Dancing Cats of Applesap Page 5

  “Hooray!” screamed Melba. Miss Toonie put her fingers to her lips and blew the long, low whistle that shot every cat’s tail straight up in the air.

  “Come on, cats!” shouted Melba, and, a minute later, an impatient, if somewhat bedraggled line surged out the front door. At the head went Miss Toonie, in a coat whose pockets were temptingly stuffed with candy bars.

  There was, however, one cat who, for reasons of his own, did not respond to Miss Toonie’s hoot. While the other cats moved haltingly out to the sidewalk, Butch turned his old beaten body around and limped off into the back room. There he set up watch again under Mr. Jiggs’ guitar, casting worried glances around the room.

  Well, by now—maybe you’ve been noticing out of the corner of your eye—Melba has been sitting on the telephone for over an hour.

  She has already talked to ten people at the Guinness Book of World Records. Five of them were secretaries who told her she had the wrong department. Three were switchboard operators who said the department she wanted was busy and did she wish to hold? (She certainly did!) The remaining two were line bargers who came on through a mistake in the connection and didn’t know who they were supposed to be talking to either.

  Melba, to kill time while she waits for the right department to show up, has been drawing pictures of the cats on her mother’s doodle pad next to the phone. There’s Butch about to crunch on another cherry. This one is Snowflake who, according to Melba, is so smart she’s figured out how to open the cash register by leaning on the “sale” button with her paw. She likes the ring the register makes when she does it.

  “But she won’t do it if anyone is watching,” says Melba now, cocking the phone’s receiver on her shoulder in a professional way. “When anyone looks at her she acts stupid, like any dumb house cat in the world. A lot of Miss Toonie’s cats are like that.

  “We’ve got one cat called Fudge, on account of his chocolate color, who can answer the phone. Of course, he doesn’t say anything after he’s knocked it off the hook. He waits for Miss Toonie to pick up. Still, you’ve got to admit, it’s pretty remarkable for a cat. But Fudge won’t answer if you are watching him. He gets embarrassed and goes off to hide somewhere. He’s afraid he couldn’t do it if someone were looking, or that he’ll be laughed at. I don’t blame him at all. I used to feel that way.

  “At school I was afraid to hold up my hand to answer a question, even when I knew the answer cold. I was afraid to walk across the room, even before Irma pinched me. When people looked at me, I felt as if a big, icy spotlight was shining down in my face, and I’d freeze. Victor said I made people nervous by freezing that way.

  “ ‘Stay loose,’ he told me. ‘Nobody wants to talk to a frozen up person. It makes them feel frozen up too.’

  “Stay loose. Stay loose. That’s what I was saying to myself over and over as I started off on that cat march. I didn’t think about how the cats were doing. I hardly noticed them. I suppose Snowflake and Fudge and all of them were shaking like leaves themselves (being out on that murderous street), but I was too busy worrying about whether I’d make it myself to pay attention to them.

  “Shyness will do that to you,” Melba explains. “You spend so much time thinking about yourself that you forget to think about other people. For instance, if I’d looked more closely, maybe I would have found out that a lot of other kids in my class at school were shy too. And afraid to raise their hands sometimes, and scared of Irma, which, I discovered later, nearly everybody was!

  “If I hadn’t had the spotlight in my face, maybe I would have noticed how the cats were becoming jumpier and more frightened with each block we marched; how their tails were curling down between their legs and their ears were flattening against their heads.

  “Miss Toonie couldn’t see it. She was walking on ahead. It wasn’t her fault the cats went wild. I’m the one who could have stopped them but…

  “Hush!” Melba interrupts herself. “Hello? Yes! This is Melba Morris calling about the dancing cats of Applesap!”

  Chapter Twelve

  BACK AT JIGGS’ DRUG Store, Butch curled his tail more tightly around his body. Otherwise, he remained motionless at the foot of the chair. Ten minutes passed. Then, about the time the grand cat march was passing through Applesap Center, causing the first townsfolk to blink their eyes, there came the sound of a key in the front lock. Mr. Jiggs, finding the door open, shuffled in and gazed dejectedly at the empty store.

  “Cats?” said Mr. Jiggs in a low voice. There was no answer. He shuffled over to the soda fountain counter and peered behind it. Then he wiped his hand over the top of his bald head and went to the back room. As soon as he appeared, Butch got up and ran to rub himself fondly against the old man’s worn trousers.

  “Where is everyone?” asked Mr. Jiggs. He bent over to pick up Butch, who was showing no sign of the shyness Melba knew so well. Mr. Jiggs retrieved his guitar from the chair, and sat down heavily. He pulled a guitar string from his pocket and set to work replacing the broken string. Butch, perched on his lap, watched every movement with keen interest.

  After a while, Mr. Jiggs spoke to Butch in the tones of someone long used to confiding in cats.

  “They’re up to something, aren’t they, Miss Toonie and the others? And you don’t like the looks of it. Well? Am I right? I appreciate your looking after my instrument all night. Do the same for you sometime.”

  The cat watched Mr. Jiggs closely.

  “All that whispering by the soda fountain last night. There’s a plan afoot, I don’t doubt. Don’t worry,” added Mr. Jiggs dismally. “It won’t come to anything. Nothing ever comes to anything these days.”

  He drew his thumb across the strings to test the new one for sound. It was flat. Slowly, patiently, he tuned the guitar until its old mournful chords rang harmoniously again. Butch’s ears perked up. He leapt to the floor and stood eagerly looking up at the old man.

  “Ah, old friend,” sighed Mr. Jiggs. “What a time we had last night, eh? Never have I seen you cats perform so well. We’ve had some good parties in our day, yes we have.” He strummed softly, and sadly.

  “Having you cats about, well, it’s been a pleasure, if I may say so. Never would have thought it. Never did like cats particularly. But then,” he looked sympathetically at Butch, “I don’t suppose you cats had much interest in music before we got together. We’ve made a strange mixture between us. Crazy, some would say.” Mr. Jiggs stifled a giddy laugh. Then, as another thought struck him, he sat up and narrowed his eyes at Butch.

  “Don’t you ever,” he began fiercely, “don’t you ever dare tell Miss Toonie what’s been going on these last few years. She doesn’t like me. Never has. I couldn’t stand the way she’d laugh and spread the news all over town: Jiggs has really lost his mind now, she’d say, playing orchestra to a bunch of loonie cats.”

  Mr. Jiggs’ face flushed red with embarrassed anger. “And it wouldn’t do you cats any good either. This is a private business between you and me. Don’t want people stepping in and making a mess of it. I wouldn’t trust them, not for a minute!” Mr. Jiggs slammed his fist against the strings, producing a harsh thump that flattened Butch’s ears. But a moment later he relaxed.

  “Well. Well,” he said. “I’m sorry for how it must end. Still, store or no store, it couldn’t last forever. I’m getting old.” He wiped his hand over his head.

  “I stumble and shuffle and forget things. Look how I forgot my guitar last night in the worry of saying our goodbyes.” He shook his head gloomily at Butch, who stood rigid at his feet.

  His words meant nothing to the cat. They washed through his head like an incomprehensible wind, sometimes fierce and frightening, sometimes low and soothing. It was the way of all humans—Butch knew from long experience—to speak and speak and at the end to have said nothing of importance. The old cat shifted his weight watchfully. He was waiting for Mr. Jiggs’ voice to stop, and for that other language, the one he understood and craved, to begin.

 
He was waiting for the music, the fast, gay music that had become over the years, on lonely winter nights and parched summer evenings, through times of pain and times of suspicion, a way of talking between friends.

  “We are here together,” Mr. Jiggs’ music said, appealing to all the cats, but especially to Butch, oldest and most deeply wounded. “Outside the world is strange and dark and trucks prowl the streets searching for us with their lights. Out there is uncertainty and danger. But here, while the sound lasts, we are sheltered. Here we can relax and be ourselves; act like cats, act like men, who cares,” sang the music, “how we act. Let us dance because we are safe!”

  Butch mewed a plaintive mew. But the old man’s eyes were not on his guitar. They seemed to rest on something far off across the room. After a long time, he stirred.

  “Come on,” said Jiggs, getting up at last. Butch leapt for the door. “I’ll sit out for a bit while you have a sniff around. It’s not a bad day as days go.”

  Mr. Jiggs carried his chair out front, placed it in the open door to the shop and sat down again in the broad sunlight. There he strummed morosely while Butch nosed into the bushes. And there, a minute later, a piece of the day’s sparkle caught onto his fingers. It caused a happy little tune to flare up. In a flash, Butch was at his feet.

  “Hah!” cried Mr. Jiggs. “That was a pretty one! Well, I’ll give you another seeing as there’s something in the air that stirs it up.”

  Checking to see that no one was around to hear, he played another twinkling chord, and then a gay, strutting melody wholly unlike the mournful sounds Melba was used to hearing in the store. Then, feeling the music put cheer into his old bones, he let his fingers go and launched into a full-fledged song that danced up to the treetops and made the birds fall silent with admiration.

  This was what Butch had been waiting for. In pure ecstasy, the old battered cat rose on his back feet, forgetting his injuries, forgetting that he was a cat at all and bound to obey the shy laws of catness. His head went back to face the sky. His tail curled and recurled around his body. His feet began a dreamy dance pattern that swirled him around, slowly at first, then (“Let us dance because we are safe!”) faster and faster.

  “Now you’ve got it, Butch!” roared Mr. Jiggs over the music, and neglecting all caution, he played on more loudly still, completely lost in his own performance.

  He played so loudly, in fact, that he drowned out the sound of approaching footsteps, or, one should say, the drum of approaching paws. For at that moment, an unruly herd of ninety-nine cats was already turning down Dunn Street, thundering ecstatically toward the source of the gay talking music.

  Chapter Thirteen

  IT WAS THREE O’CLOCK when the cats set up off Dunn Street, dutifully following Miss Toonie and the candy bars. Melba, taking up the rear, was talking to herself.

  “Stay loose,” she murmured through clenched teeth. She tried desperately to pretend she was Victor, but the jitters clutched at her throat. “Look straight ahead. Don’t think who is watching. Stay loose. Stay loose!”

  She was carrying the big sign CATS MARCH FOR JIGGS’ nose high. Only her eyes and the top of her head showed above it. Around her the town breathed lazily and quietly and, suddenly (they were turning the corner onto Main Street), very strangely. Then it seemed to Melba not like Applesap at all, for all the houses were hunched together watching, and a queer wind blew, and there was a menacing straightness to Main Street that Melba had never noticed before. Before her the street stretched out like a narrow bridge slung between mountain peaks. Far below lay a treacherous valley floor. One false step and Melba would plunge over the edge. One false step and…

  “ONWARD CATS!” screeched Miss Toonie from ahead. Melba jumped and pulled herself together. The line was approaching Applesap Center. By now, small knots of people were stopping to watch. And behind Melba, children on bicycles were catching up and keeping pace. They were laughing and calling. Melba held her sign higher and blushed. But, with the sign in the way, she couldn’t see where she was going.

  “Hey, you!” yelled a man’s angry voice. “Get out of the road. You’re blocking traffic!” A car horn roared in Melba’s ear. She jumped back on the sidewalk. The cats were far ahead of her. When she ran to catch up, the bicycle riders (she was sure it was they and not the wind in her ears) snickered.

  The marchers crossed School Street. Then Center Street. Then Melba’s own Orchard Street, and here word of the parade seemed to have spread ahead because suddenly swarms of spectators were lining the streets, pointing and laughing. Melba was clinging to her sign as if it were a sinking life preserver when—

  “Isn’t that Melba Morris?” asked someone close by. “What does she think she’s doing hiding behind that silly sign?”

  Melba spun around in surprise. Irma Herring stood at the edge of her front yard amidst a group of girls, giggling. She was wearing a pale pink church dress, and pale pink ribbons in her hair. But self-conscious Melba, half blinded by sunlight and teetering again on the brink of that bridge, saw another color: Yellow! Immediately it seemed that she was back in her dream—the cat belly! yellow Irma!—and that the shooting must begin at any moment. Under Melba’s feet the flat sidewalk trembled, and fell away.

  Melba screamed. (This time it came out loud and clear.) She dropped her sign and tripped over it. Then she too fell. And landed abruptly, scraping both knees hard on the pavement.

  Irma doubled up with laughter.

  “Why Melba Morris,” she squealed with delight. “You’re even funnier than these cats. I’ve never before seen so many dumb-looking animals all in one place!”

  Maybe if Irma hadn’t brought the cats into it, Melba would have gotten up and run away back to her room, crying. (Under the legs of her pants, her knees were bleeding.)

  As it turned out though, Irma started crying herself exactly ten seconds after Melba hit the ground.

  “Dumb-looking animals.” The words streaked through Melba like a shotgun blast. They blew the dream away, and the bridge, and a second later they changed Irma from a frightening, gun-toting tyrant into the very same person Melba had been pinching, for months and months, up in her room.

  Melba rose slowly, and walked over to Irma. She raised her hand. (Irma was still smirking.) Then she grabbed Irma’s nose and pinched it as hard as she could.

  Irma stopped smirking and screamed: “Let go!”

  “No,” said Melba.

  “Help!” squeaked Irma. But no one helped. They stared. Irma pounded Melba with her fists.

  “These cats are smart,” said Melba quietly, but holding on tight. “They’re smarter than you are.”

  “Okay! Okay!” shrieked Irma. She wrenched away and ran, sobbing, toward her house. Her friends hesitated, then followed her.

  “I’m telling my mother about this,” yelled Irma between sobs. “You’ll be sorry!”

  “No, I won’t!” Melba called back. She dusted off her pants and turned to look triumphantly at all the people who, she thought, must have been watching.

  But no one was watching. All heads were turned in the opposite direction down the street, where some sort of confusion seemed to have broken out: shouts and a bustle of movement. The crowd gave a collective gasp. Then, the cats hit.

  They came thundering back down Main Street like a single, churning cyclone, tripping spectators and trampling Melba’s sign to shreds. Children were toppled from their bicycles. Dried leaves and dust spun through the air.

  “Mad cats! Look out!” people were yelling. They ran for cover as the herd charged through. Then shouting and pushing, they ran after the cats. Miss Toonie was in the middle flailing her arms and howling. But no amount of howling, or whistling, not even the candy bars which she waved in the air, could halt the cats’ stampede. On they stormed toward Dunn Street, each cat nipping and hissing and scampering to be first. And on their tails came the frightened, hysterical crowds, and after them, Melba, running flat out.

  Chapter Fourteen

&nb
sp; CATS ARE FAST RUNNERS, however, they are not usually long-distance runners. Few animals can sprint up a tree faster than a cat, but when it comes to covering whole blocks at a time, most cats run out of breath or lose interest.

  Miss Toonie’s cats were five blocks from Jiggs’ Drug Store when they heard the guitar music float past faintly on a wisp of wind. The speed with which they ran those blocks would have set a world record if anyone had been clocking time. Of course, world records of one sort or another are broken every day, only they mostly go unnoticed. Melba, for instance, had just broken two records herself that morning: (1) by being the first person ever to pinch Irma Herring’s snooty nose, and (2) by being the first shy, ten-year-old girl to march down Main Street in a cat parade.

  But Melba wasn’t thinking about world records that morning, and neither were the cats, who came racing down Jiggs’ front walk a solid five minutes ahead of the screaming crowd of spectators.

  There, without even pausing to catch their breaths, they joined Butch at Mr. Jiggs’ feet, and rose to dance. Butch turned his head to welcome his friends. From Mr. Jiggs there was no greeting. He was crouched over his instrument lost in his own wonderful music.

  Never, it seemed to him, had he played so beautifully. His fingers, long accustomed to picking out tunes in gloomy indoor corners, took on a new quickness in the sun. The clear air that floated his melodies, also floated him, out of himself and away.

  Not only was Mr. Jiggs unaware that the other cats had arrived. He did not hear the spectators who began to straggle up shortly after, gasping for air. They surrounded him in a wide, suspicious circle, and fell silent. First they stared at Mr. Jiggs. Then they stared at the cats, who were acting unlike any cats they had ever seen before.

  As Mr. Jiggs trilled, one hundred mangy, beat-up felines swayed on their hind legs, lean and elegant and perfectly balanced. One hundred cat faces turned back to the sky in pure pleasure. One hundred cat tails curled and recurled rhythmically to the music, catching up and entwining each other, then weaving apart again.