Sneaky Pie for President (18 page)

Wearing a sweater, the human sat on the porch in an Adirondack chair badly in need of a fresh coat of paint.
The usual crew gathered below on the floor. An old serviceable lantern sat on the wooden side table outside. Sneaky watched as the human lit a match, took a deep breath, then blew it out, apparently thinking better of it, a decision Sneaky agreed with. The lantern’s oil gave off such a strong odor. Bad though human noses are, it seemed even the C.O. preferred the night’s fresh fragrances.

They watched as the owl lifted off from the barn’s cupola, circled once, then headed for the fields. Bats darted in and out. Turtles shut up for the night. Snakes crawled into their holes, as did field mice. Rabbits withdrew to their hutches. The cats could see every detail. The dogs, eyes not as good, could still perceive movement. The C.O. watched as well. Human eyes were quite good, although their night vision was weak.

A long yip followed another, rousing the C.O. “We’ll never get rid of those coyotes now,” she said.

“No, we won’t,” Tally agreed, “but I’ll protect you.”

“Me, too,” Tucker chimed in.

“Take more than the four of us to bring down a coyote,” Sneaky Pie advised. “Plus, they’re never alone.”

“Make that three. I’m not messing with them.” Pewter hopped onto the C.O.’s lap, circled once, snuggled down.

“You all are chatty.” The human smiled, then reached into her shirt pocket for a tiny flashlight the size of a BIC cigarette lighter.

She picked up a book next to the lantern.

“Hey,” Pewter complained. Could she please sit still?

“Pewter, you can be so fussy.” The C.O. laughed.

“All the time.” Tally sighed. “You have no idea what I put up with.”

“Tally, don’t start. It’s a lovely evening,” Sneaky told the Jack Russell, and just then the barn owl called far away.

“Owls, bats, blacksnakes, swallows, you all, best friends. Can’t farm without the team.” Tucker smiled.

“Forget blacksnakes.” Pewter was horrified.

“They eat a lot of vermin,” Sneaky, now on the side table, mentioned.

“I don’t care,” countered Pewts. “I don’t like snakes. No reptiles in your campaign. Remember?”

“I do.” The tiger cat sighed.

“Just thinking of the terrible incident with that horrible snake, I shudder. I could have been killed. A lingering, painful, terrible suffering.” Pewter’s pupils enlarged.

“Pewter, we know all about the snake,” said Tally. “You’re fine. I’m sure the copperhead is still just as scared. You might have crushed him.” Tally giggled.

“Ha, ha,” Pewter sarcastically said.

“I am trying to read,” the human admonished them.

“That little flashlight has such a bright beam.” Pewter shifted her weight, for the book was held above her head, resting on the human’s knees.

“Blind. You’ll be blind,” Tally teased.

“Listen to this,” the human said, preparing to read to them. “ ‘We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us.’ ”

“True for humans.” Tucker had settled on the C.O.’s boots.

“Pascal.” The C.O. named the author of those words.

“Who’s that?” Pewter asked.

“Someone who’s been dead a long, long time,” Tally replied. “She likes the old stuff.”

“As long as it makes her happy,” Sneaky wisely said.

“We make her happy.” Pewter announced this with confidence.

“Of course we do,” Tally agreed. “Animals always make people happy.”

Sneaky Pie, Pewter, and Tucker stared at the little dog for a moment.

“Not always,” Tucker offhandedly remarked. “Jack Russells are God’s way of telling humans that not all dogs are obedient.”

The animals laughed. The human looked at each of them for a moment, then went back to her book as the evening stars glowed ice white.

“We lower their blood pressure,” Pewter informed them. “We calm their nerves.”

Sneaky Pie curled her tail around her legs. “They’re so lonely. We fight that off.”

“There are so many of them,” Tally said. “I mean, I suppose what you’re saying is true, but I don’t know how they can be lonely.”

“They can’t communicate with one another very well.” Pewter had observed this. “They miss a lot. Misread a lot. They’re not like us. We smell a lie, or fear, or attraction. They’ve lost their way. And they can’t really read one another’s bodies anymore.”

“Could they ever?” asked Tucker.

“Yes, but now they rely on electronics,” said Pewter. “Really.” She shifted yet again in the C.O.’s lap. “They believe what’s on the Internet, on their Droids. On the TV. They don’t talk to one another, not like they used to. Remember when Mom was telling us about riding on the bus? She said lots of different people rode on the bus. You learned to get along. Then the rural bus lines got cut back, as well as the old train lines—little spur lines, she called them. They’ve lost touch with one another. It’s all pulled apart. I mean people.”

“I do kind of recall something about that,” said Tucker. “She had a fit and fell in it over one of the presidential debates.” The corgi remembered the night in front of the TV
during the winter. “All that jawing on TV provoked her rant about public transportation.”

Sneaky laughed. “And here she has a candidate in her own house. Just underfoot. Of course, we must get her to see that.”

“Don’t hold your breath.” Pewter stretched, then jumped down. “Look.”

They looked toward the river, a quarter of a mile away. Tiny dots of light appeared, then began moving up to the higher meadows.

“Lightning bugs.” Tally jumped up, ran in a circle.

“Tally.” The C.O. started to say something to the dog, then she, too, saw the first of the flying insects. “Magic!”

The peepers sang. The owl did, too, the fireflies swirling along to their own music, it seemed. It was the true beginning of summer. The human closed her book and clicked off the flashlight.

“Doesn’t get any better than this,” she happily spoke, and her four friends agreed.

Shots Are Fired

“Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.” The rockfish burped out a string of bubbles.

“Gross.” Pewter stayed out of water-shot range.

“Thought I might find you in your pool now that the water is calmed.” Sneaky fearlessly leaned over the creek-bed.

“I have a friend with me,” said the fish, disappearing, then popping back up with a catfish beside him.

The dark catfish’s distinctive whiskers swayed with the slight water current. “Are you named for me, or am I named for you?” he asked Sneaky Pie.

“I don’t know, but you sure are big,” Sneaky said, offering a compliment.

“Lots to eat.” The fish’s distinctive laugh came out as a gurgle. “I’ll grow even bigger,” he vowed.

“I won’t.” The rockfish swished his tail near the water’s surface. “But, hey, size has nothing to do with brains.”

The catfish agreed in part. “Though you could say what’s dumb dies.”

“Not always.” Pewter cut her eyes toward Tally, chasing butterflies nearby.

“There are exceptions to every rule.” The big catfish smiled. “My friend Rocky here tells me you harbor political ambitions.”

“I do,” Sneaky forthrightly replied.

“He told me, I told my brethren, and the word sailed on down the line into the Chesapeake Bay. There are big fish there. And then, of course, the Bay flows into the Atlantic. The biggest fish ever swim in the ocean. Well, I can’t substantiate this, but what’s come back up to us is that fish aren’t going to help you. They are unwilling to help humans. The Big Boys, you know, the whales, the sailfish, the hammerheads, and even the manta rays, they say the bipeds first crawled out of the ocean because the rest of them in the sea didn’t want them. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,’ they say.”

The tiger cat was surprised. “Really?”

“The whales are still angry over the many years of whaling, especially out of those New England towns. That was the largest industry in the nineteenth century for decades, and they aren’t quick to forgive the slaughter.”

The rockfish added to the catfish’s report. “They’re mad about
Moby-Dick
, too.”

Pewter, inching closer, said, “Hey, what about
Puss ’n Boots
?”

“Pewter, the cat’s the hero,” Sneaky told her. “You’ve nothing to complain about. In
Moby-Dick
, the whale is the bad guy,” the tiger informed the gray.

“I prefer to think of Moby-Dick as representing Nature,” the large fish said. “Kind of an overgrown catfish.” More bubbles popped on the water’s surface.

Sneaky said, “Ah, but then he’d be so much better-looking, that white whale.”

The catfish laughed. “You just might have a shot at a political career.”

He dove back down, and the rockfish followed.

The two cats meandered through the pastures, milk butterflies everywhere, grasshoppers shooting straight up then hitting the half-grown hay with a
click, click, click
.

“Think the big fish really said that?” Pewter wondered.

“We’ll never know. It might be idle gossip among chatty fish. But if they did say it, the whales have a point.” Sneaky then noticed the grass. “Chickweed.”

“The weedkiller doesn’t work on this. Kills some, but chickweed’s kinda like cockroaches.” Pewter giggled. “Can’t get them all.”

“Waterbugs,” said Sneaky, diverted by the topic. “I can
tolerate cockroaches, but waterbugs set me off. And spiders. They move funny.”

“Boy, if insects could vote, if you could just get them interested, nobody could overcome those numbers,” said Pewter. “And I still think you should talk to earthworms.”

Before Sneaky could again affirm that she would not be pressing earthworms for her campaign, Tally shot past them.

“What the—?” Pewter exclaimed.

“Uh-oh!” Sneaky took a big sniff, turned her head, and saw the mother bear rumbling her way through the pasture.

Both cats hit the accelerator, following the dog.

“Hide your children!” Tally screamed to the horses. “Protect yourselves!”

Hearing the little dog’s warning, the horses saw the running bear. They could easily evade the huge animal, but the bear’s presence did agitate them. They snorted and ran around.

“Momma, Momma, I’m tired,” the bear cub called up to her furious mother.

The brown bear stopped. “Did that little runt dog bite you?”

“She barked a lot and came real, real close,” said the little girl cub. “Oh, Momma, she near to broke my eardrums.”

“Well, I’ll set her straight. Come on, little one.” The mother, calming down, moved slower now.

The C.O., who’d been repairing the fence, slipped the hammer through her belt.

Tucker, helping, called out to Tally, “You’re okay. She won’t catch you.”

The cats tore up behind Tally.

Having noted the commotion, the human now saw the bear and her cub. She calmly trotted to the tack room of the barn, her animals following her.

She grabbed the shotgun leaning against the wall, slipped in two shells, and walked back outside.

When she fired in the air, Tally blasted out through the animal door in the tack room. Emboldened by the shotgun, the Jack Russell hurled insults.

“My God, she’s a blistering idiot.” Tucker slipped through the door to help the C.O.

The cats followed.

Racing around the human, barking as loudly as she could, the little dog would stop, take a step in the direction of the mother and cub, then race around again.

Not entirely stupid, the human yelled, “Tally, sit down.”

Seeing the human and hearing the warning blast, the bear stopped. Her cub stopped with her.

“You come near my baby again and I will break your neck,” said the enraged mother bear.

“You could never catch me,” Tally shouted back.

“Tally, shut up!” The C.O. purposefully stepped on her small tail, eliciting a yelp.

“You’d better do what she says,” Tucker warned.

Sneaky moved forward, calling to the bear, “We’re sorry. Tally has ideas above her station.”

“I will break her neck,” the bear again warned.

“If you don’t, I will,” Sneaky replied, which made the bear laugh.

The human lowered her shotgun as the bear turned, rambling back down the pasture.

“
Whew
,” she said, as she broke the shotgun, taking out the shells.

Pewter said, “Ever notice how some humans look like animals?”

“Yes, I have,” Sneaky replied.

Staring at the retreating bear, the gray cat quipped, “I’ve seen hairy butts on a few humans just like that.”

The cats laughed uproariously.

“What did you do, exactly?” Tucker grilled Tally.

“Nothing.”

“Tally,” Tucker said sternly.

“The cub was playing, and I just snuck up. I was so quiet in my approach that I startled her. She got scared and ran for her mother.”

“You barked the second you were out of your mother’s womb.” Pewter watched the four-hundred-pound animal move through the pastures, not the least bit interested in the horses.

Big Sky, Shamus at his side, smelled the bear. He whinnied, “Should I run?”