Qwilleran said, “I suppose you have Saturdays off, unlike us overworked columnists.”
“I thought you were on vacation, Qwill. When I read your column today, I assumed the squirrels had written it for you!”
“Don’t be too surprised. They’re smarter than you think.”
“Do you have something in mind for Saturday?” Barter asked.
“Yes. Lunch at the Nutcracker Inn. They have the best Reuben sandwich this side of the Hudson River.”
“Good! Do I dare inquire of your ulterior motive?”
“I’d like some information on the Black Forest Conservancy.”
“Shall I bring the files?”
“Only those between your ears, Bart.”
Before leaving for the opera Friday night, Qwilleran played the video that Hannah had lent him. He was familiar with the plot, characters and songs, but it refreshed his memory. Koko was duly impressed, yowling—in either pleasure or pain—at the rousing opening number: Oh it is a glorious thing to be a pirate king! Yum Yum expressed her boredom by sitting with her back to the screen and twitching her ears.
No opening night on Broadway could surpass in excitement the event that took place in the auditorium of the Mooseland high school. Everyone dressed for a very special occasion, a few in long dresses and dinner jackets. The lobby was conversational bedlam, since everyone knew someone in the cast: relative, friend, neighbor, coworker, customer, patient or parishioner.
The parking lot was jammed, and Qwilleran used his press card in order to park with the dignitaries and handicapped. The lobby was teeming with showgoers too excited to go to their seats. Qwilleran pushed through the crowd, nodding and saluting.
At a table in the lobby, orders were being taken for pirate socks, knee-high and tri-colored, with proceeds to underwrite the choral club expenses. The socks, it was predicted, would become the tourist fad of the year.
He also indulged in his favorite vice, eavesdropping:
“I always love the pirates! They’re so friendly!”
“I love the policemen. They’re so good-hearted and a little timid.”
“There’s Elizabeth Hart. Where’s Derek Cuttlebrink? They’re always together.”
“There’s Dr. Prelligate with that interior designer.”
“Don’t look now, but the man with a moustache is Mr. Q.”
As he walked down the aisle to the fifth row, he wished Polly were there; she knew the opera by heart. He wondered who would be sitting next to him—that is, if Cathy had been able to give his ticket away. To his surprise it was Cathy herself.
“I’ve never seen an opera, and I decided it would be part of my education.”
“This isn’t Pagliacci or Tosca, you know. It’s a musical farce. Do you appreciate farce?”
“I don’t know. What is it exactly?”
She was frank and eager to learn, and he admired her for that. “It’s a comedy in which ridiculous elements are treated seriously. Prepare to suspend your disbelief, your common sense, and even your sanity.”
“It sounds like fun,” she said soberly. “What’s it about?”
“Do you know Penzance?”
“I don’t think so.”
He had to talk fast. The orchestra members were looking expectant. Latecomers were rushing to their seats. “It’s a town on the coast of England, once a hangout for pirates. A youth named Frederick, who was supposed to be apprenticed to a pilot, was mistakenly apprenticed to pirates, because his baby-sitter was hearing-impaired. Now, at the age of twenty-one, he is being released from his contract. His baby-sitter, who had been so embarrassed that she went into piratical service with him, also quits and tags along after her young master. Her role is sung by Hannah Hawley, who is living in one of the Nutcracker cabins.”
“Mrs. Hawley was written up in your column this week!” Cathy exclaimed. “I’d love to see her doll house things.”
Uncle Louie, as the conductor was affectionately known, came to the podium as the lights dimmed and bowed to the audience with a mischievous smile. Then he turned, rapped twice with his baton, raised both arms, and plunged the orchestra into the overture. The frenzied opening bars had the audience smiling as they settled in for three hours of bouncy music, a few romantic melodies, witty lyrics, and a madcap plot . . . all except Cathy. She was not sure what to expect or how to react.
The curtain rose on a rollicking band of pirates on the beach at Penzance, celebrating Frederick’s release. All wore red bandannas on their heads—and striped knee socks hand-knitted for the occasion. Ruth-poor-Ruth, their maid-of-all-work, was padded and costumed to look dumpy and dowdy.
“Is that Mrs. Hawley?” Cathy whispered.
Her solo explaining her mistake was delivered with full-throated verve and conviction, and applause brought down the house—not only because the house was filled with Hawleys and Scottens.
Another favorite was the stuffy major general with his over-trimmed uniform and wooden-soldier gait. His patter song, delivered with the speed of an automatic weapon, also delighted the audience. His beautiful daughters (twelve members of the women’s chorus) fluttered about the beach in long dresses, hats and gloves. One of them, a lyric soprano, fell in love with the ex-pirate, a romantic tenor. So far, so good. Qwilleran glanced at Cathy; she was sitting there solemnly, being educated.
Then the problems arose. The other pirates (twelve members of the men’s chorus) wanted to marry the major general’s daughters. At the same time, an error in reading the fine print of Frederick’s contract had released him too soon. And the major general told a heinous lie as the curtain fell on Act One.
These were all twists of plot that sent a happy audience to the lobby for a glass of punch during intermission.
Qwilleran said, “I’m going to the lobby. Would you like to stretch?” He avoided asking her what she thought of the opera, so far. Instead, he said, “Roger MacGillivray tells me you’re going to be a dance hall girl in the reenactment. How did you get involved?”
“My boyfriend is playing one of the river-drivers. They came down from French Canada to ride the logs downstream in spring. He teaches romance languages at the high school, so he’ll speak French. They wear red sashes and red knitted caps.”
“What do the dance hall girls do?”
“Hang around the saloon, and the customers say ‘chip, chip’ to us. That’s the 1860 equivalent of the wolf whistle.”
Before he could comment, the Abernethys appeared, and he introduced her as “Cathy of the Nutcracker staff,” adding, “Sorry, Cathy, I don’t know your last name.”
“Hooper, of the Trawnto Beach Hoopers.”
Brightly Nell said, “My name was Cooper, from the Purple Point Coopers. My cousin married a Hooper.”
“That was my aunt, and I was flower girl. That was the wedding where the cake exploded!” With difficulty, she suppressed giggles.
Nell was overwhelmed with mirth. “It was supposed to shoot off fireworks, but it backfired! The tablecloth caught fire and my cousin poured champagne punch on it!”
“Everyone was screaming!”
“The bride’s mother fainted!”
The two women were rocking with laughter, and the two men looked at each other and shook their heads.
Nell regained her composure enough to explain, “The Pickax Picayune headlined it ‘Hooper-Cooper Nuptials’ and didn’t say a word about the explosion. Now, whenever there’s a big wedding, we call it a real Hooper-Cooper!”
Qwilleran said, “Why don’t I find this event funny?”
The women said in unison, “Because you weren’t there!”
The lights blinked, summoning the audience back to their seats. As they moved toward the auditorium, Nell said, “Don’t forget the MCCC luncheon, Qwill.”
“Are you having fireworks?” he asked. He wanted to inquire about her connection with MCCC, but this was not the appropriate time.
As he and Cathy waited for the lights to dim and for Uncle Louie to return to
the podium, she asked, “What happens in the second act?”
“Deceit, vengeance, intrigue, and a happy ending. The pirates battle the cops, who win on a technicality.” He handed her the lyrics in booklet form. “Take these home and read them, and you’ll appreciate W. S. Gilbert’s freewheeling way with rhyme. Who else would rhyme lot of news with hypotenuse?”
“Thank you. Shall I return it?”
“No. It’s part of your education.”
When the last triumphant chorus ended, the hall exploded in applause, cheers and whistles.
Cathy was glad that the pirates turned out to be decent after all.
“That’s Gilbert and Sullivan,” Qwilleran said.
“I loved their socks!”
She thought the policemen in their brass buttons and bobby hats were adorable. “But I felt so sorry for Ruth-poor-Ruth!”
“Don’t waste your tears. At the end she went off with the police chief and was winking at the audience.”
Hannah Hawley was the hit of the show—and not just because the auditorium was packed with Hawleys and Scottens.
Arriving at the cabin, Qwilleran could hear the Howling Chorus even as he put the key in the door. He realized it was not exactly delight at seeing him; it was a reminder that their elevenses were overdue. Automatically, he scanned the premises for catly mischief, just as Nick Bamba scanned a vacated guest room for missing lightbulbs and dripping hot water faucets. There were no shredded newspapers or disarranged pens and pencils, but two items had been pushed off the shelf over the sofa: Hannah’s video of Pirates and Bruce’s copy of Black Walnut. The latter reminded him there were some black walnut cookies in the refrigerator, and he brewed a cup of coffee.
chapter nine
On Saturday, Qwilleran was “up betimes,” as they used to say three centuries ago. What, he wondered, had happened to that word? It was still in the dictionary. If Polly were there, they would have a lively discussion about it. He missed her most on weekends. Later, he would drive over to her place to cheer up the cats, who missed her too.
Meanwhile he had coffee and a thawed breakfast roll on the porch. The cats were nearby, washing up after their own breakfast when, suddenly, they went on ear-alert. Someone was coming along the creek footpath.
It was the small boy from Cabin Two. He approached the screen saying, “Kitty! Kitty! You found your mittens!”
The cats remained stiffly aloof from this alien creature who was larger than a squirrel and smaller than a human.
Qwilleran started to say, “Does your mother—?”
“Danny! Danny!” screamed a shrill voice, and a frail-looking woman came hurrying along the path. “I told you not to bother people!”
“I wanna see the kitties!”
She snatched his wrist and dragged him home while he looked back in disappointment.
In preparation for Barter’s luncheon visit, he had some exploring to do and was pleased that he had brought his trail bike. The dense woods called the Black Forest Conservancy adjoined the Nutcracker Inn to the south and stretched for miles and miles.
He put on the biking gear that always scared the cats—tight-fitting green-and-purple suit, spherical yellow helmet, large black sun goggles—and wheeled his bike to Cabin One, where he rapped on Hannah’s back door.
She greeted him with a small cry of alarm and then laughed.
“Oh, it’s you, Qwill! I thought it was someone from outer space. Come in!”
“Not today, thanks. I have miles to bike before noon. Just stopped to say that your ovation last night was well deserved.”
“I had a lot of friends in the audience.”
“Friends or no friends, you created a believable character, and you have a splendid voice!”
“Thank you,” she said graciously, with the aplomb of one who believes in herself.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow night at dinner. I suggest we all meet here and walk up the hill.”
Qwilleran pedaled east on Gully Road with farmland on his left and the Black Forest on his right, and he thought about Fanny Klingenschoen. While pursuing a lucrative career on the fast track—elsewhere—she had bought up half of Moose County. She acquired woodland and abandoned mining villages as well as property in downtown Pickax. Ecologically, she was doing something right, but she was doing it for her own reason: revenge against the “respectable” families who had scorned her freewheeling ancestors. Now the wilderness holdings had been placed in conservancy by the Klingenschoen Foundation—to prevent development and do some small part in saving the planet.
In the wrong hands, Qwilleran was aware, millions of trees would have been cleared to make way for high-density condominiums, a golf course, and even an auto raceway. The pure air and water of the north country would have been exchanged for population growth and pollution. He had been reading about trees and oxygen and rain.
The K Fund had established three conservancies, each with its own agenda. The largest, called the Black Forest, was dedicated to the preservation of wildlife, and Qwilleran wanted to gain some idea of its character before discussing it with the attorney.
After a mile or so on Gully Road there came a break in the dense wall of evergreens, hardwoods and other growth. A sign—obviously new but made to look old—announced BLACK FOREST CONSERVANCY—WILDLIFE REFUGE.
There was an entryway of sorts, wide enough for a motor vehicle but hardly more than a beaten path into the woods: weeds, ruts, stones, tree roots, and forest debris. It had no name, only a county number on a leaning pole—with a warning: DEAD END. Qwilleran was curious enough, and his trail bike was sturdy enough, to give it a try.
Actually it appeared to dead-end fifty yards ahead at a lofty outcropping of rock, the kind of souvenir deposited by prehistoric glaciers.
Standing on the pedals and gripping the handlebars with determination he headed for the rock, only to find that County 1124 went around it, turning left, then turning right around the east end of the rock, then turning right again into . . .
“What the devil!” Qwilleran yelped as he came face-to-face, or rather face-to-tail, with a large truck! It had a Wisconsin tag. It looked like an interstate moving van.
He walked his bike around it. The name painted on the side of the van was DIAMOND MOVING AND STORAGE. The cab window was open, and the driver was talking on a cell phone.
“Having trouble? Are you lost?” Qwilleran asked helpfully.
The man dropped the phone when he saw the yellow bubble-head with goggle eyes and enough facial hair for an old English sheepdog. “Uhh . . . Takin’ a break. Been drivin’ all night.”
“How far have you come?”
“Milwaukee . . . Where’s a place to eat?”
“At the gas station in Black Creek. But you can’t turn around, and you’ll never back out with this rig.”
“I done it before.”
“Well . . . good luck!”
Qwilleran hopped on his bike and punished the pedals some more, meanwhile thinking he had insulted a professional teamster. He remembered working at a metropolitan newspaper and being fascinated by the flatbed trucks that delivered the giant rolls of newsprint. To back up to the pressroom’s loading dock, the driver had to double-jackknife backward—from a busy street to a narrow alley to a narrower dock.
He continued to follow 1124 on its eccentric course around more outcroppings of rock, clumps of trees, evil-looking bogs, and one ancient tree with a trunk at least five feet in diameter. At one point a tree had fallen across the road, and he had to lift his bike over it.
He saw no wildlife larger than a squirrel but heard crackling in the underbrush and rustling in branches overhead. And he could hear the sounds of distant civilization: an emergency siren, shots from a rabbit-hunter’s gun, a chain saw turning a tree into firewood, a hammer turning cedar boards into a deck.
At intervals, trails led into the depths of the forest, disappearing into a mysterious darkness suitable for fairy tales about wolves and wicked witches.
Before the attorney arrived, there was time to shower, give the Siamese their noontime entitlement, and open a bottle of red wine, to breathe. Barter always looked lawyerly, even in jeans, polo shirt, baseball cap and sneakers. He walked into the cabin with authority and appraised the ingenious space-savers and built-ins. “Snug!” was his verdict.
Pompously Qwilleran said, “Think not of it as a small dwelling; think of it as a large boat.”
“Where are the cats?”
“Out on deck. If you’ll join them and pour yourself a glass of wine, I’ll phone the inn to start our sandwiches.”
Koko ignored the visitor, but Yum Yum could smell a shoelace at fifty paces and approached stealthily.
“Cheers!” the attorney said, lifting his glass, while his host raised his glass of Squunk water with a dash of cranberry juice.
Barter said, “My wife wants to know if you’re having a limerick contest this summer. She won a prize last year.”
“I remember. It was about the town of Brrr. Tell her that public clamor is forcing us to repeat it. Did she ever write a limerick about you, Bart?”
“Yes, and I won’t recite it. . . . Now what do you want to know about conservancies, Qwill?”
“I know that wilderness tracts can be legally protected against development. And I know the K Fund has put three tracts in conservancy. The Piney Woods will be open to hunters in deer season; Great Oaks offers campsites for tents but not recreational vehicles—”
“And all campsites are reserved through Labor Day,” the attorney interrupted. “It has beach access and thirty miles of beach hiking in each direction. The agate-hunters are enthusiastic.”
“But what about the Black Forest, Bart? I biked through it, and nothing’s happening.”
Cat Who Went Up the Creek Page 9