Fool on the Hill (7 page)

“Daddy,” she said, her voice still uncertain how to compose itself, “Daddy, what’s wrong?”

His tongue froze on him. He balled his hand into a fist and struck his thigh as one might strike a defective tape recorder, forcing himself to concentrate, and the words came out in a flood:

“Jesse. I was just thinking about your brother Jesse, how he . . . how he had this smile, this special smile about him. One of the clippings he sent us during the War protests, I still have it, it shows these two policemen dragging him away after he screamed out that Lyndon Johnson was a pig. They were dragging him away to a special police bus, and one of the cops had just clubbed him, but he was smiling, smiling and shouting all the same, as if it were the greatest thing in the world. That smile, it was an
I’m alive
smile, I guess you’d call it, because he
was
alive . . . he . . . he . . .”

The words faltered again, and Aurora shook her head, still struggling.

“Daddy, I don’t—” she bit her lip. “Are you trying to say that Jesse was gay, or . . .”

“No, no!” Walter burst out. “No! I mean, he might have been, you can always hope, but that’s not the point, the point is . . . the point . . . it was the smile, the smile! Jesse never tried to conform, he was
different,
different in a dozen ways, and that being different made him
alive,
made him smile. Ed, he smiles and laughs too, but never that way. Not everyone is meant to smile that way, maybe. Oh, but if you’ve got it in you, the potential, and you don’t . . . don’t . . .”

He reached across the table and took one of Aurora’s hands, clasping it tightly.

“I can remember,” he continued, “I can remember two years after Jesse died, and we took a trip to Minnesota for Ed’s wedding. At the reception all the bridesmaids were lined up like birds at one side of the hall, with these big yellow bonnets on their heads, and you got one of Jesse’s
I’m alive
smiles on your face and asked me what would happen if someone went and started knocking those girls’ hats off. And I . . . I would have let you do it, you know,
let you try jumping up and knocking hats off. But your mother overheard, she was already upset over some of the relatives she’d had to talk to, she told you to behave and stop thinking things like that. When . . . when did you start listening to your mother, Aurora?”

“Daddy,
what .
. .”

“I just don’t want you to wake up thirty years from now,” he told her, squeezing her hand almost tightly enough to hurt, “and realize that your chance to have more of a life, your chance to smile the way Jesse smiled, all the time, has gone by. I don’t want you to feel that loss. Do you see? Do you understand?”

III.

“Don’t worry about the damage, Mr. Smith,” Brian Garroway was saying. “The left headlight’s out, but the engine’s fine and we won’t be driving after dark. You can thank my younger brother for this, by the way. His sense of responsibility belongs in a Crackerjack box.”

Brian carried Aurora’s bags to the back of his station wagon, which was parked in the Smith’s driveway. The wagon had a bumper sticker that said “
JESUS IS MY BACKSEAT DRIVER
.” It also had a pronounced dent in the left side of the front fender; the headlight was mortally wounded.

“Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” Aurora asked her father in low voice, as Brian unlocked the back of the wagon. “I swear I thought you were having some kind of a nervous breakdown at breakfast.”

“I’ll be fine,” Walter said. She studied him uncertainly, and noticed for the first time how very red his eyes were. A thought struck her, one which she dismissed immediately as ridiculous.

“What would you say,” Walter went on, “if I offered to drive you?”

“Drive me where, Daddy? You don’t mean to
Ithaca,
do you?”

“The car’s in the garage,” said Walter. “Tank’s almost full. We could go a fair piece down the road before we even had to stop. And we could talk, just you and me, about anything you want. My ‘nervous breakdown,’ for instance.”

“Daddy . . .”

“I mean it. Back at breakfast I wasn’t too clear-headed, but I’m feeling better. I might like to rest a little bit more before we take off, but I
will
drive you. Really.”

“But . . . well, what about Brian?”

“Let him drive his own damn car,” Walter replied, and Aurora would have laughed at this if it were not for the fact that he was dead serious.

“Daddy,” she said again, “Daddy, you’ve got to realize how silly this is.” Walter lowered his eyes, nodding.

“It is pretty silly, isn’t it? Pretty damn silly, yes . . .” He looked up again. “But what do you say?”

For the briefest instant—only an instant, mind you—Aurora considered accepting his offer, leting him drive her all the way to Ithaca if it was that important to him. And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t only for his sake that she considered it.

“Let’s go, Aurora!” Brian called, breaking the spell.

“I love you, Daddy,” Aurora said, kissing Walter on the cheek. Then she was hurrying to the station wagon, pausing to yell back over her shoulder: “I’ll call as soon as we get there, all right? . . . I promise.”

Walter nodded again, and had to fight hard to keep his fists from clenching. He felt worn out, beaten.

“You take care now,” Walter said.

Aurora opened her mouth to speak, but Brian Garroway said: “We’ll be fine, Mr. Smith. Don’t worry yourself.”

The two climbed into the station wagon, slammed the doors. “Seat belts,” Brian said automatically, even as Aurora was reaching for hers. He turned on the engine, put the station wagon in reverse, and began to back gingerly down the driveway. Walter waved from the house and Aurora waved back . . . and as they approached the end of the driveway, she reached over to the steering wheel and honked the horn twice.

“Cripes!” Brian said, startled. His nervous system did a few quick jumping jacks. “What’d you do that for?”

“Just saying good-bye,” she told him.

“Well please do it some other way. I’m in a very edgy mood about this car right now.”

Aurora made no response to this and waved to her father one last time. Then the station wagon was moving down the road, leaving home and parents behind. There was silence in the car for the next few minutes.

“This is going to be a good year,” Brian finally said. He smiled and squeezed her hand. “Maybe the best year so far.”

“I hope so,” Aurora said. She smiled back, and Brian never even noticed how forced it looked. “I really hope so.”

She suddenly wished very badly that she’d taken her father’s offer.

IV.

As for Walter Smith, his morning ended in prayer. Not the orthodox, “Lord we beseech thee” style of prayer, but something much closer to true conversation. Walter. had not been to church in some years—though Prudence still went regularly, and Brian Garroway frequently urged him to do the
same—but he still retained a fair amount of faith; surely the world could not have become so wonderfully mixed-up without a guiding, jester’s hand.

When the station wagon was out of sight, Walter sat down on his front porch and stared at the stretch of driveway where Brian had been parked.

“Listen,” he began. “I need a really big favor, I think. . . .”

. . . AND LADY CALLIOPE

Day ran on into night again, and that evening, in Delaware, the most beautiful woman in the world left the capital city of Dover and walked north on U.S. 13. Her name was Calliope, and on the long road behind her she left a string of carefully broken hearts, like diamonds cut to a finer shape by a master lapidary.

Cut to a finer shape . . . she too was finely shaped, custom-made in a sense. In the city she had just left there lived an out-of-work mechanic, a man of little ambition and even less courage. Shy but possessed of a depth of passion that was his one strength, this mechanic favored women with fiery red hair, milk-white skin, and silver eyes, women of medium height whom he could kiss without stretching or stooping; Calliope fit this description exactly, more exactly than might have been believed possible. Even for those whose fantasy lover was different, Calliope had a heart-catching edge to her, a perfect, irresistible something. That she walked tonight was a fact of her own choosing; no motorist, regardless of their hurry, would have denied Calliope a ride had she desired one. But she did choose to walk, wanting to be alone for a time, as she always did after an Exit.

Back in Dover, the mechanic would soon return from a day’s wandering to find his lover Gone. Not gone, but Gone. Photographs of the two of them together now showed only one person, him; a jacket saturated with her scent now smelled only of must; their bed was made, as if never slept in. He would search for her frantically, and when he realized that she was truly lost forever, the Hurt would begin. Calliope had seduced him well; he would Hurt so badly that at first he would think he was going to die. But when death did not come, he would find himself being transformed by his Pain, and in the end for the sake of lost love he would be drawn into an act of great heroism, of consequence. Exactly how this was to come about and for what purpose Calliope could not have said . . . she knew only that it had something to do with a Story. As always. But she was not the Storyteller; she was part of the Tale.

Calliope turned her thoughts ahead, to the next Meeting. This upcoming Love promised to be an important one, and more complicated than the last. She cleared her mind and walked, duffel bag slung over her shoulder, a tiny silver whistle hanging from a chain around her neck.

There was no moon that night. Calliope traveled far, in darkness. By eleven forty-five she had reached the small town of Talbot’s Legacy, some twenty miles outside of Dover. The road was deserted, and she passed through the town’s center with no company except for the scant streetlamps that cast faint circles of light on the asphalt every thirty yards or so. And the wind, of course. The wind was always with her.

The Turning began at exactly twelve o’clock.

Far to the north, so many miles distant that no natural creature could have heard it from here, a set of tower chimes marked the passage of one day into another as the clock touched midnight. Calliope’s ears perked up at the sound.

A moment later she walked beneath one of the streetlamps, and her hair was longer. Longer, and darker—it covered her ears, nearly touching her shoulders. And that was not the only thing different about her, though for a moment it was the most noticeable.

Thirty-some paces in the shadows, and another streetlamp captured her. Her hair, black as the new moon, now hung halfway down her back. Her skin had taken on color, and her eyes were phasing from silver to dark brown.

More paces, more changes. Calliope’s entire stature began to change, becoming shorter, thinner; her skin continued to color, taking on a rich olive cast; her breasts grew smaller, more compact, but still perfectly proportioned; her nose widened.

The entire metamorphosis took perhaps five minutes. When it was done, Calliope stopped under another streetlamp and looked at her reflection in a nearby storefront. It had been a long time since she had been Asian; she liked what she saw.

“I’m on my way, George,” said Calliope, executing a graceful pirouette in the lamplight. “I’m on my way.”

A SIDETRIP THROUGH HELL

I.

For Luther and Blackjack, New York City had become a memory left far behind. Led by the mongrel’s nose and the Heaven scent, they had been traveling for some days now, in a zigzagging but roughly northwesterly direction. This particular morning they had come upon a town, the name of which they never learned. They had passed through a residential area—rows of neat houses, each with its own well-kept yard and garage—and were now nearing its center. Blackjack was unusually calm after their stroll through the peaceful neighborhood—which had been mercifully free of petting children and hose-spraying old men—but Luther found himself growing suddenly tense. His anxiety took a quantum leap when he saw a white van cross through an intersection about two blocks ahead.

“I can feel Raaq in this place,” Luther began to say. “Maybe we should—”

“Oh, hell!”

“What is it?” said Luther, thinking that Blackjack must have smelled danger too, or seen something.

“Heat,” Blackjack told him. “Just caught a whiff of it. There’s a puss in heat around here. A street puss, if I’m lucky.” He looked at Luther hopefully. “It’s kind of tempting, you know. Would you mind if I just nipped off for a moment and . . .”

“There’s danger here, Blackjack,” Luther replied. “Can’t you feel it? Raaq . . . Raaq’s somewhere close.”

“Raaq,” the Manx repeated, unimpressed. “Well listen, Luther, isn’t Raaq only supposed to bother dogs? I mean, he’s your devil, not mine. So I don’t have anything to worry about. And if he
does
show up, I’ll hit him broadside while he’s concentrating on you and knock him senseless.” A poorly constructed chain of logic, but Blackjack was in a hurry to get laid now and didn’t want to waste time arguing ever nonsense.

Luther looked away, disappointed. “OK, Blackjack,” he said. “You go ahead, if you want to think I’m being superstitious. I’ll wait here for you as long as I can. But if something does happen—”

“Please, please don’t try and make me feel guilty, Luther. I came with you on this trip, didn’t I? And I promise I’m going to stick by you until we find your Heaven, but right now I want a little heaven of my own. That’s not too much to ask, is it?” He began backing away in the direction of the heatscent, all the while looking at Luther with wide, imploring eyes. “I’ll be back before you know it. Cats don’t take that long anyway and I can be fast when I’m pressed for time. I’ll be right back.”

“Go on, then,” Luther said flatly. “But it’s a mistake, Blackjack. This is a bad place.”

“We’ll be gone soon enough,” Blackjack called back, vanishing into an alley.

Luther crouched nervously beside a telephone pole, not at all reassured by Blackjack’s words. He watched the street, wondering from which direction Raaq would come at him, and in what form.

Directly above him, a handbill had been stapled to the pole. Luther glanced at it once and then ignored it. Perhaps Blackjack could have made sense of it, but to him it was just a meaningless collection of symbols.

The handbill read:

ATTENTION

Town Ordinance #101-bb

passed 4/13 this year:

Due to a large number of incidents involving stray animals, a revised leash law has been passed by City Hall. Any dog or cat discovered roaming free within the town limits will be taken to the Animal Shelter. If the animal has a collar with proper identification, the owner will be contacted and a fee imposed for return of the animal.

Unclaimed animals, and those without any identification, will, after a period of thirty (30) days, be either sold or destroyed.

LEASH YOUR PET—IT’S THE LAW

II.

Half an hour later, Blackjack had still not returned. Luther found himself caught in a great dilemma, for trouble had arrived, and though he wanted to run, he was not at all certain that he could find Blackjack, or that the Manx
would be able to find him. But to stay here much longer might bring even worse consequences.

Luther remained crouched beside the telephone pole. Across the street, two German Shepherds lounged—not too casually—in front of a vacant lot. They were watching him. A Boxer had been with them earlier, but he had hurried away down a side street as soon as Luther had been spotted.

Now, at last, Luther understood what a Purebred really was. The Shepherds
did
look alike. and their coats were sharp and clear, as opposed to the random, muddied coloration of the mongrels Luther had grown up with. He could see how such dogs might develop a certain pride in themselves—they were beautiful, no denying that.

But Raaq was in them. or he had been in them before and left a mark on their hearts, and that dimmed their beauty to nothing.
Have you killed others of your kind?
Luther would have asked them, had he not been so afraid.
Other dogs? I think you have.
And that thought that Malcolm had warned him about—
Mange
—filled the Shepherds’ minds like poison as they watched him.

Luther looked at the alley, wondering how far Blackjack had had to go to find the puss.

“Blackjack?” Luther said with sudden hope. as he heard a noise in the alley. But it was only a newspaper blown by a light breeze. Then the breeze died, leaving the paper scattered on the sidewalk like a dirty white shroud.

Blackjack,
Luther thought to himself.
Blackjack, where are you?

And where were the people” Surely some kind Master would save him if the Shepherds chose to attack. But there were no people on this street, no one coming in or out of the stores.

It was as if someone-Raaq?—didn’t want him to escape.

More noise from the alley. It was definitely an animal this time, and Luther knew he had waited too long, because it was a big animal, too big to be Blackjack.

A Great Dane padded out of the alley. The Dane stood almost three feet high at the shoulders, more than a foot taller than Luther.

“Hello, mange,” it said.

Luther began to move then. He walked along the sidewalk, away from the Dane, and the big dog did not attack him. It simply followed him, at a distance of about ten feet. Across the street the Shepherds had stopped lounging, and they too were trailing him.

Luther walked, slowly gaining speed as panic took him.

“Hello, mange.”

The greeting came from a vacant lot on his right. He had thought to turn in there, but saw that a Golden Retriever and two Schnauzers were waiting for him. He kept on straight past the lot. The Retriever and the Schnauzers fell in beside the Great Dane.

Now it was worse. Now they were talking about him.

“Kind of runty-looking, isn’t he?” This from one of the Schnauzers, who was actually a good bit smaller than Luther.

“Sort of,” the Great Dane agreed. “But I’ll bet he’s got some fight in him.”

“All manges do,” said the Retriever. “Where do you suppose he came from?”

“It doesn’t matter. Manges are everywhere. There’s too damn many of them.”

“What do you think Dragon’ll do with him?”

“That isn’t hard to figure out.”

“
I’d
feed him to Cerberus, if I were Dragon.”

Forced to listen to them, Luther suddenly heard other words, deeper down in his mind where his best memories lay. Moses’ words.

“
You don’t
ever
kill another dog, don’t ever even fight with one. A day may come when you feel pressed, when you feel there ain’t no other way out, but remember that a dog that lets Raaq into his heart is dead anyhow.
”

“
But Malcolm says—
"

“
Don’t you listen to Malcolm. Malcolm ain’t anything special, nothing special at all. Just think how easy it is to give yourself over to hate, and then remember that the easy thing is never the right thing. Never. And that’s what
Malcolm’s
all about.

“
You mark me well, Luther. God gave a dog four legs so he could run, and he gave him a mind so he could pick the right way to run. You know which way that is?
"

“
Any way but Raaq’s way.
"

“
That’s right. You keep that well.
"

“—stupid mange, I wonder if he’ll beg as much as the last one.” Luther quickened his pace still more. Up ahead was an intersection, and if he bolted at just the right moment he might yet escape. They had him flanked, but so far the Shepherds hadn’t tried to cut in front of him. A quick zigzag into a convenient alley and he could—

The Boxer, the one that had been with the Shepherds before, appeared on the sidewalk at the intersection, panting heavily. He was followed by a Dalmation, an Irish Setter, and a Bull Terrier.

There was no way out, now. The Shepherds crossed the street, closing the ring tightly around him. Luther backed up against a storefront—a butcher shop, it happened to be—and waited as the other dogs moved in toward him.

“Hello, mange,” the Boxer said.

III.

“State your pedigree, Booth.”

The Cocker Spaniel cowered in the center of a narrow courtyard which had been formed incidentally from the placement of several connecting buildings, most of them warehouses. No windows overlooked the courtyard, and the only exits were one padlocked back door and two alleyways, one of which was blocked off by a chain-link fence. The air in the place was still and hot, and the walls and ground were stark in the noon sunlight. A pack of various kinds of Terriers had arrayed themselves along one wall like a jury, and two Bull Mastiffs stood guard at the open alleyway; various other Purebreds stood or crouched in random places. At the far end of the court, three Doberman Pinschers ringed a high mound of gravel. Sitting atop the mound was the dog that had just thought-spoken—an Irish Wolfhound, the largest of the breeds. It measured nearly seven feet from nose to tail, and stood a yard high at the shoulders. Its coat was pure white, and unlike some of the other dogs in attendance, it wore no collar.

“Booth!” the Wolfhound exclaimed when the Spaniel did not answer immediately. “State your pedigree!”

Still the Spaniel hesitated, and a Bulldog with only one ear ran up and nipped at his flank.

“Dragon’s given you an order!” the Bulldog said, barking furiously at the same time, “Answer him!”

This only terrified the Spaniel further and the Bulldog began snapping at his flank again, driving him around in a circle. The other dogs watched this with great amusement.

“Judas!” the Wolfhound finally said, and the Bulldog came to immediate attention. “Leave him be.”

“Of course, Dragon. As you wish.” The Bulldog gave one more bark and backed off. The Spaniel was now bleeding from a tear in its hind leg.

“Now, Booth . . .” the Wolfhound began.

There was a disturbance at the entrance to the courtyard. A new pack of dogs had arrived, led by a Boxer and a Great Dane. Luther was in the pack, forcibly hidden in the center. He was to be a surprise. The guards allowed the pack to enter, and after a quick glance the Wolfhound paid no attention to them.

“. . . let’s make this simple,” he continued. “I asked you for your pedigree, but we both know it, don’t we? Your sire and dam were both Purebred Spaniels, correct?”

“Y-y-yes,” the Spaniel said. He was not terribly bright, and close inbreeding had given him a peculiar mental defect—the telepathic equivalent of a stutter.

“What was that?”

“Y-yes, Dr-dr-dragon.”

“And your grandsires? All Spaniels?”

“Y-yes.”

“How many generations back? How many that you know for certain?”

“Seh-seh-seven. M-maybe eh-eight.”

“That’s pretty good,” the Wolfhound told him. “Eight generations. That’s even better than old Judas, there.” The Bulldog glowered at this, but did not protest. “You’re a real Purebred, Booth. And tell me, what is the law for Purebreds?”

“N-n-n-not . . . n-not t-t-to . . .”

“Not to what?”

“N-not to m-m-mate outside the br-br-br-br-”

“Breed! Breed!” snapped Judas.

“-br-br-breed.”

“Very good, Booth.” The Wolfhound showed teeth that were nearly as white as his coat. “And what is your crime?”

The Spaniel did not reply.

“Come on, Booth,” the Wolfhound cajoled him, warning back Judas with a glance. “What is your crime?”

“I-I b-broke the br-br-breeding l-law. I . . . huh-huh-had re-luh-lations . . . w-with a b-b-bitch outside m-my br-br-breed.”

“ ‘Had relations.’ ” The Wolfhound pulled the corners of his mouth back so far that he seemed to be smiling. Then, with sudden fury: “You
impregnated
her, you idiot! And
by
impregnating her, you forced me to destroy what was otherwise a perfect animal.”

“Destroy?” Luther said, trying to see better over the dogs that surrounded him. “What does—”

“Shut up, mange,” the Great Dane said sharply.

In the center of the courtyard, the Spaniel had begun to cringe again. “Dr-dr-dragon,” he tried to say. “Dr-dragon, i-i-it—”

“You broke the breeding law, Booth,” the Wolfhound overrode him. “You broke the highest law there is. Now tell us, tell everyone here, what is the penalty for breaking the highest law?”

“I know!” Judas piped up. “A dog who breaks the breeding law, who risks the creation of manges, has betrayed the entire Purebred Order as well as his own breed. For this treason he shall be torn apart, even as he sought to tear apart the foundations of decency.”

The Wolfhound nodded.

“Cerberus,” he said.

At the word, the three Dobermans stood up as one. Luther caught a clear view of them and immediately noticed something strange, both in the way they moved and in the way their eyes looked. He watched them stride forward and circle the Spaniel. Even when the three were not making
identical motions, they seemed to be moving eerily in tandem with one another . . . almost as though they were possessed of a single mind.

“Dr-dragon!” the Spaniel pleaded, pawing vainly at the ground as if to dig a hole to hide in. “Dr-dr-dragon, p-please! Wh-when Assa d-d-died, you pr-promised t-t-to g-g-get m-me someone n-n-new: Y-you pr-pr-promised: I-I-I-I c-couldn’t w-wait any-muh-more: I-is th-th-that s-s-so bad? I-i-is th-th-tha—”