Qwilleran, to his dismay, had found several believers in the interplanetary
origin of UFOs - among such persons as Riker’s wife, the superintendent of schools, and a sophisticated young heiress from Chicago… or else they were playacting to preserve a local tradition, like adults pretending to believe in Santa Claus.
The last stop on his morning round was Amanda’s design studio, where Fran Brodie, second in command, was back from vacation. She was one of the most attractive young women in Pickax, as well as one of the most talented, and now she had the added glamor that seems to come with foreign travel.
He said, “I don’t need to ask if you had a good time. You look spectacularly happy.”
“It was fabulous!” she cried, tossing her strawberry-blond hair. “Have you been to Italy?”
“Only as a foreign correspondent for papers Down Below.”
“You must go there for a vacation and take Polly! The cities! The countryside! The art! The food! The people!” She rolled her eyes in a way that suggested she was not telling the whole story about… the people. “Sit down, Qwill, we have things to discuss.”
She had done a small design job for him and was redesigning the interior of the Pickax Hotel, but her greatest passion was the Pickax Theater Club. It had been her idea to do summer theater in a barn near Mooseville. They were opening with a comedy, Visitor to a Small Planet.
“Are you going to review our opening night, Qwill?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“For the first time in club history we’re getting reviewers from neighboring counties: the Lockmaster Ledger and Bixby Bugle! Do you know the play?”
“Only that Gore Vidal wrote it and it opened on Broadway a long time ago.”
“It’s a fun production,” Fran said. “A flying saucer lands in front of a TV commentator’s house, and a Visitor from outer space proceeds to stir things up.”
“Who’s playing the Visitor? Were you able to draw from a pool of small green actors?”
“That’s our big joke, Qwill. We’ve purposely cast actors under five-feet- nine for all the earthlings, so the Visitor comes as a shock. He’s six-feet- eight!”
“Derek Cuttlebrink!”
“Isn’t that a hoot? Larry’s playing the commentator, and Scott Gippel is perfect for the overbearing general… Shall I have two tickets at the box office for you on Friday?”
“One will do,” Qwilleran said. “Polly’s vacationing with her sister in Ontario. They’re seeing Shakespeare in Stratford and some Shaw plays at Niagra-on-the-Lake.”
“Oh, I’m envious!” Fran cried.
“Don’t be greedy! You’ve just seen the Pope in Rome, David in Florence, and all those virile gondoliers in Venice.”
She gave him a Fran Brodie glance - half amusement, half rebuke.
“Where did you find a barn suitable for a theater?” he asked.
“Avery Botts is letting us use his dairy barn for nine weekends. Each play will run three weekends.”
“I see,” said Qwilleran thoughtfully. “And what will the cows do on weekends?”
“Are you serious, Qwill? Avery quit dairy farming a long time ago, when the state built the prison. They gave him a lot of money for his back forty, and he switched to poultry. You must have seen his place on Lakeshore just west of Pickax Road: big white frame farmhouse with a lot of white outbuildings. A sign on the lawn says: FRESH EGGS… FRYERS. Avery tells a funny story about that. Want to hear it?”
“Is it clean?”
“Well, one summer day,” she began, “a city dude and a flashy blonde drove into the farmyard in a convertible with the top down. The guy yelled that he wanted a dozen fryers. Avery told him he had only three on hand but could have the other nine in a couple of hours. The guy slammed into reverse and yelled, ‘Forget it! Sell your three eggs to somebody else!’ And he gunned the car back down the drive in a cloud of dust. When Avery tells the story, he laughs till he chokes.”
“I don’t get it,” Qwilleran admitted, “but I’m a city dude myself.”
“A fryer, Qwill, is a young chicken - not an egg that you fry!”
“Hmmm…learn something every day.”
“We’re going to call our theater the Fryers Club Summer Stage… But I’m doing all the talking,” she said. “What’s your news?”
“Only that the cats and I are moving to the beach for a month.”
“Have you seen your new guest house?”
“Not yet. I hope you didn’t make it too comfortable or too attractive. I don’t want to find myself in the motel business.”
“Don’t worry. I did it in bilious colors with lumpy mattresses, flimsy towels, and framed pictures of drowning sailors.”
“Good!” he said. “See you Friday night. Break a leg!”
Driving back to the barn to collect the Siamese for the Mooseville expedition, Qwilleran considered what he would need to pack in his van. For himself it would be, first of all, the automated coffeemaker. Otherwise he would require only polo: .shirts, shorts, and sandals, plus writing materials and a few books. There was no point in taking the revolutionary high-tech recumbent bike that had been presented to him by the community as a token of their esteem. The rider reclined in a bucket seat, pedaling with elevated feet. Needless to say, it was such a sensation in Pickax that he seldom ventured out on the highway; instead he displayed it in his living room as a conversation piece and even an art object. On this occasion, he decided to leave it where it was; after all, there was a trail bike in the tool shed at the cabin.
The cats’ vacation needs were more complex. He would have to take their blue cushion from the top of the refrigerator; the turkey roaster that served as their commode; several bags of their favorite cat litter that was kind to the toes; grooming equipment; their special dishes for food and water; a month’s supply of Kabibbles, a crunchy treat prepared by a neighbor; and a few cans of their preferred brands of red salmon, crabmeat, lobster, and smoked turkey.
Right now it was time for their midday snack, and they would be waiting for him, prancing on long thin legs, waving eloquent tails, raising eager eyes that were pools of blue in their brown masks. When he unlocked the door, however, both were asleep on the sofa - a tangle of pale fawn fur and brown legs and tails, with heads buried in each other’s underside, except for three visible ears.
“Treat!” he said in a stage whisper. Two heads popped up!
“Yow!” came Koko’s clamoring response.
“N-n-now!” shrieked Yum Yum.
After the luggage was packed and the van loaded, and after Yum Yum had been chased and captured and pushed into the cat carrier, Koko was found sitting in the bucket seat of the recumbent bike, looking wise.
Oh, well, Qwilleran thought, I might as well take it along. I can practice on the back roads.
-2-
The two passengers in the cat carrier on the backseat complained and jockeyed
for position, then settled down as the brown van picked up speed on the open highway. The route to Mooseville lay due north. For Qwilleran, it was a highway of memories, crowded with landmarks from his earlier experiences in the county:
Dimsdale Diner (bad coffee, good gossip) … Ittibittiwassee Road (turn left to Shantytown, right to the Buckshot Mine) … old turkey farm (once owned by Mildred Riker’s first husband) … abandoned cemetery (poison ivy) … state prison (famous flower gardens, infamous scandal).
At the prison gates, the dozing Siamese perked up, stretched their necks, and sniffed. It was not roses they smelled; it was the lake, still a mile away. They detected open water, aquatic weeds, algae, plankton, minnows! Their excitement increased as the van traveled along the lakeshore road. On the left, Qwilleran saw Avery Botts’s farmhouse and the Fryers Club Summer Stage… on the right, glimpses of the lake between the trees… on the left, pastureland with cattle ruminating or horses showing off their glossy coats and noble bearing… on the right, the rustic gate of Top o’ the Dunes Club, where the Rikers had their beach house… on the left, a solitary stone chimney, all that remained of an old one-room schoolhouse… on the right, the letter K on a post.