May Day Mayday Mayhem
This cat's meow enlightens the season with reason amid protest.
The fabling “cool-headed cat” leapt from his plush presence on the ottoman and darted for the door precisely as it opened. Bemis shot through the space between footfalls and raced for the city street filled with people carrying signs and emulating what he had seen on TV.
“You be careful, Bemis!” Mr. Jones quipped. “Crazy cat. Can’t say I didn’t warn you!”
Bemis sulked among cars jammed together in gridlock. Horns blared. People shouted. Signs moved up and down the block: PEOPLE FIRST. WHERE’S MY VOTE? NOT MY KING. Nothing like a good old-fashioned protest to get your adrenaline pumping. Bemis narrowed his eyes and strode with feline finesse and total cat-confidence. Then he spotted a man lying facedown and spread-eagle on the ground with a guard sitting on him.
Of course an already tense situation must have taken a bad turn—unexpectedly. Bemis discerned that nobody would want to be flattened on the pavement with another man’s weight between the shoulder blades. Neither man really wanted this outcome. The helmeted guard raised his face shield and glared at Bemis. Having nine unshakable lives emboldened this cat’s meow, and so the small and unpredictable feline feeling fine but drawn with disfavor purred as he approached.
Bemis crept up to the protester’s sideways grimace. Being a story-cat, he could communicate fluently in all the world’s languages. Who ever said fiction was nonsense? For Bemis, being alive in fiction meant being able to merrily face mayhem without fear of fatality, ridicule or arrest. If you can’t talk it out in reality, why not try fiction? The truth—trite or tragic—must be told! Our so-called “cool-headed cat” curled his tail and sat.
“Can’t you do something?” the protester called out to the guard.
“Scram, cat! Go on! Get outta here!” Without success, he shrugged.
The protester yelped. “Make this cat go away, and get the hell off me!”
“Can’t do either,” the guard said. “Gotta have backup.”
Bemis lowered his head and looked into the windows of the protester’s soul, pupils enlarged with fear, anger and loathing. Why not write about such angst? Don’t people like to read for the challenge of figuring out feelings or trying to make sense of questionable behaviors?
“You know I object to what I see,” Bemis said to the protester. “That’s obvious. Right?”
“You can talk?” the protester asked.
The guard radioed for backup. “On the double. Let’s go!”
“So you’re both stuck here doing what you’re doing,” Bemis surmised. “How’d it start?”
“You hear this cat talking?” the protester asked the guard.
“Freedom of speech,” the guard said. “Yep. I hear it.”
“It’s all the same whether I talk or not,” Bemis confessed. “If people don’t think with reason or act with reason, how can we expect them to reason with reason? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“I have reason!” the protester shouted.
“Me too,” the guard said.
“What happened here?” Bemis asked.
Squirming, the protester twisted his face upward, and Bemis could see bits of gravel stuck to his chin. “I was out here with my sign—minding my own business—when this guard jacked me.”
The guard shook his head. “Not true.”
“It is true!” the protester objected. “You have no right—NO RIGHT—to sit on me!”
“Wrong again,” the guard said. “You ever been trained? Doubt it. I have every legal right to detain a threat, even neutralize the danger, should it come to that.”
Bemis refined his question. “What exact actions from each of you led to this—honestly—objectionable outcome?”
“I told you,” the protestor said, “I was busy carrying my sign.”
“You spit in my face,” the guard corrected.
“I was yelling,” the protester said. “Any spit was accidental. And you have that face shield anyway!”
Bemis inspected the protester’s bright red sign with supersized green fluorescent lettering. The top half said MAY, and the bottom half said DAY. MAY DAY. MAYDAY. Either way, the words were meant to solicit a reaction. Fine.
The guard radioed again for backup. “This cat’s got claws. Don’t leave me hangin’!”
“I’ve been watching TV all morning,” Bemis said to the guard, “all week, all month, every day for the last six months actually. Have you been at this job all that time?”
“Six months,” the guard muttered. “Try six years. I’ve seen it all.” His voice trailed off as if he lost his train of thought to stuffing bad memories. “TV,” he uttered, then raised his voice. “Try reality.”
“Look now,” Bemis continued. “You’re in a riptide of people slapping out impersonal insults. Who knows what’ll happen? Pounce or be pounced on. Attack or be attacked.”
“It’s my job,” the guard said. “I’m not complainin’.”
“I am!” shouted the protester with his chin poised on the pavement. “I want to get up!”
“You don’t have to hurt him,” Bemis told the guard.
The guard objected. “I’m sitting on him to detain a threat.”
“This man has nothing but a May Day sign. You can’t possibly feel threatened by that.”
“Nobody spits at me! You try spittin’? You’re goin’ down.”
“He says the spit was accidental,” Bemis said. “Sounds like spittle to me. You know spit and spittle are not the same. There’s a telling difference.”
“HE WAS SHOUTING OBSCENITIES! RIGHT IN MY FACE!”
Bemis used all the emotion of his cat eyes to elicit the protester’s truest response.
“Okay! Okay! I was out of control. But you knocked me down. This gravel’s sticking into my chin. And you’re still sitting right straight on my back—even now.”
“I’m doin’ my job. Detain the threat. Call for backup.” He buzzed his lips.
“I hear you,” Bemis said. “You’re wondering where they are—what’s taking so long.”
“You know I think I’m done talking with you cat,” the guard said. “Take your freedom of speech somewhere else. Scram!”
Bemis nodded at both human beings. What he would give to be a living, breathing person! And to see such miracles of life sometimes take such bad turns. There must be a way to restore their natural integrity. Bemis said to the protestor, “Your spittle became spit. Do you understand how that was the guard’s reasonable perception?”
The protester groaned. “Okay! Yes! I didn’t have to shout in his face!”
Bemis immediately addressed the guard. “Your knocking this unarmed man to the ground may qualify for assault. Words rarely warrant physical force. Are we clear?”
The guard called once more for backup.
“If this were a top priority, they would be here by now,” Bemis said. “And even when they do arrive, you know all this could end up in court. Is that what you want? To try defending yourself against potential assault charges? I think anyone would encourage him to file a lawsuit, and this scene will make the news with your bodycam as the witness. What do the two of you want?”
Finally, the guard and the protester looked into the windows of each other’s souls.
What are we doing?
Neither had verbally asked the question, but Bemis trusted his instinct. He asked the guard, “What would ever force you to abandon your duty?”
The guard shook his head and then widened his eyes. “If my life was threatened.”
Bemis straightened himself and raised his claws. “Don’t make me...”
The guard nodded and slowly stood as the protester sat up, sighing with some relief. Undeterred, the guard locked eyes with Bemis and unsnapped his gun holster.
Bemis spasmed his claws. “Go. You can say I would’ve ripped your face off.”
The guard resnapped his carrier and crossed his arms. “Okay cat. You win.”
“We win,” Bemis corrected. “Include yourself in our reasonable outcome.” Bemis could see the guard’s alerted eyes pivot, so he looked in the same direction. A unit of guards rushed forward with unmatched ferocity.
The protester said, “I won’t press charges. My sign will do my shouting.”
The guard replied, “I’ll watch my temper and de-escalate things. We have a deal?”
“Deal,” the protester said, getting up and repositioning his sign over his head.
“What’s the problem?” a unit guard asked.
The helmeted guard shook hands with the protestor. “We’re cool?”
The protester brushed the last bits of grit from his chin. “I won’t yell.”
“And I won’t snap,” the guard said. “You’re free to go.”
“Free to go?” asked another unit guard. “You called multiple times—all for this?”
“We reasoned things out. Conflict resolution. Mutual respect.”
Bemis left the scene with his tail spiraling above his relaxed back. No need to complicate the delicate truce with his death-defying presence and fictional freedom of speech. He turned a corner and joined a voluminous group. Were they chanting May Day—or—mayday? An intended combination of meanings?
Bemis wasn’t entirely sure, but he liked handling uncertainty—with reasonable reason!
I appreciate your interest. Please feel free to share your thoughts. I’d love to hear from you.
Also, Top in Fiction featured this short story in their Weekly #21 publication. Thank you, TiF!
Glad to see this made it into print. You take some creative (and political) chances here, and it pays off. Keep it up. This is a great piece.
An entertaining way to make an excellent point.
Aesop's fables comes to mind.