The Cat Who Blew the Whistle Read online

  “Just the same, don't tell her,” the old man warned.

  * * *

  After leaving the library, Qwilleran continued his walk downtown, making a few unscheduled visits for the purpose of sharing information:

  To Scottie's Men's Store to look at summer shirts. Nothing caught his fancy, but he chatted with the proprietor and told him about the Party Train.

  To Edd's Editions, a shop specializing in preowned books from estate libraries. Eddington Smith was interested to hear about the Party Train because he had several books on railroads. Qwilleran bought one on the digging of the Panama Canal.

  To the office of the newspaper which, for strange reasons, was named the Moose County Something. His longtime friend from Down Below, Arch Riker, was publisher and editor-in-chief and was pleased to hear about the Party Train.

  To Toodle's Market to buy six ounces of sliced roast beef from the deli counter and two packages of macaroni and cheese from the frozen food chest. In the checkout line he stood behind Wally Toddwhistle's mother, who made costumes for the theatre club. She asked if he'd heard about A Midsummer Night's Dream, and he asked if she'd heard about the Party Train.

  Returning to the barn, he found it good to be greeted by importunate yowls and waving tails, even though he knew the cats' real motive. He diced roast beef for them and heated both packages of macaroni and cheese for himself. Dicing, thawing, and pressing the button on the computerized coffeemaker were his only kitchen skills.

  After dinner the three of them gravitated to the library area for a session of reading. Qwilleran's growing collection of old books was organized according to category: biography, classic fiction, drama, and so forth. He added his new purchase to the history shelf. Yum Yum waited patiently for him to sit down and make a lap; Koko was alert and awaiting his cue.

  “Book! Book!” It was one of several words understood by Kao K'o Kung, among them: treat, brush, leash, and NO! The cat surveyed the expanse of shelving before jumping up and teetering on the edge of the classic fiction collection. He sniffed the bindings critically, then pawed Swiss Family Robinson with enthusiasm.

  A curious choice, Qwilleran thought. He realized it was mere coincidence but a provocative one, Koko having a unique sense of association. Yet, the connection between an 1813 Swiss novel and the inventor of Kabibbles was too absurd even for a willing believer like Qwilleran.

  He sprawled in his favorite lounge chair and propped his feet on the ottoman. Yum Yum hopped lightly into his lap and turned around three times counterclockwise before settling down. Koko took his usual position on the arm of the chair, sitting tall.

  Qwilleran opened the book, which he had bought for its illustrations, and said, “This is a book primarily for young people but is suitable for cats of any age. There are chapters on . . . let's see . . . whales, turtles, ostriches, and bears. You'll like it. Chapter One: Shipwrecked and Alone.”

  Yum Yum was the first one to sigh and close her eyes; then Koko started swaying drowsily; finally Qwilleran, mesmerized by the sound of his own voice, read himself to sleep.

  * * *

  One afternoon, before his appointment with the president of the Lumbertown Credit Union, Qwilleran drove to Sawdust City out of sheer curiosity. The town itself might be material for the “Qwill Pen” column. He knew only that it was the industrial hub of the county, straddling the mouth of the Ittibittiwassee River, where pollution was an ongoing problem. Although freight trains made regular runs to points Down Below, most manufactures were shipped by truck. Their tires constantly tracked mud from unpaved side streets onto the highway, giving the town the nickname of Mudville. Nevertheless, there was a healthy job market there, and Sawdust City was home to 5,000 working-class residents whose soccer team regularly trounced others in the county.

  Outside the town limits Qwilleran noticed an athletic field with a running track, one softball diamond, and three soccer fields with goal nets—no tennis courts. There was also an extensive consolidated school complex with its own football stadium.

  On Main Street there was plenty of downtown traffic as well as cafés, gas stations, churches, a storefront library, gun shops, pawnbrokers, apparel shops with racks of clothing on the sidewalk, taverns, and a video store. The Lumbertown Credit Union occupied a new version of an old depot, while the real railway station was a neglected relic on the outskirts of town, surrounded by tracks, boxcars, trucks, and warehouses. The residential neighborhoods were notable for their neat lawns, swarms of schoolchildren on summer vacation, basketball hoops, barbecues, and satellite saucers. In every sense it was a thriving town. Whether it would be material for the “Qwill Pen” was questionable. Qwilleran knew only that Sawdust City stood in sharp contrast to West Middle Hummock, where the Lumbertown president lived. This was the most fashionable of the Hummocks with the largest estates, owned by families like the Lanspeaks, the Wilmots, and—in happier days—the Fitches. When Qwilleran set out to interview Floyd Trevelyan his route lay out Ittibittiwassee Road between stony pastures and dark woods, past abandoned mines and ghostlike shafthouses. After passing the Buckshot Mine, where he had suffered a nasty tumble from his bike, he reached a fork in the road. Ahead was Indian Village, a more or less swanky complex of apartments and condominiums. Hummock Road branched off to the left, forming a triangular meadow where car-poolers left their vehicles. Share-the-ride had been a Moose County custom long before the first energy crisis; it was the neighborly thing to do and an opportunity to keep abreast of rumors. Beyond the meadow the road passed a blighted hamlet or two before emerging in a landscape of knobby hills, bucolic vistas, architect-designed farmhouses, and no utility poles. All cables were underground, and the road curved to avoid cutting down ancient trees.

  Then there was a rural mailbox shaped like a locomotive and a sign hanging between railroad ties announcing “The Roundhouse.” There was nothing round about the residence that perched on a hill at the end of the drive. It was a long, low contemporary building with wide overhangs and large chimneys—almost brutal in its boldness—and the rough cedar exterior was stained a gloomy brownish-green.

  Qwilleran parked at the foot of a terraced walkway and climbed wide steps formed from railroad ties, then rang the doorbell and waited in the usual state of suspense: Would this interview make a great story? Or would it be a waste of his time?

  The man who came to the door, wearing crumpled shorts and a tank top, was obviously one of the “hairy Welshmen” for whom Sawdust City was famous. Although seriously balding toward the brow, his head was rimmed with hair that was black and bushy, and although his jutting jaw was clean-shaven, his arms and legs were thickly furred. So also was his back, Qwilleran discovered upon following him into the foyer.

  His initial greeting had been curt. “You from the paper?”

  “Jim Qwilleran. Dwight Somers tells me you have a railroad empire on the premises.”

  “Downstairs. Want a shot or a beer?”

  “Not right now, thanks. Let's have a look at the trains first. I'm completely ignorant about model railroading, so this visit will be an education.” Following the collector toward a broad staircase to the lower level, Qwilleran quickly appraised the main floor: architecturally impressive, poorly furnished. On the way downstairs he tossed off a few warm-up questions: How long have you been collecting? How did you get started? Do you still have your first train?

  The answers were as vapid as the queries: “Long time . . . Dunno . . . Yep.”

  The staircase opened into a large light room with glass walls overlooking a paved patio and grassy hillside. The opposite wall formed a background for a table-height diorama of landscape and cityscape. There were buildings, roadways, rivers, hills, and a complexity of train tracks running through towns, up grades, across bridges, and around curves. A passenger train waited at a depot; a freight train had been shunted to a siding; the nose of a locomotive could be seen in the mouth of a tunnel.

  “How many trains do you have?” Qwilleran asked, producing a poc
ket tape recorder.

  “Six trains. Thousand feet of track.” The hobbyist started toying with a bank of controls at the front edge of the layout, and the scene was instantly illuminated: the headlight of the locomotive in the tunnel, the interior of the passenger coaches, and all street lights and railway signals. Then the trains began to move, slowly at first, and gradually picking up speed. One train stopped to let another pass. A locomotive chugged around a curve, with white smoke pouring from its smokestack. It blew its whistle as it approached a grade crossing and stopped at the station with a hiss of steam.

  Qwilleran was impressed but said coolly, “Quite realistic!”

  An engine pulled cars up a grade to cross a bridge while another passed underneath. Trains backed up as cars were coupled. A train of boxcars, tank cars, and gondolas stopped to give right-of-way to a diesel speeding through with passenger coaches and an observation car.

  “Watch 'em take those curves,” Trevelyan said proudly. He operated the remote controls with practiced skill, switching tracks, unloading coal from hopper cars, and dumping logs from a flatcar. In a freight yard with seven parallel tracks he had a switch engine shifting boxcars. “You hafta be quick to figure how fast they go, what route to take and which turnouts to switch. . . . Wanna try it?”

  “And derail the whole railroad? No thanks,” Qwilleran said. “Did you play with trains when you were a kid?”

  “Me? Nah, my folks were too poor. But I had the real thing in the backyard. Our house, it was next to the track, and I knew every train schedule and all the crews. The engineers, they always clanged their bell and waved at me. Man! Did I feel like a big shot! Saturdays I'd go down to the yard and watch 'em switchin'.” I wanted to stow away in a boxcar, but I knew my pop would lick the devil outa me.”

  “I suppose you wanted to grow up to be an engineer,” Qwilleran said.

  “Funny thing, I wanted to be a crossin' guard and sit in a little shack high up, lookin' down the tracks and workin' the gate. That's a kid for you!”

  Above the confusion of mechanical noises in front of him, Qwilleran heard an elevator door open at the far end of the room and turned to see a frail woman in an electric wheelchair coming hesitantly in their direction. Although she was in Trevelyan's line of vision, he ignored her. He was saying, “There was four of us kids. Pop worked in the plastic plant till the chemicals killed 'im. I took Vocational in school. English and that kinda stuff, you could shove it! I could build things and tinker with motors, so who needed English? Summers I got jobs with builders. Finally got to be a contractor myself, licensed and all that.”

  The woman in the wheelchair was fixing her gaze eagerly on Qwilleran, and he mumbled a polite good-afternoon.

  In a faltering voice she said, “You're Mr. Q. I see your picture in the paper all the time.”

  It was the kind of ambiguous comment that beggared reply, but he bowed courteously.

  Trevelyan went on talking. “Like I said, I went as far as I could go with model trains. I'm into somethin' bigger now. Did Dwight tell you we're gonna—”

  The woman interrupted shrilly. “My pop was an engineer!”

  The man scowled and waved her away with an impatient hand. Obediently she wheeled back to the elevator, leaving Qwilleran to wonder who she might be. Her age was difficult to guess, her face and figure being ravaged by some kind of disease.

  The trains were still running and performing their automatic ballet, but Qwilleran had all the information he could use and had even learned some railroad terms:

  Roundhouse: a round building where locomotives were serviced in the Steam Era

  Hog: locomotive

  Hoghead: engineer

  Wildcat: a runaway locomotive

  Consist: a train of cars (accent on first syllable)

  Gandy dancer: member of a section gang repairing rails

  Whittling: taking a curve at high speed and braking the wheels

  Rule G: the SC&L rule against drinking

  Trevelyan said, “We don't worry about Rule G around this man's railroad yard. How's about wettin' your whistle?” He opened the door to a well-stocked bar. “Whatever you want, we got it.”

  “What are you drinking?” Qwilleran asked.

  “Whiskey and soda.”

  “I'll take the same without the whiskey.”

  His host gave him an incredulous glance, then shook his head as he poured plain soda. They carried their glasses outdoors and sat on the patio while the railroad buff talked about the Lumbertown Party Train and the $500 tickets.

  “How many can you seat in the dining car?” Qwilleran asked.

  “Thirty-six at a shot. We figure to have a double shift, two o'clock and six o'clock. We figure we can sell out.”

  “How long will the ride last?”

  “We figure we can kill three hours on the rails, round trip, with a layover at Flapjack.”

  “How did you go about buying your rolling stock?”

  “Went to train museums, read PV magazines, answered ads.”

  “PV meaning . . . ?”

  “Private varnish—all about private railroads. But I found my hog in a scrapyard in Sawdust City. She was a mess! I almost cried. As soon as those SC&L sharpies saw I was hooked, they upped the price outasight. I didn't care. I hadda have that baby! Spent another bundle to fix ‘er up. Diesels—you can have ‘em. Steam is where it's at—for me anyway.”

  “What's the big attraction?”

  The collector shrugged. “A hog's nothin' but a firebox and a big boiler on wheels, but what a sight when she rolls! Raw power! My Engine No. 9 is a 4-6-2.”

  “You'll have to explain that,” Qwilleran said.

  Without a word Trevelyan went into the train room and returned with a framed photo of No. 9. “Four small wheels in front keep the engine on the rails. The six big babies with piston rods are the drivin' wheels; they deliver the power. The two in back hold up the firebox and the engineer's cab. Dwight tells me you signed up for the first run. Tell him to show you through my PV; it's a palace on wheels! . . . How long did you know Dwight?”

  “Ever since he arrived from Down Below. He's a real pro—knows his job—good personality.”

  “Yeah, nice fella . . . How come he isn't married?”

  “I don't know. Why don't you ask him?” Qwilleran replied in a genial tone that masked his annoyance at the prying question. Then he changed the subject. “There's a town south of Pickax called Wildcat, and I often wondered why. Any railroad connection?”

  “Sure is! A runaway train was wrecked on the trestle bridge there in 1908—worst wreck ever! Old railroaders still talk about it.”

  “Are their recollections being recorded?” Qwilleran asked. “Is there a railroad library in Sawdust City? Are any old engineers still living?” He was feeling an old familiar urge. With a little research and some oral histories from retired railroad personnel, plus stories handed down in their families, he could write a book! It would capture the horror of train wrecks as well as the nostalgia of the Steam Era when trains were the glamorous mode of transportation and locomotive engineers were the folk heroes. Homer Tibbitt, who had grown up on a farm, still remembered the haunting sound of a steam whistle in the middle of the night. He said it had filled him with loneliness and nameless desires. He doubted that it could be equaled today by the honking of a diesel, or the roar of a jet, or the whining tires of an eighteen-wheeler on a freeway.

  “Ready for another drink?” the host asked. “I am.”

  Qwilleran declined, saying he had to meet a newspaper deadline, but on his way out of the house he asked casually, “Do you happen to know a Trevelyan who's a house builder?”

  “My son,” was the prompt reply. “Just starting out on his own.”

  “Does he know his stuff? A friend of mine is thinking of hiring him.”

  “Sure, he's a whizbang! Learned the trade from me. I taught him the whole works. I said to both my kids: The trick is to start early and work hard. That's what I did.” />
  “You have another son?”

  “A girl. She took bookkeepin' in high school. Works in my office now.”

  Strange family situation, Qwilleran thought as he drove away from The Roundhouse. There was the unkempt president of a successful family business. Then there was the undistinguished furniture in a pretentious house. And how about the shabbily treated woman in a state-of-the-art wheelchair? Who was she? She seemed too old to be his wife, too young to be his mother. Was she a poor relative or former housekeeper living on his charity? In any case, the man should have made some sort of introduction or at least acknowledged her presence. The financial success that had vaulted him from Sawdust City to West Middle Hummock had hardly polished his rough edges.

  On the way home Qwilleran stopped at Toodles' Market for a frozen dinner and six ounces of sliced turkey breast. He was not surprised when Yum Yum met him at the kitchen door, slinking flirtatiously, one dainty forepaw in front of the other.

  “There she is! Miss Cat America!” he said. “Where's your sidekick? Where's Koko?”

  The other cat came running, and the two of them sang for their supper—a duet of baritone yowls and coloratura trills, the latter more like shrieks. After Qwilleran had diced their favorite treat and arranged it on their favorite plate, Koko made a dive for it, but Yum Yum looked at the plate sourly and veered away with lowered head.

  Qwilleran was alarmed. Was she ill? Had she found a bug and eaten it? Was it a hair ball? Had she swallowed a rubber band? He picked her up gently and asked, “What's wrong with my little sweetheart?” She looked at him with large eyes filled with reproach.

  Meanwhile, Koko had polished off two-thirds of the repast, leaving the usual one-third for his partner. Qwilleran, with Yum Yum still in his arms, picked up the plate and placed it on the kitchen counter. Immediately she squirmed from his grasp, landed on the counter, and devoured the turkey.

  “Cats!” he muttered. “They drive you crazy!”

  THREE

  Qwilleran wrote a thousand words about Floyd Trevelyan's model trains and walked downtown to the office of the Moose County Something to file his copy. Junior Goodwinter had a managing editor's ability to read at the rate of fifty words a second, and he scanned the “Qwill Pen” copy in its entirety before Qwilleran could pour himself a cup of coffee.