Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Talked Turkey

So, instead of a few hundred spectators, there were a few thousand. County highways as well as city streets were clogged with sensation-seekers. Whole families attended—with picnic lunches and campstools. Would the pirate’s loot be found? Or was it just a rumor? Bets were being placed among friends—nothing over a quarter. The idea was to have something “on the nose” to report to future generations.

Then sirens were heard! The state police were escorting TV teams who had unexpectedly flown up from Down Below in chartered planes. The media in metropolitan areas were always alert for bizarre happenings in the boondocks. And in the digital age, buried treasure was bizarre.

The high school band arrived in a school bus and proceeded to tune up noisily and discordantly for the next half hour, exciting the crowd.

The police strung their yellow tape around the digging area. The dignitaries entered the viewing stand. The backhoe operator was perched in the vehicle’s lofty seat. Cops and deputies with sidearms entered the area and stood facing the crowd.

The band played “Stars and Stripes Forever,” hitting most of the right notes, and the backhoe jockeyed into position. The boom rose, and the bucket dropped with a resounding crack. Onlookers seemed to be holding their collective breath as the machine backed and lunged, bashed and scraped and shoveled. Finally a shout rose from the crowd. The bucket brought up an iron-strapped chest.

Chief Andrew Brodie stepped forward and opened it. He spread his hands palms-down in a negative gesture. The chest was empty!

Groans of disappointment quickly turned into roars of laughter. The good folk of Moose County liked a good laugh, even at their own expense, and this was a good joke. The only ones who weren’t laughing and crowing and whooping were the out-of-town media, and this tickled the locals even more; they liked to hoax outsiders.

Even old-timers in Pickax could not remember a year with so much excitement. The old opera house had been restored for the performing arts! Plans were under way for the city’s Sesquicentennial celebration! The local soccer team had taken the championship away from Bixby County. And the K Fund was building a bookstore.

It was not just a rumor. The ground had already been broken. Polly Duncan, who had directed the public library for twenty years, was resigning in order to manage the new venture. She had gone to Chicago twice to consult the brain trust at the K Fund, as the philanthropic foundation was known.

There was also an incident of an unfortunate nature, but it was being hushed up. The body of a well-dressed man without identification had been found in a wooded area near the beach. He had been shot, execution-style. It happened on the day of the groundbreaking, and rumormongers were determined to find some connection but failed.

Qwilleran walked home from the groundbreaking. His barn was only a few blocks from downtown, but it was screened by a dense patch of woods. Though only a home address to a pair of pampered felines, it was an architectural wonder to residents of Moose County. An octagonal structure a century old, it rose from the barnyard like an ancient castle, four stories high and built of fieldstone and weathered wood siding.

Originally it had stored wagonloads of apples waiting to be pressed into cider. Now the lofts and ladders were gone, and so was the interior gloom. Odd-shaped windows had been cut into the siding at various levels, and all exposed wood surfaces—beams, rafters, and plank walls—had been bleached to a honey color.

There was living space on three balconies, connected by a ramp that spiraled up the interior wall. And in the center of the ground floor, a giant white fireplace cube served the living areas, with stacks rising to the roof forty feet overhead.

To the cats Qwilleran would say, “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”

In reply Koko would yowl and Yum Yum would sneeze delicately.

Now, as he arrived home from the groundbreaking, he looked for the welcoming committee sitting in the kitchen window. They were not there.

After unlocking the door, he found Yum Yum huddled on the blue cushion atop the refrigerator, looking worried. Koko paced the floor, looking uncomfortable.

“Something you ate?” Qwilleran asked in a jocular way.

Suddenly the cat uttered a bloodcurdling howl that started as a growl in his lower depths and ended in a shriek.

Qwilleran shuddered. He recognized Koko’s “death howl”! Someone, somehow, somewhere was the victim of foul play.

There was no explanation, except that some cats, like some humans, seem to have psychic powers.

Koko and Yum Yum were a pair of purebred Siamese with pale fawn-colored bodies accented with seal-brown points. The male had a commanding appearance; the female was daintier and sweeter, although with a mind of her own. Both had the incredibly blue eyes of the breed.

Koko was the communicator of the family. He ordered meals, greeted guests, told them when to go home, and always, always spoke his mind, either in ear-piercing howls or an indecipherable ik-ik-ik.

They knew it was dinnertime and were throwing thought waves in Qwilleran’s direction, sitting under the kitchen table and staring at their empty plates. He chopped turkey from the deli and watched them. Only once did Koko raise his head, and that was to stare at the wall telephone. A few seconds later, it rang. Polly Duncan, the chief woman in Qwilleran’s life, was calling from Chicago, where she had been in conference with bigwigs at the Klingenschoen Foundation. She would be flying home the next morning. Qwilleran said he would pick her up at the airport and asked if she was bringing him something from the big city.

“Yes, and you’ll love it!”

“What is it? Give me a clue.”

“No clues. À bientôt. ”

“À bientôt.”

Later that evening, when Qwilleran was reading a thought-provoking treatise from the Wilson Quarterly, Koko jumped onto a bookshelf and yowled; he wanted Qwilleran to read aloud. They enjoyed the sound of his voice, and Yum Yum liked to snuggle up to his rib cage and feel the vibrations. Koko went so far as to select the title, and Qwilleran read the one about the owl and the pussycat who went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat, embellishing the lines with hoots, purrs, and meows. He thought, How can an animal who cannot read or understand the language . . . how can he choose one book over some other? It was something to ponder.

Polly’s plane was due to arrive at noon on Sunday. In Moose County all shuttle flights from Chicago—or anywhere else—were consistently an hour late, and friends and relatives who met the passengers were consistently on time. They liked to stand around and make ludicrous comments about the service. They said:

“The tail fin was loose, and they’d run out of Scotch tape.”

“The pilot had to have her hair done.”

“They forgot to gas up and had to stop in Milwaukee. . . .”

The banter was an old Moose County custom, handed down from pioneer days, when a sense of humor helped the settlers cope with discomforts, hardships, and even disasters.

When the brave little plane finally bounced up to the terminal, Polly was the last one to disembark, descending the ramp warily, as if she believed the myth that it was built of recycled bicycle parts.

Qwilleran stepped forward, took her carry-on, and said he would collect her other luggage—if they could find the can opener to open the baggage compartment. They were discreet in their personal greetings; gossips were always watching for a sign of romance between the librarian and the newsman.

“Decent flight?”

“Bearable,” she replied. “How was the groundbreaking?”