The Cat in the Hatbox

Chapter 4

Ed woke up early Saturday morning, planning to fix a big breakfast and then do some work with the flowers around the base of the house. As he walked through the living room, heading for the kitchen, he noticed the corner of a flyer under his front door. He picked it up and saw that Roland Vickers was inviting all the residents of PVC to a special brunch meeting in the dining room of the community center at 10:00. It was marked IMPORTANT!! in red ink as if the all-caps and exclamation point didn't sufficiently convey the message, so he decided he would just eat toast and coffee and save his appetite for the brunch.

Two slices of dry toast and a cup of instant coffee later, he was dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a tattered white tee shirt, on his knees at the north side of his house pulling dandelions from among the ferns he'd planted there to take advantage of the almost permanent shade on that side of the structure. Damn dandelions seemed to thrive anywhere, snapping back after being zapped with weed killer—not that he'd ever use it for fear of killing the other plants or harming the wildlife that hung out in the ferns. They even regrew after he mowed, within days in fact. The only thing that seemed to reduce their numbers—temporarily—was pulling them out by the roots and dumping them on the curb for the recycling truck that came every Tuesday morning. At least the ferns were lush and green. They didn't seem to mind sharing space with the noxious weeds.

After getting all the dandelions he could see on the north side, he dumped them into a dark green plastic bag and moved to the front yard. When he saw the number of the colorful, but noxious, weeds on his tiny front lawn, he shrugged and sighed.

"Darn," he said to himself, dropping the bag on the ground. "It'll take hours to even make a dent in all this."

"Why don't you just buy weed killer?" Ed hadn't noticed Ernie crossing the street. "That's what I do, and you can see, my lawn's dandelion free."

"I hate spraying poisons around willy nilly," Ed said. "It kills more than just the weeds, you know. What about the birds who feed on the insects in the grass?"

Ernie's brows wiggled and he frowned. "You're not gonna guilt me into crawling 'round on my hands and knees pullin' weeds, amigo, so just forget it."

Ed looked around at his yard. The grass was a nice deep green, he thought. And, the little yellow dots were scattered pretty much evenly across the whole expanse of the yard. Not a bad look when you stop and think about it.

"That's exactly what I plan to do," he said. "You want to join me for a cup of coffee to kill time until we go for this brunch Vickers is inviting us to?"

"Sure, why not? I wonder what's so important he has to call a special last minute brunch?"

Ed just shrugged. With PVC's CEO one could never tell. Ernie followed him around back and into the kitchen. He busied himself at the kitchen counter, preparing coffee, freshly ground instead of instant, while Ernie plopped himself down at the small table in the breakfast nook.

When the coffee pot began burbling, Ed joined his friend at the table. The two men sat in silence, enjoying the aroma of coffee that was quickly filling the room. True friends that they were; conversation was unnecessary in moments like this. They were able to enjoy each other's company without the need to fill the silence. It reminded Ed of the camaraderie he'd enjoyed with the men in his platoon in Vietnam. Between patrols, if they weren't in the tent that served as the enlisted club drinking beer, or in someone's hooch playing cards, they'd just lounge around on the sandbags staring up at the sky, not talking, just enjoying being alive, and, for those few moments, not being shot at.