The Cranberry Tales
A Children's Story for Adults, Too

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Item #29

The Wensleydale home is a large, single storey, square structure that Peter and Anna built with their own hands from the ground up when they first moved to Cranberry County, which was several years before the setting of this story.

The perimeter walls are upright cedar logs, left rough on the outside face, and planed smooth on the inside. A particular advantage to those as building material is that they require no maintenance, and, as Peter and Anna have learned to their considerable relief, they do not reveal cat scratches, picture hook nail holes, or other evidence of what is euphemistically called normal wear-and-tear, of which this house gets all its share. The building has a hip roof in which the four long, corner rafters meet high above the center of the house, creating in effect four equal triangles leaning against each other, together forming a pyramid that sits atop the walls like a hat.

Inside, a tree-length, peeled spruce log runs across the house from the top midpoint of each wall to the top midpoint of the wall opposite. Viewed from above, these appear as a wooden cross stretched athwart the body of the house. From an architectural point of view, they serve to tie the facing walls together, ensuring that they do not spread out and collapse under the pressure of a heavy snow load on the roof above. But from Selene’s and Pilikia’s perspective, these two crossed logs provide ideal catwalks along which to traverse the house, and from which to observe the activity below, out of reach of the dog, the humans, and whatever else might be inhabiting or visiting “the lower regions,” as Selene calls the floor.

“Just imagine being confined to the floor,” Selene was overheard remarking to Purrfect the first time she showed the Roomey’s cat around the Wensleydale house. “Nowhere to go to get above the day’s dust, always having to be alert lest someone or something step on your tail. Oh my, I should say not, the lower regions are no place for a cat to live.”

In the beginning, Peter and Anna undertook the construction project with some trepidation, neither of them having ever built anything before. On hearing of Peter’s concern, the man who owned and operated the lumbermill that supplied the Wensleydales most of the construction materials for the house asked Peter if he had any woodworking experience.

“Does sharpening pencils count?” was Peter’s reply.

“Certainly, it counts,” the fellow answered, with infectious confidence. “If you can do that well, you can learn to build a house.”

This man’s face wears a permanent smile, and from what the Wensleydale’s have come to know of him, so does his heart. His mill, sprawled over several acres of northern Maine, has been in the same family for many years, and even now, the planes are still powered by a waterwheel set into a fast running stream.

The winter before beginning actual work on the house, Peter and Anna immersed themselves in books from the public library on every subject to do with home construction from algebra (for determining rafter lengths and angles) to zoning. Anna, being an artist, assumed responsibility for designing the house and drawing up plans, while Peter concentrated on the mechanics of actually putting the pieces together.

Of course, their first outdoor task was to clear the building site of trees. In that overwhelming undertaking, for so it seemed to them at the time, Peter and Anna turned for assistance to Tyler Freeman, a neighbor who had spent his whole life working in the woods.

“You got a chain saw?” Tyler asked Peter and Anna that first day.

“Chain saw?” they replied, “Will we be sawing chains?” And they were not joking.

So it was that Tyler Freeman became one of many teachers to Peter and Anna in Cranberry County, and his first lesson was how to fell a tree cleanly, predictably, and safely … with a chain saw. In fact, it was at Tyler’s recommendation that Peter purchased an expensive Swedish chain saw, which, the first time out alone, he had been unable to get to operate.

“The motor seems to run okay,” Peter reported to Anna, “but the chain’s jammed. I guess I’m going to have to take it back.” He put the saw in the trunk of the car, and drove over to the combined auto garage and chain saw shop run by Thaddaeus Haines in the next town.

“Here, let me try it,” Thaddaeus said, flicking the on/off toggle switch, then pulling on the starter cable. The engine roared to life, settling quickly to a steady hum. But, just as Peter reported, the chain did not move. Thaddaeus ambled over to a nearby woodpile to try the machine on a log. As he was about to lay the blade against the wood, he released the safety brake.

The safety brake, Peter thought to himself, I forgot all about the safety brake!

“I realize it’s too much to ask of you not to repeat this story,” Peter said to Thaddaeus as he apologized for so foolishly taking up the man’s time, “but I sure would appreciate it if you didn’t identify me as the idiot in it.”

Sure enough, Thaddaeus Haines often relates the story of the fellow who brought a chain saw in to be fixed because it wouldn’t run with the brake on, and it always gets a good laugh, especially from the professional woodsmen who stop by on their way home for gasoline, or a soft drink from the bottle dispenser, or just to chat. But to this day, Thaddaeus has not revealed the identity of the idiot in it.

Anyway, to continue our story, early one morning one spring, the telephone on Peter’s desk rang. Actually, it isn’t exactly Peter’s desk; it is the only desk in the house. It is called Peter’s desk, just as the art studio is called Anna’s studio, even though that space doubles, or perhaps I should say multiples, as a print shop, photography darkroom, cat laundry (Have you ever tried to bathe a cat who insists it is against its religion to get wet?) , and for any other activity that might involve spilling or splashing, especially of inks or paints. “If you must fuss with that stuff inside the house,” Anna has been heard to say more than many times, “you might as well do it in the studio. The floor and walls in there have already got that color on them anyway.”

“I’ll get it,” Pilikia announced, racing across the peeled spruce log to where it passes directly over Peter’s desk, down to which she dropped abruptly like a rock, scattering a stack of papers that Peter was handling.

“Pilikia!” Peter wailed, papers flying every which way. “Don’t do that! Appearing out of nowhere like a ghost, you scared me half to death. And, no, you may not answer the phone.”

But it was too late. Pilikia already had the handset.

“It’s for you,” Pilikia said, handing him the receiver. “Something about town meeting.”

Peter took the handset, and shooed Pilikia off his desk.

“Peter Wensleydale speaking,” he said, as he glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall, and confirmed that the third Monday in April, town meeting day, fell next week.

Peter and Anna have grown to have mixed feelings about town meeting. On the one hand, of course, the annual gathering of the town’s citizenry represents all that is best about democracy: the people themselves in congress at the most local level to resolve shared problems and to provide for common needs. In fact, having moved to Cranberry County after a decade’s experience in the federal bureaucracy, Peter and Anna discovered in their first exposure to town meeting a breath of refreshing and reassuring air.

But, too, over the years they have observed that an awful lot of energy is spent addressing matters of little import, while others of significance are handled either perfunctorily or not at all. And, even here in the heartland of this great American tradition, personalities and prejudices seem sometimes to win the day over principle. “What do you expect, they’re human beings, just like the two of you,” was Selene’s observation after overhearing one of Peter’s and Anna’s conversations on this subject. “Your species has not yet learned self-discipline. Why else do you think you still need institutional government?”

After a few minutes on the telephone, Peter walked from the study toward the studio where Anna was at work on a canvas, an expansive skyscape commissioned by a surgeon in Atlanta for hanging in his waiting room. “The calming effect on my patients is palpable,” the doctor had written to Anna, referring to a similar painting he purchased from her the preceding summer while on a vacation trip in Maine. “Even my nursing staff has commented on it. So I intend to increase the dosage with this larger piece I am asking of you now.” Particularly during their early years in Cranberry County, it was Anna’s artwork that fed the Wensleydales, and made possible the freedom they enjoyed. Fortunately, she is superb at it. Happily, she enjoys it. Peter knows that he will always be grateful to her for it.

“Who was that on the phone?” Anna asked, as Peter passed through the kitchen into the studio.

“Susanne,” he replied. “Susanne Roomey.”

“Don’t tell me one of our animals has strayed up there again,” Anna said, with a grimace.

“No, it’s not that,” Peter replied, adding, with a sigh, “for a change.”

Selene, who was sitting on the beam overhead listening to the conversation below, flicked her tail several times vigorously to register silent disgust at the implication in Anna’s question and Peter’s response

Peter continued, “She was calling about town meeting next Monday evening. Apparently, there’s some talk of laying a speed bump across the road up here. She wonders how we feel about it.”

The Wensleydales and the Roomeys live on opposite sides of a road that dead-ends in the woods about a quarter of a mile beyond their homes. This is very rural country, and there are few other houses nearby. Accordingly, automobile traffic on the road is extremely light, and it is not uncommon for an entire day to pass without the sound of a single vehicle, other than the school bus fetching and returning the Roomey’s twelve year-old daughter, Claire, and Bernard the Mailman’s four-wheel drive Scout. (As is likely the case in other rural communities nationwide, Bernard the Mailman’s service to his route extends beyond merely carrying the mail. For some, perhaps particularly but by no means only the elderly, the daily, certain appearance of his vehicle at the end of the driveway is a genuine comfort, even an essential antidote against the ravages of loneliness, especially during the worst of the winter, which some years is all of the winter, which some years seems to be all but a few weeks of the year.)

So, why would there be any interest in laying a speed bump across a road so rarely traveled? Because during the short summer, this tranquil picture changes into something quite different.

As anyone who has ever read a license plate from this state knows, Maine bills itself as “Vacationland,” and sometimes, at least to the residents of this country road, it seems that all of the millions of Americans and other nationalities who take that label as an invitation, do so right here, and at high speed. You see, at the dead end beyond the Wensleydale house there begins a dirt road which traverses miles of wilderness, and which, in midsummer, when it is accessible, is an irresistible lure to campers, hunters, bird watchers, and other wanderers who may not fit into any other category than that every summer they experience an urge to drive by. Now, this annual migration is not a new phenomenon, but the preceding year a good lad was seriously hurt on this piece of road in an accident involving excessive speed, and so the question arose whether the town ought to take some kind of remedial action, like laying down a speed bump.

“What’s a speed bump?” Cantachiaro asked, when Selene related to the other animals what she had overheard in the studio. Cantachiaro, curious to learn about the world from the animals who occasionally accompany Peter and Anna on errands, often inquires about the what of things.

“It’s a narrow strip of raised tar poured across the road,” Tancredi explained. “They put them on school streets or in hospital parking lots, shopping mall access roads, and anywhere else that cars are supposed to move slowly but don’t.”

“What’s a shopping mall access road?” Cantachiaro asked.

“Not now, Cantachiaro,” Pilikia said, for she was anxious to explore the subject of speed bumps. “How do they work? Are they high-tech electronics, or what?”

“No, silly,” Tancredi continued, “the bump itself is all there is. It’s designed to be high enough that, if you pass over it at any more than say, five or ten miles an hour, you risk losing your teeth.”

The image evoked by Tancredi’s explanation struck Cantachiaro, who, being a chicken, has no teeth, as most amusing, and he laughed. “Let’s get one,” he said to Tancredi, “Then, you and I can stampede all the local foxes over it at high speed. A toothless fox is no fox at all!”

“It may not work on foxes, Cantachiaro,” Pilikia said, “but it may still be a good idea. After all, remember that fall I very nearly got run over, and everyone knows that in the summer the road can be a hazard to life of every variety. But if a speed bump would force the cars to creep by, then the rest of us would have a chance.”

“If you’d stay off the road as you’re supposed to do, Pilikia,” Selene said, sternly, “then you wouldn’t care about the traffic.”

“Well, excuse me, o flawless one,” Pilikia replied, executing a deep bow, fully aware that Selene was absolutely right but equally unwilling to admit it.

“What is the point of all this discussion, anyway?” Selene asked, ignoring Pilikia’s antics. “Whether or not the town decides to put in a speed bump has nothing to do with us.”

“Now, don’t be so sure,” Pilikia said, almost whispering, her brow furrowed, and a conniving look developing across her face, revealing clearly to those who knew her that she was concocting a plan.

“Whatever you’re up to, Pilikia, I want in!” Cantachiaro exclaimed, gleefully, flapping his wings in anticipation.

“Very well, my feathered friend, in you are,” Pilikia said, thoroughly enjoying the developing intrigue. “What about you two?” she asked Tancredi and Selene.

“As usual, I will undoubtedly live to regret these words, but you know you can always count on me,” Tancredi replied.

“Utter foolishness,” Selene huffed, then turned away, and walked off.

“I thought so,” Pilikia said, confidently, “she’s in, too.”

Losing no time, Pilikia called a conference for the next day. “A pre-town meeting strategy planning meeting,” she named it. Animals only. The subject: speed bumps. Location: the hayloft in the Roomey’s barn, above Montauk’s stall. Pass it on.

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Montauk is a horse, an aging chestnut, who spends most of his days watching the grass grow. I doubt that he’s ever won a race or earned a blue ribbon, but I know that there’s never been a friendlier horse on four legs anywhere in the world.

Before moving to Cranberry County, Peter had very little exposure to animals, except the house pet varieties, and so when he was first introduced to Montauk, he was, he admitted to Anna, not just a little afraid of the horse.

“Up close he’s so much bigger, so much more imposing, than, well, than horses in the movies,” Peter had observed, quite accurately.

Determined to defuse his fear, Peter made a point of getting to know Montauk better. Every so often the Wensleydale’s compost pile needed an infusion of manure, so Peter made a deal with the horse: occasional manure in exchange for occasional grooming. The only problem with that arrangement was that it meant getting close to the animal, very close, and, in the beginning, Peter was afraid to do so.

What if he crushes me, Peter thought with trepidation, as he held the comb and brush at arm’s length, barely skimming the horse’s flesh.

“Peter, this isn’t going to work,” Montauk finally observed. “If you don’t come in closer, and press harder, you’re only going to tickle me, and then, if I lose control, I just might step on you!”

My very dread, Peter thought.

Over time, what came to impress Peter most about Montauk was how gentle a being so immense and so powerful could be.

“I’d have thought,” Peter said to his new friend one day as together they watched the grass grow, “that with your size and weight, not to mention those hoofs, you’d be pushing everyone around.”

“Why would I want to?” Montauk replied. “The exercise of great strength, Peter, lies not in doing but in not doing. Thus, for most, it is far more difficult, and more stressful, to watch grass grow than to grow grass.”

Peter did not always understand the horse, but he learned never to question his wisdom.

“I am going to attend town meeting,” Pilikia announced to those assembled in the Roomey’s hayloft above the horse’s stall, after she had delivered her pitch for the speed bump. “On this question, we will need every vote we can get.”

Present, besides Pilikia, were Tancredi, Cantachiaro, and three of the hens. Purrfect, too, was there. Montauk and the sheep were just below, in or beside the horse stall, where they could hear and participate in the proceedings. There were also several chickadees, a pair of downy woodpeckers, and a raucous blue jay. And Selene. (“Someone’s got to keep you lunatics from landing yourselves in the pound,” was her explanation for being there, although everyone knew she loved it.)

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Selene responded to Pilikia’s announcement.

“Selene’s right, Pilikia,” one of the sheep observed. “While I agree with you that a speed bump would be a nice addition to our environment, it is also true that only humans are allowed at town meeting. I know because someone told me.”

“I know that, too,” Pilikia said, without hesitation. “That’s why I’m going as a human.”

“As a human?” Tancredi asked, his confusion apparent.

Pilikia nodded. The blue jay squawked with delight.

Selene was not amused. She hissed at the jay, who flew up to the rafters, and then she turned to Pilikia. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you.”

“Yes, I am,” Pilikia responded.

“How do you propose doing so?” Selene asked.

“Ah, well,” Pilikia admitted, “I hadn’t gotten to that part yet.”

“No, I don’t suppose you had,” Selene said, with evident disapproval, “and you probably wouldn’t have until you were already in the warden’s clutches.” She turned to the others. “Look at you,” she said to them, “When will you learn not to follow someone who isn’t going anywhere?”

At that, Selene walked to the edge of the loft. Everyone present expected her to jump down to the ground, and leave for home, and they would not have blamed her. Instead, turning back around, she spoke again. “However, if we are going to do this …”

As soon as the other animals heard Selene use the collective pronoun “we,” they all released an audible sigh of relief. It meant that Selene truly was in, after all, and all of them knew that if Selene was in, the plan would be sound.

“… we might as well do it right. But,” and here Selene spoke forcefully, “this is the last harebrained scheme…”

“Hey!” shouted out a squeaky voice. It came from a snowshoe rabbit seated atop a bale of hay in the corner.

“What’re you doing here?” Tancredi asked, his tail beginning to wag furiously. Tancredi loves chasing rabbits. He has no interest in catching them, you understand, just chasing them. He particularly loves the way they disappear into holes.

“We have to cross the road, too, you know,” the rabbit said.

“Fair enough,” Selene allowed. “And, Tancredi, get a handle on your tail. This is a business meeting.” Turning back to the rabbit, she asked, “So, what’s this about hay?”

“Not hay, hey,” the rabbit replied. “I say ‘hey!’ to the expression ‘harebrained.’ How would you like it if we said ‘catbrained’? It’s the thoughtless use of meaningless labels like that which …”

“Point taken,” Selene observed. Then, picking up where she had been interrupted, she continued. “This is the last of your senseless schemes” (here, she looked questioningly toward the rabbit, who nodded graciously) “that I’ll take part in. Agreed?”

This disclaimer was a ritual Selene invariably observed. She always said it was the last time, and everyone always knew she never meant it.

“The last time,” Pilikia intoned, ceremoniously.

“The very last time,” the others murmured in unison.

“All right, then,” Selene said, “Let’s get to it. Outrageous as it may seem, your proposal could be made to work. However, there are some potentially sticky wickets …”

“What’s a sticky wicket?” Cantachiaro whispered to a chickadee who had perched on the rooster’s head.

“A species of summer bird, I think,” the ‘dee responded. “They’ll all be flocking back from Florida any day now.”

“Problem areas, Cantachiaro,” Selene said, in an effort to hush the two of them. “A sticky wicket is a difficult or particularly demanding situation. It comes from a silly game humans play to entertain each other.” Then, she returned her attention to the group as a whole. “All the same, considering the general appearance and the dress code of the ruffians that inhabit these parts, passing you off as a human being may not be so difficult after all. There is the question of two-leggedness though.”

“Two-leggedness?” Purrfect asked, moving a little closer to Selene.

“Yes,” Selene replied. “Humans only have two legs. Pilikia’s got four legs. So, if she is to pass as human, she’s got to appear to be two-legged.”

“I’m two-legged,” Cantachiaro offered.

Selene eyed the rooster carefully. “Umm,” she said to him, “so you are. You could be her two legs. Are you game?”

“No, I’m poultry!” Cantachiaro roared, bursting into laughter, puffing out his chest, and flapping his wings.

It was a bad joke, of course, but Cantachiaro didn’t care. Neither did the other animals, evidently, for they all reacted vociferously, with hoots and groans. All except Selene, that is, who simply watched the lot of them perform, while thinking to herself, “One of these days, I’m going to have to raise a tent over this circus.”

When calm finally returned, Selene spoke again, addressing Tancredi, Pilikia, and Cantachiaro. “You three work on a suitable disguise. And let’s try to stay within the realm of the believable, shall we, Pilikia?”

To that, Pilikia did not respond, except to make a face.

“What about my legs,” Cantachiaro asked.

“We’ll have Pilikia sit on your shoulders. That’ll give her some height, and, with the right disguise, only two legs showing. But those feet,” Selene said, indicating Cantachiaro’s long, sharp talons, “have got to go.”

“Go?” Cantachiaro asked, tremulously.

“She means hide them,” Purrfect noted, adding with a little uncertainty, “don’t you?”

Some questions Selene felt were too absurd to address, and this was one of them, so she ignored it. Besides, better it is, she thought to herself, that they don’t fully understand me. A little mystery about oneself is not necessarily a bad thing. “Now, the next issue,” she said, without so much as a nod to Purrfect’s question, “is, how do we get into the building?”

“We need a ringer,” Montauk suggested.

“Yes,” Selene agreed, instantly, “a ringer.”

Everyone could hear the question forming in Cantachiaro’s brain. It was Montauk who took the initiative to answer him. “A ringer,” the horse said to the rooster, “is an imposter. A person whose identity or circumstance is intentionally made to seem other than what it is. For example, on television you’ve seen scenes of screaming teenagers awaiting the arrival of a rock idol at an airport? Well, often they’ve been hired to do that, simply for effect. Or, a magician might place an accomplice in the audience unbeknownst to the public with instructions to behave or react in a certain way that will lend credibility to the magician’s act. That’s a ringer.”

“A plant,” Cantachiaro said, proud that he knew a synonym.

“Yes,” Pilikia added, “plant could be another word for ringer.”

“I think I’ve got our ringer,” offered Ruffles, one of the sheep. “This morning, Claire told me her class is going to bake cookies, and sell them at town meeting, to help finance their seventh grade class trip.”

“Where are they going?” Montauk asked.

“Some place called Graceland,” the ewe replied.

“GRACELAND?” squawked the blue jay, excitedly, taking flight among the rafters. “All right! Far out!! Get down!!!”

“What’s with you?” Montauk asked the bird, as it flapped about overhead.

“The king, man,” the jay replied, alighting in a tuft of hair between Montauk’s long ears. “We’re going down to Graceland, going down to see the king!”

“What king?” asked Ruffles, who was following the bird’s acrobatics with interest.

“What king? I’ll say, what king!” squawked the jay, “What king, indeed!”

“Don’t encourage him, Ruffles,” Selene said, motioning to the ewe to get on with her report.

“Well,” Ruffles continued, “Claire said that she had been elected chairman of the cookie committee, which means she’ll be at town meeting for sure.”

“Wonderful,” Selene remarked, “that decides it.” Then, turning toward Purrfect, she observed, “Claire will do almost anything you ask of her, won’t she?”

Purrfect nodded, and then, very softly, very quietly, he purred, “Would that she were you.”

“Then you must convince her,” Selene said, seeming to ignore Purrfect’s obvious pass. But those who were especially observant noticed that, very discreetly, Selene shifted her tail ever so slightly, letting it fall alongside Purrfect’s, just barely touching. Certainly, Purrfect noticed; but he said nothing. “Now,” Selene continued, “all we have to do is get our conspirators there on time, but without leaving here until the humans have gone. The difficulty there is, to accomplish it, we’ll have to move faster than any of us can travel.”

“Except me,” Montauk said. “I’ll provide the transportation, to and from. If someone can open the gate for me, that is.”

“Yessirree, folks, horse and riders are at the gate,” intoned one of the downy woodpeckers, mimicking a racetrack radio announcer, “as an anxious crowd awaits a strong beak to release the catch!” At that, she turned to her mate, and boasted, “There’s not a lock or latch we can’t pick, is there, Billy?”

“No, Billie, there surely is not,” agreed the other.

“Then it’s done!” exclaimed Selene, forcefully. “Town meeting is Monday evening at half past six. Pilikia and Cantachiaro should arrive just a minute or two before that. Late enough so there’s no time for anyone to engage them in conversation, but early enough so that people are still milling about and less likely to notice them. That means they must leave here precisely at …” Here, the cat paused, deferring to the horse.

“Six fifteen,” Montauk said.

“Six fifteen,” Selene repeated. “Any questions?”

At that, a chickadee piped up from a ledge by the loft window. “Before we leave, would it be out of order to raise the matter of a more varied selection of seed in the bird feeder outside the Wensleydale’s kitchen window?”

“We are not here to discuss corn chips,” Selene grumbled, and then, dismissing the question, she proclaimed, “There being no further important business, this gathering is adjourned.”

On town meeting day, the third Monday in April, at about six in the evening, the animals began to gather again at the Roomey’s barn.

As Selene walked up the driveway, she noticed with relief that the Roomey’s new station wagon was missing, which almost certainly meant Wendell and Susanne had already left, a fact Purrfect confirmed when he landed at her feet from the oak in which he had been keeping watch.

“Claire’s gone, too,” he said, “she left earlier, on her bike.”

“Was that a good idea?” Selene wondered out loud. “It is still a little cold out for a youngster on a bicycle, especially after dark.” Within Selene, the eternal cynic, there resides also Selene the infinitely compassionate. The presence of these two conflicting, even apparently mutually exclusive characteristics in this cat is an endless source of confusion for Peter and Anna. Indeed, “Will we ever understand this one?” is a question often heard in the Wensleydale house, and one which may never be satisfactorily answered.

“Perhaps she’ll come back in the car,” Purrfect offered.

“I hope so,” Selene said, adding, “And you’re sure she’s with us?”

“Oh, yes,” Purrfect confirmed, “enthusiastically.”

“Good. You know,” Selene said, her pleasure in this intrigue beginning to show, “we just might pull off this caper … if, that is, you-know-who will stick to the plan.”

“Umm,” Purrfect replied, thoughtfully, and then asked, “Where is Pilikia, anyway?”

“Peter and Anna were just getting ready to go when I left,” Selene explained. “I told Pilikia and Cantachiaro to wait until the car had cleared the driveway. So, they should be right along.”

“The Wensleydale’s don’t know, then?” Purrfect asked.

“Haven’t a clue,” Selene replied. “Actually, they’d probably love it, but those two are not yet ready to allow all that they could love.”

“Funny, isn’t it,” Purrfect observed, “how reluctant humans are to permit themselves to be themselves.”

At the barn, Selene was pleased to see Billy and Billie, the downy woodpeckers, perched on a railing.

“You’ve checked out the gate catch?” she asked them.

“Piece of cake,” replied Billy.

“Easy as pie,” echoed Billie.

Just then, Pilikia and Cantachiaro arrived on the scene. With them was Tancredi, a large, brown supermarket-type paper bag in his mouth.

“The disguise?” Selene asked Tancredi.

The dog nodded.

“And what else?” Selene said.

Tancredi lowered his head almost to the ground, and shifted his gaze to one side, a posture he invariably took when caught at some mischief.

Selene reached into the bag, and drew out an old, rotting soup bone.

“What’s this?” she inquired. “Is Pilikia posing as a cannibal?”

“Just something to gnaw on to pass the time,” the dog explained. “Tonight could last for hours.” After that first meeting in the Roomey’s barn, the animals had decided that Tancredi should accompany Pilikia and Cantachiaro to town meeting, and remain there hidden, out of view but in reserve, just in case they should need help.

“There will be no gnawing,” Selene said, dropping the bone with disgust.

“It’s nearly time,” Montauk announced.

With those words, the sense of excitement in the barn mounted. Pilikia leapt onto the horse’s back. Cantachiaro flew up, landing behind her. With some difficulty, but refusing help, a red squirrel carried the paper bag containing the disguise up a post, then tossed it over to the cat. All the while, the other animals offered Pilikia and Cantachiaro words of encouragement for the mission ahead.

“All right, you two, let’s go over it one more time,” Purrfect said, repeating the instructions he and Selene had already given several times. “Montauk will carry you to the building, where Claire will meet you at the side door. She will accompany you upstairs to a back row seat next to a window that looks onto the fire escape. She will have opened the window just enough for Tancredi to get in, should that become necessary. He’ll be outside on the landing, alert for your signal. After dropping you off, Montauk will wait behind the old schoolhouse. When the meeting’s over, you are to leave immediately and quickly, but not so quickly as to draw attention to yourselves. Once outside, go directly to Montauk, and return home.”

“You are to say absolutely nothing,” Selene stressed, picking up the briefing from Purrfect, “not when you get there, not when you leave, not to anyone. Your only function is to raise your hand during the affirmative vote on the speed bump question. Nothing else. Is that clear?”

“As crystal,” Pilikia replied. “It was clear the first, second, third, and fourth times, too.”

“It’s clear,” Cantachiaro agreed.

“Well, then, remember it,” Selene insisted. She turned to Purrfect, and whispered, “It’s hopeless. They haven’t heard a word.” Turning back to Montauk, she ordered, “Now, go,” adding, “and good luck.”

The rooster and the cat, the brown paper bag between her front paws, saluted confidently as the horse walked out of the barn toward the gate.

“It’s open,” the downy woodpeckers sang out in unison.

“We’re gone,” Montauk said, as he trotted down the gravel driveway, waiting to pick up speed until he had reached the paved road. Running comfortably alongside the horse was the dog, tail wagging furiously. Firmly clenched between his jaws was the soup bone.

–Top of Page–

Town meeting is held in a big, open room on the second floor of the Grange building. “The Grange” is a shorthand name for a national organization of farmers founded in this country during the 1800s, and judging from the condition of their building here, this might have been one of their first. Built right off the road, it is a rectangular, two storey structure of wood board painted, a very long time ago, white. The roof sags, the walls lean, and the floors creak. The first time Peter and Anna attended town meeting there, he commented to her, as they climbed the rickety staircase to the second floor, “I hope they issue parachutes.”

Next to the Grange is the town’s old one-room schoolhouse, which is no longer in use, having been replaced by a new school, owned and operated jointly with a neighboring town, an arrangement over which the two towns argue vehemently every year, even to the point of regularly threatening to dissolve the relationship. “Don’t look for merit in these arguments,” Peter and Anna were advised the first time they attended a school board meeting. “It’s like the weather. They’re just making noise because they know there is nothing else they can do about it.”

The original schoolhouse was built in the early part of the last century, and is one of only a few of its kind still standing. In fact, someone once suggested having it put on the National Registry of Historical Buildings, but that idea died of exposure after Radburn “Wrong Way” Radford, so nicknamed because he seems inordinately wont to misunderstand what he hears, responded to the suggestion with the comment, “You mean to say the Government keeps a list of all the funny looking buildings in the country? What’ll they think of next!” Here, Wrong Way had apparently mistaken the word historical for hysterical.

Across the road from the old schoolhouse is a church, perhaps best known for the time that a particularly potent bolt of lightning struck a tree along the road in front, ran across the lawn, up the steps, through the front door, and straight down the center aisle to the altar, and from there followed a length of electrical conduit to the basement below. As a retired master electrician, who was a member of the congregation, and who, generous as the sun, taught Peter everything he needed to know to install all the electrical wiring in their own house, observed on relating the story to Peter and Anna, “I’m sure you can imagine for yourselves what fun some folks had interpreting that event!”

Except for a small, family operated general store, these are all the buildings in town, other than an assortment of homes, barns, woodsheds, and summer camps.

That evening, when Montauk arrived with Pilikia and Cantachiaro, the field in front of the old schoolhouse which serves as a parking lot for the Grange was full of cars and pickup trucks. Clearly, our conspirators were among the last to get there, as planned. The horse came to a halt in the shadows, where his riders dismounted and donned their disguise. Tancredi went off to climb the wooden staircase of the fire escape to the second floor window, there to wait in reserve.

Presently, the side door of the Grange opened, and Claire Roomey appeared. Montauk, who loved her dearly, smiled. “Right on time,” he said to himself, “good girl!” Then, to his two friends standing beside him, he whispered, “She’s there. You two ready?”

“Anytime!” Cantachiaro crowed.

“Anywhere!” Pilikia boasted, heartily.

The cat and the rooster set off through the parking lot toward the side door of the Grange building. Watching them, Montauk wondered whether they could possibly get away with this foolishness, but then, he thought to himself, they seem to be having fun, and it’s harmless enough, so why not.

When Claire laid eyes on the creature coming toward her across the field, she very nearly dissolved into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Of course, it must be said that, quick to see the humor in everything, Claire laughs easily.

Claire Roomey is an extraordinary child in a lot of ways. She is lovely to look at, but that is only the beginning and by far the least important of her characteristics, except to the extent that her outer appearance reflects an inner reality. Claire’s beauty resides in her unrestrained love of life and of the people, animals, and things that populate it. From the world’s point of view, she is something of a misfit, and she spends more than her share of time being scolded for having failed to meet society’s expectations of children. For example, I doubt that Claire owns a wristwatch or a calendar, and if she does, I am sure she pays no attention whatsoever to their dictates. Thus, she is often the target of impatient inquiries of restless elders. “What kept you?” or “Why wasn’t this done on time?” to which she will likely reply, “Well, you see, there was this butterfly …” or, simply, “I was looking out the window.” Claire is not a stellar student, and she does not do particularly well in her classes. And yet, the poetry she writes at home in her own room, to be read by no one but herself and the few with whom she shares it, reveals a wisdom that exceeds the vision of even her best school teachers or their textbooks. I suppose that Claire Roomey will not grow up to become President of the United States, but whoever among her generation that does will be fortunate to discover in the whole experience even half the joy Claire Roomey finds in every day.

“You are a visitor from outer space, I presume,” Claire said, with feigned respect to the thing that was now standing before her, “and you are looking for our leader.” At that, she doubled over with laughter, holding her sides to keep from splitting wide open.

“C’mon, Claire, it’s not funny,” Pilikia insisted. “We’re supposed to look like a human being, so we can get into town meeting.”

“A HUMAN BEING!” Claire howled, tears running down her face.

“Can I take it that you are not fooled by the disguise?” Cantachiaro asked, meekly.

The disguise Pilikia and Cantachiaro had developed, with the help and advice of Tancredi and some of the other conspirators, was, even they admitted, something of a grab bag. After all, they had not had much time or a great deal to work with. First, you will recall, it had been agreed that Pilikia would ride on Cantachiaro’s back. This served two purposes: It gave Pilikia a little height, and provided her with a single pair of legs. Then, to hide the two exposed chicken feet, the rooster wore a pair of worn out work boots which had been retrieved from the town dump, and buried in the Wensleydale’s woods by Tancredi about a year previously. No one dared asked Tancredi what he had originally intended doing with this discarded footwear, but certainly the twelve months in the ground had done nothing to improve their appearance or, for that matter, their odor. Above the boots was wrapped around Cantachiaro’s feathered body a piece of clothing borrowed from Anna.

“Well, maybe we didn’t exactly borrow it,” Pilikia admitted to Selene when the latter raised the issue, “more like …”

“Purloined?” Selene suggested.

“Yes, I suppose, sort of,” Pilikia confessed, adding quickly, in her defense, “but Anna never wears it.”

The article in question is a long, formal skirt in red and black wool. It is, to be fair to Pilikia, a garment Anna had probably worn no more than twice since she and Peter moved to Maine. Certainly, she will never wear it again. You see, there was about a yard too much material for the skirt to fit the rooster, so, at Pilikia’s request, Tancredi had chewed it apart. And it looked it.

Thus, the rooster was pretty much hidden from view, at least from being identified as a rooster, by the muddy boots and what was left of the red and black wool skirt. Atop him was Pilikia. She was wearing, if that’s the word, an art canvas from Anna’s studio.

As it happened, when Pilikia first dragged the painting outside for an initial fitting, the oil colors were still not dry, so the artwork was rather badly smudged, but it looked to have been the beginning of a portrait of an old man, leaning against his hoe in a potato field.

“Are you nuts, Pilikia,” one of the animals had remarked on watching Pilikia struggle with the canvas, “the other day I heard Peter refer to that as Anna’s best work,” to which she had replied, “Don’t be silly, he says that about every one of her paintings.” And she was right, he does.

The canvas was held in place around the cat by Tancredi’s leather and chain leash. “If you should misplace this, don’t worry about it,” Tancredi said on volunteering it for the mission. “I keep trying to convince Peter and Anna that it’s an unnecessary inconvenience anyway.”

Now, to register her vote on the speed bump issue, Pilikia was, of course, going to have to raise a front paw, which had to be made to look like a human hand. But in the discussion of this element of the disguise, Purrfect observed that a cat’s front leg and paw would never be long enough, however intently reaching, to be seen above a roomful of human bodies, especially from the back row. So, he suggested taking a sleeve from one of Peter’s shirts (“I’ll be glad to chew it off,” Tancredi offered) and placing it over her tail, and stapling to the end of that (“To the shirt, not your tail!” Purrfect added quickly, as Pilikia wailed in protest) a glove. Then, when the vote was called, Pilikia could stretch her long, fluffy tail straight upward, and for all the world it would appear to be a human arm and hand.

“Brilliant!” Selene said to Purrfect, who beamed at her praise.

And so it was that from underneath the smudged portrait of an old man there emerged a hunters’ blaze orange shirt sleeve with a worn and torn blue cotton carpenter’s glove stapled at the cuff. And as Claire stared at it in wonder, Pilikia flicked her tail just enough to demonstrate the effect. While it didn’t exactly look like a human arm and hand, it didn’t exactly look like a cat’s tail, either.

“What it looks like,” Claire said, with as straight a face as she could manage, “is something someone should have discarded at the laundromat.”

To top off this extraordinary ensemble, Pilikia placed upon her head a full brimmed, dark green, canvas fisherman’s hat with an attached face net. It is a hat Anna wears in the garden as protection against the fierce, chewing black flies that overrun the state of Maine for about six weeks every spring.

“Well, Pilikia,” Claire said, once she regained her composure, “I concede there seems to be a good reason behind every element of the disguise. But I’m still a little concerned about the face net. Now, if this were a church service …”

“But don’t you understand,” Pilikia interrupted, “it’s perfect to hide my feline features.”

“Yes,” Claire agreed, “it does that well enough. But, all the same, it’s bound to attract attention. You see, Pilikia, there won’t be many others in there trying to hide their feline features, or anything else, behind a bug net!” At that, it was again too much for Claire. She could feel a whole new round of laughter rising.

“If anyone notices it,” Pilikia suggested, “we’ll simply say I’m in mourning.”

That was the last straw. Claire was now laughing again, as she asked the cat, “Over what? The tragic loss of your only mirror?”

But, when necessary, Claire can be practical, too, and she recognized that they had no choice but to go with the disguise as it was, and hope for the best.

Fortunately, as Claire and her two animal companions entered the second floor meeting room, most of the people were talking among themselves, and did not notice the new arrivals. That is, except the children, Claire’s seventh grade classmates, at the table selling cookies and brownies and muffins to finance their class trip. The children noticed immediately.

“Wicked outfit!” one of them exclaimed.

For reasons not exactly clear, in the state of Maine the word “wicked,” used either as an adjective or an adverb, carries a positive connotation. Thus, if one is commenting upon something really liked, it is quite appropriate to describe it either as “wicked” or “wicked good.” How this began, I do not know, but I should not be surprised to learn that it was as a device by children for tweaking their elders. Imagine, for example, a parent’s discomfort, and an adolescent’s secret pleasure, over this exchange: “Did you have fun, dear?” a mother or father asks at the front door, unsuccessfully camouflaging unrestrained terror behind a false smile, about her or his child’s first date with a member of the opposite sex at night in a car without an adult chaperone, to which the youngster responds, cryptically, “Wicked fun.”

Anyway, Claire managed to get her friends to ignore the new arrival, and, without further incident, to escort her charges to the back row and into the seat next to the window, taking just a moment to confirm with a glance that Tancredi was at his station outside (gnawing a soup bone). Just then, when she thought this aspect of the mission had been accomplished, Claire heard Pilikia’s voice.

“Don’t you know it’s impolite to stare?”

Pilikia was talking to a gray-haired, elderly woman in the next seat, who was, it must be acknowledged, staring rather intently at Pilikia sitting atop Cantachiaro. Immediately, Claire silenced Pilikia by putting her hand over the cat’s mouth, while saying to the woman, with as much sincerity as she could generate, “She’s in mourning, you know. Lost her son, fighting the gorillas.”

“Oh, I see,” the gray-haired woman replied. “Dear me, I am sorry, I’m sure.” Then, turning to her neighbor on the other side, the woman repeated, “Lost her son, fighting the gorillas.”

“The gorillas?” Pilikia hissed behind the bug net and between Claire’s fingers. “The word is guerrilla, Claire, not gorilla. It’s Spanish, meaning little war. And it’s got nothing to do with apes.”

“Am I glad to hear that,” Claire whispered. “I’ve hated the thought of everyone’s beating up on those defenseless animals.” Then, as she considered Pilikia’s remark further, she asked, “What is it that’s little about guerrilla war?”

“You’ll have to ask that of another human being,” Pilikia sighed.

Now, there are about two hundred and fifty people who live in this town all the year around. In the summer, the number of residents varies, sometimes increasing by as much as ten times that figure, depending upon the weather, the state of the national economy, the price of gasoline, relations between the United States and a variety of foreign countries, and other unknowns and unpredictables. Notwithstanding this uncertainty, every year at the first sign of a thaw in March, every newspaper in Maine unearths an expert on the subject of tourist travel, and prints an article confidently announcing his or her findings, which reads something like, “Tourism to the state of Maine will be up by a factor of one point three this year over last,” and then the rest of us dutifully quotes it, equally confidently, as “They say that tourism will be up this year by as much as a factor of one point three.” Come fall, of course, no one remembers what was read or said in March, and besides, if it was a good season, who cares, and if it was a bad one, what difference does it make.

For those who care to do so, there are ways of discerning the difference between year-rounders and summer people, sometimes known as people “from away,” among them being the way they talk, act, dress, shop, eat, walk, drive, sail, swim, and think, but there is one particular characteristic or trait which, as they say in bird watching circles, is diagnostic: At the town dump, folks from away take in more than they take out, and year-rounders take home more than they bring in, most of which the summer people later buy back at the numberless yard sales, antique shows, and swap meets that infest the state during the warm month.

Anyway, at town meeting there usually show up something near to half of the year-rounders and none of the summer people, or about a hundred count, and this year was no different.

“Town meeting will come to order.” The voice belonged to Claudia Fisher, the town’s First Selectman, or senior elected official, and was punctuated by the sound of a wood gavel striking against an aluminum foldout picnic table that had been set up at the front of the room and behind which, on metal folding chairs, sat the town’s two other selectmen, Chester Delavoire and Walter Pineham, and the town clerk, Maria (pronounced ma-RYE-ah) Moller, and Chester Delavoire’s six year old son, Wilhelm, who had a box of crayons and a drawing book in his lap. Ordinarily, Wilhelm would be sitting out front with his mother, Hester Delavoire, Chester’s wife, but this evening she was over to Gardiner, in the central part of the state, visiting with her brother, Leopold, whose second wife Arthelia was experiencing otherwise unidentified “spells,” an ailment uncommonly common to the Maine woods towards the end of winter.

Now, when Claudia Fisher first ran for Selectman at town meeting the preceding year, Peter and Anna Wensleydale had been ecstatic. At the time, they hardly knew her or anything about her, but it was enough that she was a woman. The town offices had been the private province of the town’s men since the beginning of time, and a breakup of that ice jam was long past due. Happily, as it turned out, in addition to being female, Claudia Fisher was quite effective at the job. “Just as good, I’d say, and just as bad as any man we’ve had in the position since I’ve been of voting age,” opined Arthur Bestford one morning to Anna while she was picking up their weekly dairy order from his son’s Jersey cow, Cream ’n Sugar, “except for Malcolm Featherbridge, Junior, of course, about whom enough best left unsaid.”

“Does everyone who wants one have a copy of this year’s Annual Report?” Claudia asked the assembled citizenry as they shifted about in futile attempts to get comfortable in metal folding chairs similar to the ones occupied by their elected officials.

The reference was to the fifty-or-so paged booklet distributed to every mailbox, one to a household, several days to a week before town meeting, which contained, as its title suggests, reports of the town’s activities and expenses for the fiscal year preceding that evening’s gathering. Every year someone asks for an explanation of the difference between a fiscal year and a calendar year, and why the town report is set to the former, and every year a different response is given. Actually, it is likely that no one in town really knows for sure, or cares. Truth to tell, most of the questions raised in town meeting are intended solely to irk the town’s officers, on the theory that, as articulated to Peter by a very, very old man seated next to him at town meeting some years previous, “If we’re going to have to live for a year with their hands in our pockets, seems like they ought to dance for us at least once.”

Thus, the Annual Report contains such entries as a list, prepared by the chief of the volunteer fire department, of fires extinguished under his command. That year his report included two chimney fires, a grass fire, and a junk car fire. There was no indication of just what a junk car fire is, but whatever a junk car fire is, there was one that year, and the volunteer fire department successfully dealt with it. Similarly, the Town Clerk’s report “respectfully submits” the “whole number” of births, marriages, and deaths in town (that year, two, three, and five, respectively). Neither Peter nor Anna have yet been able to determine just what the use of the term “whole number” is intended to signify in this context, but it always appears in the Clerk’s section of the Town Report, and only there. Also listed is the town’s “earned income” from dog licenses ($22.25 that year). On this subject, Selene and Pilikia are quick to remind Tancredi that cats do not need to be licensed. “We are self-regulating,” they insist, in good humor, to which the dog rejoins, in the same spirit, “No, it’s not that. Rather, it is that cats are of no interest.”

Finally, and most importantly, the Annual Report contains The Warrant.

The Warrant appears as the last few pages of the Report. It is addressed to the town constable, whose principal function seems to be to receive the Warrant and read it at Town Meeting. “Greetings,” it begins, “in the name of the State of Maine, you are directed to notify and warn” (warn is what it says) the inhabitants of this town to assemble in the Grange at six-thirty o’clock in the evening the third Monday in April, “to act on the following articles, to wit.” There then follows a list of about thirty items, some of which appear every year (for example, electing and voting compensation for town officials) and others of which are one time occurrences. Reading over the shoulder of the gray-haired lady seated next to her, Pilikia could see that this year item number twenty-nine, the next to last item (item number thirty being “Motion to adjourn”), belonged to the latter category, to wit, “Vote to see if the Town will raise $350 to lay a raised strip of tar to form a speed bump across the road at the top of Meekum’s Hill.”

“Meekum’s Hill?” Anna mumbled as, seated a half dozen or so rows in front of Pilikia and Cantachiaro, she read from their copy of the Annual Report.

“What’s that?” Peter asked her.

“It says here,” Anna replied, “the speed bump is to be laid on Meekum’s Hill. Since when is our hill called Meekum’s Hill?”

“Since forever,” Peter said.

“Who’s Meekum?” Anna asked.

“Not who, what,” Peter answered. “Meekum is an Indian word meaning Joy and Peace Everlasting.”

Anna looked at him doubtfully, and said, “Meekum is an Indian word meaning Joy and Peace Everlasting?”

“It isn’t?” Peter asked.

Most of the evening’s business went smoothly. Claudia Fisher was reelected to chair the meeting and reelected to another year’s term as First Selectman. Although it was generally known she hoped to have the compensation for the office raised from $2,000 to $3,000, she did not offer it as a motion, lest she appear to be more interested in what the town could do for her than what she can do for the town, and neither did anyone else, except that Peter did observe to Anna that “these days, a couple thousand bucks hardly seems enough to get her attention, much less keep it.” The only potentially interesting question raised during the discussion of the vote for First Selectman was from Colin Masters who wanted to know of Claudia “How come the town just got done paving a road that doesn’t go anywhere except to your wood lot?” which Claudia answered, apparently to her constituency’s satisfaction, by reading a paragraph from a state report on environmental protection.

A suggestion that the title selectman be changed to selectwoman or selectperson, at least during Claudia’s tenure, never got beyond the shouting stage. “It’s not a title,” a voice was heard to say, “it’s the name of an office,” to which another opined, “That seems to me to settle the issue.” Both voices, incidentally, were male. Claudia did not press the issue. I suppose her view was that having the job for another year was what counted.

After that, it was agreed that consideration of the school budget would be postponed until further notice because, the school board regretted, none of the figures had yet come back from the accountants. Here, someone observed, almost certainly with intended sarcasm, that perhaps the problem was “the figures had grown so large they didn’t dare carry them across the bridge over Amand’s Stream,” a crossing at the base of Fool’s Hill that everyone agreed needed attention soon, and preferably before that year’s rainy season, already in progress, to which Marcia Silverstruck, school board chairperson (upon investiture, she, unlike Claudia Fisher, had held out for the title change), responded that the condition of the bridge was not her responsibility, and as for the size of the school budget, “the only way to avoid increases there is to stop having children, something none of you seems willing to do,” at which one of the seventh graders whispered to a friend, “Wicked!”

After that, the town agreed to reject the planning board’s recommendations, whatever they might be. “We don’t need a bunch of fancy Dans with briefcases telling us what to do with our land” seems to be the considered opinion of most townspeople on this subject. Immediately following that vote, the chair moderated a heated discussion over how an out-of-state realtor managed to purchase four hundred acres, including considerable pond frontage, this side of Three Mile Turn, and place it on the market as a subdivision. No one present seemed to connect the nagging question “How can they get away with that?” to the town’s rejection by acclamation, a few moments earlier, of its own planning board’s recommendations.

And so on it went, until, after about two and a half hours of active democracy, item number twenty-nine was raised for discussion.

–Top of Page–

“Now listen to item number twenty-nine,” the chair intoned, pounding the gavel on the aluminum picnic table, as she prepared to read from the Warrant the second to last time that third Monday in April.

“Vote to see if the Town will raise $350 to lay a raised strip of tar to form a speed bump across the road at the top of Meekum’s Hill,” Claudia read aloud, and then asked the assemblage, “The floor is now open for discussion or a motion on item number twenty-nine. What is your pleasure?”

All this while, Pilikia had been sitting silently, just as instructed by Selene and Purrfect, watching and listening, learning in quiet fascination about the ways of humans. But when she heard Claudia Fisher reading item number twenty-nine, she stirred.

“That’s our cue, Cantachiaro,” Pilikia whispered into the canvas posing as her clothing, “It’s item number twenty-nine, the speed bump.” Pilikia was so excited she did not notice that Cantachiaro made no reply.

From the floor, there came a motion. “I move that we relegate item number twenty-nine to the custody of the planning board for careful study or other inappropriate handling, and as for the rest of us, let’s get on to item number thirty so we can go home!” The voice was that of Colin Masters, who, you will recall, had earlier pestered Claudia Fisher about the town’s having paved a road that “goes nowhere except to your wood lot.”

Had a suggestion to dispense with item number twenty-nine been offered by anyone else, Claudia probably would have entertained it, and engineered a quick enabling vote. But she was still a little irked at Colin, and she chose to act it out. Thus, Claudia pointedly ignored Colin’s motion, and instead recognized a lady in the back row.

“I live in the last house on the Meekum’s Hill Road,” the speaker, the gray-haired, elderly woman seated next to Pilikia, began meekly, unnecessarily identifying herself to the town inhabited since its inception by members of her family, and even now by four generations of them. Her name is Gloriana Trevor, and the man seated to the other side of her, perhaps ten or fifteen years her senior, is her husband, Torrance Trevor. Gloriana and Torrance live at the dead-end a half mile or so beyond the Wensleydales, and it was they from whom Peter and Anna had bought the land on which to build a new life.

“That’s Gloriana’s voice,” Peter whispered to Anna.

“I know,” Anna replied. “I’ve never heard either of them speak out in town meeting before.”

Peter and Anna first met Gloriana and Torrance Trevor at the Trevor home in the presence of the realtor who listed the land the Trevors were selling and on which the Wensleydales wanted to make an offer. Peter and Anna had set foot on the property only once, the preceding day, but there was no question then, and neither has there been ever since, that it was the piece for them. And by that time, they were quite certain they had seen and walked every parcel of land then up for sale, barter, or exchange in the entire state of Maine.

Actually, the Wensleydales came across the Trevor listing almost by accident. About noon one day after what seemed to them endless weeks of land shopping, Peter and Anna were in their car, Simone, the Volvo sedan they had brought home with them from Gazinga, driving north on Route 1 after having just been shown, and disappointed by, still another “adorable Down East waterfront parcel” that turned out to be under water. (“Well, yes, I see what you mean about the drainage,” the realtor, a young man originally from out of state himself, acknowledged to Anna as she sank to her knees in mud, “but that needn’t be a problem,” to which Anna had replied, “Not if you’re a duck!”), when their frustration and exhaustion finally erupted into anger vented on each other, not over anything in particular so much as simply for lack of any other suitable target so close at hand, climaxing with Anna’s shouting to Peter, who was at the wheel, “Stop the car, I’m getting out!” which he did, slamming on the brakes, and which she did, slamming the door behind her. Peter drove away in fury, leaving Anna standing at the side of the road, wondering to herself, “Now what?”

Right in front of her was the answer to her question, in the form of a small, one-room building, with a nicely painted sign proclaiming the home of Rustic Rural Realty. “Oh, why not,” Anna muttered aloud as she walked into what must have been the only real estate office within a several hundred mile radius that she and Peter had not yet visited. In fact, as Anna closed the door behind her, she wondered how they had missed this one.

“As a matter of fact, I just finished speaking on the telephone with a man who has asked me to list a piece of land that sounds precisely like what you described,” the agent said to Anna after she told him what they were looking for. “If you like, I can give you directions so you and your husband can go for a look at it today.”

That’d be great, Anna thought to herself, if I knew where my husband was. “Yes, do that,” she said.

Well, of course, in a matter of a few minutes, Peter came back in search of Anna.

“Where was I to go,” he asked her, as she got back into the car, “you’ve got my heart.” So, together, they drove out to look at the land they would come to live on.

“How much are they asking?” Peter inquired of Anna as they sat beneath a yellow birch that would eventually shade the chicken house from the summer’s midday sun.

“More than we can afford, I’m afraid,” Anna said.

“Great,” Peter groaned. “Either we like it, and we can’t afford it, or we can afford it, but we don’t like it. I wonder if this is the way it’s supposed to work?”

“I don’t know, but we’re not letting this one get away,” Anna replied. “We’ll make the best offer we can.”

“If it’s true that it was just put on the market a few hours ago,” Peter warned, “then the agent is going to urge the owners to sit tight.”

“We’ll insist on making the offer ourselves,” Anna rejoined, “and then it’ll be up to us to convince them.”

And so they did, the very next day. They decided to refrain from any fancy negotiating footwork in favor of simply telling the owners the truth. “We have seen the land you are selling, and we love it. We want to buy it. We want to build a house on it, and live there, the two of us and our two cats. This offer we make to you today is not a feeler, or an initial position, that we expect to have to adjust to your counter offer, or anything else of that kind. It is simply all that we can afford. We wish it could be more, but there it is.”

“It is enough,” Torrance Trevor said to them after discussing it privately with his wife and their agent for a few minutes in the kitchen.

The following morning, beneath a clear, blue sky, Peter and Anna drove out to the land for a picnic. Since then, there have been sunny days, and there have been rainy days, but the picnic goes on.

“#133; and …” Gloriana continued, standing now in order to be seen and heard from the back row of the room, “I can tell you that in the summer the traffic comes up toward our place at a terrible pace. One young man has already been badly hurt. I should think we would all want to avoid another incident of the kind.” With that, Gloriana resumed her seat, and sighed. Torrance, seated next to her, touched her shoulder gently with his hand, indicating his approval and offering encouragement.

“Why don’t we erect a sign?” someone asked. “A big red one, with huge letters, warning drivers to slow down.”

“The color red can be used only in stop signs,” the town constable interjected, pleased at this opportunity to play his role. “A sign such as you suggest would have to be either black on white, providing information, or black on yellow, presenting a warning.”

“Whose property you propose putting this sign of yours on?” an angry voice demanded.

“If a sign was all it’d take,” another offered, “then banks would long ago have replaced security guards with signs that say ‘No Robberies’! Let’s face it, no one’s going to pay attention to any sign, except perhaps to take shots at it.”

“Or put a chain saw to it,” still another opined.

“According to my calculations of the probabilities,” spoke out a young lad who had recently come into his own laptop computer as a birthday present, and who was fast turning into a full fledged hacker, “statistically there is not likely to be another accident along that stretch of road for ten point seven one years. So, from an actuarial perspective, the town could safely table this issue for reconsideration later, say, nine point seven one years from now.”

“Will someone please tell me what language the boy is speaking?” asked the youngster’s father, a man who loved his son dearly, and who had in fact given him the gift but who, just a little, wished his son had wanted a tractor or a snowmobile, something that spoke the same language he did.

Claudia Fisher was tiring of this discussion, which was clearly going nowhere. And besides, she had made her point to Colin Masters. She pounded the aluminum table with her gavel. “May the chair hear a motion to vote on item number twenty-nine?”

But Colin Masters wasn’t going to let Claudia off so easily. He would insist on the last word, even if it meant prolonging the evening. He raised his hand to be recognized.

“Colin?” the chair inquired, reluctantly ready to accept his initial motion, after all.

Colin stood up. “Madame Chairwoman,” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately, stressing — even overstressing — the word “woman,” for this was the same Colin Masters who had earlier hissed vehemently at the proposal to adopt the appellation First Selectwoman for the duration of Claudia Fisher’s tenure in the position, “will someone please explain to me why the town is being asked by its Board of Selectpersons“ (this man was evidently not going to let go) “to raise $350 to construct a speed bump across the Meekum’s Hill Road when potholes, which have the selfsame effect of bringing traffic to a crawl, are provided free of charge by Almighty God?”

His was a point well taken, if rather meanly made. The annual pothole population in this town, even in this state, is legendary. There are wags who claim that, on more than one occasion, serious consideration has been given by the legislature in Augusta, the state capital, to declare the pothole the Maine state flower, for they grow prolifically in every corner of the state, on every highway, road, and lane, and from the evidence available to the average taxpayer, they seem to require no maintenance whatsoever. At least, they get none. And, with proper carelessness, they can indeed grow very deep, easily deep enough, as Colin Masters suggested, to slow traffic to a near standstill. In fact, it is said that in this town the practice of filling potholes every spring did not begin until the year after Malcolm Featherbridge’s son, Malcolm Junior, had been missing an entire growing season, only to be discovered harvesting forty rows of corn at the bottom of an average sized pothole in the road across from his father’s barn. In an ill-advised show of strength, the selectmen that year tried to claim Malcolm Junior’s corn crop for consumption by the citizenry at the Labor Day barbecue and fete, on the grounds that the roadbed, whatever its state of disrepair, is public property, and therefore any crops grown thereupon belong to the public. To no one’s surprise, the Featherbridge’s paid no attention whatsoever to the claim, and neither did anyone else. In fact, at town meeting the following spring, the town voted Malcolm Junior into the office of First Selectman, an office he retained virtually unopposed until he got caught at, well, to borrow Arthur Bestford’s phrase on the subject, about that enough best left unsaid. In succeeding years, rather than face the private use of potholes issue again, the town’s selectmen have chosen to order the spring crop of potholes filled before planting time. Unfortunately, the job is done with a loose mixture of sand and gravel, all of which washes out in the first heavy rain.

Anyway, when Colin Masters had finished speaking, he remained standing, pointedly awaiting Claudia Fisher’s reply. For her part, Claudia was most reluctant to take on his question, and all the less did she want to let it loose on the floor, for she knew that it could easily evolve into a general discussion of the condition of the roads, never a good subject for any politician in this state, or worse, now that Colin had, however flippantly, defined the matter as a religious issue, into a debate of First Amendment protection for potholes.

This was a test, and Claudia Fisher knew it. Further, she knew that she must prevail. Procedural rules of order to the contrary notwithstanding, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Once again, she banged the gavel firmly, wood to aluminum.

“There being no further comments or questions,” she announced, totally ignoring Colin’s hanging question, and thoroughly preempting the floor, “prepare now to vote on item number twenty-nine.”

Colin Masters looked about the room to his fellow citizens for support of his position. Finding none, he sat down, quietly. Claudia had won, but Colin, having irked her, had won, too. Once again, tradition was served, and once again, the town had survived.

“All those in favor of spending $350 to lay a speed bump across the Meekum’s Hill Road will so signify by raising their right hand,” the chair ordered.

“NOW!” Pilikia whispered loudly, stretching her tail as high as she could. But Cantachiaro had slipped part way off the chair, and Pilikia could tell that the blue cotton glove was not reaching high enough to be seen. “Cantachiaro!” she said, “you’ve got to stand up on the chair, so they’ll see my vote.” There was no response, neither was there any movement, from the rooster below. “Cantachiaro!” Pilikia repeated, louder. Still there was no answer. Finally, she peeked down into her canvas shirt and under the red and black wool skirt, and there, to her dismay, she discovered the problem. Cantachiaro, his head turned back and neatly nestled beneath a wing, was asleep. “Of course,” the cat declared, “chickens go to sleep at dark, and there’s no waking them until dawn.”

“Right you are, my dear,” Gloriana Torrance said, her right hand raised high for the vote count, apparently not the least fazed by the fact that Pilikia’s observation did not seem to have anything to do with anything.

“But you don’t understand,” Pilikia said, “he’s, uh, it’s my legs. They’ve fallen asleep.”

“Quite normal at our age, my dear,” her neighbor suggested. “Circulation, you know.”

“But my vote …” the cat cried.

The next voice was Claudia Fisher’s. “And now, all opposed.”

“But I haven’t had a chance to vote,” Pilikia wailed.

Claudia Fisher did not hear her. In a few moments, the chair reported the vote count. “Listen to the results of your voting,” Claudia said. “Eighty-four votes were cast. For, forty-two. Opposed, forty-two. The vote being evenly divided, the chair casts the deciding vote, against. Item number twenty-nine fails, forty-three to forty-two.”

Claudia was just about to wield the gavel again when Gloriana Torrance spoke out. “Just a moment,” she said, waving her hand to get the chair’s attention. “Claudia, this lady’s vote wasn’t counted.” She indicated Pilikia seated next to her. “Her legs have gone to sleep, don’t you know, and she was unable to raise her hand high enough to be seen.”

It was an unusual procedure, but by that time Claudia wanted nothing else than to put the matter to rest, one way or the other. She called on Pilikia. “How do you vote?”

“I vote Yes!” Pilikia exclaimed.

“Carried!” Claudia Fisher responded, her gavel pounding forcefully on the table, punctuating her relief that it was finally over. Before anyone could say anything further, she called for a motion to adjourn, which was quickly made, seconded, and passed. “Will all newly elected officers please come to the front of the room to be sworn in,” Claudia shouted above the commotion of mumbling voices and chairs scraping against the floor, as the townspeople prepared to leave for home.

Town meeting was over. Our conspirators had accomplished their mission. Pilikia had voted, and funds for the speed bump had been approved. But, now, how was Pilikia to get out of the room? Or, more to the point, what was she to do about Cantachiaro?

“Tancredi!” Pilikia remembered. She stuck her head out the window. There he was, big as life, stretched out on the landing, right where he was supposed to be, still gnawing on what was left of the soup bone.

“What’s happening?” he asked her, wagging his tail.

“We’ve got a crisis,” the cat said. “Cantachiaro has fallen asleep, and I can’t waken him.”

“Of course,” the dog replied, “as soon as it got dark. We should’ve known.” For a moment he considered what to do. Then, with authority, he announced, “I’m coming in.”

That evening, as folks emptied out of town meeting, apparently no one noticed a very big dog walking across the floor, down the stairs, through the parking lot to the old schoolhouse, with a rather strange looking lady in his mouth. Well, actually, one old timer did, but Pilikia defused that encounter quickly.

“You’ve heard of seeing eye dogs,” Pilikia said to the man who was staring in disbelief at her and Cantachiaro grasped between Tancredi’s huge jaws, “well, this is a carrying mouth dog. To replace walkers for the elderly.”

“Very sensible,” the man observed.

Early the next morning, the animals gathered in the Roomey’s barn for a full telling of all the exciting details. Word of the adventure, its perils and success, had quickly spread among the nocturnal inhabitants of the neighborhood, the raccoons, the owls, the field mice, for they were up and about when town meeting got out, and, at first light, they passed it along to their awakening diurnal friends.

“Susanne!” Wendell Roomey shouted to his wife as he looked out their bathroom window. “What is going on in our barn? It looks like Noah’s ark!”

“Claire, your father wants to know what you’ve got going on in the barn,” Susanne said to her daughter, guessing it was almost certainly her doing.

“Oh, that. It’s nothing,” Claire responded, making up an answer as fast as she could. “It’s part of a biology experiment for Mrs. Checkleword’s class.”

“Well, that’s okay, then,” Wendell observed, “as long as we’re not feeding them.”

Claire left her breakfast, and walked out to the barn to shoo the animals away before her father had a chance to think about the matter any further. On seeing the girl, the creatures broke out into applause.

“Well done, Claire,” Montauk said, speaking for the lot of them. “We couldn’t have managed without your help.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” Claire replied, “not for all the world.”

“What I still don’t understand,” Cantachiaro said, “is how did you get me home?”

“Easy,” Pilikia explained. “Once we found Montauk, Tancredi jumped onto the hood of a car, and from there to the cab of a pickup truck, and then it was just a leap over to the horse’s back.”

“With you in his mouth,” Purrfect added, sharing in the enthusiasm.

“My only regret,” Tancredi observed, “was having to leave that bone behind. There’s plenty of good gnawing left in it.”

“Is this what you’re missing?” a pair of shiny black crows inquired, one of whom was lightly perched on the soup bone. Tancredi’s tail set to wagging. “We retrieved it for you off the fire escape first thing this morning.”

“The school bus will be by for me any minute,” Claire said, reluctantly breaking up the happy gathering, “and the rest of you had better go, too, before …”

“The adult humans find us,” Selene said.

“Yes,” Claire answered.

As the other animals returned to their routines in the surrounding woods and fields and the sky above, Selene and Purrfect sat alone together alongside the cedar fencing at the end of the Roomey’s driveway.

“It was close, Purrfect,” Selene said, “but we pulled it off.”

“Yes, we did,” Purrfect replied, “and it was fun, especially our working together.”

Selene turned to him. “Yes,” she agreed, “it was.”

They sat there for several hours, the two cats, quietly purring in the morning sun. That evening, Pilikia, who covertly observed this intimate encounter between her feline friends, made a special point of raising the name Tomas, the heretofore presumed sole object of Selene’s affection, to discover what kind of reaction it would get. Undoubtedly onto Pilikia’s game, Selene replied simply, but cryptically, “A rose has many petals,” and walked off.

Now, it was not until seven months later that the town’s big, red truck growled up the Meekum’s Hill Road with its two man crew, to lay down the speed bump. By then, of course, summer was well over. The need for a speed bump, if there ever was one, had passed. Traffic had returned to its normal nil. Still, the crew had its instructions, and there was no arguing with that.

“You’re not going to believe what I just witnessed,” Peter said to Anna later than afternoon over a cup of tea.

“Try me,” Anna replied.

“You remember the speed bump business at town meeting,” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Well,” Peter informed her, “the road crew finally laid it today.”

“A little late, perhaps,” Anna observed, “but so?”

“So,” he explained, “they laid it across the strip of road just in front of …”

“You don’t mean …” she interrupted him.

“Precisely,” he interrupted her.

While the potholes are always fierce all along the Meekum’s Hill Road, that year there had developed one particular pothole that might just as well be labeled a pot canyon. In fact, so deep was it that it almost devoured the big truck itself, which doubles as the town’s snow plow, during the last storm of the preceding winter. Thus, just as fast as the road crew lay the tar for the speed bump, it was swallowed up by the pothole.

“Well, if we didn’t get a speed bump,” Anna opined, “at least we filled the pothole.”

“That was a deep hole, Anna,” Peter reminded her. “When the crew left a few minutes ago, all that new tar was still not enough to reach the level of the roadbed.”

From her perch overhead on one of the peeled spruce logs, Selene listened to this report, and shook her tail in disgust.

“Humans,” the cat wondered aloud to herself. “What’s the point?”

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