Fool on the Hill

by Matt Ruff

  “Because I’m Eldest now, and while I may not be half as old as Julius was, I’m over a hundred years your senior, with that much more experience. Which makes it my prerogative to be optimistic.” He nodded dismissively at Laertes, then focused his eyes on the rest of the crowd.

  “Now . . . I believe we were talking about butterflies. . . .”

  IX.

  “Auro-o-o-ra! . . .”

  The shriek echoed through the clearing where the man and woman lay together in the grass. Like a broken enchantment the fog lifted all at once, and as the woman raised her head she saw clearly for the first time whom it was she embraced.

  “George!?”

  “Aurora? . . . What—”

  “Oh my,” she said, rebuttoning the top buttons of her blouse. “Oh my.” She sprang to her feet and was gone into the woods, but not without a backward glance or two.

  “What?” George repeated, sitting up. He heard a laugh behind him and turned to see Calliope reclining against a tree, shepherdess’ crook held loosely in one hand. From the other she dangled a picnic basket.

  “It’s hers,” Calliope said, setting the basket on the ground. “She dropped it in the fog just before the two of you bumped into each other.”

  “You saw us?”

  Calliope nodded. “Very exciting. Another minute and you would have had her costume off. Now that would have been interesting.”

  “I thought she was you,” George said. “I don’t understand how I couldn’t tell . . .”

  “You were an English major, weren’t you? Remember Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale?"

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  George struggled slowly to his feet. “Are you angry about this?”

  Ignoring the question, she reached out to stroke his chin. “Did you enjoy it, George?”

  “I . . .”

  “The truth. I’m honestly curious.”

  “I though she was you.”

  “Which means?”

  “It was perfect. I mean . . . not that anything really happened.”

  “Oh, George, it’s not how much you do, it’s what you feel while you’re doing it. You know that. But do you know the real truth?”

  “No, What?”

  “The real truth is that whoever you love will be just like me, and not just in the fog. Understand?”

  “No.”

  “You will . . .” The Lady moved in closer. “She’s really a very good person, that blond girl. A lot more to her than you’d first think.”

  “She’s in love with someone else,” George said. “So am I.”

  “Mmm . . . of course.”

  “You’re going to leave me soon, aren’t you?”

  “Soon,” Calliope agreed. “But not today, and not tomorrow—there’s still a good number of things to be done.” She began kissing his fingers, one by one, and with her foot lightly nudged the picnic basket. “Let’s see what we can find to eat, shall we?”

  THE ROMANCE OF THE BONE

  I.

  The Revel began to break up a little over an hour before dawn. The sprites crept out through the secret exits that they had dug years ago, when Tolkien House was new. The Bohemians took the more conventional route, back over the Khazad-dûm bridge, where safety lines had been rigged to prevent anyone from pitching over the side in a drunken stupor.

  Outside a thunderstorm was winding itself down. Z. Z. Top stepped out into a lightning flash that lit up the front lawn in flickering white; smiling, he turned face up into the rain and saluted the sky with his last Schlitz.

  “Very nice,” he said. “Very pretty.”

  Others drifted out: Lion-Heart, Myoko, Panhandle, a shorter-haired Aphrodite, many more. Aurora Smith and Brian Garroway had long since taken their leave, but George and Calliope did not come out till very near the end. A flash of lightning revealed the Lady’s face for the barest instant, rooting three House brothers to the ground where they stood; they had to be literally dragged in out of the rain.

  Last to go were Jinsei and Preacher, who walked out into the wet supporting Ragnarok between them. Preacher was costumed as an unlikely Miles Standish, Jinsei as a cat; her tiny cardboard ears wilted quickly in the rain.

  Ragnarok, dressed only as himself, had gotten so deep into the bottle tonight that he’d nearly come out the other side, and on his way to the door he’d thrown up on his trenchcoat. They’d wrapped him in Preacher’s longcoat now, which led to a bad moment when, during another lightning flash, Ragnarok looked down at himself and realized he was wearing white.

  “Shit! Oh shit what the fuck—”

  He fought them. Jinsei took a good elbowing to the side of the head and staggered away, nearly falling. Without her support Ragnarok slumped halfway to his knees, but Preacher caught him up, holding him in a bear hug from behind so that he could not turn and punch.

  “You get off me!” Ragnarok bellowed, jerking like a fish in a net. “I’m not, not—"

  “It’s me, Rag,” Preacher said softly, speaking right into his ear. The fish paused in his struggles.

  “Huh? Whu—Preacher? Preach?”

  “It’s only my coat, Rag. You got that all right? It’s only my coat.”

  “Whuh . . . this your coat, Preach?”

  The fight went out of him like a departing spirit. He slumped all the way now, and as dead weight Preacher had a hard time keeping him from falling flat out in the mud. Fortunately Shen Han appeared at that moment, two brothers trailing at his heels.

  “We’ll take him,” Shen Han offered. “We can put him up for the night in one of the spare rooms.”

  Preacher nodded, handing Ragnarok over to the brothers, who picked him up by his arms and legs and bore him back into the House. Preacher turned his attention to Jinsei, who was gingerly rubbing the side of her face.

  “You hurt?” he asked.

  “No,” Jinsei replied, watching the retreating form of Ragnarok with something like pity. “No, not badly. Is he always like this?”

  “Does he always get drunk at parties, you mean?”

  “Does he always invite women to parties and then get drunk?”

  Preacher shook his head. “Hardly ever seen him drink before. And as far as it goes, he talks a lot about women but it’s a rare day he actually asks one out. He must like you.”

  “He barely said a word to me all night.”

  “Yeah, well, that figures, actually. See, Ragnarok’s got this big disagreement problem with himself between what he wants and what he thinks he deserves. Has to do with where he comes from.”

  “Where is he from? I mean I know somewhere down South, but not what city, or anything like what his parents do.”

  “He didn’t tell you about his growing up?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Then I don’t know if I ought to.” He was looking at her in the gloom between lightning flashes, trying to decide if something he’d seen in her expression was real or imagined. Hesitantly: “Hey listen, you need a lift home?”

  Jinsei smiled, remembering a similar offer. “I think I’d rather go on foot than ride a motorcycle in this weather. Thanks anyway.”

  “Motorcycle, hell,” said Preacher. He pointed off to their left, where one of the brothers was leading a white stallion around the corner of the House. “That’s my transport. Name’s Calvin, Calvin Coolidge.”

  “Are you sure he’s safe with all the lightning?”

  “Safe as walking, if we’re careful.” As if to demonstrate, another flash lit up the sky; Calvin did not twitch so much as an ear at it or the accompanying thunder. “You see? He’s steady under fire.”

  Smiling broadly now, Jinsei said: “Maybe you should go and get your coat back. That Pilgrim outfit doesn’t look very waterproof.”

  “Don’t worry it. I don’t get cold easy.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not drunk too, are you?”

  The Bohemian shook his head. “Don’t touch alcohol,” he said seriously. “Don’t touc
h tobacco, either, or dope. And that, pretty lady, is why they call me Preacher.”

  He gave Jinsei a wink that brought her smile back; his hand brushed hers and in that moment he knew he had not been imagining things.

  “All right then,” Jinsei said, and Preacher took her home.

  II.

  Luther had not been idle these past weeks. Forced at last to admit that this place he and Blackjack had come to was something less than Heaven, he had decided to bury his regret in canine academia; he had taken on The Five Questions of Ultimate Wisdom. Choosing to start with the First—What is the nature of the Divine?—he had inquired after the canine philosopher assigned to the subject, the local God-expert.

  There were two. Blackjack had come along to meet them, though the Manx soon lost his patience with the whole business. The philosophers were a Cocker Spaniel named Cashmere and a Greyhound named Estrogen. They were both chained to a dead tree on North Campus, beyond Fuertes Observatory; it was said a boy came to feed them every evening at dusk. They were quite insane.

  “We’re waiting for a fellow by the name of Dogot,” Cashmere had said in greeting. “Have you seen him by any chance?” Thus began one of the most bizarre conversations Luther had ever been party to. Estrogen pointed out that nothing is better than complete happiness; but, he added, one must concede that even a dry milk bone is better than nothing, especially if you’re hungry. It followed through transitivity that a dry milk bone is better than complete happiness, which served as conclusive proof of God’s existence, for how could such an odd state of affairs arise purely by chance?

  No wonder, really, that Blackjack had stomped off in disgust barely fifteen minutes after they first arrived.

  This morning of November first, All Saints’ Day, Luther figured he would give The Questions another chance. Alone this time, following directions given to him by Rover Too-Bad, he checked a number of possible locations in search of the canine philosopher in charge of the meaning of life. The philosopher was an Irish Setter, lanky and red-haired, and hence his name: Ruff. As the thunderstorm passed on to elsewhere and the sun peeked over the horizon, Luther caught Ruff’s scent and tracked him to the face of Libe Slope.

  He was perched midway down the Slope in a peculiar position: reared up on his hind legs, front paws in the air, nose tilted toward the clouds, long ears flapping in the breeze that meandered up from town, back warming in the rising sun. The Setter’s eyes were closed, his attitude almost prayerful, and indeed, the litany of thoughts going through his head as Luther approached was very much like a prayer-chant: “Oh sun Oh sky Oh clouds Oh wind Oh grass Oh trees Oh hill Oh milkbone Oh bitch-in-heat Oh life is grand . . . Oh sun Oh sky Oh clouds . . .”

  Luther came up to him slowly, not wanting to disturb him and a little afraid at the same time. Love, passionate love, as humans think of that emotion, is a rare occurrence among dogkind, yet Luther had heard that this Ruff had been in love not once but several times. One notorious incident, involving a Chow who had eventually run off with a Mastiff, had supposedly driven him a little mad . . . which left Luther to wonder if there were any sane philosophers on this Hill.

  “. . . Oh trees Oh hill Oh milkbone Oh bitch-in-heat Oh—”

  The Setter stopped abruptly as Luther came upwind of him. Ruff cracked an eyelid, studied the mongrel curiously.

  “Name?” he asked, bluntly.

  “I’m Luther,” said Luther. “Are you—”

  “Ruff!” Opening both eyes now, the Setter dropped to all fours and barked a cheerful greeting. “Well, well, Luther, so we finally meet.”

  “Finally?” Luther cocked his head. “You’ve heard of me?”

  Another happy bark; Ruff would have laughed, if he could.

  “Heard of you? Heard of you? Oh hell . . . I’ve been telling your damn story for the past month and a half.”

  III.

  “I can’t eat watermelon,” Preacher said, tossing more wood into the fire. Outside the sun was coming up, but they were still damp and chill. “Nor fried chicken, either. Put me on a desert island with a watermelon patch and a chicken coop and I guess I’d starve to death.”

  “You’re that afraid of the stereotype?” asked Jinsei.

  “My father was afraid of the stereotype. Me, I’m afraid of what my father taught me to be afraid of.”

  Cowcliffes, one of three large rooms that opened off the main hallway of Risley’s first floor, was deserted but for the two of them. They stretched out on sofa cushions around an open hearth; Calvin Coolidge had been hitched to a radiator out in the hall, where he made breakfast of the memos on the Risley Committee bulletin board.

  “He’s a wealthy man, my father,” Preacher continued. “Nothing to hold a candle to Lion-Heart’s folks, but still. And there are almost no role models for that situation. Even though he’s not first generation—the money in the family goes back to a Madame C. J. Walker who made her fortune in hair care—he never really learned how to handle being rich and black at the same time. Books and movies aren’t exactly full of helpful examples, know what I mean? So he’s always been kind of offstep, and I inherited a lot from him.”

  Jinsei traced the lines of his palm with a finger. “How did you come to meet Ragnarok?”

  “That—that was one of my Dad’s ‘notions.’ We started taking in boarders—mostly white—around the time I was ten. Didn’t need the extra income at all, you understand, my father just thought it was a great idea, giving shelter like that. Ragnarok was the last of them. He came up from North Carolina so broke he couldn’t even pay what little rent we were asking, but my father didn’t care, that made it even better, he took Rag in and practically adopted him. Even helped him get the scholarship to Cornell, and if you knew how Rag feels about charity, you’d understand how amazing that is.”

  “Why did he come up from North Carolina broke?” Jinsei pressed the subject gently. “Why didn’t his own father help him pay for college?”

  Preacher didn’t answer, just stared at the fire. She tried another tack: “Did you hear what happened in front of the Straight the night of the CAAU party?”

  “Can’t say as I did.”

  She told him. Preacher looked grim but not surprised. “Jack Baron . . . that son of a bitch, he’s got a very hard fall waiting for him one of these days. Almost too bad Ragnarok didn’t let him have it.”

  “I know it’s personal,” Jinsei went on, “but I’d really like to know what Ragnarok meant about his father selling his soul to the Devil. He wouldn’t tell me, just said something about a ‘Georgia bedsheet salesman.’ I thought about that, and it almost sounds as if he was saying . . . well, that he was saying his father was . . .”

  “Klansman,” Preacher finished for her, at the same time coming to a decision. “Klan Ghoul, rank and file member.” He squeezed her hand. “It’s all right, talking about the Klan isn’t one of my taboos. Ku Klux, you know that’s from the Greek word for circle?”

  “But I thought the Klan didn’t exist anymore.”

  “Oh hell, sure it does, Lady. They may not have a goddamn five-million-person membership like they did in the Twenties, but I’ll be stone dead surprised if they ever totally disappear. You walk out of this dorm right now, a twenty-mile hike’d take you to the door of an active klavern.”

  “That’s . . . very hard to believe.”

  “Lots of things are hard to believe, lady. . . .”

  IV.

  “Did you really come here in search of Heaven?” Ruff asked, making his way south along the face of the Slope. Luther kept pace with him.

  “I know it must sound silly,” the mongrel replied, “but I really hoped—”

  “It doesn’t sound silly at all,” the Setter interrupted him. “Not to these shaggy ears. I think it’s marvelous. It’s got all the right ingredients for an epic: courage, determination, nobility, a strong sense of pathos—”

  “An epic?”

  “Hmm, well . . . the story about your travels going around now isn’t
quite of epic proportions, but give it time and some more embellishment and you’ll be amazed. A dog scenting after Heaven! You’re the stuff that legends are made of, Luther.”

  “Legends? But wait, I didn’t come looking for Heaven so I could be famous.”

  “Doesn’t matter Most of the famous canines in history had no special wish for recognition. Rather, it was their desire, their obsession over something other than fame that made them famous. The tragic love of Rufus and Juliet; Spot driving the pack rats out of the temple; Dog Quixote tilting at fire hydrants; The Romance of the Bone . . .”

  “I don’t know any of those stories,” Luther said. “What’s the last one again?”

  “The Romance of the Bone,” Ruff repeated. “An epic’s epic, really: in addition to standing ·well on its own it serves as an allegory for almost every story ever told.”

  “Can you tell it to me?”

  “Not now. It’s very long—it takes three days to tell from beginning to end, and because of that there’s a ritual to the telling. It’s an event, really. Who knows, maybe later in the year . . . but for today I can at least tell you something about it. The hero of the story is called Everydog, and he is in search of his lost love, the Bone—Wait! Hold up a second!”

  They were at the far end of the Slope now, beneath Willard Straight Hall by the loading dock for Oakenshields Dining. A delivery truck with a chrome rooster for a hood ornament had backed up to the dock, and a fat man was offloading a stack of bloodstained white boxes. Even with the wind blowing in the wrong direction it was not hard to guess what they contained.

  “Time for brunch,” Ruff announced, licking his chops.

  Luther looked at the fat man. “Will he give us scraps?”

  Again, Ruff would have laughed if he could. Instead, leaving Luther to gape at his actions, the philosopher sprang forward, charging up to the dock. He took the trucker by surprise; barreling between the human’s legs he caught him off balance, sending him sprawling, then hurled himself at the stack of boxes. The top one tottered free and broke open, spilling uncooked chicken halves across the dock.