Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Knew A Cardinal

"Those devils!" he had recently remarked to his friend Polly. "I believe they have the Mungojerry-Rumpelteazer franchise for Moose County."

Tonight, as the cats nosed their way through the crab-meat without enthusiasm, the man observed the disapproving posture of the fawn-furred bodies, the critical tilt of the brown ears, and the reproachful contour of the brown tails. He was beginning to read their body language - especially their tail language. His concentration was interrupted when the telephone rang and there was no one on the line. Thinking nothing of it, he proceeded to thaw a pouch of beef stew for his own dinner.

Ordinarily, Saturday evening would have found him dining at the Old Stone Mill with Polly Duncan, the chief librarian in Pickax and the chief woman in his life. She was out of town, however, and he gulped down the beef stew without tasting it, after which he retired to his studio to write his "Straight from the Qwill Pen" column for the local newspaper. His upbeat topic was the success of an unusual experiment in Pickax. On that very evening the Theatre Club was presenting the final performance of The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth. It had been a controversial choice of play. Even devotees of Shakespeare predicted there would be more persons on the stage than in the audience. Yet, the production had achieved the longest run in Pickax theatre history: twelve performances over a period of four weekends, with virtually no empty seats.

Qwilleran had attended opening night in the company of Polly Duncan, fifth row on the aisle, after which he wrote a justifiably favorable review. Now that the final box office results were known, he wrote a wrap-up piece commending the audiences for their discerning appreciation of serious drama and complimenting the small-town performers for their believable portrayals of sixteenth-century English nobility. It was not entirely accidental that he neglected to mention the director until the last paragraph. Hilary Van Brook had offended Qwilleran's journalistic pride by refusing to be profiled in the "Qwill Pen" column - an opportunity that the rest of Pickax equated with winning the lottery. Now the journalist was getting the last word, so to speak, by relegating the director to the last paragraph.

Pleased with his handiwork, he concocted a cup of coffee in a computerized machine, thawed a doughnut, and prepared to relax with a book he had bought secondhand. Qwilleran was thrifty by temperament, and despite his new financial status he retained many of his old habits of frugality. He drove a preowned car, gassed up at the self-serve pump, winced when he looked at pricetags, and always sought out bargains in used books.

After getting into pajamas and his comfortable old threadbare plaid robe, he put a match to some dry twigs and applewood logs in the fireplace and was about to stretch out in an oversized armchair when the telephone rang again. Once more he heard an abrupt click-off followed by a dial tone, and this time he questioned it. In the cities where he had lived and worked Down Below, the incident would suggest a burglar lurking in a phone booth down at the corner. In Moose County, where break-ins were rare, he could suspect only curiosity-seekers. There had been so much gossip about Qwilleran's apple barn (where a fruit grower had hanged himself from the rafters in 1920) that townfolk had been prowling about the premises and peering in the windows.

Putting the phone call out of his mind, he settled down in his big chair with his feet propped on the ottoman. Immediately, the Siamese came running in anticipation of a reading session. He often read aloud to them. They seemed to appreciate the sound of his voice, whether he was reciting from his secondhand Walt Whitman or reading the major league scores in the newspapers from Down Below. He had a richly timbred delivery - the result of his diction classes while dabbling in college drama - and the acoustics of the barn added to its resonance.

As he opened Audubon's Birds of America - the so-called Popular Edition of the nineteenth-century best-seller - his audience arranged themselves in comfortable bundles of attention, Yum Yum on his lap and Koko at his elbow on the arm of the chair. Ornithology was not one of Qwilleran's interests, but Polly had given him binoculars for his birthday and was trying to convert him to bird watching. Moreover, a book with two hundred colorplates was an irresistible bargain at a dollar.

"It's mostly pictures," he explained to the attentive animals as he turned the pages. "Who thinks up these absurd names? Black-bellied plover! Loggerhead shrike! Pied-billed grebe! Don't you think they're absurd?"

"Yow," Koko agreed.

"Here's a handsome one! It's your friend, the cardinal. The book says it resides in thickets, tangles, and gardens as far north as Canada."

Koko, an experienced pigeon watcher from Down Below, now spent hours every day at the windows on the various levels of the barn, sighting myriad small birds in the blighted orchard. Recently he had struck up an acquaintance with a visitor distinguished by red plumage, a royal crown, and a patrician beak, who whistled a continual question: who-it?

As Qwilleran turned the page to the rose-breasted grosbeak, both cats suddenly stretched to attention and craned their necks in the direction of the front door. Qwilleran also sat up and listened. He could hear a menacing rumble in the orchard that sounded alarmingly like army tanks, and he could see lights approaching the barn. He jumped to his feet and switched on the yardlights. Peering down the Trevelyan Trail he could see them coming - a column of headlights, weaving and bouncing as vehicles maneuvered through the ruts of the dirt road.

"What the deuce is this?" he barked, palming his moustache in perplexity. "An invasion?" The alarming tone of his voice sent both cats bounding out of sight; they had no intention of being caught in the line of fire.

One by one the vehicles turned out of the lane and parked in the tall grasses between the old apple trees. Headlights disappeared, and dark figures piled out of dark cars and trucks, converging on the barn. Only when they reached the pool of light in the yard did Qwilleran recognize them as the cast and crew of Henry VIII. They were carrying six-packs, coolers, brown paper bags, and pizza boxes.

His first thought was: Dammit! They've caught me in my pajamas and old robe! His second thought was: They look like hoboes themselves. It was true. The troupe wore backstage attire: tattered jeans, faded sweatshirts, washed out plaids, bedraggled sweaters, and grimy sneakers - a drastic change from the court finery of an hour before.

"Happy barn warming!" they shouted when they saw Qwilleran in the doorway. He reached around the doorjamb and threw a master switch that illuminated the entire interior. Uplights and downlights were concealed artfully in timbers and under balconies. Then he stepped aside and let them file into the barn - all forty of them!

If their eyes popped and their jaws dropped, it was for good reason. The walls of the main floor were the original stone foundation, a random stack of boulders held together by hidden mortar - craggy as a grotto. Overhead were massive pine timbers, some of them twelve inches square. Sandblasted to their original honey color, they contrasted softly with the newly insulated walls, painted white. And in the center of it all stood the contemporary fireplace, a huge white cube with three chubby cylindrical white flues rising to the center of the roof.

For the first time in anyone's memory the members of the Pickax Theatre Club were speechless. They wandered about the main level in a trance, gazing upward at the interlocking braces and beams, then downward at the earthen tile floor where furniture was arranged in conversation groups on Moroccan rugs. Then they collected their wits and all talked at once.