The Cat Who Moved a Mountain

CHAPTER 4

Qwilleran took a few precautions before falling into the arms of Morpheus. It was June, and the sun would be rising early; that meant the Siamese would be awake at dawn, clamoring for their breakfast. Fortunately there were blinds on the bedroom windows—opaque, room-darkening roller blinds. Qwilleran pulled them down in the cats' quarters as well as in his own—four in each room. He also took care to leave their door open so they could go downstairs to the pantry and the turkey roaster that served as their commode. It was a long walk to the pantry, and they really needed a second commode, he thought. He added "turkey roaster" to his shopping list for the next day. There was nothing like a turkey roaster, he had discovered, for a non-tip, rustproof, easy-to-clean, long-lasting litterbox.

He expected to sleep well in the fresh mountain atmosphere. There were many claims made for living at high altitudes, he recalled as he started to doze off: People who live in the mountains are nicer . . . They live longer because the water and air are so pure . . . Heavy drinkers have fewer hangovers in the mountains . . .

He slept fairly well, considering the strange bed and the lace on the sheets and pillowcases. Whenever he shifted position he felt an alien substance under his chin. Nevertheless, he managed well enough until about five-thirty. At that early hour he was jolted awake.

Was it a gunshot? It brought him to a sitting position even before his eyes were open. At the sound of the second shot he was wide awake! The realization that it was happening inside the house catapulted him from the bed just as the third shot rang out! He dashed for the door, fearing for the cats and unmindful of his own safety. He yanked open the door in time to hear the fourth shot!

At that moment he realized it was not gunfire. Two Siamese were walking triumphantly from their sleeping quarters, tails waving. Early morning light was streaming into their room, turning everything rosy. All four window shades were raised!

"You devils!" Qwilleran muttered, shuffling back to his bed. One of them—no doubt Yum Yum the Paw—had discovered how to raise a roller blind with an explosive report. Simply insert a paw in the pull-ring . . . release it . . . and BANG! Up it goes! He had to admit it was a smart maneuver.

Two hours later it was the noisy motor of an aging truck that disturbed his sleep. Checking the parking lot from a second floor window, he saw a bearded man stepping out of a red pickup with one blue fender. His beard was untamed, and he wore old-fashioned striped railroad overalls and a wide-brimmed felt fedora that was green with age. Collecting paint buckets from the truck bed, he walked slowly toward the stone steps with a hitch in his gait. Hurriedly Qwilleran pulled on some clothes and met the workman on the veranda.

"Good morning," he said to the stranger. "Nice day, isn't it? A bit coolish, but fresh." He had lived in Moose County long enough to know about weather as a form of introduction.

"Gonna rain, come nightfall," said the workman. "Gonna be a gully-washer."

"How do you know?" The air was crisp; there was not a cloud in the sky; the mountains were sharply defined. "What makes you think we'll get rain?"

"Earthworms comin' up. See'd a black snake in a tree."

The man's face was a crinkled, weatherbeaten tan, but his eyes were keen. "Gittin' too doggone much rain in these parts."

"Are you Mr. Beechum?"

"Dewey Beechum, come to finish up," he said as he started around the veranda toward the rear.

Qwilleran followed. "What needs to be finished?"

They had reached the rear of the house, and Mr. Beechum nodded toward the railing of the veranda. "That there back rail, and that there glass door." He nodded toward the French door that Koko had sniffed the night before.

"What happened to the door?" Qwilleran asked.

"Busted." He applied a final coat of stain to a section of railing and then painted the framework around the small glass panes of the door—without using a dropcloth and without a spill or a smear.

"You do good work, Mr. Beechum."

"Don't pay to do bad. See that there chair?" He nodded toward the Queen Anne chair in the foyer. "Legs was busted, but I fixed 'em. Never know they was busted."

That explained Koko's interest in the chair and the French door; one of them had recently varnished legs, and the other had new glass and a coat of fresh paint on the frame. Clever cat! He never missed a thing. He even knew that the tall secretary desk in the living room was supposed to have books in its upper deck.

"Do you live around here?" Qwilleran asked.

Beechum jerked his head to the south. "Yonder on L'il Tater. That there's a real mount'n."

"Big Potato looks pretty good to me."

"Ain't what it was, years back."

"What happened?"

"Folks from down there"—he nodded toward the valley—"they come up here and rooned it, cuttin' down trees, buildin' fancy houses, roonin' the waterfalls. No tellin' what they'll be roonin' nextways. But they won't git L'il Tater iffen we hafta hold 'em off with shotguns!"

"Good for you!" Qwilleran always agreed heartily with anyone he was trying to encourage, and already he envisioned Mr. Beechum as a colorful subject for a column in the Moose County Something. "I've been thinking, Mr. Beechum, that I'd like to have a gazebo built among the trees."

"A what?"

"A small summer house—just a floor and a roof and screens on all four sides. I don't think it would ruin anything."

"Don't need no screens up here. No bugs."

How could Qwilleran explain to this mountain man that the gazebo was for the cats, so they could enjoy the outdoors in safety? "Just the same," he said, "I'd feel more comfortable with screens. Could you build it for me?"

"How big you want?"

"Perhaps ten or twelve feet square."

"Twelve's better. No waste."

"May I pay you in advance for the materials?"

"Ain't no need."

"I'd appreciate it if you'd use that treated lumber that doesn't need painting."

"That's what I'm aimin' to do."

"Good! We're on the same wave length. When can you start, Mr. Beechum?"

"When you be wantin' it?"

"Soon as possible."

The workman raised his green fedora and scratched his head. There was a line of demarcation across his forehead—weatherbeaten tan below, pasty white above. "Mebbe Monday," he said.

"That sounds good."

"Mebbe Wednesday. All depends. Could rain." Beechum started back to the pickup with his paint buckets and brushes.

Accompanying him down the steps Qwilleran took another look at the red pickup with one blue fender and said, "I believe I stopped at your house last night, Mr. Beechum, when I was trying to find my way here. A young woman kindly came to my rescue. I'd like to thank her in some way."

"Don't need no thanks," the man mumbled as he started the reluctant motor.

Qwilleran returned to the house to feed the cats, prepare some coffee for himself, and dress for a shopping trip to Spudsboro. Saying goodbye to the Siamese he inquired, "Will you characters be all right if I go out for a while?" They regarded him with a blank feline stare capable of undermining self-esteem. He knew that look. It meant, Just be sure you come back at dinnertime.

Before descending the twenty-five steps to the parking lot, he stood on the veranda and absorbed the view. Directly below him were treetops and an occasional odd-shaped roof or turquoise swimming pool. In the valley the dome of the courthouse glistened in the sunlight, and a meandering line of trees marked the course of the Yelly-hoo River. Across the river the West Potatoes rose majestically. He snapped a few pictures to send to Polly and then walked down the steps, wondering if his car would start, and if he still had a jigger of gas in the tank, and if one could safely coast down the mountain to a gas station in the valley.

There was no cause for concern; the small car could run on a thimbleful. Maneuvering it around the curves of Hawk's Nest Drive he was thankful for the smooth pavements, the guardrails, and the white and yellow lines. He passed the Wilbank and Lessmore houses and other contemporary dwellings with glass where one would expect walls—and walls where one would expect glass. All had neat, circular drives, blacktopped. In one large area cleared of trees a new house was being built, and a powerful backhoe was gouging out the hillside. At the bottom of the hill the entrance to Hawk's Nest Drive was marked by two stone pylons and a sign: TIPTOP ESTATES . . . PRIVATE ROAD.

Qwilleran filled his gas tank and asked for foolproof directions to Five Points—without shortcuts—and was amazed how easily he found the star-shaped intersection. At the Five Points Cafe he sat in a booth, ordered ham and eggs, and perused the Spudsboro Gazette, in which the headline news was Friday's excessive rain, seven inches in two hours. The river was running high, and the softball field on the west bank was too wet for play. Otherwise, Colin Carmichael's newspaper was similar to the Moose County Something, although it surprised Qwilleran to learn that the "Potato Peelings" column was still being written by Vonda Dudley Wix. She was gushing about Father's Day.

The radio at the restaurant was playing country music and advertising a sale of recliners at a local furniture store, and in an adjoining booth three men were arguing over their coffee.

A voice with a nasal twang said, "I see the damned pickets came crawling out of the woodwork again."

"They're there every Friday afternoon and Saturday," said another man with a high-pitched voice. "They're trying to embarrass the city when the weekend tourists arrive."

"There oughta be a law!"

"Ever hear of freedom of speech, Jerry?" This voice sounded somewhat familiar to Qwilleran. "It's their constitutional right. I'd carry a picket sign myself if I had a legitimate beef. Okay?"

The second speaker said, "The trouble is—things are going so good in this town. Why do they have to make waves?"

"They're a bunch of radicals, that's why!" said Jerry. "That whole crowd on Little Potato is radical to the eyebrows!"

"Oh, come off it, Jerry. Okay?"

"I mean it! Always trying to sabotage progress. Just because they live like bums, they don't want the rest of us to live nice and make a little money."

"Listen, Jerry, there should be a way to live nice without spoiling it for everybody else. Okay? Look what happened to the road up Big Potato! They call it Hawk's Nest Drive and put up a sign to keep people out. That's no private road! That's a secondary county highway, and they can't legally stop anybody from driving up there. When I was a kid, my dad used to drive us to the top of Big Potato where the old inn is, and we'd have picnics at Batata Falls. That was before they dammed it and made it Lake Batata. In those days it was nothing but a dirt road. Then J.J. pulled strings and got it paved at taxpayers' expense, after which they try to call it a private drive. I'm gonna get a picket sign myself one of these days. Okay?"

"Bill's right, Jerry. J.J. started it, and now his cronies are selling timber rights and slashing the forest for a motel or hotel or something. Investors, they call 'em. Not even local people!"

"Whoever they are, it's good for the economy," Jerry insisted. "It creates jobs and brings more people in. You paint more houses, and Bill sells more hot dogs, and I sell more hardware."

"Speaking of hot dogs," Bill said, "I've gotta get back to the store. See you loafers next week—okay?" As he paid for his coffee on the way out, Qwilleran recognized the manager of the Five Points Market and would have relished a few words with him about the Snaggy Creek cutoff, but Bill Treacle slipped out too quickly.

Qwilleran himself left the cafe soon afterward and drove downtown. He parked and walked along Center Street, noting the new brick sidewalks, ornamental trees, and simulated gaslights. Approaching the Lessmore agency, he thought of stopping to ask a couple of questions: Would there be any objection to a gazebo? What were the revolving lights on the mountain? The office was closed, however. Generally, Center Street had the deserted air of a downtown business district on Saturday when everyone is at the mall. There was no one but Qwilleran to read the picket signs in front of the courthouse: SAVE OUR MOUNTAIN ... NO MORE SLASHING . . . STOP THE RAPE . . FREE FOREST.

At the office of the Spudsboro Gazette a Saturday calm prevailed, and when he asked for Mr. Carmichael, die lone woman in the front office pointed down a cor-ndor.

The editor was in his office, talking to a law enforcement officer, but he jumped up exclaiming, "You must be Jim Qwilleran! I recognized the moustache. This is our sheriff, Del Wilbank . . . Del, this is the man who's renting Tiptop for the summer. Jim Qwilleran used to cover the police beat for newspapers around the country. He also wrote a book on urban crime."

"Am I intruding?" Qwilleran asked.

"No, I was just leaving," said the sheriff. He turned to the editor. "Don't touch this thing, Colin. Don't even consider it—at this time. Agreed?"

"You have my word, Del. Thanks for coming in."

The sheriff nodded to Qwilleran. "Enjoy your stay, Mr"

"Qwilleran."

The editor, a fortyish man with thinning hair and a little too much weight, came around the desk and pumped his visitor's hand. "When Kip told me you were coming, 1 flipped! You were my hero when I was in J school, Qwill. Okay if I call you Qwill? In fact, your book was required reading. I remember the title, City of Brotherly Crime. Dolly told me you were renting Tiptop. How do you like it? Have a chair."

"I came to see if I could take you to lunch," Qwilleran said.

"Absolutely not! I'll take you to lunch. We'll go to the golf club, and now's a good time to go, before the rush. My car's parked in back."

On the way to the club Carmichael pointed out the new public library, the site of a proposed community college, a modern papermill, a church of unconventional design.

"This is a yuppie town, Qwill. Most all the movers and shakers are young, energetic, and ambitious."

"I noticed a lot of expensive cars on Center Street," Qwilleran said, "and a lot of small planes at the airport."

"Absolutely! The town's booming. I bought at the right time. The furniture factory is being automated. An electronics firm is building downriver and will be on-line this year. Any chance you'd like to re-locate in Spudsboro? Kip said you took early retirement. There's plenty to do here—fishing, white-water rafting, golf, backpacking, tennis . . . My kids love it."

"To be frank, Colin, I plan to be the solitary, sedentary type this summer. I have some serious thinking to do, and I thought a mountaintop would be ideal. How about you? What brought you and your family to Spudsboro?"

"Well, my wife and I had been hoping to find a smaller, healthier community to bring up our kids, and then this opportunity popped up. I'd always wanted to manage my own newspaper. Don't we all? So when the owner of the Gazette died and it went on the block, I grabbed it, although I may be in hock for the next twenty years."

"Are you talking about J.J. Hawkinfield?"

"He's the one! It's his house you're staying in. My kids wanted me to buy that, too, but they were asking too much money for it, and we don't need all that space. We're better off with a ranch house in the valley. And who knows if the school bus could get up the mountain in bad weather—or if we could get down?"

When they arrived at the golf club, groups were pouring into the clubhouse. Saturday lunch, it appeared, was the accepted way to entertain in Spudsboro. Men wore blazers in pastel colors. Women dressed to outdo each other, one of them actually wearing a hat. Altogether they were far different from the sweaters-and-cords crowd that patronized restaurants in Moose County. There were club-shirted golfers as well, but most of them walked through the dining room to a noisy bar in the rear, called the Off-Links Lounge.

Carmichael ordered a Bloody Mary, and Qwilleran ordered the same without the vodka.

"How do you like Tiptop?" the editor asked.

"It's roomy, to say the least. Something smaller would have been preferable, but I have two cats, and no one accepts pets in rental units. Dolly Lessmore twisted an arm or two to get me into Tiptop."

"Yes, she's quite aggressive. As they say at the chamber of commerce meetings, he's less and she's more . . . Cheers! Welcome to the Potatoes!" He lifted his glass.

Qwilleran said, "What do you know about your predecessor?"

"I never met J.J., but people still talk about him. They're thinking of naming a scenic drive after him. He was quite powerful in this town and ran the Gazette like a one-man show, writing an editorial every week that knocked the town on its ear. Mine must sound pretty bland by comparison."

"What was his background?"

"J.J. grew up here. His family owned the Gazette for a couple of generations, but he wanted to go into law. He was in law school, as a matter of fact, when his father died. He dropped out and came back here to run the paper, but he was a born adversary, from what I hear. He stirred things up and made a lot of enemies, but he also spurred the economic growth of Spudsboro—not to mention the circulation of the Gazette."

Qwilleran said, "From a conversation I overheard in a coffee shop this morning, there's divided opinion about economic growth."

"That's true. The conservatives and old-timers want everything to stay the way it was, with population growth at zero. The younger ones and the merchants are all for progress, and let the chips fall where they may."

"Where do you stand?"

"Well, you know, Qwill, I'm exposed to both viewpoints, and I try to be objective. We're entering a new century, and we're already engulfed in a wave of technology that's going to break the dikes. And yet . . . the environment must be understood and respected. Right here in the Potatoes we've got to address such issues as the stripping of forests, damming of waterfalls for private use, population density, pollution, and the destruction of wildlife habitat. How are they handling it where you live?"

Qwilleran said, "In Moose County we're always thirty years behind the times, so the problems you mention haven't confronted us as yet. We haven't even been discovered by the fast-food chains, but the situation is going to alter very soon. The business community is pushing for tourism. So I'll watch the situation in Spudsboro with a great deal of interest. Who are the pickets in front of the courthouse?"

"That's an ongoing campaign by the environmentalists," Carmichael said. "Different picketers show up each weekend—all hill folks from Little Potato, some of them with a personal ax to grind. There are two kinds of people on that mountain, living quite primitively, you might say. There are the ones called Taters, whose ancestors bought cheap land from the government more than a century ago and who still cling to a pioneer way of life, and then there are the artists and others who deserted the cities for what they call plain living. We call them New Taters. They're the ones who are militant about protecting the environment. Strange to say, some of the conservatives in the valley are afraid of the Taters, even though they're on the same side of the fence politically. It's not a clear-cut situation."

Two golfers walking through the dining room to the lounge attracted a flurry of interest from women who were lunching. One had a shaggy head of sun-bleached hair and the other was neatly barbered. Qwilleran recognized the latter as Dolly Lessmore's husband.

"That's Bob Lessmore and Hugh Lumpton, top guns in the club," the editor explained. "Champion golfers have a certain look, don't they? Their build, their walk, even their facial set. It comes from concentration, I guess. Do you play golf?"

"No," Qwilleran said. "I never thought that anything -mailer than a baseball was worth hitting. Baseball was my game until I injured a knee. I was too short for basketball, too cowardly to play football, too poor to play polo, and too sane to play soccer."

Carmichael recommended the poached flounder, saying that the new chef was introducing a lighter menu to a membership hooked on corned beef sandwiches and sixteen-ounce steaks. Qwilleran ordered the poached flounder, although he noticed that his host ordered a corned beef sandwich and cheddar cheese soup. It proved to be a small piece of fish, lightly sauced and served on an oversized plate along with three perfect green beans, a sliver of parboiled carrot, and two halves of a cherry tomato broiled and sprinkled with parsley. It was accompanied by the starch of the day, mashed turnip flavored with grated orange rind.

Gingerly Qwilleran forked into this repast, and as he did so, he was aware that a woman at a nearby table was staring at his moustache. She had the embalmed look that conies from too many facelifts, and she was wearing a voluptuous brimmed hat that zoomed up on one side and swooped down on the other.

"Who's the woman in the hat who's giving me the eye?" he asked under his breath.

"That's Vonda Dudley Wix," the editor said without moving his lips. "She writes the 'Potato Peelings' column. She's spotted your moustache, I'm afraid, and she'll be nailing you for an interview."

"She'll have to catch me first. I've read her column. What do you think of her style?"

"Overripe, to say the least. I tried to kill the column when I bought the paper, but the readers rose up in protest. They actually like it! Newspaper subscribers are unpredictable."

Helping himself to a third mini-muffin, Qwilleran was glad he had eaten a substantial breakfast at the Five Points Cafe. He maintained an amiable composure, however. "How long does it take to learn your way around the mountains, Colin? All I've got is three months." He related his experience of the previous day: how he wound up on the wrong mountain and how he was rescued by one of the Taters. He said, "Her manner was definitely hostile, and yet she went miles out of her way to help me find Hawk's Nest Drive. I don't understand it."

"They're not easy to understand," said Carmichael. "In fact, there are some weird characters in them thar hills."

"The MacDiarmids told me the artists have a community where they sell their handcrafts. Where's that?"

"Potato Cove. It's on the outside of Little Potato. It was a ghost town that they resurrected."

"Is it difficult to find?"

"It's on a dirt road, but the route is well marked because it's a tourist attraction. Go to Five Points and then follow the signs."

Qwilleran said, "I saw something strange last night. It was around midnight. I went out for a lungful of fresh air before turning in and walked around the veranda. On a mountain toward the south there was a circle of light, and it was revolving."

"Oh sure, we see that once in a while."

"Is it some kind of natural phenomenon? I have friends in Moose County who'd insist it was an alien aircraft from outer space."

The editor chuckled. "Are you ready for this, Qwill? . . . They say there's a witches' coven up on Little Potato. Apparently they celebrate certain phases of the moon—or whatever."

"Have you ever done a story on them?"

"Are you kidding? Even if we could find them in that godforsaken wilderness, no outsider could get close enough to take a picture or spy on them. But if you want to take a whack at it, we'll buy the story," Carmichael added in a jocular vein.

"No, thanks," said Qwilleran, "but I think it was one of the witches who came to my rescue last night."

They ordered coffee, and Qwilleran had a slice of double chocolate fudge cake that restored his interest in the golf club. On the way out, at the editor's urging, he signed up for a social membership that would permit him to use the dining room. They gave him a card with the club logo: SGC in embossed gold, on a brown oval representing a potato.

"And now where do you want to be dropped?" Carmichael asked.

"At a furniture store, if there's one downtown. I left my car on Center Street."

"Didn't you rent the place furnished?"

"Supposedly, but I need an ottoman. I like to put my feet up when I read. I also need a small radio for weather reports."

"The hardware store at Five Points is the best for that. Get one that can operate on batteries in case of a blackout."

"Do you lose power often?" Qwilleran asked.

"Only when a tree blows down across a power line."

As they drove back downtown, the editor pointed out some local attractions: the Lumpton furniture factory, offering guided tours every afternoon; the historical museum in an old house on Center Street; the scenic drive about to be named after J.J. Hawkinfield.

"How old was he when he died?" Qwilleran asked.

"Not old. In his fifties."

"What happened to him?"

Carmichael hesitated. "You haven't heard? He was murdered."

Qwilleran put his hand to his moustache. "Ms. Less-more didn't tell me that." He had sensed something sinister, though.

"Well, you know, Qwill . . . small towns are sensitive about serious crimes . . . and with the emphasis on tourism here, murder is never mentioned to vacationers."

"I had a hunch that something irregular had happened to the owner of Tiptop. What were the circumstances?"

"He was pushed off his own mountain. You can read about it in our files if you're interested. The murderer is in prison, although there's an element here that thinks they convicted the wrong man, but that's par for the course, isn't it? . . . Well, here's your furniture store, Qwill. It's great to have you here. Don't be too solitary. Keep in touch."