“Yeah, a red one,” Beth said.
They watched until the big red truck drove away and they saw the teacher close the door.
“Is she going to come back out?” Evie asked.
Beth frowned. “I think she’ll unpack now, like we do when we come back from Granny and Papa’s house after Christmas.”
“Yeah, like that,” Evie said, then nudged her sister. “Go ask Miss Roxie if you can have a juice box.”
Beth frowned. “Why don’t you ask?”
“Because you got hurt and she won’t tell you no. Just don’t forget to ask if I can have one, too.”
“Okay,” Beth said, and went to the laundry room. “Miss Roxie, can I please have a juice box?”
Roxie was switching laundry from the washer to the dryer and nodded absently.
“Yes, sure. Get your sister one, too, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Beth said, and then ran to the refrigerator, snagged a couple of the juice boxes, and went running up the hall to their bedroom. “Ta-da!” she said, as she entered carrying the juice.
Evie grinned. “See, I told you she wouldn’t tell you no. Let’s do this puzzle while we have our juice. It will be like snack time at school.”
“Yes! Snack time,” Beth echoed as her sister dumped the pieces of a puzzle out on their play table.
They sat down together and, without competition, began searching out the pieces that formed the edges like their daddy had taught them.
***
While Katie was unpacking and hanging her awards on the office wall, and Sam’s girls were playing school, Sam was headed to the east side of town to mediate an argument between neighbors, and it all started over a cat named Puppy.
For months, Helen Primm’s cat, Puppy, had been using Martha Desmond’s flower bed for a litter box, despite Martha’s constant complaints to Helen and her disgust at the odor. It finally came to a head this morning when Martha went out to plant a flat of pansies and wound up with cat shit all over her gardening gloves and the knees of her jeans. When Martha realized what it was, she screamed, stormed over to Helen’s house, rang the doorbell, and then smeared the cat shit from her gloves all over Helen’s front door.
Helen smelled it even as she was opening the door, and then Martha came at her, wiping her hands on the front of Helen’s shirt, while still screaming in hysterics.
“Smell that?” Martha shrieked. “That’s what your cat leaves in my flower bed every day. I’ve asked you and asked you to stop letting it out your front door, and yet you persist. I went out to plant pansies this morning, and this is what I got. Today was the last straw. I’ve had it with you!”
“How dare you!” Helen shouted, and drew back and slapped Martha so hard it knocked the banana clip out of her hair.
“No! How dare you!” With a flying tackle, Martha took Helen down on the porch.
One of their neighbors heard the screaming, came out on their porch long enough to see the two women fighting, and ran back inside and called the police, which was how Sam wound up in the middle of a cat fight—about a cat.
***
The moment Sam rolled up to the address, he called in his location, then got out and strode toward the porch. Neighbors from both sides of the street were in the front yard watching.
“Why have none of you tried to stop this?” Sam asked.
“I’m smart enough not to ever get in the middle of two fighting women who are covered in cat shit,” one man said.
Sam paused. Looked at the brown stuff all over their faces and clothes and on the door and groaned.
“Are you serious?” he muttered.
The woman from across the street nodded. “Helen lets her cat out the front door every morning. It goes straight to Martha’s flower bed and poops. Been going on for months. I guess Martha finally got enough of it.”
Sam looked around, saw a garden hose coiled neatly near the front steps, and headed for it. He turned on the water at the spigot, dragged the hose up the steps, aimed the spray nozzle at the two women’s faces, and let them have it.
Martha was cursing a blue streak and got a dose in her mouth and up her nose.
Helen was screaming and scratching ruts in Martha’s neck with her red Hot as Hell dip nails when the water went in her ear and eye.
Both women rolled over on their backs, their hands flailing in the air as they tried to get away from the blast.
“Stop! Stop!” they screamed.
Sam shut off the spray. “Ladies—and I use that phrase lightly—this morning, you have just made asses of yourselves in front of God and everybody who cared to drive down this street.”
Martha sat up, saw the crowd on Helen’s front lawn, and groaned as Helen was shaking water out of her ear.
Martha’s rage deflated, and she was in tears again. “Her cat poops in my flower bed. For months, I’ve asked her to please let it out the back door instead of the front, but she ignores me. This morning, I went to plant pansies, and the first hole I dug was nothing but fresh cat poop. It was all over my gloves and on my jeans before I knew it. So I came over to Helen’s house to return her property.”
“You smeared it on my door. You smeared it all over me!” Helen whined.
“You started it,” Martha snapped.
“And I just ended it,” Sam said. “Now. You two have a decision to make. You will stand up and apologize to each other and mean it, or I’m hauling you both to jail for disturbing the peace.”
Martha rolled over onto her knees and got up, blood dripping from the scratches on her neck.
Helen thought her vision was blurred from the water in her eyes, and then realized one eye was nearly swollen shut.
They saw the disgust on Chief Youngblood’s face, then looked at each other, then down at their feet.
“Sorry,” they mumbled.
“Nope. I didn’t get any sincerity from either of you,” Sam said.
Martha frowned. “I’m sorry I lost my temper.”
Helen eyed the blood on Martha’s neck. “I’m so sorry I hurt you.”
Then they threw their arms around each other, crying as they hugged.
Sam sighed. “That was step one. Step two has to do with a cat. Helen, you have a moral obligation to not let an animal that belongs to you be a nuisance in your neighborhood, and you know that. Do you have a litter box in your house for the cat?”
She nodded.
“So, either that cat uses the litter box, or you take it out in your backyard, wait until it’s finished its business, and then bring it back in your house. Under no circumstances do you ever let it out in front again. If you do, Martha will call animal welfare. Martha, do you hear me?”