The various conservation groups in the county are on top of this one. Anyway, there are more-pressing political issues.”

            “Like what?”

            “Like a new grade school in Greenwood.”

            “Yeah, that is pretty important,” Harry agreed.

            “That fop Sir H. Vane-Tempest—and if he’s a knight or a lord or whatever, I’m John the Baptist—” Herb arched an eyebrow, “called me up and chewed me out for having too much brass on my foraging cap.”

            “What?” The three women stared at him.

            “Like a fool I agreed to be in this reenactment. Now look, girls,”—he always called them girls, and there was no point in mentioning that might not be desirable—“I’m no fanatic. I agreed to fill out the ranks. He wants me to be one hundred percent accurate, though. He says that no real soldier would have all that brass on his cap because it’s just one more thing to keep clean.”

            “Exactly what is on your cap?” Miranda asked.

            “VA 1st—and then he said I had to wear something called a havelock—it’s a piece of white canvas that buttons over the cap. He said it might be hot and a real soldier would want to keep the sun off. I told him I’d spent enough money and if I wasn’t one hundred percent accurate that was too bad. He huffed and puffed. Finally I told him he wasn’t an American, and far more important, he wasn’t a Virginian and he shouldn’t tell one born and bred how to dress. My great-granddaddy was in the war. His was living high on the hog in England. He sputtered some more and said nationality had nothing to do with it. This was living history.” He shook his head. “Obviously, the man has nothing better to do with his life.”

            “What about Ned?” Harry turned to Susan. “Is he getting obsessive?”

            “He started out like the Rev.” She smiled at Herb when she said that. “Now he’s really into it. Why do you think I’m getting involved?”

            “That settles it. I’m going.” Mrs. Murphy spoke from the depths of the mail cart.

            “Fat chance,” Tucker replied.

            “I am too going and I’ll tell you why, midget fatso.”

            “I’m not fat.”

            “You’re so low to the ground, how can I tell?” The tiger cackled. “I’m going because there were Confederate cats. They were vital to the war effort. We kept mice out of the grain supplies.”

            “What about Union cats?” Pewter, a glorious Confederate gray, said.

            “We don’t mention them.”

            “What are you all talking about?” Susan, sensitive to animals, asked them.

            “The reenactment,” came the reply.

            “You know Blair Bainbridge bought everything authentic, not reproductions but real stuff. Must have cost him a fortune,” Herb mused.

            “I’d kill for his Porsche.” Harry’s eyes clouded over.

            “You’d have to.” Susan poked at her. “You can’t even afford a new truck.”

            “Ain’t it awful?” Harry hung her head in mock despair.

            “Your ex is going as a cavalry officer. No one can find a jacket large enough for him, so he’s wearing a period muslin shirt and gray pants.”