Bark vs. Snark Read online

  “Now me what?”

  “Stroke her. Say nice things.”

  Bro kicked off his flip-flops and stepped into the pond. He reached out and stroked Queenie. “Nice Queenie,” he said. “Who’s the nicest cat in the whole pond?”

  “Bro!”

  “As well as the whole wide world.”

  Soon they were both stroking Queenie and both saying nice things. Was Queenie paying attention? I had no idea, but her eyes were burning. By now I’d forgotten—if I’d ever known—the point of all this. But is it all right to point out that Arthur likes getting stroked? That Arthur likes hearing nice things about him?

  “Okay,” Harmony said. “She seems pretty calm. There’s shampoo in my back pocket. Take it out and be ready. I’m going to lower her very slowly in the water, and when she’s used to it you pour a little shampoo on her and rub it in gently.”

  Bro reached into Harmony’s back pocket, took out the shampoo bottle, and flipped it to his other hand. Bro flips a lot of things that way—pencils, soda cans, and of course balls of many types. Mr. Salming says Bro has soft hands, which are what you want for catching, and I’m sure Bro would have caught the shampoo bottle if events hadn’t taken a sudden turn.

  Did I play a role in this sudden turn? Kind of. Bertha says the mind does tricks on you. I myself know one trick, namely playing dead, and maybe that’s what I should have done at that moment, out there by the pond. But the sight of that shampoo bottle spinning in the air made me realize—finally realize!—that Bro very badly wanted me to fetch. I love Bro and want to make him happy. There! Now you have the whole story. Do I really need to describe what happened next, a whole busy chain of activity?

  I don’t see why, but in case I’m wrong, I suppose we should start with me springing out over the water and snatching that shampoo bottle right out of midair, like the great athlete I am, deep deep inside. Except that part—the snatching out of midair—didn’t actually happen. But I did make contact with the shampoo bottle, don’t doubt that, not for a second. The only problem was it bounced off my muzzle and spun even higher in the air. At that point I did something pretty amazing, even surprising myself. Somehow I managed to twist around—how was I staying aloft for so long? Wow, just wow!—and snapped once more at the bottle. Which I didn’t quite touch this time. Still, no harm, no foul, not at this point. The real difficulty began on my way down, when I sort of hurtled into Harmony and knocked a certain beauty contestant clear out of her arms and into the pond.

  An instant later—KER-SPLASH! I hit the water myself, went down and down, and there on the muddy bottom, glinting in a ray of sunshine, lay the shampoo bottle! I grabbed it and headed up. Who’s a good good boy?

  I shot through the surface of the pond—or at least got to it. Things had changed up there. First, some strange white stringy-looking thing was swimming away and making a horrible shrieking noise. Harmony and Bro seemed to be swimming after the stringy thing, at the same time shouting at each other in a way that didn’t seem brotherly or sisterly. In short, this was not so easy to understand. I climbed up on shore, dropped the shampoo bottle at the feet of nobody, and gave myself a real good shake.

  Nothing like a good shake for clearing the head. And what a lot of stuff I had in my head to get rid of! This had been such a busy day already, and it seemed to be getting busier. The strange stringy thing scrambled out of the pond and … and started giving itself a good shake! That was a bit of a surprise, and then came a bigger one. The strange stringy thing got all fluffed out and turned out to be Queenie! And in a real bad mood. She opened her mouth wide, exposing those alarmingly long teeth—long and very sharp, as I knew for sure, unfortunately—and let out a kind of scream that seemed to stop the whole day in its tracks. Then she took off for the woods, like a white streak across the meadow. I had to remind myself that I, Arthur, was much faster.

  I was standing there by the pond, reminding myself of my awesome speed, when I noticed someone coming across the meadow, namely the old man with the wild white hair, Mr. Ware if I was remembering right. Whoa! Had I seen him without that wild white hair? I was trying to get Mr. Ware all sorted out in my mind when Harmony and Bro came charging out of the water.

  “Queenie! Queenie!”

  Queenie paid no attention. She raced toward the woods. At that moment, Mr. Ware saw her just about to disappear among the trees. Mr. Ware stopped dead, a look of alarm on his face. Then he opened his mouth and spoke in a clear but not loud voice. All he said was, “Meow.”

  Queenie slammed on the brakes. Then she turned, walked straight to Mr. Ware, and sat at his feet. He smiled a very small smile.

  The twins ran up. “Oh, thank you, Mr…. Mr….” Harmony said.

  “Ware,” said Mr. Ware.

  “Hey,” said Bro. “How did you do that?”

  “I speak cat,” Mr. Ware told him.

  I’d been trying to make up my mind about Mr. Ware. But now I knew. He was scary, and that was that.

  IN THOSE MOMENTS DOWN AT THE pond—and not just at the pond, but in it! The horror! Cast into the water, my whole body! Even my head, dunked right under. I was totally immersed in water! All of me! Has anything worse happened to anyone ever?

  I know what you’re saying: But just think, Queenie. You’re a hero. True, of course, and deservedly so, but did I ask to be a hero? No. What is the one thing I ask for in this life? To be alone! I want to be alone. Is that so hard to understand? Why does everyone clamor to be around me 24-7? The answer to that question is what came to me in those moments down at—and in!—the pond. Everyone is drawn to me on account of my beauty. My beauty ends up being a curse as well as a blessing.

  Oh, the horror!

  And in the midst of all the horror, our bedraggled—yes, bedraggled—little hero, on her way to a life of complete aloneness in the deepest, darkest corner of the deep, dark woods, suddenly hears a sympathetic voice, a sympathetic voice calling out in her own language.

  “Meow!”

  Meow. A beautiful sound, perfectly spoken. It cut through all the badness. I turned in the direction of that perfect sound and before I knew it, I seemed to be at the feet of that strange man, Mr. Ware, the one who sometimes looked old and sometimes looked young.

  Right now, he looked old. Did I like this man, old or young? I did not. Plus, I was soaking wet! And probably not looking my best, not even close. Who am I if I’m not looking my best? I faced that terrible question for the first time in my life, and began digging my claws into Mr. Ware’s shoe. He gazed calmly down at me and said, “Meow.”

  This time he said it in a way that was even nicer than the time before, a perfect, lovely cat sound coming from the mouth of this human. I forgot all about what I’d been planning to do with my claws, and instead went absolutely still. Mr. Ware bent down and began fluffing out my fur, which was exactly what I wanted.

  The twins came over. “Wow, Mr. Ware,” Harmony said. “You’re so good with cats.”

  Mr. Ware said nothing. He stepped back and Harmony picked me up.

  “How come?” Bro said.

  Mr. Ware raised one of his shaggy white eyebrows. Not a real eyebrow; I knew that but no longer cared.

  “I mean how come you’re so good with cats?” Bro said.

  Mr. Ware spoke in his scratchy old man voice. Not his real voice, but I no longer cared about that, either. “Their attitude mirrors my own.”

  “Meaning you’re like a cat?” Bro said.

  “Meaning just what I said,” said Mr. Ware. “No more, no less.”

  Bro gets this look on his face when he’s not going to let something go. He had it now, but before he could speak, Harmony said, “Thank you for helping Queenie. We were trying to get her ready for the beauty contest at the county fair, but I’m not sure we’d have made it without you.”

  “Hey,” said Bro. “Do you want to come?”

  “I have no interest in county fairs,” Mr. Ware said.

  There are times when I fall into a sort of trance. If
Mom notices me in one, she says, “Queenie’s having deep thoughts again.”

  Mom is Mom, of course, and more often right about things than any human I’d ever met, but she was wrong about deep thoughts. The truth is that in my trances I have no thoughts at all. What I have in my trances are feelings. Actually just a single feeling, the same one every time. It’s a feeling of being huge while everything around me is tiny. A lovely feeling, which you probably have never experienced and never will.

  The reason I bring this up is that as Mr. Ware walked away from us, headed back across the meadow to the inn, I fell into one of my trances. When I snapped out of it we were no longer in the meadow, but walking down Harvest Road. I’d been on Harvest Road several times, but only on nighttime excursions, somewhat secret excursions that might have been all about hunting, a fact I’ll keep to myself.

  In the direction I always went, Harvest Road ended at the village green, a popular nighttime spot for all sorts of little critters. But we were going in the other direction, me in the special backpack with the see-through mesh, a backpack Harmony wears in front when I’m in it. Queenie rides in front, as I made clear the first day the backpack appeared at the Blackberry Hill Inn. When dealing with humans, you want to establish the rules right out of the gate.

  Next to us we had Bro, carrying the green Frisbee, and a certain other party, sniffing at every spot where one of his kind had stopped to pee, which turned out to be many. In this direction, Harvest Road led past a farm, some woods, another farm, and then came a very big unpaved parking lot with lots of cars and pickups already there, and then beyond that a whole big and noisy scene, hard to take in all at once even if you wanted to, which I did not.

  “Ferris wheel!” said Harmony.

  “Bumper cars!” said Bro.

  And on and on like that. We crossed the parking lot and came to the ticket booth.

  “Two kids under sixteen?” said the gum-chewing woman in the booth. “Ten bucks. No charge for the cat, especially one this beautiful.”

  I liked this gum-chewing woman immediately. She had long hair, wore lots of jewelry, and had a look on her face like she was about to smile any second.

  Meanwhile Bro was reaching into his pocket and coming up empty, as usual. “Harm? I’ll pay you back.”

  “If I live to be a million,” said Harmony.

  The gun-chewing woman laughed. Harmony handed over some money.

  “Know about the beauty contest?” the woman said.

  “That’s why we’re here,” said Harmony.

  “Thought so,” said the woman.

  “And for the Frisbee contest,” Bro said.

  The woman’s eyes shifted to Arthur, at that moment scratching vigorously behind his ear. “Hmmf,” she said.

  We entered the fairgrounds. Ferris wheel, check. Bumper cars, check. The reek of cotton candy in the air, check. Noise, check. Crowds, check. Bro’s mouth hung open, and so did Harmony’s, if only a little. After what seemed like several days, we reached a booth selling something that didn’t smell very appetizing to me.

  “Corn dogs!” yelled the man in the booth. “Corn dogs heah!”

  Around then was when Arthur got put on a leash. Being leashed was unthinkable to me, but Arthur didn’t seem to mind or even notice. He just kept ambling along, sniff-sniff-sniffing all the way. That was irritating. What was wrong with him? Why didn’t he mind? Why didn’t he notice?

  Also irritating was the summer heat, the dust in the air, plus the smells of farm animals, many animals of many kinds, wafting our way from one of the big tents at the far end of the fairgrounds. When and where was the beauty contest? It was time to win this thing and get out of here.

  But no. We hadn’t even gotten past the corn dog booth when a clown stepped in front of our path. I’d seen a clown once before at Emma’s birthday party, Emma being one of Harmony’s pals. I hadn’t liked that one and I didn’t like this one—a tall man—the man smell very clear even in this hot, dusty, greasy air—wearing enormous floppy shoes, one green, one yellow, a striped and polka-dotted clown suit, and a big red ball on the end of his nose.

  “Well well,” he said in a voice that I might have considered warm and friendly if I hadn’t decided to dislike the guy, “welcome to the fair, you two lovely things. And to your humans as well!”

  “Ha-ha,” said Bro.

  “Ha,” said Harmony. I gazed into the distance. Arthur hid behind Bro’s leg.

  “Hey, little fella,” said the clown, “have no fear!” He reached down to pat Arthur, then pretended to get all caught up in the leash, tilting sideways one way, all rubbery, then the other way, crying, “Woo woo, woo, woo,” like he was out of his mind with fear, and the twins started laughing, and a crowd formed around us—a crowd within the crowd, if you see what I mean, absolutely dreadful—and I stuck my claws through the mesh, where there was nothing to claw but air. I didn’t care for clowns, not at all. And especially this one, with the boozy breath. Boozy breath often leads to problems down the road—one of the first things you learn in the hospitality industry, which is our industry, of course, at the Blackberry Hill Inn.

  After way too long, something else caught the clown’s attention, possibly something having to do with a giant blob of cotton candy. The cotton candy smell reminded me of something, but was I capable of concentrating my mind at the moment? No, not even I. The crowd flowed away, following the pink blob. And there, right in front of us, stood Maxie Millipat.

  “Yo, dudes,” he said.

  “Knock it off,” Harmony told him.

  “My lingo too cool for ya?” said Maxie. “You jelly of me?”

  Maxie was a scrawny kid, possibly a genius, according to the Green Mountain Record, where there’d been an article not long ago about Maxie and something he was building in his backyard to attract beings from space. That hadn’t interested me in the slightest, but I’d loved the look on Mom’s face as she read the article aloud at the kitchen table.

  “Do you even want to be cool, Maxie?” Harmony said.

  “What I want,” said Maxie, one of his legs now twitching, “is to set up a booth right here at the fair and get people to pay to guess my IQ. And here’s the kicker! The prize will be a stuffed Einstein doll!”

  “You know your IQ?” Harmony said.

  “Of course,” said Maxie. “My mom took me to Boston and I got tested.”

  “Why?” said Bro.

  “Huh?” Maxie said.

  “Why’d you want to get your IQ tested?”

  Maxie opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, but no sound came out.

  “Maybe if it was a little higher, you’d know the answer,” Bro said.

  Maxie’s face turned pink. “It is high! Really high! Go on—guess.”

  “Nine hundred,” Bro said.

  “Hmm,” said Maxie. “Not that high. IQs don’t go to nine hundred.”

  “Why not?” said Bro.

  Maxie’s face got pinker. He turned to Harmony. “Explain to him.”

  “Explain what?”

  “IQ.”

  “What about it?”

  “Why you should get it tested,” Maxie said.

  Harmony thought. Through the backpack I could feel her heartbeat, boom-boom, boom-boom, nice and steady. “To give your parents a thrill,” she said.

  Maxie’s eyes shifted, like something going on in his head had grabbed his attention. Then he gave his head a little shake—like to chase away whatever it was—and he said, “Tell you what—I’ll show you where I got the idea.”

  “What idea?” said Harmony.

  “For the IQ booth. It’s still a good idea—I’ll just have to iron out the bugs, that’s all.”

  “When the bugs are gone, there’ll be nothing left,” Bro said.

  Harmony glanced at him in surprise.

  We followed Maxie past a stall where people were throwing darts at balloons hanging on a back wall, balloons shaped like various creatures, including … including a cat?

 
; Pop!

  “And we have another winner! Pick out your prize, little lady!”

  Oh, how horrible! Why was I here? And then I remembered: the beauty contest. Sometimes in life you’ve just got to suck it up. I sucked it up.

  We came to another booth. This one was better. No darts, no cat-shaped balloon, no balloons of any kind. All it had were some teddy bears on a pole—not unlike the teddy bear Harmony once had, before Arthur did what he did—plus a scale like the one in Mom’s bathroom, except with a pole sticking up from it, and on top of the pole a round clocklike thing that reminded me of my grandfather clock. A girl stood beside the scale. She was maybe Harmony’s age, but not big and strong like Harmony, much skinnier, with pale skin and huge dark eyes, and thick long braids that hung down her back. She also wore a sparkling gown and a sparkling crown. I like sparkles so I liked her. Life can be so simple.

  “Step right up,” she said, waving a sparkling wand, her voice on the small side, although somehow very clear. “I, Magical Miranda, will guess your weight to within one pound or you win a teddy bear.”

  “Watch this,” Maxie whispered.

  Magical Miranda’s huge eyes shifted in his direction, showed nothing, and shifted back. Meanwhile a big bearded guy had stepped right up.

  “What’s it cost?” he said.

  “Three dollars,” said Magical Miranda.

  The big bearded guy handed over some money, which she tucked away. She held out the sparkling wand, close to the big bearded guy, but not touching him. Then, without studying him—or really looking closely at all—she said, “Two hundred and forty-five pounds.”

  The man’s eyebrows rose.

  “Please get on the scale,” Magical Miranda said.

  The man got on the scale. The needle on the round clocklike thing started moving and stopped with a little ding.

  “Would you read the number, please?” said Magical Miranda.

  “Two forty-five,” the man said.

  “Thank you, sir. Who’s next? I, Magical Miranda, will guess your weight to within one pound or you win a teddy bear.”