Lantern Sam and the Blue Streak Bandits (12 page)

“Nothing special. I just like them.” Clarence threw me the key.

When I was sticking the key into my pants pocket, something sharp stabbed my hand—the barrette! I had completely forgotten about it! I took it out of my pocket
and polished the engraved oval surface on my pants until it glistened like a mirror.

“What have you got there?” Clarence asked.

I set the barrette on the bed, next to the sardine can. “I found this on the floor, right after the train stopped in Albany.”

“Hmmm. Nice,”
said Sam.
“Looks like sterling silver, good quality. What, exactly, is it?”

“It’s called a barrette,” I said. “Girls use them to … they put them in their hair.”

“Does this barrette have some special significance, or are you interrupting my dinner out of spite?”
Sam asked.

“Knock, knock,” said a voice out in the vestibule. “Mr. Nockwood?”

“Come in,” said Clarence. “Ah, Reverend Perfiddle. What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering if I could talk to you for a moment—in private.”

Clarence disappeared into the vestibule to talk to him, leaving me to finish telling the story of the barrette to Sam alone.

“I don’t
know
that it is important, but there’s something funny—funny strange, that is—about it. Like I said, it was right after the Albany stop, right after I was talking to you. I was heading toward the back of the train, looking for Ellie,
when I got stuck behind a family that had just boarded. There were three of them. The dad, who was carrying a girl with long red hair—she was sleeping, with her face against his shoulder, so I couldn’t tell how old she was—and the mom, whose hair was exactly the same color. They were right in front of me, and all of a sudden,
this
drops onto the floor and bounces under a seat. I was
sure
it came from one of them, but when I tried to give it to the lady, she said it wasn’t hers or her daughter’s. There was nobody else around, so I don’t know where else it could have come from.”

Sam yawned.
“Kid, you’re killing me. Where are you going with this story? So some dame dropped a barrette and didn’t want it back. Big deal. Now, why don’t you tell me more about this little hobby of yours. How many cans of sardines would you say the cook aboard your pop’s ship has stocked away? A couple hundred? More?”

“Boy, you really do have a one-track mind,” I said. “I’m not done with my story yet. What I was trying to say is, don’t you think it’s a little fishy that she wouldn’t want something so nice back?”

“Sorry, kid, but I have to interrupt you again. I’m not really comfortable with people using the word
fishy
as a synonym for suspicious,”
said Sam. “Fishy
should always be considered a
good
thing. But go on.”

“You see, I kept my eyes open all through dinner, watching everybody who came into the dining car, and I never saw them—the man, the woman, the kid. None of them had dinner. They’d be kind of hard to miss with all that red hair.”

Another yawn from Sam, this one louder and longer.
“One more time: so? Maybe they brought their own sandwiches. Maybe they forgot about dinner. Maybe they got off the train at Schenectady—”

“We didn’t stop at Schenectady.”

“Oh, right. I knew that.”

“You could be right about the sandwiches; my mom does that sometimes. I just think it’s … strange, that’s all. Okay, okay, I’ll stop talking about it. For now.”

“Good. Now, let’s go spy on Clarence and Reverend Perfiddle, and see what that little visit was all about.”

I’m not proud of the humiliating conclusion to this chapter of my life, but I swore to tell the unvarnished truth, so here it is: bruised and bloodied, but with a belly full of roast chicken, I slept for fourteen hours straight on Walt’s boat. (After the
Susie G
incident, I had sworn off boats for life, but I think we can all agree that after surviving Tom the Tomcat, a demented rooster, and the Cleveland sewer system, I was entitled to a night in a warm, dry cabin.)

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciated all that Walt had done for me, but I just wasn’t ready for a long-term commitment—especially with someone who lived on a boat—so I quietly limped away from the dock when he went off to buy
groceries for the next leg of his voyage. Even though the odds of running into Marmalade and Tom were slim, I was taking no chances, so I headed due south, away from the city and away from the water. After traveling two days on paw, I caught a ride on a southbound freight train. As we passed by one dairy farm after another, I started craving fresh milk so badly that I jumped off at the first opportunity, a small town called Hiram.

It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for; the scent of Jersey cows was like perfume to me, and I simply followed my nose until I found myself in a pasture with a whole herd. At milking time, I tagged along and then slipped into the barn unnoticed. My heart leapt when the first cat I saw was another calico. It meant that I would have a place to rest, and all the fresh milk I could drink. You see, calicoes are not like other cats; we live and die by a sacred code.

Another calico must always be treated like family
, Mom told my siblings and me.
No matter the circumstances
.

That’s when Mom recited “The Rhyme of the Ancient Calico,” a poem about a silent, broken-down cat who was turned away from barn after barn on a snowy January night. The next day, he was found dead in a snowdrift, where an older cat recognized him as Jedediah, a member of the Calicium, also known as the Council of Calicoes. The Calicium was made up of three elder calicoes, one for each of our
colors. For many centuries, they met once a year under a half-moon and recited verses in the old language. With the death of Jedediah, however, a third of the secret was lost forever, as he had never passed his knowledge on to another. At first no one noticed anything different, but slowly the truth became clear. From every corner of the world, the news was the same, litter after litter, year after year: no male calicoes were born.

And nothing can change that, calicoes believe, until the lost verses are rediscovered. In the meantime, we live by the Calico Code and treat all strangers like family, reciting verses from the epic poem “The Rhyme of the Ancient Calico” whenever we meet.

I tiptoed across the floor of the barn and slowly approached the other calico. I touched my left front paw to my forehead and chest, and then spoke the opening lines of the sacred poem:

Then, as the code requires, we touched noses and introduced ourselves.

“Sam, Linesville, Pennsylvania.”

“Billie, Hiram, Ohio. Welcome to Twin Elms Farm, Sam. Sorry if I’m staring. You’re my first male calico. And if you don’t mind my saying, you look like somebody’s been using you for a scratching post.”

“Tough night in the city,” I said.

“Well, feel free to stay as long as you like. At the moment, there’s just me and Ginny—that’s her over by those calves—so there’s plenty of milk. Ginny’s deaf and mostly blind, so she probably won’t even notice you’re here.”

“Anything I need to worry about? Roosters, for instance?”

“No, nothing like that. Well, no, that’s not quite true. Can’t forget about Daisy.”

“Daisy?”

“A Chihuahua.”

“What’s that, some kind of chicken?”

Billie laughed. “It’s a kind of dog,” she said.

“Ohhh. Big?”

“No, only about half my size.” She shook her head, reconsidering. “Actually, she’s not quite that big.”

I had never heard of such a thing. “Are you
sure
it’s a dog?”

“Oh, she’s a dog, all right. An unholy terror. Just keep an eye out for her; she’s sneaky. And
fast
.”

I couldn’t tell if she was pulling my leg. A tiny, dangerous dog? Didn’t seem possible.

My first few days with Billie at Twin Elms Farm were a slice of homemade sardine pie. My wounds began to heal (although my right ear was permanently notched, thanks to Tom’s wicked left hook), my stomach was always full, and the straw in the loft was softer and sweeter smelling than any I had ever slept on. Each day the weather turned a little colder, and I made up my mind to take up Billie’s offer to spend the winter in the comfort of the dairy barn.

October turned into November, and I still hadn’t seen Daisy. I kidded Billie about it one evening, chiding her for making up such a crazy story.

She laughed. “Just you wait, Sam. Daisy is all too real. She is not to be trifled with.”

The very next day, Billie and I were in a small pasture next to the house stalking field mice when out of the corner of my eye, I saw something running toward us. For a moment, I was confused.

“Look at the size of that rat,” I said.

“That’s no rat,” said Billie. “It’s Daisy! Run for your life!” She ducked under the barbed wire and bolted for the barn.

But I stood my ground. I wasn’t about to be bullied by a dog less than half my size. Clearly it was time for somebody to teach Daisy a lesson, so I puffed myself up and extended my sharpest claws. Only a fool would dare to get within swinging range.

When she was about twenty feet away and closing fast, I realized that I had made a horrible, and possibly fatal, mistake. I still have nightmares about the look in that crazy mutt’s eyes as she barreled straight into me, snarling and snapping those razor-like teeth. I spat and hissed and scratched with everything I had, but I don’t think she even noticed! I had only one option left: retreat. I turned and ran faster than I had ever run, with Daisy nipping at my heels all the way across the yard as the farmer and his wife, who had just left the barn, stared openmouthed.

I swore to myself when I realized that they had closed the barn door, and then swerved out toward the front yard, where a pair of stately old elm trees stood. I hit the closer of the two at full speed with all seventeen claws extended for climbing. A split second later, Daisy ran into the tree so hard that she knocked herself out cold for about ten seconds. Meanwhile, I kept on climbing, not stopping until I found myself a comfy spot on a branch about fifty feet above the ground.

By then Daisy was awake and absolutely furious that I
had somehow escaped her jaws of death. She bounced up and down, looking as if she were on a trampoline, and then changed tactics, trying to climb the elm tree, again and again. She would make it a few feet up—far enough to concern me, at least the first few times—and then fall backward, yelping at me as if it were all
my
fault.

That went on for more than an hour. The farmer’s wife brought out a leash, but dear old Daisy refused to let anyone get close enough to put it on. She snarled at her owners and ran faster and faster around the base of the tree until they gave up trying. I’m sure they were thinking what I was thinking: sooner or later, the stupid dog would give up.

Of course, even if she did finally admit defeat, I was still left with one big problem. I knew how to climb up. Getting down? That was another story. I had a vague memory of something my mother had said about going backward, but the details were hazy. (In general, she told us never to climb higher than we were willing to jump down from, but it was too late for
that
piece of advice to be useful to me.) With Daisy showing no signs of slowing, I figured that I would cross that bridge when I came to it. Snuggled into the notch between my branch and the tree trunk, and prepared to wait as long as necessary, I closed my eyes to think for a while.

Billie, thank goodness, was the only witness to what happened next.

In short, I fell out of the tree. One second I was safe and secure, and the next I was, according to Billie, “dropping like an apple that’s been shaken from its branch.”

About halfway down, I sensed that something was wrong and opened my eyes, realizing too late that I was plummeting toward Daisy, with nothing between us except air. Lucky for me, she was sound asleep, exhausted from hours of barking and running in circles, and she never saw me coming.