Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ The Cat's Meow ❯ To Pile ( Chapter 2 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

The Cat’s Meow
Chapter Two: To Pile

“Meow.”

Wolfwood and Meryl stood impatiently next to Vash and Millie, who were kneeling on the fine grains of sand that was the ground. They were smiling and laughing as they stroked the stray cat’s black fur. Its watery green eyes stared playfully up at them as it tried to bat the wool mitten out of Millie’s hand. She swung the glove like a pendulum in front of the cat as he leapt into the air. Too bad; he missed.

Vash chuckled when the cat landed on all fours (as cats always do) and turned around to try again. “Lucky thing that you keep your hat and gloves with you, Millie,” he said. “Otherwise, this kitty here would have missed the chance to get some exercise!”

“Yeah, really fortunate,” muttered Meryl, folding her arms across her chest. “Come on, you two! We were on our way to a murder scene, or did you forget?”

“Oh, Meryl,” sighed Millie as she stood. “You never have time for any fun. Life’s going to pass you by.”

“That’s right, girl!” Wolfwood said, deciding to enter the conversation. He slapped Meryl lightly on the back and continued, “Before you know it, you’re gonna’ be old and wrinkly!” He jumped backwards to avoid her fist and twirled in a circle laughing. Of course, he could not stop there. “Someday, people are gonna’ look at you and whisper, ‘That’s Old Lady Meryl. She never was any fun, that ol’ Meryl. Always cranky, she was. Never go to her house on Halloween…she hands out celery sticks instead of Mars Bars!’”

“Why you…!”

Meryl chased the priest up and down the street several times, turning different shades of red in the process. Wolfwood, however, seemed to be enjoying himself. He encouraged her anger by shouting “Hurry up, Old Lady Meryl!” and “You’ll never be able to catch me without your walking stick!” or eve “Faster, old one, faster!”

Vash finally rose to his feet, scratching the head of the purring cat that he held in his arms. He sweat dropped as he saw Meryl taking out two of her single shots and laugh hysterically. “Gee,” he said, watching Wolfwood jump around like a River Dancer to avoid the continuous fire of Meryl’s guns, “I sure wouldn’t want to be in his place!”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Mr. Vash!” laughed Millie. “You’ve been in Mr. Wolfwood’s situation before! Remember the time when you…”

“Ahem,” Vash interrupted, “I’d rather not remember any of those times, thank you.” His expression turned thoughtful as he continued to gaze at his two dancing and shooting friends. “Hey,” he said, “didn’t she just complain about us messing around and wasting time?”

“You’re right!” Millie put her fingers in her mouth and gave a sharp whistle. “Hey, Mr. Wolfwood, Meryl!” She waited for them to come to a halt and then said, “Now who’s delaying our arrival at the scene of the crime?”

Meryl looked rather flustered and haughtily said, “If it weren’t for Nicholas’s rude comments, then I most certainly wouldn’t have been forced into taking such actions.” She turned to face Wolfwood and snapped, “What kid of priest are you anyway?”

Wolfwood smiled and put a hand behind his head. He couldn’t suppress a laugh when he replied, “One of a kind!”

The two men burst into fits of hysterics. Vash almost dropped the cat he was holding as he doubled over. Millie, however, looked worriedly at Meryl and said, “Um, Meryl? Perhaps you should put those firearms away…”

“I…don’t…know…what…you’re…talking…about!” said Meryl through clenched teeth. Her hand quivered violently as she tightened her grip on the two guns in her hands. It took a minute, but Millie managed to wrestle them away from her.

“Breath, Meryl,” Millie soothed. “Breath.”

“I think,” Wolfwood managed to say between fits, “that it’s time I brought you guys to Sam’s house.”

After several minutes during which a heated debate between Vash and Meryl on whether or not the stray cat could come with them, the five of them (yes, Vash won the argument) made their way to a building on the other side of town. It wasn’t at all hard to find. Since word had gotten round that Sam Cloe was dead, the residents of May had begun to gather curiously outside of the old smithy where the deceased man had lived and worked all his life. When our five friends arrived, approximately thirty people could be seen milling around. They were trying to peer through the windows, the door…trying to catch a glimpse of what a murder scene looked like.

The outside of the house and workshop was nothing spectacular. A couple glassless windows, a thick wooden door. The man’s living quarters branched out behind and to the side of the smithy, giving a passerby the impression that the owner had quite a sum of money when, in fact, he did not. Little could be seen through the windows as they stood at the back of the crowd, but Millie and Vash (being the tallest) managed to report that there was movement going on inside the place. This, of course, was a murder scene so the idea that came over them was that there was a sheriff and his deputies, perhaps even some town volunteers, in Sam Cloe’s home, trying to decide what could be done.

Millie chocked back a sob as she gasped, “Look at all of them. All of the townspeople. They’re all pointing and laughing and gossiping. Not a single one of them looks even remotely sorry that someone they have known all their lives has been…has been…” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word “murdered”, but her friends knew what it was that she was saying all the same. For these people that had grown up with and worked with Sam to show not even the slightest bit of remorse for his death was absolutely preposterous. And now that they stood outside of the place where his fate had been sealed, talking about he latest fashions for women, the baby Susie that had been conceived the night before and what kind of game their children would play later that day, was all more than Millie could bear. She put her face into her hands and sobbed like a child whose birthday had been forgotten.

“There, there, Millie,” Meryl whispered, taking a step towards her insurance partner. She stroked her hair gently, proving that even she could show some sort of emotion besides anger. The truth of the matter was that she was also strongly appalled by the crowd’s actions on such a dismal morning. And the two girls weren’t the only ones.

The clearly outraged priest jumped up onto one of the white-stone walls that separated every building in the city. Though nobody yet saw him, as he was still in the back of the crowd, they would soon. He examined them all from a different, higher perspective, trying to find at least one person who might be mourning the death of the blacksmith. He gave the crown a good twice-over, and still found no one besides his friends with even a single tear in their eyes.

He clenched his fists heatedly and forced his eyes shut. “What is with you people?” he whispered, loud enough so only the ones scattered in the back could hear him. They turned their heads. They seemed to look him up and down for a minute and then, after realizing that he was nobody they knew, returned to their gossip.

This only made Wolfwood more infuriated.

“Don’t turn your dry-eyed heads away from me!” His eyes flew open and he put a fist in the air, shaking it fiercely. This time, every one of them could hear him and talk died down to nothing louder than a breath.

“That’s right,” continued Wolfwood, “all of you! You woke up this morning happy and with not a care in the world; exactly how you wanted to be. But then, when you realized that Same Cloe, your town’s blacksmith who always helped you out of a jam, had been murdered, what did you do? You froze in your places out of shock and felt big lumps in your throats as the tears fell down your red cheeks. Who knows, some of you might even have fallen to the ground because you had been struck in the heart so badly by this news that your legs turned to mush. Am I right? Am I!?”

He took a moment to breathe and glance at their reactions. Some of them looked worried; others nervous. Several of them looked downright angry, if not murderous. But whatever their individual expression, they all avoided Wolfwood’s gaze.

He shook his head in disgust. “Of course I’m right. I mean, a man that you’ve grown up with, a man that you’ve seen everyday is dead. No, he’s worse than dead; he’s just been brutally killed in cold blood. Who wouldn’t cry at the news of a life-long friend’s vicious murder?

“But, wait a minute.” He stepped down off the wall and walked over to a young woman. “She has no tears in her eyes!” He whirled around and faced a man who towered over him. “And this man has not cried in a long time! His nose isn’t even red! In fact,” he said, scrambling back up on the wall, “I don’t see a single face of remorse. Not any salty drops of water rolling down anyone’s cheeks.” His hands dropped to his sides and he hung his head. His voice lowered to a sound barely louder than a whisper, so low, that all of them strained to hear his words. “Do you mean to tell me that I was wrong?”

And so it was that Vash gave the cat to Meryl and leapt onto the stone to put a hand on the exasperated priest’s shoulder. Wolfwood himself acknowledged this gesture by falling to a crouched position, his bangs covering his face. They could all see tears dancing in his eyes.

“Of course you’re wrong, Nicholas,” said Vash. All eyes drew to him now. “You’re a stranger in this town. You helped a young, happy couple by blessing their precious new born daughter, earning their respect.” He looked at the people staring at him and glared at them all. “But you are still a stranger.” His voice was now a soft yell, filled with a chocking noise that was holding back a sob. “You have never been in this town before, never known its people, and yet you cry for a dead man that you have never met. But all these people, who have known him so long, dare to laugh outside his house, the house in which he was murdered. Why do you do this, Nicholas? Why do you let tears fall from your eyes when you never even met this man?”

He now faced the people head on, looking at them as they stared at the ground and shoved their hands into their pockets. He started to talk to the people right out. “Because he cares. He gets a sharp pain in his heart when he realizes that an innocent life has been stolen from this place and the corpse’s fellow townspeople do not shed a single tear for him. Is it because you hated him? Did he ever hurt you? Were his skills as a blacksmith not good enough to keep you satisfied? Or do you just not care?

“Yes, my friend here is a stranger. But he’s a stranger with enough compassion to realize that to cry when someone dies is to help the dead man’s soul build a stairway of tears to Heaven.”

“But, wait, my friend,” started Wolfwood. He stood up and stared at Vash. “You too are a stranger! And are those sobs I hear in your voice? Do you also feel the pain that I feel? Of course you do! Because you are a stranger.”

It was more than the townspeople could take. About nine women burst into tears and had to lean against their husbands for support. A few of the men allowed a few drops of salt water to flow from their eyes, but they did so silently. All the same, the majority of the crowd turned red with embarrassment and guilt. They knew that, the two men, the two strangers, standing atop the wall were right. They should have cried. They should have prayed for Sam Cloe’s soul to reach the next life safely. But they hadn’t.

“Stop cryin’! All of ya’s!”

All the eyes, red and not so red, looked at the man who was sitting atop a wall opposite that of Wolfwood’s and Vash’s. He was a small, greasy haired man and held a bottle of booze that could have quite possibly been glued to his hand. His hair was a dusty brown color, speckled with grey, and the dry eyes that were plastered too far down his head were a deep hazel. No one was near him for the obvious reason that he reeked of liquor and it was apparent that he hadn’t washed in days, if not weeks. Wolfwood immediately recognized him as Bob, one of the men from the inn.

He took a swig from the bottle and wiped his lips with the back of a dirty hand. After a nauseating belch, he said, “Have you all suddenly gone soft? It’s exactly because they are strangers that they cry for ol’ Sam! They didn’t know what he was like. Drank all the time, trying to get his hands on women,” (hear, Meryl muttered, “Sounds like someone I know…”) “pissing in the streets. Nothing like rape or murder, but all the other bad stuff. Never did a good thing in his life, Sam didn’t.”

“That’s not true!” shouted one of the women. “Sam helped me and my husband load our wagon with meats and spices when we were going off to trade with another town!”

“That’s right!” yelled a man. “And he made me the best sword I’ve ever seen! And he made it as a gift for my birthday!”

“What, are you defending him and these two strangers now?” Bob barked. Drops of spittle flew from his mouth and landed on the sand and stuck to his un-kept beard. “Wow, two good deeds and a man is redeemed from a lifetime of sin. Tell me, father,” he cocked his head towards Wolfwood, “is that how it works? Loading a wagon and remembering a birthday fix everything and turn an evil man into a good one? Or am I being too just?”

“I’m sure there were other good things that he had done,” growled Wolfwood. “There is no man or woman alive who has not sinned. Repent off all sins comes in the final hour of life. For all we know, he could have taken a stranger off the streets and given him a place to rest for the night. One simple, good deed can make all the difference in the Lord’s eyes.”

“If that’s so, and the Lord is really watching, then, whoever brought that blade down upon Sam’s skin is forever damned,” said a voice. It came from the doorway to Sam’s house and an excited hush fell over the crowd. For there, in the front of the smithy stood Tom Mitchel, the sheriff of May.

He walked over the stone wall that Vash and Wolfwood were standing on. He glanced from them to the insurance girls, to the cat in the sand, to Bob, and back to them again. After doing this several times, he said, “I knew Sam Cloe, we all did, but I knew him best. He’d always come over to the office when he was in a fix. He wasn’t the best man in the world, but he certainly wasn’t the worst. I want to thank you two,” he motioned towards the priest and the tall man, “for at least getting some tears out of these folks. God knows they aren’t the most emotional lot, but you sure got ‘em thinking.”

He turned around to address the crowd. “Okay, folks, you all know Sam’s dead, so there’s no need to stick around! I want all of you to get back to your normal businesses. But, leave no children unsupervised and I suggest going around in pairs. At night, lock you windows and bolt your doors. I don’t want to get another message telling me that someone’s been killed.”

The people muttered and whispered to each other, but started breaking up and stroll casually and slowly down the street.

“As for you four,” Sheriff Tom said, “I have two things to say to you. First off all, thank you for finding my cat.”

“Oh, this is your cat!” smiled Millie. She bent over and picked up the feline, giving it a last pat on the head before handing it to the sheriff. “We found it wandering around outside the inn. I’m glad it’s got a home!”

The sheriff laughed. “Yes, well, I’m glad that there is at least one thing that’s good to start off my day. Grisly murder, this is. Never seen anything like it.” He accepted his cat from Millie and continued, “Anyhow, the second thing I wanted to tell you is that you should probably get out of this town. This isn’t the time for strangers wandering around; you might get accused of Sam Cloe’s murder or some’ in’.”

“That’s exactly right, sheriff!” growled Bob. He’d gotten up off the wall and meandered over to them, smiling ghastly. He pointed at the blond man and said, “You see, this here is no ordinary stranger. This here is the one and only Vash the Stampede!”

Those few people that were still hovering around froze and muttered gasps of surprise. “Vash the Stampede!?”

Bob nodded and snickered. “That’s right. Feast your eyes on the one and only Humanoid Typhoon. You’re a good actor, Stampede. Pretending to be all caring about Sam’s death. But I see right through that mask of yours. You know what they say, sheriff, something about the criminal always returning to the scene of the crime?”

Vash looked very surprised. He’d been accused of deaths and murders before, but not after crying over them. How could anyone be so crude?

Meryl, however, jumped right in to defend her friend. She might think him an idiot, but she wasn’t about to let some drunk land him in jail! “What do you know?” she shouted. “Vash happened to be at the inn all of last night, I’ll have you know!”

“And how can you be sure, little lady?” asked Bob. “Were you with him ALL night? Are you his whore?”

“Why you…I am not his whore!”

“Enough!” cried the sheriff. “I will not have this kind of argument going on in my streets! You,” he said, pointing to Bob. “You go and find a washing trough to dunk your head in. And you four…you’d better come with me.”

Wolfwood looked taken aback. “Surely you don’t think we did this?”

“I don’t know what to think. What I do know is that Vash the Stampede happens to be in this town right when a mutilated body turns up, and I can’t ignore that. Now, why don’t you…”

Sheriff Tom was cut off, however, as he quite suddenly passed out on the ground. No one had hit him, he wasn’t bleeding, and the afternoon sun was not blazing very brightly. He’d just collapsed on to the sand!

To be continued…

A/N: Wow, my laziness regarding homework is obviously taking its toll on me. I should really try harder at summer school…I mean, come one! How could I know how to write a check? I’m only 14! *rolls eyes* Stupid retard teachers…anyway, here’s the second chapter. Posted only because I procrastinate my homework more than I should, this chapter has got to be my favorite. I just love the gospel Nicholas and Vash deliver. I find it softening on their characters. Not to mention the fact that I get the feeling that every one of those villagers is wearing the traveling confessional Wolfwood carries around on their heads. God, I love that thing! Yeah…that’s it…I’m done with my incessant rambling…I swear I am…look at me stopping…blah…