“Who lives there?” Qwilleran was sure he knew the answer.
Mildred said, “A woman from Down Below. I went over to welcome her to the neighborhood, but really to satisfy my curiosity, and she was as friendly as a cold fish. All she could do was complain—about the noise of the surf and the seagulls, about people walking on the beach and staring at her house and even taking snapshots of it, about dead fish washing up. Just to be devilish, I told her not to be alarmed by green lights flashing over the lake at night; they’re only UFOs.”
Qwilleran said, “She sounds like the charmer who was staying at the Nutcracker Inn. Keep Toulouse indoors. She hates cats.”
Toulouse was lounging on the railing of the deck with the assurance of a cat who has adopted a food editor. Mildred gave him a morsel of crabmeat as she passed a plate of canapés. “Is it true,” she asked, “that household pets are going to be the theme of your next limerick contest?”
“I think so. Rhymes about pets can be fun to write—whimsical, exaggerated, nonsensical. Give me another of those crabmeat things, and I’ll show you what I mean.”
In the time it took to eat a canapé, Qwilleran produced the following: “A black-and-white stray named Toulouse / found a home in the county of Moose. / He lives on ice cream / and chicken supreme / and crabmeat and paté of goose.”
“Hit the nail on the head,” Arch said.
Dinner was served al fresco, starting with cold purée of zucchini garnished with fresh blueberries.
Arch said, “Millie throws a handful of blueberries into everything.”
“They’re good for you,” she said.
Then individual beef potpies were served, and Arch remarked, “Do you realize that Millie is descended from a lumber camp cook?”
“My great-grandfather,” she said proudly. “The loggers lived on beans and salt pork, hardtack, boiled turnips, and tea boiled with molasses.”
“What about flapjacks? I thought they ate stacks of twelve, big as a dinner plate,” Qwilleran said.
Arch said, “That sounds like the figment of a Hollywood script writer’s imagination.”
Because there was no time for a formal dessert, Mildred served coffee and a confection called a Black Walnut Bombshell. They were balls an inch in diameter: buttery, nutty, not too sweet, and tasting faintly of chocolate. She packed some for her guest to take home.
“By the way,” Qwilleran said, “did I tell you I’m invited to be guest-of-honor at an MCCC luncheon?”
“What happened?” Arch said wryly. “Did those academic types suddenly find out we have a writer who doesn’t do double negatives and dangling adverbs?”
There had been a lack of rapport between the college and the media. Most of the faculty were from Down Below, and many of them commuted.
Qwilleran explained the breakthrough: “I was interviewing Dr. and Mrs. Abernethy, and she seems to have some connection with MCCC. She invited me to the luncheon. There’ll be a speaker from Down Below, but they’ll introduce me and I’ll be expected to say something trenchant in twenty-five words or less.”
“Write a limerick,” Mildred suggested.
He said, “Do you know that last year’s winner in the limerick contest now hangs in the lobby of the Hotel Booze—enlarged and framed? ‘There was a young lady in Brrr / who always went swimming in fur. / One day, on a dare, / she swam in the bare / and that was the end of HER.’ ”
They rode to the Hotel Booze in separate vehicles, so that Qwilleran could search for column material after the performance. The route lay along the lakeshore to the town of Brrr (as in “cold”).
The Black Bear Café occupied half the main floor and was the scene of the reenactment. Qwilleran and his guests were ushered to one of the booths lining three walls. On the other long wall was a bar with twenty stools, and in the center of the room were chairs still upended on tables after the last floor sweeping.
Beverages were being served until eight o’clock, and hotelkeeper Gary Pratt made the rounds of the booths, welcoming the spectators and reminding them to look at the programs on their tables. With his shambling gait and shaggy black beard and hair, he looked as ursine as the eight-foot mounted bear at the entrance.
The programs credited Roger MacGillivray, historian and coach; Carol and Larry Lanspeak, directors; Thornton Haggis, stage manager, who also played the role of “Whitey.”
Principals were Whitey, the saloonkeeper; Jake, his helper; Mrs. Watts and Lucy, barmaids; and George, the most-favored customer. Then there were lumberjacks, just in from the backwoods camps; the elite river-drivers from French Canada; sawyers from the mills at the river’s mouth; dance hall girls; and sailors from the schooners in the harbor.
Mildred, a native of the area, knew them all. “Lucy” was the daughter of her hairdresser; “Jake” taught math at the high school and coached the wrestling team; “Stinko” worked at Toodles’ supermarket; “George” was an insurance agent.
At eight o’clock the lights blinked for attention, and then blacked out, leaving only the vigil candles in the booths. The audience was silent, but a commotion could be heard beyond the entrance doors at the far right end of the bar. At the opposite end a double door opened and in came Whitey with his bar apron tied around his middle and with his shock of white hair looking like a torch in the grubby saloon. His helper, Jake, followed—a mountain of a man in a plaid flannel shirt. The two barmaids, one middle-aged and one young, wore long gray granny dresses with small white collars and white ruffled caps.
Jake went to work, setting up the chairs around the tables, while the barmaids wiped the tabletops. Whitey started pouring stage whiskey (cold tea) from whiskey bottles into shot glasses.
There were impatient thumps on the entrance door and shouts of “Open up!” Whitey consulted a large gold watch on a long chain and gave a nod to his helper. After unlocking the doors, Jake barred the entrance with his huge arms and admitted the thirsty horde in a thin trickle while bellowing, “No corks! No corks!”
He referred to the caulks, or steel pins, that could be attached to boots for gripping logs. Indoors, they damaged floors. In a violent fight, they damaged flesh.
In they came! Husky lumberjacks in beards and pigtails and burly backwoods clothing . . . Sailors of a taut, wiry build, wearing striped jerseys, tight pants, and hats with brims turned up all around. They yelled with the exuberance of youth:
“Whitey, y’ol’ galoot! Ain’t you dead yet?”
“Pour the red-eye, Whitey! I gotta thirst that’d drain a swamp!”
“Where’s George? He owes me a drink!”
“Ain’t George here yet?”
The loggers dropped into chairs around the tables and got out the cards and dice. The sailors kept their distance from this rough crowd and lined up at the bar. Also at the bar were three of the elite river-drivers in red caps and red sashes, just arrived from Quebec to ride the logs downstream like daredevils. A few dance hall girls, swishing their short skirts and twitching their bare shoulders, were especially interested in the French-Canadians.
The barmaids were bustling about the tables when young Lucy shrieked, “He pinched me!”
“Slap his face!” Mrs. Watts shouted, but before Lucy could summon the nerve, big Jake was on the spot. He raised the culprit by the collar, glared menacingly in his face, then dropped him back into his seat.
“Yahoo!” the other loggers yelled. In Whitey’s saloon it was all right to flirt with the dance hall girls but not with the hired help.
Whitey signaled to three sailors, and they put their heads together and sang sea shanties in three-part harmony. “Blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down,” and then the rollicking “What do you do with a drunken sailor early in the morning?”