“She’s gone,” Gus says, and he blows his nose hard. “The cement boat sailed last night. Them sailors musta stole her. Maybe drowned her.” You never seen a man so broke up.
Things was pretty gloomy in the bar that night. The bets, they was all called off, and the place emptied out by ten o’clock. Next night, same thing. Customers bought one beer, maybe, and then vamoosed. Gus had no heart for anythin’.
We was there alone in the bar, just him and me, not even talkin’, when we heard a little noise. Golly if it wasn’t a meow. Gus jumps up and yells: “It’s Tipsy! Where is she? She’s trapped someplace!”
We listened hard. Yep, another meow. It come from the black hole in the wall where the stove pipe used to go, and you could see a kind of shadow movin’ in the hole. Then a black cat come out with a mouthful of somethin’ black, size of a mouse.
“That ain’t Tipsy,” I says, but when she jumped down and staggered across the floor, it was Tipsy, all right.
How did Gus react?
He went crazy, boy. Yellin’ and jiggin’ and carryin’ on! Word got round the waterfront, and that night the cash register was ringin’ like nobody’s business.
Tipsy got the kittens all cleaned up—two tigers and four black-and-white—and the whole family was squirmin’ around in a box on the bar when … guess who walks in!
The health inspector.
Nobody but! Gus took the violation ticket and grinned, sort of. He says:“What’ll this cost me, Inspector? Ten plunks?”
“Seventy dollars,” the man says. “Ten for each animal on the premises. Payable at City Hall. You can expect a follow-up inspection within a few weeks.”
“Seventy holy smackers!” I says to Gus, after. “Y’better drown ’em.”
“Nothin’ doin’,” says Gus. “We’ll raffle ’em off and pick up enough plunks to pay the fine.”
Well, the raffle tickets sold like hotcakes, but Gus wouldn’t let the kittens leave their mother yet. Too young. So the whole caboodle was crawlin’ in and out of spittoons when that doggone inspector showed up again.
He counted tails and wrote up another seventy-dollar ticket.
“Whaddaya drink, Inspector?” Gus says, with a wink at me. “I’ll buy one.”
“Sorry. Regulations,” the inspector says. He kept shakin’ his foot. One of the tigers was tryin’ to crawl up his leg.
Well, the little ones got to be seven weeks old—time to pull the winners out of a hat. It was Saturday night, and the place was crowded. Gus was kinda quiet. Looked like he was sorry to see Tipsy lose her brood.
After the raffle he drops a bombshell. He says:“Drinks on the house, folks, till the booze runs out. The city’s gonna padlock the joint at midnight.”
The customers, they raised a holy row. Nobody believed it.
Gus says:“Funny thing, folks. Durin’ Prohibition I ran a speakeasy, and once up north I came close to killin’ a fella with a peavey, and nobody give a hoot-n-holler. Now I get me a little cat, and they’re liftin’ my license.”
Porky was there, and he says:“Don’t be a dumfool, Gus. It ain’t worth it. Get rid of the cat.”
“Nope,” Gus says. “Tipsy and me’ll get a shack up in the north woods, and we’ll get along jim-dandy. She’ll have a reg’lar hoodang in North Kennebeck. No alleys. No garbage cans. No scummy rats.”
And that’s the last we ever seen of Gus and Tipsy.
Did you ever hear about them after that?
Can’t say we did. But a few years back, me and some buddies went fishin’ up north. Drove up in a big RV. Stopped in North Kennebeck to get grub for our camp. No shacks there anymore. No dirt roads. All condominiums and curbstones. Musta been a lotta cats in town because the store had about fifty kinds of catfood in them little cans. I asked around, if anybody every heard of an old fella called Gus. Nobody remembered him. Course, that was maybe forty years before. Time flies, don’t it?
We ate some five-dollar sandwiches in a restaurant in North Kennebeck. Made me think back to the Depression—sandwiches for ten cents—big bowl o’ soup for a nickel. It was a nice restaurant, though—sort of a log cabin. Folks said it was there a long time. Changed hands once in a while but always kept the same name. It was called Tipsy’s Tavern.
A CAT NAMED CONSCIENCE
(The following interview with Miss A.J.T. was taped at the Gattville Senior Care Facility in October 1985, for the Oral History Project of Gattville Community College.)
Don’t shout at me! I’m not deaf. I can’t see a blessed thing, but I can hear. You want to know how old I am? The newspaper said I’m a hundred, but I don’t know about that. The last birthday I remember, I was twenty-nine. Twenty-nine red roses came to the house in a long box. Expensive ones! Most likely a dollar a dozen. They came from Chicago on the train, and the depot boy delivered them on his bicycle. Roses in December! Imagine that! … A whole boxcar of flowers came for Mister Freddie’s funeral, but that was in April.
Push my wheelchair to the window, so I can feel the sun … . There! That’s better. You sound like a very young man. Are you from the newspaper?
No, ma’am. I’m from the college.
What? The college? What college? The newspaper took my picture. Are you going to take my picture? … Speak up! Everybody mumbles.
No pictures, ma’am. We just want to record your recollections of Gattville in the early days—for the Oral History Project.
Oral what? I don’t know anything about that. Are you going to write down what I say? I can tell you a heap of stories. I was a little girl when the granary exploded and burned down half the town. And one summer the circus came to town, and the lion got loose.
What’s that noise? I hear something humming.
Just the tape recorder, ma’am.
What? I don’t know anything about that … . Do you know about the grasshoppers? When they came to Gattville, we could hear them humming before we could see them. A black cloud, they were, over the whole county. Chewed up the crops, trees, everything—even the washing on the line.
Another time, the president came to Gattville. He made a speech from the back of the train … . Are you still there?
Yes, ma’am. This is very interesting.
The whole town, almost, went down to the depot and shouted,“Teddy! Teddy!” Biggest crowd I ever saw in Gattville, except for Mister Freddie’s funeral. Aunt Ulah went to the depot with a sign on a stick. GIVE WOMEN THE VOTE! On the other side of it said: CLOSE THE SALOONS! Aunt Ulah was a caution, she was.
Where’s my cat? I want my cat. Look on the bed … . Look on the table. It’s not a real cat. They won’t let me have a real one, but I like a little furry critter on my lap. I talk to him and stroke him. He’s only got one eye, but I don’t care. They’re only buttons. Could you send me a shoe button? Then somebody could fix his eye.
There were twelve gray pearl buttons on my gray kid shoes. My, they were pretty! I wore them to the funeral and ruined them—walking behind the coffin. It’s muddy in April. A cat went to the funeral, too. We had a heap of cats in Gattville. The general store had three. The granary always had seven or eight. Cousin Willie called our town Catville. Aunt Ulah said that wasn’t nice, but Uncle Bill laughed like anything.
The bank had a cat, too. They kept boxes of old bank records in the cellar, and one winter the mice got in and messed them up. So they got a cat. Her name was Constance. Black with white feet and green eyes. Oh my! Those eyes! They made folks uncomfortable. Seemed like Constance knew what you were thinking, and she’d look at you reproachful-like. Uncle Bill called her Conscience. He said: “If a burglar tried to rob the bank, Conscience would give him thatlook, and he’d run like the dickens.” So then everybody called her Conscience.
Listen! Do you hear blue jays? Reminds me of the funeral. Is there a tree out there? They like oak trees … .
Excuse me, ma’am. What was the funeral you mentioned?