Driving away from the Black Bear Café, Qwilleran made his plans. This was Wednesday. He could move his household back to Pickax on Thursday, then drive to the shore briefly on Saturday morning to announce the dogcart races. On Monday he would pick up Polly at the airport, and Tuesday evening they would celebrate at the opening night of Owen’s Place.
It was neat planning, but Robert Burns was right; the best-laid plans go off-line.
THIRTEEN
When Qwilleran arrived at the cabin after his visit to the Black Bear Café, he found a cardboard carton on the doorstep, apparently delivered by someone from the newspaper. It contained bundles of postcards in response to his column on Lisa’s great-grandmother’s diary. Enthusiasm for the witty journalist who lectured in Pickax circa 1895 had been handed down in many local families.
Indoors, the Siamese were lounging on the coffee table in a shaft of sunlight that slanted down from a window, their fur glistening. Qwilleran took a moment to admire them. “You are two gorgeous brutes!” Yum Yum lowered her head modestly. Koko, who was keeping the Mark Twain reference book warm, stared with meaningful intensity.
Qwilleran patted his moustache as an idea crept into his consciousness. On an impulse he phoned Hixie Rice, the promotion director for the Moose County Something.
“Hixie! I’ve just thought of a sensational idea to promote the city of Pickax—and the newspaper, too, if we care to sponsor it.”
“Is it as big as the Great Food Explo?” she asked dubiously.
“Bigger.”
“As big as the Ice Festival?”
“Bigger, and guaranteed not to melt. How about meeting me for lunch tomorrow? I’d suggest Owen’s Place, but you know what happened.”
“How about Linguini’s? They still have the same menu, the same mom-and-pop operation, the same dull color scheme, and the same broken locks on the restrooms. But the food is wonderful!”
“You might also bring Fran Brodie, if she’s available on short notice.”
“We’ll be there, I promise,” Hixie said. “You’ve got me all pumped up. Can you give me a clue?”
“No,” he said.
Not surprisingly—after thawing some pork barbecue for his dinner—Qwilleran had a graphic dream Wednesday night: He was having lunch with Mark Twain at an unidentified restaurant. The man across the table was the same one who appeared on the jacket of Koko’s favorite book: white three-piece suit, cravat with diamond stickpin, good head of hair, high forehead, alert brows, rampant moustache. He was genial and talkative as they compared notes. One was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, in Florida; the other was born Merlin James Qwilleran, in Chicago. They discussed journalism, travel, cats, lecturing—and then the picture faded, and Qwilleran was lying in his dark bed in the cabin.
The dream was a portent of an eventful day. After breakfast, the cats wanted to play rough-and-tumble, and Qwilleran obliged by whipping an old paisley necktie through the air and watched them leap, grab, collide, and roll over on the floor. Like Montaigne, whose cat liked to play with a garter, he was not sure who enjoyed it more—the cats or himself.
Next he hung the skewers, pounding five brads in a row in the log wall above the kitchen counter. Koko immediately sniffed the fingergrips and touched the thin twisted skewers with a nervous paw. “Stay away from those,” Qwilleran warned him. “They’re for skewering potatoes, not members of the family.”
His morning’s work was finished quickly. The “Qwill Pen” for Friday was a reader-participation stunt, meaning that unsuspecting readers did the legwork for him. In June, he had posed a burning question, and hundreds of subscribers had mailed their replies on postcards, which were then tabulated by the office manager. Qwilleran had only to incorporate the results into his entertaining prose. The question: Why do your cats squeeze their eyes? Eight thoughtful explanations were submitted, the most popular being: “They’re smiling.”
Shortly before noon he set out for his lunch date carrying his canvas tote bag from the Pickax library. At the restaurant outside the town of Brrr he was greeted by Mrs. Linguini, who recognized his moustache. “Ah! Mr. Grape Juice! No wine! . . . Poppa!” she shouted toward the kitchen. “Mr. Grape Juice here!”
Mr. Linguini came rushing to shake hands, his right hand damp from the steam of boiling pasta, then rushed back to the kitchen.
“Sit anywhere,” said his wife with a grand gesture. “You want grape juice?”
“Wait till my guests arrive,” he said. “I think they’ll want some of your good red wine.” It was commonly believed that Poppa Linguini made his own wine in the basement; also, someone was growing wine grapes on a rocky slope outside Brrr—where the days were sunny and nights were cool—and it was most certainly Mr. Linguini.
Qwilleran took a table for four and propped the canvas tote bag on the fourth chair.
Soon his guests bustled in excitedly, saying, “There he is! . . . He’s always early . . . Qwill, you look wonderful! . . . Your vacation agrees with you!”
Standing to pull out their chairs, he responded with a frown: “I haven’t had a minute’s rest since coming to the beach! I do more loafing in Pickax . . . You two look as if you’d won the lottery!”
“We’re excited about your secret project!” Hixie explained.
“We’ve been making wild guesses all the way up here,” Fran added.
In Qwilleran’s opinion they were the two most glamorous women in the county—in personality, dress, and grooming. The publicity woman was always recklessly vivacious; the interior designer was always coolly dynamic.
“First, some wine!” he proposed. It was immediately served in squat tumblers, with grape juice for the host. He said, “You’d be drinking imported pinot noir from thin-stemmed wine glasses, if Owen’s Place hadn’t closed.”
“I feel bad about that. I really do,” said Hixie. “When the Bowens first arrived, I called on him to set up an ad campaign for the summer. He didn’t have much personality, but he was incredibly handsome and rather conceited—what locals call uppity.”
“Do you know exactly what happened to him?” Fran asked Qwilleran.
“Only what I read in the paper.”
Roguishly, Hixie said, “I think he was leaning over the rail, admiring his reflection in the surface of the lake, and he fell in.”
“That’s an uncharitable thought,” Qwilleran rebuked her, “but possibly true. The good news is that Owen’s Place will reopen next Tuesday evening with Derek as manager.”
“He can’t work that weekend!” Fran objected. “It’s the last week of our play, and he has the title role!”
“I’ll be glad to sub for him at the restaurant,” Hixie volunteered. She had managed the Old Stone Mill before joining the Something. “He was our busboy at the Mill. It’s good to see him making progress.”
“Onward and especially upward,” Fran added.
Qwilleran told them how Derek had introduced skewered potatoes as a luncheon dish, deskewering them at tableside with the dramatic flourish of a Cyrano de Bergerac.
“More wine!” he called to Mrs. Linguini, “And then we’ll order.” After selections were made, he presented his proposition:
“Moose County has never been associated with a prominent literary figure. No local boy ever made good as a famous writer. So I suggest we adopt one and observe his birthday, just as the men’s lodge observes Robert Burns Night on January 25. I’ve had tremendous reader response to my column about Lisa Compton’s great-grandmother’s diary. She was a Mark Twain fan in the nineteenth century and as goofy, in a Victorian way, as an Elvis fan in the mid-twentieth. Mark Twain made Pickax one of his stops on a lecture tour, and the locals flocked to hear him speak, bought his books, wrote letters about him, and made entries in their journals. He had a fantastic way with audiences of that era. He was a journalist, a humorist, and a prolific creative writer . . . So I propose an annual Mark Twain celebration to honor an American icon who never passed this way again.”
Hixie’s e
yes were shining as she thought of the possibilities. “How far do we want to go?”
“We could easily fill a week with special events. Proceeds could go to the county’s literacy program. Samuel Langhorne Clemens would approve of that.”
Fran said, “The theater club could do readings from his books or dramatizations from Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.”
“We could have a parade—with floats!” Hixie said ecstatically. “That would draw the TV crews from Down Below.”
“We could stage a banquet. Does anyone know what he liked to eat?”
“How about a lecture by some university bigwig from Down Below?”
“Why not rename a street Mark Twain Boulevard?”
“The Something could offer an annual Mark Twain scholarship to a student going into journalism.”
Then Qwilleran suggested, “When the renovated hotel opens in September, perhaps we could name one room after him and hang a large portrait.” He unsheathed Mark Twain A to Z from the canvas tote bag, displaying the splendid photograph on the book jacket.
Hixie squealed with delight. “We could have a Mark Twain Look-alike Contest, and Qwill would win!”
“You’d never get him into a three-piece suit,” Fran said.
“Their eyes are different. Their brows are different.”
“Qwill is handsomer.”
“And sexier.”
He huffed into his moustache. “Here comes the nutrimento.”
Mrs. Linguini came from the kitchen, balancing three plates. She banged one down in front of Fran, saying, “Stuffed manicotti . . . Very good!” The next landed in front of Hixie. “Veal marsala . . . Very good!” Qwilleran got the third. “Lasagna . . . The best!”
After the frenzied brainstorming, they enjoyed lunch quietly with only desultory conversation.
Qwilleran mentioned that Owen’s widow was anxious to sell their boat and might consider any offer of cash.
Fran announced that the next play at the barn theater would be Life with Father, and they were looking for five kids with red hair—to save the cost of wigs.
Hixie said she was stuck with fifteen thousand large lapel buttons in a polar bear design, rendered useless when the Ice Festival thawed out. She wondered if they could be returned to the manufacturer and reworked for another purpose.
Qwilleran confided that he might work on a scenario for a film in collaboration with a corvidologist—not to be confused with a cardiologist.
Then Fran shocked them with the news (confidential, of course) that Amanda Goodwinter was quitting the city council and running for mayor. Qwilleran said he would campaign for her.
Finally, Hixie said she had seen proofsheets of the first “Ask Ms. Gramma” column and had brought a set with her. “I want to know what you both think of it,” she said. “I think she wrote it with a pitcher of martinis on her desk.”
At her suggestion, Qwilleran read it aloud at the table:
Dear sweet readers . . . Ms. Gramma was thrilled to pieces by your response to last week’s announcement. It shows you really care about saying it right. Stick around, and we’ll have some fun, too. Ms. Gramma loves to step on toes and upset applecarts. For starters, here’s a note from a brave guy who dares to challenge Ms. Gramma’s grammar.
Dear Ms. Gramma . . . You goofed. “Say it right” is wrong. It should be “say it correctly.”—Bill, in Black Creek.
Dear Billy Boy . . . “Right” can be an adverb or an adjective. Look it up in your dictionary, sweetheart.
Dear Ms. Gramma . . . My husband and two grown sons are educated and know better, but they still insist on saying “he don’t” instead of “he doesn’t.” What to do?—Pauline, in Pickax.
Dear Pauline . . . Some men think “he don’t” is macho. Give up, my dear. The male animal is as stubborn as a mule—and we all know about mules, don’t we?
Fran interrupted. “Who’s writing this column?”
“Only Junior Goodwinter knows, and he’s not telling,” said Hixie.
“Well, I think it’s a man.”
“I do, too,” said Qwilleran. “I also think it’s not very good.”
“Read some more,” Hixie urged.
Dear Ms. Gramma . . . When I was in school, we had a campaign against the word “ain’t.” If anyone used it, the whole class yelled “oink oink.” It worked!—Isabelle, in Trawnto.
Dear Isabelle . . . Ms. Gramma hereby gives permission to her readers to yell “oink oink” whenever they hear “ain’t” in a public place. Thanks for the idea, honey. Ms. Gramma is not responsible, however, for physical assault or verbal obscenities resulting from the oinking.
Dear Ms. Gramma . . . Some people who are fussy about their speech say “between you and I” instead of “between you and me.” Why?—Linda in Mooseville.
Dear Linda . . . For the same reason they crook their pinky when drinking tea. They think it’s correct, but it ain’t . . . Oops! Sorry! . . . Ms. Gramma could write a volume about pronouns following prepositions, honey, but it would be boring, so let’s do it the easy way. All together now . . . Between you and me!
When Qwilleran had concluded the reading, he asked, “Do you think it was written by a staffer or a freelancer? Or a committee?”
“I won’t rest until I find out,” Hixie said.
“Don’t waste your time on Ms. Gramma,” Qwilleran told her. “Apply your brain to the Mark Twain celebration.”
Satisfied with the events of the lunch hour and looking forward to a return to Pickax, Qwilleran planned his exodus while driving back to Mooseville. There was no need to close the cabin completely. With Polly back in town they would be spending weekends at the beach, entertaining other couples with cocktails on the porch and dinner at Owen’s Place. The Siamese would stay in their luxurious barn with a cat-sitter.
Near Top o’ the Dunes he bought a frozen dinner at a roadside convenience store and started watching for the old stone chimney. He hoped it would never succumb to the bulldozers of a Roadside Improvement Coalition; he had developed an affection for the grotesque monolith. When he spotted the historic landmark in the distance, he also saw a vehicle turning into the K driveway. It was yellow! It was a school bus!
Qwilleran was indignant. He resented trespassers, and he was not fond of schoolchildren en masse. Individually, he found them amusing—the McBee boy and Celia Robinson’s grandson, for example. But what were they doing on his property without permission? School had let out in mid-June, but school buses were used for all kinds of summer enrichment activities.
Arriving at his driveway, he pursued the bus, noting a flash of yellow as it lumbered over the dunes and between the trees. His van bounced recklessly in its wake. Even so, the bus was already in the clearing when Qwilleran drove up and parked directly behind it; there would be no escape without due explanation! He jumped from the driver’s seat, expecting to see a yardful of noisy kids racing around and alarming the cats. The only sign of life was a tall, broad-shouldered figure at the top of the sandladder, gazing at the lake. Qwilleran noted a farmer’s straw hat, jeans, field boots, and some kind of inscription on the back of the T-shirt.
“Hello, there!” he shouted with a note of annoyance.
The uninvited guest turned, revealing a life-size crow on the T-shirt. “You must be Qwill,” she said in a clear authoritative voice. “I’m Tess, Joe Bunker’s cousin.”
“Oh! . . . If I’d known you were coming, I’d have been here to welcome you,” he said, tactfully mixing rebuke with apology. “Joe said you’d phone me from Horseradish when you arrived.”
“I changed my itinerary. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” he said crisply. He disliked being taken by surprise. “Go on the porch and make yourself comfortable while I unlock the cabin and put my purchases in the freezer.”
Only then did he realize that the yellow vehicle, a mini-bus, was boldly labeled REPUBLIC OF CROW- MANIA. So was the back of her T-shirt.
Indoors he briefed the Siamese.
“We have company. She’s out on the porch. She’s a corvidologist, but harmless. Don’t sniff her boots; it’s considered impolite.”
When he opened the door to the lake porch, they hung back warily. Tess was sitting with her legs crossed and her hat off, her dark hair sleeked back into a bun. Her features were clean-cut, with thin lips and high cheekbones. “You have a lot of crows on the beach,” she said. “I’m glad I brought a supply of dried corn.”
“How far have you traveled today?” he asked.
“Not far. Just from my aunt’s house in Bixby. I tried calling you from there, and when there was no answer, I decided to take a chance and come anyway.”
“Would you explain your bus?”
“I’d love to! It’s used for field trips with students and for dissemination of information at all other times—propaganda, if you will. As Joe may have told you, I believe crows are the next big craze, following pigs, frogs, owls, monkeys, whales, and dinosaurs. The crow is a noble bird—intelligent, rather handsome, well organized, cooperative, and very focused. A flock knows where it’s going and flies directly there. ‘Straight as the crow flies’ is no accidental cliché. As for the crow’s voice, it’s authoritative, with an extensive vocabulary far beyond the common ‘caw.’ What’s your reaction to crows, Qwill?”
“They all look alike.”
“On the contrary, they have different personalities, physiques, and body language, as you’ll see when you read the literature I’ve brought you. Why don’t we bring in my luggage, and I’ll unpack, and then we’ll talk some more.”
Luggage? Wetherby had said nothing about her coming as a houseguest!
“Joe tells me you don’t cook. I’d be glad to prepare meals while I’m here.”
Three Complete Novels: The Cat Who Tailed a Thief/the Cat Who Sang for the Birds/the Cat Who Saw Stars Page 13