THE CAT WHO SAW STARS_

“Hear! Hear!” the others shouted with vigor. Mildred blushed. “Lyle, I didn’t know you could be so poetic!”

“Speech! Speech!”

“Well, our parades were getting to be all commercial and political. The last straw was a candy-grabbing free-for-all for kids, with rock music blaring from a sound truck, and not an American flag in sight! Someone had to put a foot down, and I have big feet!”

“That’s my wife,” Arch said proudly. “This year’s parade will have flags, marching bands, floats, grass-roots participation, and a little originality. Athletes from Mooseland High, wearing their uniforms, will march in four rows of five each, carrying banners with a single letter of the alphabet. Each row will spell a word: PEACE, TRUTH, HONOR, and TRUST.”

“Very clever,” said Lisa. “Who’s the grand marshal?”

“Andrew Brodie, in Scottish regalia, with his bagpipe. He’ll march just ahead of the color guard and play patriotic tunes in slow tempo.”

“Maybe it’s because I was born a Campbell,” Lisa said, “but there’s something about bagpipe music that makes me limp with emotion.”

“The floats will be sponsored by the chamber of commerce, parent-teachers, commercial fisheries, private marinas, and the Friends of Wool.” Mildred referred to a new coalition of wool-growers, spinners, knitters, and other fiber artists. “Barb Ogilvie is our mentor - very talented. She teaches knitting, started the knitting club, and runs a knitting day camp for kids. In high school she was considered a bit wild, but she’s settled down. Did Arch tell you he’s learning to knit socks?”

Qwilleran turned to his life long friend in astonishment. “Arch! Why were you keeping this dirty little secret from me?”

“What the heck! It’s one of the things you do when you’re middle-aged and in love.”

“Lyle never says sweet things like that,” Lisa complained.

There was a moment of silence, which Qwilleran interrupted by asking, “What are the Friends of Wool going to do on a float?”

“We’ll have live sheep, a shepherd playing a flute, two spinners spinning, and six knitters knitting - four women and two men, if Arch will consent. Dr. Emerson, the surgeon, has agreed, and I think it would add prestige if the publisher of the newspaper were on the float, knitting a sock with four needles.”

As all eyes turned to him, he said, “To quote Shakespeare: I don’t wanna, I don’t hafta, and I ain’t gonna.”

His wife smiled knowingly at the others. After an old-fashioned Waldorf salad, and Black Forest cake, and coffee, Lyle wanted to smoke a cigar, and the other two men accompanied him down the sandladder to the beach.

Their first comment was about the miniature sand dune recently formed. It extended at least a mile to everyone’s knowledge.

“Some day,” Lyle predicted, “it will be thirty feet high, and our cottages will have crumbled to dust, leaving only the stone chimneys. Tour groups from other planets will gawk at these monuments as tour guides explain that they had religious significance, being used to ensure fertility and ward off famine.”

Qwilleran skipped a few stones across the placid lake surface.

“You’re good at that,” Arch said. “That’s something I could never learn to do.”

“It’s one of my few talents. I could never learn to knit a sock.”

Lyle said, “You should ride on the float, Arch. I’m going to be on the PTA float. We’re reproducing a one-room school with old desks and blackboards, a pot-bellied stove, and everyone in nineteenth-century costume. I’m going to be the principal in a frock coat and pince-nez eyeglasses, brandishing a whipping cane. I expect to get booed by the parade-watchers. I just hope they don’t throw eggs.”

He finished his cigar, and they climbed the sandladder to the deck, where the two women were giggling suspiciously.

Mildred said, “Qwill, I’d like to ask you a great favor.”

“It would be a privilege and a pleasure.” He could never say no to Mildred; she was so sincere, generous, and good-natured, and she was such a good cook.

“Well, the parade opens with a 1776 tableau on a float - the signing of the Declaration of Independence - and it ends with a flock of bicycles. Wouldn’t it be a terrific finale if you brought up the rear with your high-tech recumbent bike?”

Qwilleran hesitated only a second. “I’m not too enthusiastic about the idea, but… I’ll pedal with feet up in the air … if Arch will ride on your float, knitting a sock.”

-3-

Ordinarily, Koko was a feline alarm clock at eleven P.M., reminding the world at large that it was time for a bedtime snack and lights-out, so his behavior on his first night at the cabin made Qwilleran wonder. The three of them had been lolling on the screened porch in the dark, watching the fireflies blink their little flashlights. The porch was furnished with cushioned chairs and a dining set in weatherproof molded resin - white at Fran Brodie’s suggestion, as a foil for the dark logs. While Qwilleran and Yum Yum enjoyed the luxury of cushions, Koko huddled on the dining table, perhaps because it gave him an elevated view of the dark beachfront.