HarpyJanelle Meraz Hooper Copyright, 2003 |
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Harpy looked out his kitchen window and counted the cats on his neighbor's back porch. Nineteen! He reckoned he had time to make coffee and get to his rocking chair outside before she could get them all fed. He'd slept in, but luckily, he'd made up a fresh batch of ice cubes before he'd gone to bed the night before.
Excited as a kid, he hustled around his kitchen, multi-tasking chores as he went----he pulled up his suspenders as he measured coffee, filled the coffee basket, banged ice cubes out of ice trays, and loaded his coffee cup with sugar.
He'd just sat down in his rocking chair on his back porch when Julianne's backdoor opened and the old lady waded through a welcoming wave of cat tails to fill assorted recycled bowls with dry cat food. She disappeared long enough to return with a pitcher of water that splashed over the rims of the empty dishes as she poured the liquid without bending over. The droplets of water caught the edges of her lace nightwear and sparkled in the morning sun.
Hmph! Harpy grunted to himself. Who does she think she is, a spring chicken? Well, if she was trying to snag him, she was wasting her time. No way was he going to get involved with a woman who had so many cats. Harpy hated cats. Always had. He didn't know which was the most disagreeable end of the cat----the front end that caught the birds in his garden----or the back end which dirtied his flower beds, no matter how many times he asked Julianne to keep them home. Sometimes he even wondered if Julianne wasn't starting to look like her cats. Yeah, a cat in a lacy nightgown.
Unaware of Harpy's thoughts, Julianne smiled and waved at her grumpy neighbor before she went back inside. What does she do inside there all day? Harpy wondered. She seldom had company, and it was obvious she didn't expect any, because she never raced to get dressed. Once, he tried to look in her living room window----just out of curiosity----but she had so many plants on the windowsill that he couldn't see inside. Hmph! Harpy grunted again. She probably watches those religious and soap opera shows all day on her TV. He knew for sure she wasn't ordering from the shopping channels, since the deliveryman never stopped at her house. That didn't surprise him none----neither of them had money to spare on goo-gahs.
He caught sight of movement by the fence between the two yards. Harpy reached in his coffee can and grasped an ice cube while his other hand got a good grip on his slingshot. The first cat's head was just poking through the picket fence when Harpy pulled back on his cat-shooter and let an ice cube fly. His hand was already in his lap before the cat screamed with surprise and pain. Julianne pulled back the kitchen curtain and peered out, but saw nothing. Even the occasional ice cube that was propelled between the pickets into Julianne's yard got lost among the flowers. It melted before the old lady got out into her yard. Harpy took a swig of hot coffee and waited for the next cat's head to poke through the fence. This is better than a shooting game at the carnival, he mused. Thanks to several years of practice, he seldom missed. Lately, the hardest part was keeping a straight face when Julianne looked his way.
*
Julianne wasn't as clueless as she looked. She peeked out her window at the old man on his porch. What was he doing to her cats? Why did so many of them have bumps on their heads? Some of them had even suffered eye damage. Try as she might, she'd never been able to find a rock or other sign of a weapon in her yard. But he was doing something----she was sure of that.
Finally, determined to discover what was going on, she called Joe from across the alley and asked him to come over that night with his high-powered security camera. He'd been urging her to beef up her home security, and this was as good a time as any for a demonstration of what his new equipment could do. He was a little puzzled when Julianne asked him to sneak the camcorder and tripod into her house by passing it through a side window, but he'd known Julianne for years, and he trusted her. Whatever she wanted was what he was going to do. Sensing some excitement, he loaded the camera with a new videotape and made sure the batteries on the unit were fully charged. It was still light when Joe carefully threaded his camcorder and tripod through Julianne's side window----the side that faced away from Harpy's house.
"Dang, Julianne, I can't wait to find out what you're up to." he said as she let him in the front door. His eyes widened as she led him up the stairs into her bedroom.
"Joe, here's the deal. Harpy is doing something to my cats, and I can't figure out what. Can you set up this camera in my bedroom window to watch him tomorrow morning? He always sits in that rocking chair on his porch. The best view of him is from this window."
"Julianne, this camera could film him taking a bath, if you wanted to. Filming that porch will be easy."
"Good. Maybe I'll finally be able to make some sense of these wounded cats I have around here."
"Let's just set it up and forget it until tomorrow after lunch. It has an automatic motion detector on it. When something moves, it'll start filming."
"That's perfect. I knew I could count on you. How about some cake and coffee? I made it fresh."
"That's perfect." Joe mimicked Julianne. "I knew I could count on you."
Next door, Harpy had moved off his porch and pulled on his garden gloves. He preferred to work gloveless, but too many nasty----and he did mean nasty----surprises lurked underneath the soil, thanks to Julianne's cats.
The ice cube attacks were a lot of fun, but it was time to move on to something that would do a lot more than just slow the cats down. It was time to start eliminating them. He had a plan that would eliminate them slowly, but he was too impatient for that. He was leaning towards killing a lot of the cats----soon. But how? Poison was too dangerous. He might end up killing someone's dog. Traps were likely to be discovered. What a hullabaloo that would cause! Julianne was sweet, but she was no pushover. No, it had to be something like the ice cubes----undetectable----but fatal. Harpy did his best thinking when he weeded his flowerbeds. He'd think of something.
It was time for supper before the old coot went back into his house. He didn't mind his empty stomach as much as he minded being empty-headed. How was he going to kill those cats? Frustrated, he slammed things around in his kitchen as he opened a can of chili and grabbed a beer from his refrigerator. While he was in the kitchen, he made some fresh ice cubes.
As planned, Joe stopped by the next day to see what, if anything, was on the tape. They fed the tape through Julianne's TV and sat back with cake and coffee to watch the video.
Julianne was impressed with the clarity of the film. They could see Harpy on his porch as clearly as if they were looking at the real thing. There he was, sitting down, drinking coffee----and loading ice cubes into a sling shot.
So that was it! Julianne was stunned. And angry. As soon as she could politely get rid of Joe, she began to think about a plan to get even with Harpy.
She loved her cats. What did Harpy love? She found her answer when she looked out her window. Roses. Harpy loved his roses. That night, before she went to bed, Julianne made her own ice cubes----filled with salt----and dug out an old slingshot from under her sink----the one she'd taken away from her grandson years ago.
It took a while for the roses to start turning brown. Everyday, Julianne watched Harpy frantically digging fertilizers and insecticides into the soil in his rose garden----to no avail. The roses kept dying, Harpy kept fretting.
One day, when the roses looked their worst, Julianne leaned over the fence.
"Harpy, what on earth is going on with your roses?"
"I don't know! They're dying off faster than I can plant new ones. Even the new roses don't look so good."
"Oh, my. That is a shame." Julianne looked at the roses, then looked at Harpy. "I'm no expert on roses, but I do have an idea……I'm betting that your roses are dying off because they're so sad about my cats getting maimed. I'm even willing to go so far as to bet that if my cats stopped getting all messed up, well then, your roses would start to heal. Do you get what I mean, Harpy?"
Harpy looked at the little frail woman leaning over the fence in amazement. He heard what she said all right. He never thought the old gal had it in her. Trouble was, he couldn't accuse her of killing her roses without admitting what he'd been doing to her cats.
"Julianne, I have the feeling your cats are going to be fine from now on." he finally said. "Do you have any idea how I can fix my roses?"
"Well, I'm not sure Harpy, but I'll guess your roses are suffering from too much salt. You fix that problem, you'll fix your roses."
Just then, one of Julianne's cats came through the picket fence and did his business in Harpy's flowerbed. On his way back across the fence, he paused long enough to rub against Harpy's leg and purr.
Harpy rolled his eyes upward. He knew he was beat. Julianne leaned over the fence and patted his arm.
"Why don't you put a soaker hose on those
roses and come over for some cake? There's nothing else you can do for
those bushes right now anyway."
THE END
Janelle Meraz Hooper, a
Northwest writer, is the author of A Three-Turtle Summer, set in the Southwest.
Contact her : http://www.janellemerazhooper.com
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