The Persistent Mr. Monroe

Word Count: 1694

There is a type of silence that arrives with the morning fog in the bottoms. It seems sacred, somehow. Almost stifling, like a dewy blanket of shhhh. A stillness broken only by the brief, furtive movements of prey. Yet the air carries more than silence. With it comes a chill that seeps through to the bone.

It makes little difference to Mr. Monroe as he sits like a sphinx on the back deck. Cold doesn't matter, nor does the quiet. Only the Pride is important. He has been accused of being lazy. Fat. They know nothing of Mr. Monroe. Those who know him have felt the iron at his core and seen the steel springs unleashed. He is built of wire and stone.

The smells of the dead-food fill the morning air. They eat constantly, but never hunt. They provide for the Pride, but always is it dead. He will show them. He always shows them. The hunt takes patience. Vigilance. Persistence. As does the education of the Pride. It is time again to bring them tribute. To show them why it is called "Pride".

----

Dempsey looks out the kitchen window along the back field. The coastal fog hangs low enough to be tickled by the tips of the tall grass. The cows haven't grazed this plot for a while, which suits him just fine. Last time, they leaned against the shop, loosening the boards and breaking out a window. He'd rather have the grass; it's never broken anything.

Mindlessly caressing a ceramic mug as it warms his hands, he thinks about the aches and pains of a body abused by work, and injury, and his prior relationship. An intimate relationship, with the ole Irish handcuffs. "Oh, Boo Hoo!" he mocks himself and his self-pity. Pride is everything. The town might think him an old, crazy drunk, but he's set the whiskey down and not picked it up in months. They don't know that at his core he is a tender man with love of all things natural and pure. He hates the corruption that has festered in the world, and in his own heart. But the bottle wasn't making things better, just helping him to forget that it wasn't. Thinking back to those first weeks without his liquid crutch, Father Mike had been extraordinarily supportive and had always listened when Dempsey needed to talk, as he has in the months that have followed.

Movement in the field beyond the kitchen window drew Dempsey out of his reverie. Mr. Monroe, is that you? He holds his breath as Mr. Monroe moves in slow motion. Like an athlete waiting for the whistle, he prowls forward at an agonizingly slow pace. Paw in midair, he freezes. An ear twitch is the last sign of motion as he listens, watches as a statue watches with agate eyes, waiting for the moment to strike.

The brindle-orange tabby is a hunter from whisker-tip to tail. The barn and shop have long been vacant of rodentia thanks to Mr. Monroe. More than once, Dempsey had walked out onto the porch to find the remains of a veloci-gopher, with a head the size of a man's fist. The carcass displayed as if by a deranged psycho-killer. Head, front paws, rear paws, and tail in perfect position, as if the body hadn't been consumed, save for an organ or two.

Sometimes it is difficult to tell trophy from threat. Mr. Monroe makes you an offer you can't refuse.

Moving with the precision and balance of a dancer, Mr. Monroe arcs into the air. Every nerve is alive as he descends upon his target. The creature, slow and stupid, doesn't know the cat is there until trapped in jaws that death himself acknowledges as virtually inescapable.

Dempsey closes his eyes and sighs. Never before had he witnessed the hunt, only the aftermath. Mr. Monroe prances proudly along the front wall of the shop with a still-kicking gopher dangling from his mouth. Dempsey can't let Mr. Monroe kill it. The boy eats well enough to make his extra-culinary exploits unnecessary. Dempsey bursts past the flimsy patio door before he knows what he is doing, barely noticing the parade of parishioners making their weekly pilgrimage to St. Mary's Church across the street. The unintended audience to an inadvertent comedy in which The Fates had whimsically cast Dempsey and Mr. Monroe in starring roles.

----

Bursting with pride, Mr. Monroe greets Dempsey in front of the sliding door to the shop with a loud and trilley meow. The big cat catches on, too late, that Dempsey intends to steal his prize. He turns and attempts to flee, only to be hoisted into the air by the scruff of his neck and made to drop the stunned rodent.

Freedom!

The gopher runs a zig-zag pattern toward the center of the front yard. No plan, just blind panic, leading it into the open spaces near the road. Dempsey is surprised to see so much life in a critter so close to death.

Mr. Monroe is livid. Livider. Lividest! Performing an admirable impression of Looney Tunes' Taz, he spins, claws, bites, and mauls his way out of Dempsey's grasp in a veritable whirlwind of ferocity. Mr. Monroe makes a beeline for the gopher, and Dempsey makes a beeline for the cat. Cat gets gopher, man gets cat, cat drops gopher; wash, rinse, repeat.

Except this time the gopher thinks like a gopher. He is no match for the furious feline on the open plain. He needs somewhere dark and confined. Somewhere the cat can't follow. A gopher-sized hole is what is needed here.

And the gopher spots what he was looking for. Up past the shoelaces and into the left pant leg of the worn denim jeans. Now in his element, the burrowing rodent makes excellent time up Highway 501. The emotions flash across the man's face almost too quickly to catalog. Shock, dread, pain, panic. "Jesus Christ!" Dempsey yells out as if he's at a revival. Dempsey breaks into a hopping, stomping, leg-shaking performance worthy of the River Dance, in a vain attempt to slow the beastie's ascent. Not thinking clearly, he drops the cat to free both hands to deal with the rapidly rising rodent. Mr. Monroe, in hot pursuit, jams his big head up the pant leg while a bestial growl of pure hatred rumbles through his clenched teeth.

The pants are old, faded, and split at the left knee almost halfway around the leg. looking like a frothing-white maw, the frayed white cords and flecks of blue denim reveal a little black nose followed by the big flat head of the gopher. Wasting no time, Dempsey grabs the fat fugitive and quickly pulls it from his pants, leaving two sets of crimson streaks in its wake.

It took another few moments to extract the quite-single-minded Mr. Monroe from the base of his pants. Both animals squirming furiously to be free. The anxious man grips them at arm's length from each other, while the two rivals stare at one another across the vast divide.

It should be noted at this point that the steady stream of churchgoers has come to a complete halt while they gawk at the latest impropriety at the Dempsey household. What is that drunk up to now?

Hey, mister! Leave the cat alone!

The goal, now, is to get Mr. Monroe into the shop and close the sliding door so that the gopher can be plopped into the grass on the far side of the fence. Free to forage and frolic in the verdant pastures beyond. Only three steps into his master plan (Dempsey is counting) the gopher bites him on the thumb. Hard. "Sweet Jesus." He exclaimed out of reflex. "Amen" someone from the crowd answered for the same reason. The gopher hits the ground, the cat tears after the gopher, the gopher goes up the other pant leg, and the cat bolts wildly after it.

Dempsey again channels the Lord of the Dance, bouncing, careening, and kicking his leg, flinging the cat away momentarily. Unhindered by Dempsey's frantic movements, the refugee quickly surmounts the knee and heads for parts unknown. The poor man gets a mental picture of the beaver-headed varmint heading for the promised land with its razor-sharp chisel-tipped teeth.

Is that a gopher in your pants or are you just happy to see me?

All semblance of modesty is discarded as Dempsey and his faded 501's part company. In front of God and everyone stopped along Janes Road, he whips off the garment that's binding the gopher to his crotch. Clad now in only a t-shirt that reads, "I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it" and a (clean) pair of vertically striped boxer shorts, he manages to scoop up the cat and unceremoniously dump him into the shop and slam the door. Pants now firmly gripped at both ends, he reaches over the back fence and shakes them as one might shake sand out of a beach towel. Looking for a moment like a bird, the gopher flies out about ten feet to land on the grass. Wasting no time, the ungrateful little bastard runs into a thick clump of weeds and disappears.

Adrenaline subsiding and the pounding in his chest slowing, he turns around, pants in hand, to see about a dozen people, families and children, staring in uncomprehending wonderment.

Pride. Ever defiant, he stares them all down and puts his pants on, as we all do, one leg at a time. Tightening his belt, shoulders back in a belligerent pose, he voicelessly challenges the throng with a stormy glare until he spots a familiar face. Father Mike, Bible in hand, is making his way through the crowd and crossing the street, seeming exhausted and maybe just a bit disappointed.

Dempsey looks at the ground and sighs again, uncertain which would prove to be more difficult; explaining how he came to be in his front yard, dancing around with his cat, decked out in his boxer shorts, or explaining how he did it without so much as a drop to drink.