Chapter Sixteen - The Night Work

The Misery of Mrs. Geesky Number 16. The Red Reticule.

Sep 29, 2023

BEFORE CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!
Gone, Gone, Gone Beyond, Completely Gone Beyond! Enlighnment Completed.
Does death of the body and mind result in gone, gone beyond, completely gone beyond where enlightenment is completed?
NO. Not necessarily. We do not have to die a physical and mental death such as Oslo does underneath a parked car. Although Mrs. Geesky says, “He is Gone.” Birth and death remind us of the impermanence of the body and mind and helps us let go of attachments to the impermanent world.
Attachment is a condition that inevitably leads to suffering. In the Heart Sutra we empty our attachments of body and mind. And when we are willing and able to practice the Heart Sutra, we let go of our dependence on the body and mind and depend on the perfection of wisdom that leads to a realization of emptiness.

When we depend on perfecting wisdom as we traverse desire, form and formlessness, we attain bodhi svaha…complete enlightenment.

Chapter Sixteen – The Night Work

“Tonight?” She rebuffs herself with an imagined one word question. She knows there is a phone call coming from Mr. Robert Kirkwood. Tonight? She repeats in a determined voice as she responds to her imaginary conversation. No. No. Not tonight! She underpins, endorses her refusal to take any call from anyone.

No. No. Not tonight! She echoes in a louder tone.

Mrs. Geesky is on call. In defense she comments once more time as if she is speaking the Mr. Robert Kirkwood. “If someone dies tonight?” She knows her duty. Mr. Robert Kirkwood along with the dispatcher will call. She knows is first on the call sheet.

“Not tonight.” With fight gives herself a warrant to assure herself. She reviews the list of clients. No. No. No. Not the fat old man. No. No. No. Not that bag of bones. No. No. No. Her desire to run interrupts the list followed by a wet chill breaking out on her face.

“Mr. Samuel.” She emits his name as a damning curse. “Mr. Samuel.” A thin, scrawny looking man who had more false alarms than anyone she knew. “Maybe?” she admits with an absorbing displeasure. Aloud to herself she continues with her resistance.

Maybe. He could pull a fast one and go tonight. It’s a possibility; but she avoids going off the deep end. “Duty does as duty will.”

Putting the irritation aside she looks under the table for the old tom. The cat is nowhere in sight. “This might be a setback.” She imagines the old cat’s reply, ‘Oh don’t worry; that old man is not going to die tonight.’ She takes the words as a pledge and repeats her line, duty does as duty will.

Not showing up for a call is against their rules. Not to bury Oslo is against hers.

From one instance of panic to a diffident instance of triumph she walks outside to roam the neighborhood streets. Convinced those on her list are not ready to die. She roams the streets and yards at all hours in search of the homeless and unfed.

She hoists her two large shoulder bags filled with polystyrene bowls and takes in a deep breath. Food, water, flashlight and bags of seeds, nuts, corn cobs, lettuce, celery enough provisions for the hungry.

The wildlife is her kind; hungry and on their own, alone. It is a long time since she is what she believes is their only safety net. She felt unstoppable.

The neighbors discovered, early on, her unbreakable affinity for the non-human. Their evidence was the white bowls blown through the streets and backyards like Cottonwood seeds. The attraction to cats is her shameless and well-known affection that she confirms to anyone who dares get close enough to hear her say, “I understand them. They understand me.”

In her mind, she never loiters or trespasses as the neighbors are apt to say. She rescues. If she feels a neighbor mistreats a cat or a dog, she steals the creature and translates her theft into her commitment to save the poor and abandoned.

Tonight. Very late. She gathers up her gear and walks along the streets. Feral cats’ parade in zigzag fashion behind her. The hour is of no concern. She marches along the sidewalk toward her destination. Cuts across a side yard. Hears a cat in distress. Says aloud to herself, It is a young one. It is stuck between two trash cans along the side of her neighbor’s house. ‘Thoughtless!’ she condemns in silence. Heedless to fences and property lines she walks down the sidewalk of a neighbor’s house clapping her hands together and making a click with her mouth. ‘This one is a baby.’ The decision to move the trash cans comes easily. She calls out. “Kitty. Kitty. Come on, Kitty, Kitty.” In thoughtless neglect she continues. She never once thinks her singsongs are a disturbance to her sleeping neighbors. She sings. “Kitty, Kitty. Come on, Kitty, Kitty.” The baby kitten is a treasure which she risks everything to get.

Above her head a window opens. She hears a man’s annoyed voice say, “What are you doing?”

“It’s none of your business.” She bites back without looking up at the head that has popped out the window above the metal trash cans.

“It certainly is my business. You’re on my property.” He shoots back with certainty.

“No. I am not!”

“Yes. You are. Get away from my house!”

“No. Your trash cans are in the way. I won’t get away. And there’s nothing you can do. I have the law on my side.”

The man inside the house is struck with incredulous confusion. He steps back from the window and says to his partner. “She won’t get away from the trash cans.”

A voice half-asleep says, “What? You’re kidding. Just tell her to get off our property.”

“I did.”

“And…”

“She said she’s not on our property.”

“What?” the half-asleep partner screams.

There’s a groan followed by the same words, “She said she’s not on our property.”

“What are you talking about?”

A pause followed by, “It’s what she says.”

The sound of someone getting up out of bed followed by harsh words, “Get the hell off of our property.”

“No.”

“No? What? Get off our property!”

The first man pulls his screaming partner back from the window. He looks to see who is rumbling through the trash. “It’s that crazy woman looking for her cats.”

“What?”

“You know…she claps for all the wild cats, and they follow her home.”

“I don’t care if they follow her to the moon. I want her to get off our property.”

“I know.”

“What are you saying?”

“She’s that woman…the cat lady.”

The man turns back to the window, sticks both his head and arms out and shouts. “Get off our property. NOW!”

Silence.

“Did she leave?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, look out the window.”

“I am looking out the window. I don’t see her.”

“Then come back to bed.”

“Come back to bed?”

“Yes. She’s gone. If you don’t see her and you don’t hear her, she’s gone. She got what she came for.”

“And what is that?”

“A cat.”

In a huff the man slams shut the window and in a surly voice agrees. “Yeah. She got what she wanted.”

“Let it go,” the other partner presses for… “Go back to sleep.”

Still snarled and slow to conform the man gets back into bed.

The small, yellow stray is free from the heavy-duty trash can. When Mrs. Geesky moved the can, it ran out and disappeared into the night. ‘It takes time for them to trust. He may make it to the cat door.’ Buoyed by the cat’s freedom she returns to her march on the sidewalk with tools tucked under one arm and her camera around her neck.

Some neighbors complain. Some avoid. Others still wish her harm and want revenge. Most no longer offer goodwill as they did at first.

“A cat door in this neighborhood could be a problem for you. You risk waking up to more than a stray cat. A skunk or a rat is a real possibility.” She paid no attention to their friendly warnings. Saw them as intrusions. Took them for malice and nastiness. The neighborly advice was heard as rebuke and chastisement, something to fight against and defeat.

If confronted, she increased her trespassing and transgressions onto the neighbor’s properties. Leaving more white bowls, throwing food on neighbors’ lawns, banging on doors with an impertinent insistence that the neighbor had one of her strays. She did as she wished. This impertinence was a clear signal to her neighbors she lacked common sense.

From time to time, an unwary neighbor, naïve and gullible, offered advice only to pay for it in the end with bully blows back, finding numerous rounds of polystyrene bowls dotting the parkway luring raccoons and skunks to nest in the unsuspecting neighbor’s yard. The neighbors periodically called the authorities; the calls never led to satisfactory change.

She did what she wanted.

This knowledge was shared by and between the neighbors who had an altercation whether over the cats, parking spaces on the street or running into her in a grocery store.

She was known as either “Mrs. Geesky,” said with a miserable facial expression and a disdainful smirk or just an emphatic “OH, HER!” accompanied by a stern, poker face of condemnation. Little else was known about her and what was known was unlikely to balance out in her favor. And besides, when there was so little to go by, the neighbors, with willful agreement of their own accord, made things up.

The stories were not meant to be malicious. Her way with cats was admired especially by other cat lovers in the neighborhood. But when she started to abduct a family pet or barge at an unsuspecting neighbor with a seething accusation of mistreatment, things turned dark.

Over time the more community-oriented neighbors recognized that Mrs. Geesky dismissed all of it. She, with angry pleasure, admitted, even forewarned newcomers who didn’t know her, that her neighbors thought she was crazy.

Her offensive approach to offer any sign of credibility to the stories was disarming. She did not care whether it was true or false. For all but a few, this disarming tactic made her look a little malicious. But a little malicious made her sound mischievous when many neighbors felt she was much more disruptive and dangerous.

Tonight is no exception. The two men, now back in bed, reasoned her banging the trash cans late at night to help a stray cat was some sort of oddball kindness. They were, however, shaken by the encounter enough to call in a police report before they were able to fall back to sleep.

They both agreed, “She’s crazy.”

The cat troops traipse behind Mrs. Geesky as she strides towards the dead body of her dear Oslo. A skunk scurries out of the light from under the streetlamps and a mother raccoon with babies stands guard as the coon hustles her brood up a tree.

“I won’t hurt you.” Mrs. Geesky assures the mother coon. Checking on her strays. “You guys are tough, but no match for a raccoon with babies. Stay away from her.”

When she reaches the car where her dead Oslo lay, she stops. Puts her tools down on the curbside. Walks around to the street side of the car and kneels to look for him underneath. To steady her balance, she presses one hand against the car door and sets off the car alarm. Untouched by the loud, blaring sound she returns to the curb side and looks underneath a second time. She shines her Smith & Wesson pen light and sees his decomposing body.

“Is that our car?” the woman asks as she shakes the shoulder of the sleeping man beside her.

“What’s going on?” he says startled from a deep sleep.

“Can’t you hear it? Is that our car?”

Following a snort, he says. “How do I know?”

She shakes his shoulder again. “Get up! Get up and check!”

“OK. OK. You don’t have to man handle me. I was asleep. For heaven’s sake!”

The man gets up and raises the blinds on the window facing the street. His car is parked across the street in the shadows of the lamp post.

“What’s going on?” the woman says who sits up and turns toward the window.

“You’re not going to believe this. There’s a whole bunch of cats out there.”

“Is it our car?”

“It looks like it is. But I don’t know…no…wait a minute…I see someone near the front tire.”

“Maybe they are going to steal our tires?” warns the woman from her bed. “That just happened down the block.”

“It’s…I am not sure…wait…wait the figure is going around to the other side of the car. Looks like they have a flashlight or something. Something is…wait a minute. They’re taking pictures!” “I am calling the police.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I am going to get dressed. Where’s my pants? Call the police. I’ll go out.”

“No. Don’t go out until the police get here.”

“But the alarm…”

“Forget the alarm. Just wait until the police arrive.” The woman puts her bare feet on the floor and makes another suggestion. “Get the car keys and click the alarm off. You can do that.”

“OK. OK.” The man goes to find his keys.

Mrs. Geesky sets the camera next to her unrolled bag on the street. She gets down on her knees and shines her Smith & Wesson under the car. Relieved his body is still there. She wants to memorialize the scene.

The whole scene includes Mrs. Geesky lying face down with her legs straight and out into the street while her head and arms are hidden under the car. She is on her belly, arms forward and stiff, camera flat and steady. With the penlight shining towards the dark lump against the inside tire she begins to take pictures of Oslo…. his dead, still body huddled…. pressed up against the inside front tire. She blinks and holds her eyes closed for a moment. With her last take she notices the car alarm has gone silent. She blows air between her open lips and then turns her cheek to rest her face on the cold pavement. It takes her a little time…. a straggled moment until she turns her head to press her forehead to the ground.

“He’s dead.” She speaks moving her lips against the surface of the hard road. “He’s gone.” She says this time with her head and mouth facing the curb where she knows the strays are waiting. The message went out and she and the cats knew.

She twists and shimmies her hips and torso and pushes with her arms until she is out from under the vehicle. Up against the wheel rim of the car she looks at the pictures. She runs her finger across the smooth surface of the picture on the screen and identifies the image. “It’s him. It’s Oslo.” She says with a sad sigh of relief. “Oslo is dead.”

In a lucid intention she puts on the leather gloves, picks up the shovel from her array of tackle and with great care angles herself to slide the blade of the shovel under the darkened dead body; she pulls the body out. “There you are. There you are, Oslo.”

She now speaks only to herself. “Such a good boy. Oh, sweet Oslo. So thin.” She lays the shovel down and steadies the lifeless body of Oslo on the blade until she is up on her knees. “There. There.” She says to Oslo as she holds his body still with one gloved hand against the shovel’s blade. “Goodbye.” She whispers. And then whispers his name, “Oslo.” And with these words she slips his remains into the dark, green bag.

Nothing is ambiguous. All doubt disappears. Mrs. Geesky sits back against the outside of the wheel rim. She pulls the bag toward her and folds the top over Oslo’s stiff body; holding him on her lap, with eyes closed, she rests.