Dancing Cats of Applesap Read online

  Time after time the jitters froze Melba dead in her tracks and set her up to be laughed at, and whispered about, and finally swept impatiently aside.

  After a while, Melba began to get the jitters by just thinking that she might get the jitters. That was worse, because it meant she couldn’t do things that she wanted, secretly, very much to do. She couldn’t take swimming lessons because she might get the jitters. She couldn’t telephone people because she might freeze.

  Melba couldn’t even talk about the jitters or they might take revenge for being told on and fly down and grab her.

  This fine, blue morning, the jitters had Melba by the throat and it didn’t make a bit of difference that she knew where they came from. Idiotically, they came from a dream she’d had the night before.

  The dream was about Irma Herring’s Easter party which Melba had somehow stumbled into the middle of, even though it was the last place on earth she wanted to be. (Dreams will do that to you every time.)

  Irma was standing up very tall in a bright yellow party dress and she was shooting Victor’s shotgun off into the air.

  “Get the cats! Get the cats! Get the cats!” Irma was chanting. She shot the gun off in between chants. Melba was cowering in a corner. Suddenly she looked down and saw a terrible thing happening. Her body was changing into a cat body, all fur and paws and a hairy, white belly.

  “Help!” screamed Melba in her dream, but the sound came out only as a shrill cat’s mew.

  Melba woke up, hot and clammy. She examined her stomach to make sure it wasn’t a cat belly. Then she remembered the cat-march plan. That’s when the jitters came down in a black swarm all over her. They made her stomach quake and her knees go limp and her throat wrench shut so that she could hardly breathe.

  The plan all of a sudden became a terrible plan. It wouldn’t work. It had Melba walking down Main Street like a fool with everybody staring at her. It had the cats causing a traffic jam and getting hauled off to jail. It had Miss Toonie screaming and shaking her fist at her for thinking up such a dumb idea.

  Oh, dear, moaned Melba to herself. Why did I ever do it?

  “I feel sick,” she groaned aloud. “I’ll have to stay right here in my room because I feel so terrible.”

  But Melba couldn’t stay in her room. Irma Herring was there in her yellow party dress, and even though she was only left over from a dream, she scared Melba enough to send her out the door and downstairs for breakfast.

  The only person in the kitchen was Victor. He was eating an enormous bowl of cereal, and from the way he was going through it Melba knew there was nothing holding him back from his day. Jitters weren’t a subject that Victor knew anything about. As for dreams, if he had them at all, Melba thought they would be about Victor chasing things down rather than something chasing him.

  This morning, Victor was intent on getting his groundhog, and you had to admire how he was going about it.

  “Look at this!” he announced, when Melba sat down at the table. She poured herself about enough cereal to keep a mouse going for five minutes, and looked. Victor was drawing a map of the field on a pad of paper.

  “See, the groundhog has got two holes that we know of. One is up in the corner by the fence. And the other, since he’s no dummy of course, is right down opposite our vegetable garden,” Victor explained. He marked the map with a black X.

  “Now what we’re going to do is split flanks, with half of us covering the fence and the other half hiding in those bushes near the garden. Then, at the signal—which I’ll give, of course—the garden troops will make a lot of noise, just to let the groundhog know that the garden isn’t the place where he can get his lunch today.

  “So, naturally, after a while, he’ll start poking his head out the other door. That’s where I’ll be with my shotgun, and whammo!—he won’t know what hit him!”

  “It’s a good plan,” Melba had to admit. “Think it will work?”

  “It will work, all right. I’ll make it work,” said Victor. He leaned back in his chair, very pleased. Victor grinned. It was the same big, broad friendly grin that made everyone like him and want to be with him, crazy or not. Melba couldn’t help smiling too. She poured herself another bit of cereal and leaned back in her chair the way Victor was leaning, cool and casual. Victor seemed to appreciate this.

  “Hey!” he said. “Do you want to come along? We could use another person in the garden to make noise.”

  Melba shook her head. “I’ve got plans of my own today,” she answered, trying to sound businesslike. Victor sat up and eyed her.

  “What plans?” he asked suspiciously, because Melba usually didn’t have things like that. Melba usually waited for him to have plans.

  “Oh, something.”

  “Something down at that dumb drug store, I bet,” said Victor. He eyed her again. “Hey! You know what I heard?”

  “What?”

  “They’re going out of business.”

  “No. They’re not,” said Melba.

  “Yes, they are. Everybody at the Super Queen knows it. Everybody says it’s about time, too. That old wreck of a place is an eyesore in this town, and the people who run it are eyesores too!”

  “They are not!” cried Melba, blushing with anger. Victor smiled and shook his head at her.

  “Listen,” he said, lowering his. voice. “Don’t hang around there anymore. People see you there and they laugh. The place is a dump. Only losers go there. You don’t want to be a loser, do you?”

  “Yes!” cried Melba. “I mean, no!” She pushed away from the table in confusion, and stood. Victor was grinning up at her foolishly. He didn’t know anything.

  “What I mean is they are not losers,” Melba said fiercely. “They are my friends!”

  “Come on,” whined Victor. “Stay here and help me today. It will be fun.”

  “Stay here and take orders from you, you mean!” called Melba over her shoulder. She was already running for the door. Then she was on the sidewalk heading for Jiggs’ Drug Store with long, determined strides. And not until she actually saw that old building looming up over the sidewalk did she remember the jitters. But, by that time, they were somewhere down deep, hiding out quietly like the groundhog in the field.

  “Hello? Is this the company that publishes the Guinness Book of World Records? It is? Oh, wow! I mean (ahem) my name is Melba Morris and I have, or I guess I have, well, maybe I have, a world record to report.”

  (“That wasn’t a very good beginning, was it,” says Melba over her shoulder. “I should have sounded more forceful. They’ve put me on hold.”)

  “Hello? Oh, yes. I was just telling the other man…My name is Melba Morris and…What? Okay, I’ll wait.”

  (“They put me on hold again,” explains Melba with her hand over the receiver. Her glasses are falling sideways, the way they do when she’s nervous and her nose gets sweaty. “The switchboard is overloaded with calls. That’s strange, isn’t it? When you think of a world record you usually think of something that happens only once in a lifetime, or maybe once in twenty years. And here is the Guinness Book company clogged up with people calling in to report world records from all over the place.”)

  “Hello? Yes. This is…No! No, I’m Melba Morris from Applesap, New York, and it’s about dancing cats, not swallowing nails. What? I didn’t say prancing rats, it’s dancing cats I’m reporting. Can’t you send someone out to look at them? Everybody around here thinks they’re fantastic. All right, I’ll hold on.”

  (“They thought I was somebody from Tulsa, Oklahoma who had swallowed twenty-five nails and lived through it,” says Melba, wiping a clammy palm on her jeans. “What a dumb thing to do. I guess some people sit around thinking of crazy things to do just to get written up. I hope the Guinness people can see the difference between those kinds of records and our cats. Our cats aren’t showing off. They’re a plain miracle!”)

  “HELLO!” shouts Melba into the phone. “This is me. Melba. Isn’t it my turn yet? I’ve been w
aiting for a long time! See, I’ve got these cats who…But I’ve been holding!”

  (Melba rolls her eyes up to the ceiling the way Miss Toonie does when she wants to look exasperated. “Whew!” she says. “And to think that I was scared about making this phone call!”)

  Chapter Ten

  IF EVER THERE WAS a day for marching down Main Street, it was that cool, blue, spring Sunday in Applesap, New York. Applesap may have been small. It may have lived timidly for most of the year in the shadows of those louder and pushier towns of Hopsburg and Glowville. But every once in a while a day would come, a fine, clear, promising day, to make Applesap stand up as proud and confident as any town in America.

  On those days, people in Applesap walked with an extra lilt in their steps, and shop windows shone with an extra sparkle, and life took on an air of importance. On this particular Sunday, for no reason that anyone could put a finger on, Applesap was practically bursting with sparkle.

  Melba felt it as she walked along the sidewalk toward Jiggs’ Drug Store. The sparkle straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin and finally pranced her incongruously across Main Street to Dunn, as if she were a majorette leading the band.

  Fitting her old-fashioned key into the old-fashioned lock on the store’s front door, Miss Toonie felt it, and sniffed the air suspiciously.

  “If I didn’t know better I’d say it was a wonderful day today,” she muttered almost cheerfully to the cats who swarmed up to greet her.

  Across town, the mayor of Applesap, biting into his breakfast egg, felt it and decided on the spot to construct a roller-rink pavilion to beat the devil out of Glowville’s.

  And all over town people were pushing up their windows and congratulating themselves on the greenness of their lawns. Churchgoers were skipping up the steps to their churches. Paperboys were hurling their papers like javelins. Dogs galloped at the heels of their rabbits, and even groundhogs (especially Victor’s, soggy and hungry after two days of underground hiding) nosed up from their holes for a quick gulp of that glittering air.

  Meanwhile, as Melba bounded up behind Miss Toonie to enter Jiggs’ Drug Store, Jiggs himself, in his dark house at the edge of town, twitched up a shade and peeped out for exactly three seconds before sadly closing it back down again.

  “Spineless worm,” snapped Miss Toonie to Melba. “Just look how he made himself dinner on my counter last night and didn’t even have the politeness to sponge off after.”

  “He’s left his guitar here, too,” said Melba. She picked it up from the counter’s far end, where about twenty cats had been using it for a pillow.

  “And look,” she added. “A string is broken.”

  “Don’t tell me to look,” growled Miss Toonie, sponge in hand. “I have all I can stand listening to that thing all day without having to look at it too. Clear it off. We’ve got work to do.”

  So Melba carried the guitar into the back room and propped it carefully on Mr. Jiggs’ chair, where he’d be sure to see it first thing. And though she didn’t notice, every cat in the store raised its ears to attention and watched her go and come back. Then five of the biggest, including sad, three-legged Butch, padded softly out back and crouched near the chair’s legs, taking up a silent watch that lasted for the rest of the morning. They left, regretfully, only to respond to Miss Toonie’s low whistle. About noon, she decided that all cats must be brushed and fluffed for their grand appearance on Main Street.

  “Can’t have them looking like a bunch of hoodlums,” snorted Miss Toonie, brandishing her hairbrush for the operation. And as her own hair fuzzed and scraggled about like a mad alley cat’s, she went to work with powerful strokes. But Melba saw that she was careful to go gently, ever so gently, over all the bruises and cuts and sore places that might hurt a cat if brushed too roughly.

  Chapter Eleven

  IT TOOK MISS TOONIE two full hours to brush up the cats, what with chasing down the shy ones who slunk away to hide and fighting off the braver ones who wanted a second time through.

  Meanwhile, Melba worked at the counter making signs on some dusty pieces of poster board she had found on a shelf. She found watercolor paints too, and brushes, and…

  “The thing I like about plain old drug stores is they’ve got everything anybody ever needed,” Melba told Miss Toonie as she rinsed off her brush between colors.

  “Here Snowflake!” bawled Miss Toonie, groping under the candy rack. “Here Ozzie! Here Butch! Want a cherry?”

  “They’ve got huge, modern drug stores in Glowville and Hopsburg, but no soda fountain to sit down at. They have aisles and aisles of things like popcorn poppers and dried flowers and giant boxes of washing detergent, but they never have what you really need. Like turtle food,” said Melba, carefully painting a large red O.

  “We’ve got turtle food,” grunted Miss Toonie. She hauled Snowflake out by the tail.

  “I know,” said Melba. “I used to have a turtle. In Glowville you have to go to a special pet store to get turtle food. And you have to go to another special store to get your brother a jackknife for his birthday. And even another store to get the little bit of wrapping paper you need to wrap it up. At the huge drug stores all they have is huge rolls that cost five dollars each.”

  “We have jackknives and little bits of wrapping paper,” announced Miss Toonie proudly. She held the poor, wriggling Snowflake by her scruff and fluffed up her tail.

  “The Super Queen doesn’t have a comic-book rack,” Melba continued, “and it doesn’t carry water pistols anymore.”

  “Probably why they’re still in business and we’re not,” grumped Miss Toonie. “All these little things we’ve got don’t make us any money.” She looked at Melba sharply.

  “How do you know what the Super Queen carries if you never go there?” she asked.

  “Victor tells me.” Melba shrugged. “The Super Queen isn’t my kind of place.”

  Miss Toonie creaked up off the floor and brushed down her skirt, which was flecked with ten different colors of cat fur.

  “If I may say so,” she said, coming over to look at Melba’s signs, “your kind of place is about to go out of business because nobody ever comes in it. So what are you going to do if this march works? If it works, we’ll have customers jamming every corner and kids ordering hot fudge sundaes and all sorts of people you don’t want to see!”

  Melba gulped and turned to the old lady.

  “But so will you!” she cried.

  Miss Toonie stared at her. Then she glanced down at Melba’s large, gay OPEN SUNDAYS sign, and at another one she’d painted further along the counter that said:

  CATS MARCH FOR JIGGS’. INTRODUCTORY OFFER—ONE FREE ICE-CREAM CONE. COME ’N GET IT!!!

  “We should get started…if we’re going,” said Miss Toonie.

  “Are we going?” asked Melba.

  Miss Toonie stared dismally at the signs. And Melba, feeling her jitters stir around in that deep place, wondered suddenly how Victor’s groundhog was getting along. He was in a tight spot, all right. If he came up for food he’d be shot, and if he didn’t come up he’d starve to death. Melba couldn’t decide what she would do if she were the groundhog. She guessed the best way might be to stay put in her hole and wait for the hunters to go away. But knowing Victor, he’d probably be up all night, so perhaps a dash across the field for new territory would, after all, be the better plan.

  Miss Toonie had turned around to survey the cats. All the brushing and fluffing had stirred them up. Now they were swirling to and fro across the floor, their groups massing and breaking apart and remassing like rain clouds on a windy day. They were edgy, uncertain about what was coming next, and irritated that their old routines had been interrupted. Some streamed into the back room, thinking perhaps that Mr. Jiggs would suddenly appear there. They padded back out again to search the store with wide-open, worried eyes.

  “Look at them,” said Miss Toonie. “They know something is up and they don’t like it.”

  “I don�
��t either,” said Melba.

  “I don’t either,” sighed Miss Toonie, “but there’s no helping that. One way or another this drug store isn’t going to be the same comfortable, out-of-the-way place we’ve gotten used to.”

  “What if the Super Queen crowd starts coming here?” whispered Melba.

  “I guess I’ll be back to sponging off and worrying about clean spoons,” groaned Miss Toonie.

  They looked at each other nervously. Then, out of the blue, Miss Toonie snickered.

  “Well! That’s the limit!” she giggled. “Here we are scared to death of what will happen if the march works and scared of what will happen if it doesn’t. Makes us sound about as spineless as Jiggs!”

  Melba laughed, but not very heartily.

  “I didn’t like to say so, since I was the one who thought up this plan to begin with, but what scares me most is the marching itself. I never was very good at getting up in front of people.”

  “I’m not so hot in that department myself,” admitted Miss Toonie, “only I thought I wouldn’t mention it and snarl the works. I’ve always been one for having a counter between me and the rest of the world.” She glared accusingly at the soda fountain counter.

  “Listen,” said Miss Toonie. “Just because we feel spineless doesn’t mean we have to act that way.”

  “That’s right!” declared Melba. Miss Toonie’s confession about the counter made her feel braver.

  “When it comes right down to it, you won’t find me hiding behind the shades of some dark house!” bellowed Miss Toonie.

  “Me either!” cried Melba.

  “I guess nobody can take this drug store away from me if I don’t want them to!” yelled Miss Toonie, springing into the midst of the swirling cats.