Harpy & Julianne's War of the Roses
I have more to share but I'm having so many technical problems I'm quitting while I'm ahead!
photo: iStock
Harpy & Julianne’s War of the Roses
Janelle Meraz Hooper
In the old part of Lawton, right around the corner from the old sheriff’s office, lived two old rodeo stars. Though they’ve been retired for years they’ve never gotten over making everything in their lives a competition. Especially when it came to their gardens. Who could raise the best tomatoes? Whose roses were the best? Whose eggplant was the purpliest? Whose okra was the tallest?
Harpy looks out his kitchen window and counts the cats hanging around his neighbor’s kitchen door. Nineteen! The old man scowls and swears beneath his breath.
He reckons he has time to make coffee and get to his rocking chair on his back porch before she can get them all fed. He’d slept in, but luckily, his ice cubes are already in the old coffee can and ready to go, saving him some time. He snatches his cowboy hat from the top of the refrigerator and jerks his cowboy boots onto his sockless feet.
Excited as a kid, he hustles around his kitchen, multi-tasking chores as he
goes—he pulls up his suspenders as he measures coffee, fills the coffee basket,
and loads his coffee cup with sugar. All the while hearing an imaginary rodeo clock ticking away—timing him. Timing the bull. Timing the clown as he rushed out to pull Harpy to safety.
He’s just sat down in his rocking chair when Julianne’s backdoor opens and the old cowgirl wades through a welcoming wave of cat tails and fills assorted recycled bowls with dry cat food. She disappears long enough to return with a pitcher of water that splashes over the rims of the empty water dishes as she pours the liquid without bending over. The droplets of water catch the edges of her lacey lounging pajamas hanging below her rodeo robe, sparkling in the morning sunshine. Julianne had purchased the robe from a vendor at the last rodeo she’d attended at the 1-0-1 Ranch outside of Ponca. The vintage fabric, printed all over in colorful, big-busted cowgirls, was so popular with the women they were even wearing them as evening coats. Even though she isn’t dressed yet, her sparkly cowgirl boots shine like a silver dollar in the morning sunlight.
Hmph! Harpy grunts to himself. Who does she think she is, a spring chicken? Well, if she is trying to snag me, she’s wasting her time. No way am I going to get involved with a woman who has so many cats. His eyes fall on the tattoo of a cat wearing a cowboy hat on Julianne’s arm and he shudders.
Harpy hates cats. Always has. He doesn’t know which is the most disagreeable end of the
animal—the front end that catches the birds in his garden—or the back end that dirties his flowerbeds, no matter how many times he asks Julianne to keep them home. Sometimes, he even wonders if Julianne isn’t starting to look like her cats. Yeah, a cat in a lacy nightgown, he grumbles to himself.
Unaware of Harpy’s hostile thoughts, Julianne smiles and waves at her cranky neighbor before she goes back inside. What does she do inside there all day? Harpy wonders. She seldom has company, and it’s obvious she doesn’t expect any because she never races to get dressed in the morning.
Once, he tried to look in her living room window—just out of curiosity—but she had so many plants on the windowsill he couldn’t see inside. Hmph! Harpy grunts again. She probably watches those religious and soap opera shows all day on her TV. He knows for sure she isn’t ordering from the shopping channels, since the deliveryman never stops at her house. That doesn’t surprise him none—neither of them has extra money to spare on goo-gahs. Oh, both of them have walls full of rodeo prizes that shimmered in silver and gold, that they’ve won through the years. Harpy rode bulls. Julianne and her horse were champion horse cutters. But the money that came with those prizes is long gone for both of them.
Harpy catches sight of movement by the fence between the two yards. Stealthily, he reaches in his coffee can and grasps an ice cube while his other hand gets a good grip on his slingshot. The first cat’s head is just poking through the picket fence when Harpy pulls back on his cat-shooter and lets an ice cube fly. His hand is already in his lap before the cat screams with surprise and pain.
Julianne pulls back the kitchen curtain and peers out but sees nothing. Even the occasional ice cube propelled between the pickets into Julianne’s yard gets lost among the flowers and melts before it is ever detected.
Harpy takes a swig of hot coffee and waits for the next cat’s head to poke through the fence. This is better than a shooting gallery at the carnival, he muses. Thanks to several months of practice, he seldom misses. Lately, the hardest part is keeping a straight face when Julianne looks his way.
Julianne isn’t as clueless as she looks. She peeks out her window at the old man on his porch. What is he doing to her cats? Why do so many of them have bumps on their heads? Some of them have even suffered eye damage. Try as she might, she’s never been able to find a rock or other sign of a weapon in her yard. But he is doing something—she is sure of that.
Finally, determined to discover what is going on, she calls Joe from across the alley and asks him to come over that night with his high-powered security camera. He’s been urging her to beef up her home protection, and this is as good a time as any for a demonstration of what his new equipment can do. He’s a little puzzled when Julianne asks him to sneak the camcorder and tripod over to her house. Sensing some excitement, he loads the camera and makes sure the batteries on the unit are fully charged. It is still light when Joe arrives at Julianne’s back porch.
Looking through the camera lenses, Julianne is impressed with the clarity of the film. They see Harpy on his porch as clearly as if they were looking at the real thing. There he is, sitting down, drinking coffee—and loading ice cubes into a slingshot. So that’s it! Julianne is stunned. And angry. As soon as she can, she politely gets rid of Joe and begins to think about a plan to get even with Harpy. Joe stops asking questions when Julianne quietly tucks an extra piece of lemon cake into his camera bag.
Julianna puts on some Western two-step music to keep her company while she paces back and forth on her kitchen floor and wonders how she can get even. She loves her cats. What does Harpy love? She finds her answer when she looks out her window. Roses. Harpy loves his roses.
That night, and every night thereafter for days, Julianne sneaks out before she goes to bed and waters Harpy’s roses with salted water. She always takes a small bag of garbage with her in case Harpy spots her.
The old Cowboy’s roses began to turn brown. Every day, Julianne watches him frantically digging fertilizers and insecticides into the soil around his prized bushes—to no avail. The roses keep dying; Harpy keeps fretting.
One day, when the roses look their worst, Julianne leans 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 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 looks at the little frail woman leaning over the fence in amazement. He hears what she’s saying all right. He has never thought the old gal could have it in her. Trouble is, he can’t accuse her of killing his roses without admitting what he’s been doing to her cats.
After a long pause, Harpy takes a deep breath and says, “Julianne, I have the feeling your cats are going to be fine from now on. 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 does his business right on top of Harpy’s cowboy boots. On his way back across the fence, he pauses long enough to rub against Harpy’s leg and purr. Harpy rolls his eyes upward. He knows he’s beat. Julianne leans over the fence and pats his arm. “Why don’t you put a soaker hose on those roses and come over for some lemon cake?” she says sweetly. “There’s nothing else you can do for those bushes right now anyway.”
The end.