Hadden Goddard is in the fifth grade. His father, Aldrich Goddard, owns a motorized, three wheel machine, a so-called all-terrain-vehicle, painted bright red, that he uses in the woods to tend his traps. Aldrich is the only professional trapper left in town, and, as he lives down the road from the Wensleydales, he stops by from time to time to display his catch. He is basically a very nice fellow and a bottomless fountain of woods lore wisdom, so Peter and Anna enjoy his visits, except for the dead carcasses he insists upon exhibiting, although they both recognize in their revulsion a lingering aspect of the urban, middle-class upbringing that, like so much of what they brought with them to Maine, would eventually have to go.
(“There’s birthing and dying all around you all the time, so if you’re going to live in the Maine woods, you might as well get used to the fact that death lives here, too,” they had been lectured rather sternly their first summer in Maine by Tyler Freeman, the fellow who taught them how to use a chain saw and lots of other important skills, after they complained to him about his having taken an unwanted, sickly puppy into the forest and shot it. “It’s only city folk who think that animals are born already slaughtered, plucked, and cleaned in plastic bags on supermarket shelves.”)
Aldrich Goddard particularly endeared himself to Peter by his reaction to their first attempt at masonry, which had been to erect a fifteen foot chimney for the wood stove that was the sole source of heat for their new house. “Look at it,” Peter had cried out in anguish, as he and Anna reviewed their handiwork. “We’ve built a pretzel-shaped chimney!” And, while that was a slight exaggeration, it is true the chimney does seem to lean a bit, first to the east, then to the west, and then back again. When Aldrich heard Peter’s self-deprecating complaints on the subject, he asked, “What did you build the chimney for?”
“To draw smoke,” Peter replied.
“Does it do that?” Aldrich asked.
“Yes, it does,” Peter admitted, for indeed it does, and very well.
“Well then?” Aldrich responded, and with that, put an end to it.
Anyway, whenever Aldrich Goddard is not using his three wheeler, his son Hadden is.
“And Hadden was selling something, wasn’t he?” Peter asked Pilikia.
From what Peter and Anna have seen of him, Hadden is always selling something. “I tell you,” Peter has remarked more than once to Anna, and not entirely inaccurately, “that boy has never left this house without some of our money in his hands.”
In the winter, Hadden sells Christmas gifts from a Christmas gift catalog, and in the spring, Easter gifts from an Easter gift catalog. In the summer, he sells his services, mowing lawns and performing other odd jobs. All year long, he sells magazine subscriptions. “They give me a percentage on every item,” Hadden will say proudly, as Peter and Anna leaf through one catalog after another, picking out stuff they don’t really want but, because they truly like Hadden, and want to encourage so determined a youngster, they order.
“Yes, he was,” Pilikia replied. “He was selling cat food.”
“And, so, naturally,” Peter and Anna said, “you bought some.”
“Yes,” the cat admitted. “It’s a very fancy French brand, Le Chat Rieur, which means …”
“The laughing cat,” Peter translated. “How could you resist, right?”
“I knew you’d understand,” Pilikia said, smiling, but neither Peter nor Anna showed any sign of being amused.
“How did you pay for this food?” Anna asked.
“I wrote a check,” Pilikia said. “I wasn’t sure about that, but I found one in the desk drawer.”
“The cat wrote a check, Peter,” Anna said, flatly.
“I heard her,” Peter replied. “Pilikia, not that it really matters now, but how much of this cat food did you buy?”
“Two cases,” Pilikia answered.
“And where is the cat food now, Pilikia?” Anna asked.
“Well, that’s the thing,” the cat replied. “We have to pick it up.”
“We have to pick it up,” Peter repeated. “Where do we have to pick it up?”
“Well, that’s sort of the other thing,” the cat admitted. “We have to pick it up in Quebec.” Pilikia saw that Peter and Anna were not pleased, so she quickly added, “Hadden offered to arrange for home delivery, but then we wouldn’t have been able to participate in the contest.”
“Ah, yes, the contest,” Peter said. “Tell us about the contest, Pilikia.”
As the story continued to unfold, Peter and Anna learned that Le Chat Rieur is a Canadian pet food manufacturer that was conducting a promotional campaign culminating in a contest to be held at the Centre Municipal des Congres opposite the Provincial Parliament building in Quebec City. There, they would select from among the contestants the most convincing “laughing cat” whose image would appear on the company’s product label. Pilikia’s selection to participate in the contest had followed from having filled in a coupon at the time she purchased the two cases of cat food from the boy, Hadden. It remained unclear why Peter had thought the telephone call was about “his daughter” except that the caller’s name did sound a little like “sa fille,” which Peter reasonably understood to mean “your daughter,” and then incorrectly filled in the blanks. In his unnecessary defense, Peter observed that a beauty contest for his nonexistent daughter makes just as much sense as a laughing contest for his Persian cat.
“I don’t suppose, Peter,” Anna asked, as the two of them considered this matter over a cup of tea, “that your Canadian friend mentioned anything about all-expenses paid?”
“Regrettably, no,” Peter replied. “I think, if we go, it’ll be on us.”
“Does that mean we’re going?” Pilikia exclaimed, beaming with joyful expectation.
Peter and Anna exchanged a long, silent look. As always, since they had come to Maine, their financial situation was uncertain, to put it nicely, and they both knew they could ill afford this trip.
“Still,” Anna said, recalling Peter’s earlier remark, “it has been a long time since we’ve gone anywhere.”
“Yes, it has,” Peter agreed. Then, referring to the atlas he now had open on the table, he noted, “And Quebec City seems to be only a few hundred miles from here.” As Anna leaned across the table to look at the map with him, Peter traced with a finger the route they would have to take.
“You’re right,” she said, “it’s just a little way over the border.”
“And don’t forget,” Peter added, sensing their shared enthusiasm mounting, “there are more ounces to the gallon in Canada, and our dollar’s worth more there, so, in a sense, one could almost argue that driving there will save us money.”
“WE’RE GOING TO QUEBEC!” Pilikia shouted as she darted across the room and out the front door. “WE’RE GOING TO QUEBEC!”
Peter watched as the cat disappeared in a blur, then he turned to Anna, and said, “I guess we’re going to Quebec.”
“Evidently,” Anna agreed.
And so it was that the Wensleydales decided to drive the four hundred, more or less, miles from their home in Cranberry County, Maine to Quebec, Canada. And, in fact, they very nearly did so.
Actually, they did make it into the province, if not the city, of Quebec, if, that is, you are willing to count the turning radius of Simone, their Volvo sedan, which is admittedly very tight, but still every centimeter of Canada is Canada.
However, before even setting out, the Wensleydales needed to determine whom to take with them and whom to leave behind. Pilikia, of course, was at the top of the trip list. “After all, if it weren’t for me, there’d be no reason for any of us to go,” the cat boasted, as she packed her things.
Selene, on the other hand, would stay behind, by her own choice. “Laughing cat, indeed,” she scoffed. “The whole concept is demeaning, which, of course, renders it perfectly suited to you, Pilikia. Besides, someone has got to remain here, and keep the place in order. Who better than I?” Who indeed, Peter and Anna agreed.
Cantachiaro and Tancredi both wanted to make the trip. “Everyone knows that roosters are a source of good luck for travelers,” Cantachiaro said, arguing his case, “and, anyway, I never get to go anywhere.”
“I’ve never heard anything about roosters being good luck,” Anna remarked.
“It doesn’t matter one way or the other,” Peter insisted. “We are not taking a rooster to Canada. The very idea is insane. As for Tancredi, I suppose he can come, but only if he promises to behave on the leash when we get to the city.”
Tancredi, who practically wags himself into a knot at the prospect of going anywhere anytime in the car or the truck, and in fact can often be found sitting in one or the other parked in the driveway just in case a trip somewhere should develop, readily promised whatever was necessary to be included. “You can absolutely count on me to heel, and, what’s more, I’ll do it in perfect French,” he said, while mentally making a note to forget to pack the leash!
And so, off the five of them went – Peter and Anna, Tancredi and Pilikia, and, yes, Cantachiaro, who, predictably, eventually talked himself past Peter’s objections. “I may never get another chance to see a foreign land. Don’t you see that this is a genuine educational opportunity for me,” was the last straw, although Cantachiaro had been prepared, if necessary, to threaten to hold his breath until Peter and Anna agreed to take him along.
Now, when Simone pulled up to the customs house at the border crossing between the United States and Canada, the Canadian customs agent, after posing to Peter and Anna the routine questions about their citizenship, where they were going in Canada and why, and how long they proposed staying there, stuck his head into the car and, on seeing Cantachiaro in the backseat beside Tancredi and Pilikia, said, speaking English with a decidedly French accent, “That is quite a menagerie you have back there. You are perhaps with the circus?”
As the man then laughed, Peter and Anna took the remark to be a joke, and so they laughed too, but only barely.
“Sometimes it seems so,” Peter allowed.
“Often it seems so,” Anna added.
“However, about the chicken,” the customs agent continued, the sense of humor gone from his voice, “I regret it is not possible that he shall enter Canada.”
“Not possible?” Anna asked, “Why not?”
“There has been an outbreak of chicken fever,” the man explained. “All border crossings between Maine and the Province have been closed to poultry. Until the quarantine is lifted, the chicken must remain where he is.”
“Chicken fever,” Cantachiaro said with a huff, “what a lot of hooey! Tell the man I’ve been vaccinated.”
The customs agent stared in disbelief toward the car’s backseat. “Was that not the chicken speaking?”
“My husband is a ventriloquist,” Anna explained quickly, certain that if the man thought they had with them a chicken who not only could be carrying chicken fever, whatever that might be, but who also could speak, they would never get past this checkpoint, “and sometimes he plays jokes, don’t you, dear?” to which Peter nodded, and said, “Yes, just a joke,” while Anna turned toward the backseat, and whispered, “Another word out of any of you, and you are all walking home!” to which the animals made a face, but, realizing she was right and this was not the time to be complicating matters, they did as Anna suggested, and kept quiet.
“You mean you will not let us pass into Canada?” Peter asked the man.
“Again, I regret I may not do so,” the man replied, “not with the chicken.”
Peter turned to Anna. “I take it back,” he said. “I guess we’re not going to Canada.”
“I guess not,” she agreed.
“Well, then, so be it,” Peter said to the Canadian. With that, he turned Simone around, and headed back into the United States.
“So much for my reign as queen of Le Chat Rieur pet food,” Pilikia remarked to no one in particular. “I was looking forward to living in a palace. Just think of it, never having to work for a living, my every need provided for, no responsibilities except to play all day. What a life,” she said, wistfully.
“But, Pilikia,” Cantachiaro said, quizzically, “that’s the life you lead now.”
The cat looked at the rooster, and thought for a long moment. Then, she exclaimed, “By golly, you’re right. Why, that means I must have won the contest after all. I’m The Laughing Cat! C’est moi, la chatte rieuse!”
With that, Pilikia leapt up onto the headrest on the driver’s seat, and, with a deep bow and an exaggerated flourish, announced, “Mesdames et messieurs, voila la reine.”
“The cat’s speaking French,” Peter said in disbelief to Anna, as he brushed Pilikia’s tail away from his face. “Where did that cat learn to speak French?”
“Where did she learn to speak English,” Anna replied.
“Point taken,” Peter said.
Meanwhile, the excitement in the backseat grew. “I told you,” Cantachiaro boasted, “that bringing a rooster along was good luck.”
“Indeed, you did,” Pilikia declared, with enthusiasm, still perched behind Peter’s head, “and never in the history of speech were any words better spoken, nor any prophesy more happily fulfilled. Thus, I say unto you, come hither, my feathered friend, and permit your liege the privilege of rewarding her loyal subject.”
Cantachiaro crossed the backseat, and knelt before the Persian cat.
“I knight you Sir Rooster of Cranberry,” Pilikia announced, touching each of Cantachiaro’s shoulders and then the top of his head with Tancredi’s long tail. “Rise, Sir Rooster, and be recognized.”
At that, the backseat of the Volvo dissolved into bedlam, as the cat, the dog, and the rooster flew and jumped about, cackling, barking, and meowing, celebrating Pilikia’s good fortune, Cantachiaro’s new rank, their treasured friendship, Quebec, Canada, chicken fever, and whatever else came to mind. Finally, amidst a rain of dust and fur and feathers, they settled down.
After a moment, Tancredi stuck his head between the two front seats, and said to their human occupants, “The thirty feet or so of Canada that I saw, I must say I enjoyed immensely. I think we should do this more often.”
Later that day, after the Wensleydales had lunched by the side of the road with a picnic they had intended having on Canadian soil, Anna took over the driving from Peter.
“This is a beautiful part of the state,” she said, “and it would be a shame if you didn’t get a chance to see it, too.”
“Be careful,” Peter replied, as they changed places, “this stretch is badly pot-holed and crowded with pulp trucks.”
Actually, the whole state of Maine is badly pot-holed, but that’s another story. Much of the state is also crowded with pulp trucks. These are huge eighteen or twenty-two wheel rigs loaded, often overloaded, with tree length logs destined for the state’s pulp mills, where the wood is turned into paper. Most of these trucks are driven by professionals who respect their equipment, the roads they depend on, and other vehicles, but there are the inevitable exceptions to the rule, and they can be terrifying.
“I will,” Anna said.
And she was, but nothing she might have done could have avoided what lay ahead.
Here, the highway descends from several thousand feet in altitude to near sea level. It is a narrow, winding, and, as Peter observed, poorly paved stretch of road. In addition, it is one of Maine’s most scenic highways, and therefore many of its users, particularly visitors, are there more to look than to drive. Add to that equation the presence of the big lumber trucks, and you have a perfect formula for disaster.
And so it was that day, as, suddenly, while Anna was driving the car around a particularly tight hairpin turn, she saw looming directly ahead what seemed to her the biggest and most heavily laden pulp truck she had ever seen, bearing down on them in her lane, in the process of passing a tan Volkswagen van packed inside with a family, probably on vacation, and on top a canoe, assorted camping gear, and a weathered lobster trap, presumably intended to become a coffee table in the family’s living room but more likely a dust collector in the attic.
Looking quickly to either side for an escape route, for she knew that to continue straight ahead meant certain death, Anna realized that there was nowhere to go and nothing to do. The opposite shoulder was wide enough for her, but there was not enough time to get there, and trying for it would only endanger the van and its occupants. The shoulder on her side was thick with trees almost to the pavement’s edge, and offered no breathing space at all.
“My God,” Anna said to herself, “we’re going to die.” As she spoke those words, she noticed Cantachiaro looking at her in the rearview mirror, and she heard the thought run past her brain, “How extraordinary! The last thing I am going to see alive is that silly bird.” With that, she pulled the car to the right, fully aware that there was nowhere there to go, but she had to do something.
In an instant, there was only silence.
When Anna next opened her eyes, she found, to her considerable surprise, first, that she was still alive, and second, that she was still in the car, still seated in the driver’s seat, her fingers fiercely tightened on the steering wheel. She sensed, rather than observed, that the car was not moving. She looked to her right, and saw Peter. Other than the fact that he was white as a sheet, and staring wide-eyed at her, he seemed okay, equally intact and where he belonged. She looked to the rear seat. At first, she could not find Pilikia, but then, looking more carefully, she saw the cat’s tail sticking out from under one of the front seats. Evidently, Pilikia had hidden herself, and was okay, too. Tancredi was where he belonged, sitting on the backseat, apparently unfazed. When Anna smiled at him, the big dog leaned forward, and licked her face. Then Anna noticed what she hadn’t seen: Cantachiaro. Cantachiaro was missing.
“Where’s Cantachiaro?” she wailed, frantically turning to Peter, feeling herself suddenly, inexplicably, more concerned about the rooster than she had been about any of the rest of them, including herself.
“Right there,” Peter replied, pointing through the unbroken, unscratched windshield, toward the hood, “only don’t ask me how he got there.”
Sure enough, standing atop the front of the car, like a living, life-sized hood ornament, his neck stretched out, his head raised, his wings spread and flapping, was Cantachiaro, the Wensleydale’s Rhode Island Red rooster. Even as Anna laid eyes on him, Cantachiaro crowed as long and as loud and as beautiful a song as she had ever heard from him. Then, he vigorously flapped his wings several more times, jumped to the ground, and set to scratching about for insects in the brush underfoot, as calmly as if he were in their own front yard. It was then that Anna noticed that the car had come to a halt barely a few inches from a big spruce.
“Do you see that tree, Peter?” she said. “That was close.”
“If you think that’s close,” he replied, “look behind us.”
Anna did so, and to her surprise she saw there another tree, this one a pine, just as big as the one in front, and just as close. Then, she looked around more thoroughly. The car was surrounded by trees. Simone had come to rest fifteen feet or so inside the woods beyond the shoulder of the road. But there was no clearing, not even a path, leading to where they had stopped. They could not have gotten there without driving through or over a half dozen or more fully grown trees, and yet the car was undamaged, and none of the trees showed any signs of trauma.
“I don’t get it, Peter. How did we get in here?” Anna asked, as she walked beside the car, her legs still a little wobbly.
“I don’t know,” Peter said, walking beside her, “but I’ll tell you this: That must have been some maneuver you executed. I thought we were goners.”
“Peter, we were goners. This space wasn’t here, and even if it was, look at it. There are no tracks, no marks, no nothing. I did not drive the car in here.” Anna hesitated for a moment as she considered her next words, and then continued, “I can’t say how, and I grant you it sounds weird in the extreme, but somehow Simone, with all of us in her, was picked up and placed here.”
Peter looked at Anna, but said nothing.
“YOU FOLKS OKAY IN THERE?” The voice came from the road. Although loud and forceful, it was calm and reassuring. Through the trees, Peter and Anna could see the flashing blue lights from atop a silver blue cruiser of a Maine State Trooper.
By the time Peter and Anna got home late that evening, they had pretty nearly recovered from the physical effects of their ordeal. That is to say, their legs were no longer wobbling. But they were still perplexed, to put it mildly. In the words of Trooper Isaac Hansel, the state cop who, with the help of several woodsmen, their chainsaws, and a tow from their 4x4 pickup truck, extricated Simone from her forest cradle, “I don’t know how you got this car in here, ma’am, but you couldn’t have driven it in. Off the record, you understand, I’d have to label this one a miracle.”
Peter agreed, while Anna withheld judgment. “I’m just grateful for it,” she said. “But tell me, officer,” she asked, “what happened to the others? The van and the trucker?”
“Ma’am, I don’t know about the folks in the van,” Isaac Hansel replied. “I didn’t see them. But by now, I’d guess they’re probably setting up a campsite somewhere, and your near miss will have become just one of the stories they’ll tell about their Maine vacation. As for the truck driver, he’ll be having his day in court. You see, after he drove you off the road here, he tried the same thing up ahead, only there he made the mistake of trying it on me.”
Anna nodded. “I guess sometimes there is a cop around when you need one,” she said.
“We try, ma’am,” the Maine State Trooper replied.
At the house, after they had turned in for the night, Anna, who had been a science student in college and whose interest in the sciences has stayed with her, wondered out loud whether the combination of the car’s high speed, and the excited emotion of its occupants, their intense, highly focused fear, might have, “I don’t know, so agitated the molecules of the whole, of the car and of all of us in it, as to make it possible for them to pass undisturbed right through the trees. That would explain how we got in there unscathed, and why, later, they had to cut a way out for us. Once the car had stopped, and we had all calmed down, the molecules resumed their normal, so-called solid state.” Anna stopped speaking for a moment, and then, turning her head to look across the room and out the window into their familiar woods, now bathed in full moonlight, she continued, pensively, “On the other hand, maybe Cantachiaro was right, after all, about it’s being good luck to travel with a rooster. What do you think?”
Anna turned toward Peter as she addressed him, but her question went unanswered, for he had already fallen to sleep. “Whatever,” she said, leaning over to touch him gently, and then relaxing into sleep herself.
The next day, while collecting manure for the garden compost, Peter related the incident of the car in the trees to Montauk, the Roomey’s horse, and asked him his opinion of it.
“You mean, do I think it was a miracle?” the horse asked.
“Yes,” Peter answered, “or, if not a miracle, what?”
“Peter,” Montauk said, thoughtfully, “if this event has accomplished no more than to have saved you and the others to live another day, then it was no miracle. After all, any number of over-the-counter drugs can do as much. However, if it has thoroughly confused you about your own nature and the nature of the universe in which you live, then my answer is, yes, it was a miracle, and a very nice one at that.”
Peter was silent for a long moment. Finally, he nodded, and said, “I see,” but he was not sure that he did.
“The Cranberry Tales” is
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