Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Talked Turkey

“No food?” Qwilleran asked.

“No food, no gifts. Just around the corner are a gift shop and an ice cream parlor.”

For dessert they ordered blackberry cobbler. Polly said it looked awfully rich.

“But I have been doing all the talking, Qwill. What has kept you occupied?” she asked absently.

“Not much,” he said. “What did you bring me from the big city?”

“A CD recording of Massenet’s piano pieces. They’ll sound wonderful on your big sound system.”

“Good!” he said. “Shall we go to the barn and listen to music?”

Qwilleran could have told Polly about his plans for the next day, but Polly was so thrilled about the bookstore and everything concerning it that he had no desire to dampen her enthusiasm. He had never seen her so animated!

The next evening he would drive to Lockmaster for the first book signing in how many years? Earlier in his life, while a crime reporter Down Below, he had authored a book titled City of Brotherly Crime. Since then, none of his ideas had jelled until he moved to Moose County and discovered the wealth of legends originating from pioneer days, to be published as Short & Tall Tales.

In Lockmaster, the adjoining county, he had many friends and readers of the “Qwill Pen” column, and Kip MacDiarmid, editor of the Lockmaster Ledger, had arranged for a book signing on the eve of publication. It would be a private preview for members of the local Literary Club and would be held in the community room of the local bookstore.

The room was crowded with members of the club; the editor’s introduction was flattering, and applause was vociferous, and someone shouted, “Where’s Koko?”

Qwilleran walked to the lectern, surveyed the audience at length with his brooding eyes, then stroked his oversized moustache. His silence brought a standing ovation.

Then he began to speak in his mellifluous voice: “This is the story of a woman who put fear into the male population of a small town in Moose County. It is a true tale, as told by Gary Pratt, proprietor of the Hotel Booze in the Scottish town of Brrr.”

The audience began to wriggle in delight and anticipation. Qwilleran proceeded to bring alive the legend, imitating the high-pitched voice of the hotel proprietor.

HILDA THE CLIPPER

My grandfather used to tell about this eccentric old woman in Brrr who had everybody terrorized. This was about seventy years ago, you understand. She always walked around town with a pair of hedge clippers, pointing them at people and going

click-click

with the blades. Behind her back they laughed and called her Hilda the Clipper, but the same people were very nervous when she was around.

The thing of it was, nobody knew if she was just an oddball or was really smart enough to beat the system. In stores she picked up anything she wanted without paying a cent. She broke all the town ordinances and got away with it. Once in a while a cop or the sheriff would question her from a safe distance, and she said she was taking her hedge clippers to be sharpened. She didn’t have a hedge. She lived in a tar-paper shack with a mangy dog. No electricity, no running water. My grandfather had a farmhouse across the road, and Hilda’s shack was on his property. She lived there rent-free, brought water in a pail from his hand pump, and helped herself to firewood from his woodpile in winter.

One night, right after Halloween, the Reverend Mr. Wimsey from the church here was driving home from a prayer meeting at Squunk Corners. It was a cold night, and cars didn’t have heaters then. His Model T didn’t even have side curtains, so he was dressed warm. He was chugging along the country road, at probably twenty miles an hour, when he saw somebody in the darkness ahead, trudging down the middle of the dirt road and wearing a bathrobe and bedroom slippers. She was carrying hedge clippers.

Mr. Wimsey knew her well. She’d been a member of his flock until he suggested she quit bringing the clippers to services. Then she gave up going to church and was kind of hostile. Still, he couldn’t leave her out there to catch her death of cold. Nowadays you’d just call the sheriff, but there were no car radios then, and no cell phones. So he pulled up and asked where she was going.

“To see my friend,” she said in a gravelly voice.

“Would you like a ride, Hilda?”

She gave him a mean look and then said, “Seein’ as how it’s a cold night . . .” She climbed in the car and sat with the clippers on her lap and both hands on the handles.

Mr. Wimsey told Grandpa he gulped a couple of times and asked where her friend lived.

“Over yonder.” She pointed across a cornfield.

“It’s late to go visiting,” he said. “Wouldn’t you rather I should take you home?”

“I told you where I be wantin’ to go,” she shouted, as if he was deaf, and she gave the clippers a

click-click.

“That’s all right, Hilda. Do you know how to get there?”

“It’s over yonder.” She pointed to the left.

At the next road he turned left and drove for about a mile without seeing anything like a house. He asked what the house looked like.

“I’ll know it when we get there!”

Click-click.

“What road is it on? Do you know?”

“It don’t have a name.”

Click-click.

“What’s the name of your friend?”

“None o’ yer business! Just take me there.”

She was shivering, and he stopped the car and started taking off his coat. “Let me put my coat around you, Hilda.”

“Don’t you get fresh with me!” she shouted, pushing him away and going

click-click.

Mr. Wimsey kept on driving and thinking what to do. He drove past a sheep pasture, a quarry, and dark farmhouses with barking dogs. The lights of Brrr glowed in the distance, but if he steered in that direction, she went into a snit and clicked the clippers angrily.

Finally he had an inspiration. “We’re running out of fuel!” he said in an anxious voice. “We’ll be stranded out here! We’ll freeze to death! I have to go into town to buy some gasoline!”

It was the first time in his life, he told Grandpa, that he’d ever told a lie, and he prayed silently for forgiveness. He also prayed the trick would work. Hilda didn’t object. Luckily she was getting drowsy, probably in the first stages of hypothermia. Mr. Wimsey found a country store and went in to use their crank telephone.

In two minutes a sheriff deputy drove up on a motorcycle. “Mr. Wimsey! You old rascal!” he said to the preacher. “We’ve been looking all over for the Clipper! Better talk fast, or I’ll have to arrest you for kidnapping!”

What happened, you see: Hilda’s dog had been howling for hours, and Grandpa called the sheriff.

Eventually Hilda was lodged in a foster home—for her own protection—and had to surrender her hedge clippers. The whole town breathed a lot easier. I asked my grandfather why they put up with her eccentricities for so long. He said, “Folks still had the pioneer philosophy: Shut up and make do!”

Qwilleran was gratified by the cordial welcome of the Literary Club, their response to his reading, and the number of books presented for signing. He regretted only that it could not happen in Pickax at The Pirate’s Chest—as it was destined to be named.

THREE

It was Thursday—time to write another thousand words for the “Qwill Pen” column—and Qwilleran’s head was devoid of ideas. That meant resorting to the Koko System. The man yelled “Book!” and the cat came running—leaping onto a bookshelf, sniffing bindings, and nudging a selected title off the shelf. And that became the topic for the “Qwill Pen.”