Harris and Me

cat briefly earlier, during milking when Louie squirted milk into his mouth, but I hadn’t appreciated just how large he was; he was the size of a collie, maybe just a bit bigger, with large forelegs and huge, round pads on his feet. On the end of each ear there was a bedraggled tuft and his coat was spotted, almost dappled.
Knute steered the team toward a gate in a pasture fence that led us directly past the front door of the barn and Harris leaned across the space between the horses to talk quietly.
“You don’t want to touch Buzzer.”
I nodded. “You’re right. I don’t want to touch him.” It seemed an odd thing to say since Buzzer was sitting down on the ground and I was what felt like eight feet in the air.
“He ain’t normal or nothing,” Harris continued. “Louie found him in the woods one spring when he was looking for wood to cut. Buzzer was just a kitten then and Louie brought him back in his pocket. He grew some.”
“I guess...”
I was going to say more but we were right next to the door and the cat suddenly bounced up—it seemed without effort—and landed on the rear end of the horse I was riding on.
I started, expecting the horse to react, but nothing happened. Bill just kept plodding on with Buzzer sitting on his butt, leaning out a bit to look ahead around me.
“No matter what he does, don’t you touch him,” Harris repeated. “Only Louie can touch him. Buzzer can be a little edgy about being touched if it ain’t Louie.”
I nodded and whispered to him, “Why is he riding on the horse with me?”
“He likes it when Pa mows ’cause he can get the mice. That’s why I wanted to sneak out. He makes it hard to catch the mice because he’s so fast. Just watch what I do and do the same. Sometimes we can get out without him if he’s sleeping, but if he sees the mower he knows what’s going to happen and he comes along and ruins it for everybody.”
I wasn’t sure what Buzzer was going to ruin—I couldn’t, for instance, understand why we were going to get mice. As far as I was concerned Buzzer could have them all. I was ready to get off and let him have the horse as well.
Knute had stopped at the gate and Harris jumped down, opened it, closed it after we were through, and scrambled back up on Bob while we were still moving.
Once through the gate Knute turned the team and we walked slowly along the fence that went next to the driveway back out toward the main road. I kept a leery eye over my shoulder, watching Buzzer, but the big cat just sat there, looking at the sky and flying birds while the horses walked.
In a quarter mile or less we came to a stand of densely packed alfalfa almost waist high, and Knute stopped the horses at the corner of the field and lowered the sickle bar. He took a can of oil from a little holder beneath the seat on the mower and squirted oil all along the sickle bar, then sat once more and worked a lever to engage the clutch.
Harris got down and motioned for me to do the same. “We got to walk in back of the mower now and catch mice.”
It was, finally, too much. “Harris, why do we want the mice?”
“For the money.”
“What money?”
“Louie. He pays us a penny for each two mice we get him. Except for Buzzer, of course. Louie don’t pay Buzzer nothing ’cause Buzzer he just ruins ’em all to pieces and won’t give them up anyway. Last summer I tried to take one away from him and get the money for it and he like to killed me. That’s why I say don’t you touch him nor take none of his mice.”
“I won’t.”
I was going to ask why Louie paid for the mice—I thought, after watching at breakfast one and breakfast two and lunch, that he might eat them—but Knute made a squeaking sound by pursing his lips and the horses started forward, pulling the mower. With the clutch engaged, the wheels drove the sickle bar back and forth as the mower moved and sharp, triangular-shaped blades snick-snicked back and forth rapidly and cut the hay as neat as scissors.
I stood behind with Harris and watched the hay falling back across the sickle bar. The motion was mesmerizing. The bar slid along cutting and the alfalfa dropped and dropped in a never-ending row.
“Come on.” Harris started following the sickle bar, walking eight or so feet in back of it. “Watch for ’em now, keep watching...”
I was more involved in watching Buzzer. He was between Harris and me, walking along, studying the newly fallen grass ahead alertly, taking one careful step after another. Suddenly he pounced, rising in an arc and down, with his feet buried in the grass. He brought one pad up with a mouse hooked in a razorsharp claw, gave me what I took to be a threatening look, and popped the mouse into his mouth. If he chewed at all, it was just a single bite and down it went.
“Rats,” Harris said. “See? Right there goes half a cent. He always gets ’em first. I think he hears ’em or something.”
He waved for me to follow and I stepped forward, keeping well wide of Buzzer. Harris hadn’t taken two steps when he jumped, forward and down, grabbed at the grass, and raised his fist clutching a handful of grass and a mouse. “Got one!”
I nodded but noted that Buzzer was watching as well, with a faintly proprietary air, and I wondered just which mice he might consider his and which he might consider mine.
For the time being it didn’t matter. The alfalfa that fell back across the sickle bar was so thick I didn’t understand how Harris or Buzzer could see