The Cat Who Saw Stars

-10-

Halfway between the unhappy news about Owen Bowen and the happy prospect of dinner with the Rikers, Qwilleran received a phone call that left him with mixed reactions.

Wetherby Goode, the WPKX meteorologist - whose real name was Joe Bunker - had been his neighbor in Indian Village, and he was good company. An unstoppable extrovert, he announced his weather predictions in song or verse, played cocktail piano at parties, and boasted about being a native of Horseradish in Lockmaster County, once the horseradish capital of the Midwest. Like Qwilleran, a divorced man, he lived alone - with a male cat named Jet Stream.

Earlier in the year Wetherby had talked about his cousin, Dr. Teresa Bunker, a corvidologist at a Southern university. She wanted to produce an animated feature film about crows and was looking for a collaborator. In a weak moment, Qwilleran said he would be interested. Crows were a prominent feature of the environment in Moose County. They strutted around his backyard in Pickax and on the beach in Mooseville; they cawed in the woods incessantly . and had flying battles with hawks and blue jays. Unlike pigeons in the city, they were tolerated, however, and Koko was particularly fond of them.

Wetherby had said that his cousin would be coming up to visit her family in the summer and would like to meet Qwilleran and discuss a scenario for the film. Summer had seemed a long way off at the time, but now it was here, and Wetherby was calling to say, “She’s coming! She’s coming!”

“Who’s coming?” Qwilleran demanded, wrested from his speculations about Owen’s drowning and Ernie’s immediate future.

“My cousin Tess! She’s driving up. She’s already left. I don’t know her itinerary, because she has relatives and old schoolmates to visit. Besides, she changes her mind easily. However, I gave her your number at the beach, so you two can plan a meeting that’s convenient. She knows your cabin, by the way. She used to visit a friend at Top o’ the Dunes, and they’d walk on the beach and gawk at the Klingenschoen cabin. That was when the old lady lived there.”

“Tell me something about your cousin,” Qwilleran asked, thinking he should have asked the question a few months earlier.

“Well, she’s a little younger than I am. A big girl. A lot of fun. Likes to do things on the spur of the moment. She was married once, to another academic, but she’s an incorrigible optimist, and he was a card-carrying pessimist, so they drove each other crazy.”

Fighting his compunctions, Qwilleran managed to say, “Okay, I’ll expect her call.” He thought, I can spare an afternoon, or even a day, for a cousin of Wetherby Goode. Then he added, “It’ll be a challenge. I’ve never met a corvidologist.”

“So how’s the vacation?” his friend asked. “Are you renting your new guest house to Visitors from outer space?”

“Ninety-five percent of sightings,” Qwilleran shot back, “are weather balloons, and the other five percent are low-flying fireflies… By the way, what does Dr. Bunker drink?”

“Anything, but she’s crazy about mint juleps… And call her Tess. She likes to be called Tess.”

Qwilleran fed the cats early and announced, “I’m having dinner with Uncle Arch and Aunt Mildred.

I’ll be home around dark, and we’ll sit on the porch and look at the stars.”

They regarded him with mystification. Yet his mother had always said, “Jamie, it’s common courtesy to tell your family where you’re going and when you expect to return.” Now, after decades of living without a family, he found himself extending this common courtesy to the Siamese. Of course, they had no idea what he was saying, but he felt better for having said it.

He started down the beach carrying a canvas tote bag with the Pickax Public Library logo and marveling at the ever-changing aspect of the lake. This evening, the sky and water were turquoise, and a low cloud bank on the horizon resembled a mountain range. Flirtatious waves made passes at the

primly pebbled beach. At Seagull Point, broad wings wheeled over the water. Farther along, cottagers sat on their decks and waved.

At Sunny Daze, Arch was waiting at the top of the sandladder, and Qwilleran handed him two bottles of wine from the canvas bag.

“What else have you got in that thing? Arch asked with the permissible nosiness of an old friend.

“None of your business,” Qwilleran replied with the same liberty. Then he asked Lisa Compton, who was there without her husband, “How’s life without Lyle?”

“Serene!” she answered promptly.

“What are the superintendents doing in Duluth? Inventing new ways to give teachers a hard time?”

“Actually, they’re coordinating policies on homeschooling.”

“Does he approve of it?”

“He says Abraham Lincoln did it, and Thomas Edison did it, and they turned out okay.”

“That sounds like Lyle,” Qwilleran said. “To tell the truth, I don’t know how homeschooling works.”

“Ask me!” said Roger MacGillivray. Mildred’s son-in-law was a pale young man with a clipped black beard and plenty of enthusiasm. “We follow a prescribed curriculum. Kids get their lessons by E-mail. They take achievement tests. They learn at their own pace with no time wasted on the school bus.”

Lisa said, “I wish I’d been homeschooled. I was I the only Campbell in a classful of Macdonalds, and they were still avenging the Glencoe Massacre of 1692.”

Qwilleran asked, “But do kids get a chance to mix with their peers?”

“Better yet,” Roger said, “they meet a variety of adults and kids of all ages - through field trips, Scouts, Little League sports, and creative activities. For example, our group takes their pets to visit the women at Safe Harbor once a month. They’re widows of commercial fishermen, you know.”

Qwilleran said he knew - and pulled the embroidered sampler from the tote bag. He wanted advice on having it framed. He was giving it to Polly, thinking it more suitable for her house.

The women were agog over the concept, the tiny stitches, the colors of the yarn (Siamese colors). Lisa said her next-door neighbor on the beach had a framing shop in Lockmaster. Mildred suggested a narrow molding in dark wood.

Then Arch Riker, “Did everybody hear the news about Owen Bowen? He drowned this afternoon. He’d been here only a few weeks.”

There were polite murmurings: “Really too bad! … How old was he? … Where was he from? … Will the restaurant fold?”

Guiltily, Qwilleran thought, If he were “one of us,” we’d be shocked, horrified, and ready to take up a collection for his family. But Owen was an outsider, as Qwilleran himself had been before he inherited the Klingenschoen fortune and before the Moose County Something was established.

To restore the party mood Mildred served zucchini fritters with a dill-yogurt dip, and Qwilleran presented her with the set of rune stones. She promised to study the instructions and tell fortunes the next time they met. Roger hoped the stones would predict rain.

“It’s dangerously dry. I worry about forest fires,” he said. “Even the Sand Giant is worried. People think they’re hearing distant thunder, but it’s really the old boy growling in his cave.”

Qwilleran, who was collecting local legends for a book to be titled Short & Tall Tales, said, “Would you explain the Sand Giant to me? I just happen to have my tape recorder here.” He knew Roger always had a yarn to tell, having been a history teacher before switching to journalism.

“Sure!” he said, relishing an audience. “The history of the Sand Giant goes way back. The first explorers in this region arrived by sailing ship and made camp on the beach at the base of a huge wall of sand. Strangely, they claimed to hear rumbling inside the dune, and some nights they could see a large gray shape moving among the trees on the summit. Being superstitious in those days, they decided a giant lived in a cave inside the dune. They often ‘saw things’ that weren’t there.”

“Still do,” Riker muttered with a glance at Qwilleran, who nodded and chuckled.”

“Through the years,” Roger went on, “the Sand Giant continued to prowl and growl, and kids were afraid of being grabbed and taken to his cave if they misbehaved. His first overt act of hostility didn’t occur, however, until the mid-nineteenth century, when wealthy lumbermen got the idea of building fine houses on top of the Great Dune, as it was then called. As soon as they started cutting down the ancient hardwoods, a giant sandslide engulfed the lumbercamp, killing everybody. Old-timers weren’t surprised; they said the lumbermen had offended the Sand Giant. My grandparents believed that absolutely.”

“My mother’s forebears were believers,” Lisa I said, “but not the Campbell side of the family.”

“There’s more to the story,” Roger went on. “For about sixty years no one tampered with the Great Dune, and Moose County prospered. Then came the economic collapse. Mines closed, and shipping went down the drain. There was no money and precious little food. But somebody got the bright idea of mining sand and shipping it Down Below to make concrete for bridges and large buildings. So the county commissioners issued a permit to hack away at the Great Dune, where Sandpit Road now cuts through. It was dangerous work because of the shifting sand, but men had to feed their families, and they kept on hacking in spite of occasional casualties.

“Eventually they tapped a pocket of hydrogen sulphide that smelled like rotten eggs and made the whole town sick. The permit was revoked, and it was back to oatmeal and turnips for hungry families… that is, until Prohibition came along and bootlegging was found to be profitable. There were no more sandslides, but, in certain kinds of weather, you can still hear the Sand Giant growling in his cave.” “Great story!” Qwilleran said, turning off the recorder.

“I’m willing to believe it,” said Lisa.

“Interesting,” was Arch’s reluctant comment.

“Dinner is served,” Mildred announced. It was squash bisque, lamb stew, crusty bread, and green salad. Dessert and coffee were served on the deck, during which Qwilleran and Arch entertained them with a tell-all session about growing up in Chicago. How Qwilleran’s first name was really Merlin and he’d never let any other kid use his baseball bat… and how Arch’s nickname was Tubby and he once got sick from eating erasers… and how both of them were sent to the principal’s office for putting glue on the teacher’s chair pad.

“You did it!” said Qwilleran, pointing at his old friend.

“No, you did it, you dirty dog!” The evening ended with laughter, and Qwilleran accompanied Lisa back along the beach.

“Do you ever see the aurora borealis?” she asked.

“Once in a while. When I first saw those dancing lights on the horizon, I was tempted to call 911.”

“Have you seen many Visitors this year?”

He knew what she meant, but he hesitated. “Visitors?”

“Spacecraft,” she explained. “Lyle films them, and when he gets back from Duluth, we’ll have you over to look at our videos.”

“Well! That’s something to look forward to,” he said ambiguously.

When they reached The Little Frame House, she introduced him to the Van Roops, who did picture framing.

“My shop is in Lockmaster, but we advertise in your paper,” the framer said.

“Our niece knows you,” his wife said. “She’s a volunteer at Safe Harbor.”

“Charming young woman,” Qwilleran murmured.

He left the sampler at The Little Frame House, then escorted Lisa to Bah Humbug.

When he arrived at the cabin, the Siamese were waiting with the tranquillity that comes halfway between dinner and bedtime snack. It indicated that some mischief had been done. Polly’s postcards, which had been stacked on the bar, were now scattered about the floor.