Scarborough Fair and Other Stories (24 page)

After a bit Randy asked, “What's he doing?”

“Talking to the unicorns.”

“What about?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” So then he had to go out too and Jess put on his coat again to join them. I wanted to say, don't go out there and stand around in the rain like the other damn fools, you'll catch a chill and die this time and then I guessed he probably knew that. I used Doc's phonebook, found Atlanta's number, and called.

“Sue! How nice of you to call. Do you have power at your place yet?” she asked.

“Not that I know of. Actually, I'm out at Doc Holiday's in Port Padlock.”

“He caretakes the grounds at Old Fort Chet doesn't he? Is he okay? No trees down on the house or anything?”

“No. Nothing like that. But he said something about thinking he was having a psychic experience with the unicorns.”

“Really? I haven't gotten close enough myself to pick up anything specific but there's definitely
something
about them. I'm not the only one who's noticed it, either.”

“No,” I said, looking out the window at the three men sitting on their haunches in the rain, a loose circle of unicorns surrounding them. “Do you think you could come out here?”

“In this?”

“Yeah, I know. And it might be for nothing. But it could be interesting too.”

“Okay.”

I put on my own coat and went out in the yard to join the boys. Two unicorns danced skittishly sideways to let me inside the circle. They were learning manners since my first encounter, maybe? I was as skittish as they were. I didn't hunker down either. My knees aren't that good. The rain was letting up at least and the wind quieting a little.

None of the men said a word. They stared at the critters. The critters stared at them. Then the lights came back on and the unicorns, startled, scattered to the edges of the woods surrounding the house. About that time, Atlanta arrived.

Doc seemed to have a hard time snapping out of his trance but he did give her a little wave and say, “I was just thinking about you.”

“So Sue said,” she said, not smiling but looking sympathetic and receptive. “Where are the unicorns?”

He nodded toward the woods. Some of them were creeping back out, watching. A couple were brawling up in the north corner of the property.

“Will they let me touch them?”

“I think so, maybe. I'll come with you.”

The two of them headed for the nearest of the beasts while the rest of us stayed behind for fear of spooking the one Doc and Atlanta were stalking.

“Well, so much for the virgin thing,” I said, surprised to hear myself sound so disgusted. “They're not real unicorns.”

“Of course they are,” Randy said. “Just because they don't do what you were led to expect they would doesn't mean they're not real.”

I felt let down and excited at the same time. On the one hand, they weren't turning out to be what I thought they should. On the other hand, it promised to be a kick seeing what they did turn out to be, other than a nuisance.

Doc approached the unicorn first, and it let him lay his hand on it's neck in a friendly way. With his other hand, he took Atlanta's forearm and guided her hand toward the beast's nose.

The unicorn tolerated that closeness for a second or two before it bolted. Doc and Atlanta rejoined us.

When we went back inside the house, the phone was ringing and Doc's TV, set on our local news bulletin board, was saying that the recent rains had caused the flooding to overflow the reservoir and we should all used bottled water for drinking until further notice.

Doc apologised for not getting out his jerry cans sooner. I introduced Atlanta to Jess and he gave her the best of what charm he still had to call on, to which she responded with girlish confusion. I fought off a pang of jealousy and asked, “What did you think of the unicorn?”

“I think Doc's right,” she said.

“Right about what?” Randy asked.

Jess just sank back onto the dilapidated couch and closed his eyes. His mouth and nose had that strained look about them I've seen so often on people who were suffering but afraid to ask for pain meds. After a moment, he drew out his flask but from the way he shook it, I could tell it was empty.

Doc cleared his throat. “I know this sounds a little crazy, but the unicorns remind me of some of my clients. I'm pretty sure the one I was trying to talk to at first out there in the yard was Tremain.”

“It would explain why you have so many of them around here, anyway,” Doc said.

And these were the guys I turned to for practical help for Jess! “You think that's what they are too, Atlanta?” I asked her.

She did a Yoga inhale-exhale number then said, “They're frightened. Disoriented. And - I don't know how to say this. They aren't quite real.”

“What do you mean, not real?” Doc asked.

“They're all adult males for one thing, and none of them seem to have been unicorns very long. They're not sure what to do, where to go, how to act. They're like souls in limbo.”

“So you think they're reincarnations of the vets?” I asked. “Then why did one try to attack me while I was taking a leak in the park the other day?”

“Maybe that one was the reincarnation of LaGuerre's old buddy Jenkins? Remember? The guy who took potshots at the sewage plant when they started building over by the lagoon?”

“Yeah,” Randy said. “He didn't want you polluting the pristine parkland, I bet.”

“I still don't get it,” I said. “Why should they come back as something that was just mythical before? I mean, even taking reincarnation as a given, why not come back as another person, or a worm if you've behaved in a pretty unevolved fashion or one of my cats if you deserve to be spoiled?”

Atlanta shrugged. “I don't know. But it seems to me like maybe, well, because there's too many of them dying at once? Maybe there isn't really an established place for them?”

“Yeah,” Doc said. “And a lot of these guys weren't bad or good, just confused. Maybe Great Spirit didn't know what to do with them either. Take Tremain. He was well educated, for awhile after Nam he was a mercenary, then he switched and became an agent for the Feed the Children foundation, meanwhile going through three families before he tried settling down and working as an electrician. Then he kills himself. Who'd know what to do with a guy like that?”

Atlanta nodded soberly. “There's a lot of people that way now. Too many maybe. Well educated, semi-enlightened, lots of potential but just never could quite find a place among so many others - even after, I guess...” her voice trailed off as she looked out the window toward the woods again.

“So all our contemporaries who are dying are coming back as horny old goats?” Randy asked, chuckling. “I like that. That's real interesting, folks. I think I'll wander over by Flynn's place and see if he's around. Maybe he'd like a game of ring-toss.”

These were the people I was counting on for practical help with Jess? They were nuttier than I was. I just wrote about this stuff. They believed it.

“So what do you think of all that?” Jess asked in the car on the way back to my place.

“I hate to say it but I think the sixties were way too good to some of my friends,” I said.

“Maybe that's why they're comin' back as unicorns,” Jess laughed. “They're all hallucinations.”

“Or something,” I said.

“If I come back as one I promise not to gore you when you try to pee, darlin'.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Just as we were pulling into the drive he said, “Susie?”

“Yeah?”

“Say your buddies are right about the unicorns. Why are they only around here?”

He was serious now. And it occurred to me that questions about the afterlife, however ludicrous they might sound to me, were probably of urgent interest to him right now. So I said, “I dunno. Maybe because there's such a high concentration of guys kicking off around here, but it's a small place. Maybe it's like some sort of cosmic test area or something.”

He nodded, very soberly for him.

While he slept in the next morning I spoke with my doctor, with a friend in Hospice work, trying to figure out what to do if Jess chose, as he seemed to be doing, to die at my house. I half wished they'd tell me it was against the law. It had taken me a lot of years and miles to find a place to work and be peaceful while I got over him. I didn't much want it polluted with his death. On the other hand, I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I sent him away. Ordinarily, I'd figure whatever ulterior motive brought him to me would take him on his way soon enough but now he was dying and I knew about that. The bullshit stopped here.

Ramona called me about two that afternoon. “Sue, it's awful. They're going to start shooting the unicorns.”

“Who?” I asked.

“The public works guys from the city. They're trying to get in to fix the reservoir and the unicorns won't let them.”

“I don't think they can do that legally, Ramona,” I said as soothingly as possible.

“They don't f-ing care! They're going to just do it and take the consequences afterward. I'm calling everybody to get their butts up there and stop it.”

“Okay, okay. When?”

“Now!”

“What's to stop them from doing something after we leave?”

“I'm not leaving,” she said but she was a little overwrought. In her hippie days she could have chained herself to a tree. Now she's got a son to think of and an elderly mother to care for.

I was just debating whether to wake Jess or to go by myself and leave him a note when Doc and Randy drove up.

“Jess still here?” Doc asked, without even greeting me.

“Yeah,” I said. “But he ought to be up soon. You can stay and wait for him if you want. Ramona just called and said the city workers are planning to kill the unicorns blocking work on the reservoir and they're organising a protest.”

“I know,” Randy said. “I called Ramona.”

About that time there was the sound of bare feet hitting the floor in the bedroom and Jess padded out and peered benignly but blearily around the corner before disappearing into the bathroom. A few noisy minutes later he was back out. In the light of day he looked worse than he had before, his skin stretched tight and dry over his cheekbones, his eyes feverishly bright. The smile he greeted us with was more like a grimace and he walked stooped a little, his hand pressed to his side.

I didn't want him to go, but for once he didn't insist on six cups of coffee. He took one with him. He threw it up on the ground outside when we got to the reservoir.

Armed men in uniforms squared off with Ramona, yellow silk flower quivering with indignation, and a small crowd of people, only some of whom I recognised from the bakery. Lance LaGuerre for one, Eamon the Irish illegal, Mamie who used to run the gallery downtown, lots of others. A rerun of the sixties, except for the unicorns stomping, splashing, bleating, fighting, kicking, biting, and diving in and around the reservoir and the flooded river overrunning it.

Doc strode over to talk to the city workers. Some of them were clients of his, others Amvet buddies. Gunhands relaxed a little. Randy hauled Jess's guitar out of the back of the truck.

He nodded at Jess, Jess nodded at him and spent a minute or two tuning.

“Shit, oh dear, they're gonna sing Kumbaya at us,” one of the city guys said.

Instead, Jess swung himself and his guitar into the back end of the truck while Randy started the engine. I joined the protesters, as Jess began to sing in a voice that never did really need a sound system.

The unicorns that were in the reservoir climbed out and dried off and followed the others, who were already trotting down the road after the truck while the pied piper of Port Chet sang the National Anthem. Doc saluted and the city workers put their hands over their hearts while the unicorns, brown, black, white, spotted, dappled, gray and reddish, their horns uniformly shining white, passed by. Jess kept singing the National Anthem until they were well down the hill and into the trees ( and out of rifle range). Then I heard him launch into Hamish Henderson's “Freedom Come All Ye” in lowland Scots with a fake Irish accent.

“Wow,” Ramona said. “Some guy. How'd he do that?”

I shrugged. “He's been doing it all his life.”

“For unicorns? He got some special thing with them?”

“I don't know. I expect a ghetto blaster with loud rock'n'roll will work as well for some of them, or maybe the Superbowl on a portable TV, but we already knew they were attracted to Jess's music so this'll get them out of harm's way while everybody cools off. Maybe someone would like to call a lawyer for the unicorns and get a restraining order against the city? Before Jess runs out of breath and the critters return?”

But that wasn't necessary. Five o'clock came first and the city workers climbed back into their vehicles and went home, and pretty soon the protesters did too. Doc hitched back into town to help Ramona see about hiring the unicorns a lawyer. He asked me to stay and see if any of the beasts came back or new ones came. He said Randy and Jess were supposed to come back for us when they'd taken the unicorns safely off into the national forest on some of the back roads Randy knew.

It wasn't a bad wait. The water was so pretty and clear that even the turbulence of the river mingling with the still water couldn't mar its beauty. You could still see clear to the bottom, like in a mountain stream. And the reservoir was plenty deep.

It was getting dark by the time the truck returned for me, and it had started to rain. I picked up the lights all the way down the road and Randy parked and honked for my attention. When I stood up, Randy yelled, “We got to get back to your place. Jess wore himself out - he's running a fever and he's looking pretty bad.”