by Matt Ruff
“I’m in love with your daughter,” George blurted out.
Walter nodded again. “Good stuff,” he repeated. “We’ll have something to talk about after dinner.” He turned to Aurora. “Your mother won’t be home till tomorrow. She had to rush down to Madison; seems your Uncle Bryce backed his Chevy into a pine tree. Totaled the car, then broke his leg trying to climb out the window when the door wouldn’t open.”
“That’s awful.”
Walter shrugged. “At least he won’t be such a bother to his wife while he’s in traction. She might even have a nice Christmas.”
“Daddy!"
“Well it’s true. He’s always been a trial to her. Oh, by the way, Brian Garroway came by a few days ago.”
“He did?” Aurora grew apprehensive. “What did he want?”
“To drive me deaf with all his talking. Told me you’d lost your mind and been abducted by Satanists, that sort of thing. I let him ramble on for a piece about how we had to save you, then sent him home.”
“Oh my . . .”
“He’ll get over it,” Walter added quickly, fighting back a grin. “Trust me. So what do you say we eat before you folks unpack?”
They did just that.
Dinner was a wonderfully inappropriate combination of roast beef, cucumber sandwiches, and warm white wine. The roast was blood red and attracted the immediate attention of Luther, who leaped up onto the dinner table. Rather than shoo him off, Walter Smith set out an extra plate for the dog. “Don’t tell your mother about this,” he cautioned Aurora.
They talked a great deal over dinner, and during the course of the conversation it was revealed that Brian Garroway had somehow fingered George as the reason for his sudden loss of girlfriend (Aurora had told him nothing; at the moment of the breakup Brian had become so self-righteously angry that she had not even bothered trying to explain the why behind her decision).
“He said he only suspected,” Walter told them, “but he said it was a strong suspicion, and terrible if it turned out to be true. Made you out to be a real corrupt character, George, a no-account purveyer of filth trying to destroy the morals of every literate soul in America. Just like that James Joyce. Of course after an introduction like that I couldn’t wait to read your books. Town library didn’t have them, and neither did the five and dime, so I took a drive down to Milwaukee.”
“Milwaukee?” said George. “But that must be fifty miles south of here.”
“Fifty-three,” Walter corrected. “And worth every minute of the trip. Marvelous writing . . . I haven’t been so entertained since I discovered Bel Kaufman back in seventy-five.”
George was deeply flattered by this, though he hadn’t the slightest idea who Bel Kaufman was or what she had written. Aurora, wondering what precisely had gotten into her father, fell silent and gobbled down an abundance of cucumber sandwiches, which gave rise to a loud burping fit during dessert. She excused herself and rushed off to the bathroom.
No sooner had Aurora departed than Walter also got up from the table.
“Come on,” he said to George, gesturing.
“Come on?”
“Get your coat,” said Walter. “We’ll go out for a walk. There are a few things I want to talk over with you.”
“All right.” Leaving his dessert unfinished, George stood and followed Walter outside. Left unsupervised, Luther set about methodically devouring every remaining morsel on the table.
The two men walked parallel to the sunset, coming eventually to the great cow pasture that bordered the Smiths’ property. Snow lay only sparsely on the ground, but it made a pleasant crunch beneath their feet, adding a cadence to the conversation.
“I’m going to use an old-fashioned expression,” Walter warned, and then did: “You consider yourself a suitor for my daughter’s hand?”
“Do I plan to marry her, you mean?” asked George. He thought this over a moment and laughed. “Talking marriage already, man oh man . . . well hell, who knows, I suppose that might be in the cards.”
“Never mind supposes and never mind the cards, son. You’ve got a will of your own, don’t you? Do you want to marry her, or not marry her, or some other option?”
“I love your daughter,” George said earnestly, “and for all that it’s come out of nowhere I have a feeling I’m going to stay in love with her, which means, to my way of thinking, that we’ll eventually get married unless her feeling for me changes. But . . . I want you to understand that I consider myself a strong-willed person. Mr. Smith, but Fate doesn’t always listen to will, and lately I’ve gotten especially nervous about Fate. Even if I did decide to marry your daughter, you never know, a flash flood might come sweeping through tomorrow morning and carry her off someplace where I can’t find her, or an earthquake . . .”
“We’ll put you down as a tentative suitor,” Walter decided. “And as a concerned potential father-in-law, of course, I get to ask you some personal questions to make sure you’re the right sort of fellow. I expect total honesty, now—I got sharp eyes, I’ll know if you’re lying to me.” He began to rattle off a long list of queries, which Ceorge answered as best he could: “Are you in any way peculiar?”
“Yes sir, I guess I am.”
“Praise the Lord. Ever been convicted of a felony?”
“No sir.”
“Ever commit a felony and not get caught?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Ever want to commit a felony?”
“Like what, Mr. Smith?”
“Oh, I don’t know . . . something interesting like train robbery or vandalizing a national monument.”
“I could think about it if you’d like me to.”
“Fine—I’m going to hold you to that. Ever been a member of a subversive organization?”
“The Writers’ Guild of America.”
“Not good enough.”
“I went on a Unitarian Church picnic once.”
“You’re my man. Have any homosexual tendencies?”
“Not unless they’re lesbian tendencies.”
“Pity. You a drinking man, George?”
“Occasionally. I’ve toned it down since my undergrad days.”
“Better for your liver that way. Take any drugs?”
“Well . . . it’s more or less traditional to experiment in college, you know, and at Cornell—”
“Smoke any pot?”
George nodded, tentatively. “Been known to. But not often—I can’t write worth shit with a buzz on.”
“You write every day, do you?”
“I ought to. Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.”
“I know how that is. Plan on doing any writing tonight?”
“Tonight? No, this is my vacation time.”
“Well then.” Abruptly, and with a suddenness that belied his years, Walter Smith turned and vaulted the fence in a single bound. Once on the far side he spun himself around several times, laughing like a schoolboy.
“Mr. Smith?” George inquired, fearing a brain tumor.
“George,” Walter replied, stopping his spin. “George, you’ll be happy to know that I’ve decided to give my full blessing to you and Aurora, whatever you may want to do with each other. Now how about we say screw formality and go get stoned over by that tree stump yonder?”
There are some offers which a wise man does not even consider rejecting. In any case, the sight of this senior citizen producing a joint from his breast pocket—and not just an ordinary joint, either, but a six-inch Bob Marley Memorial—so stunned George that he could not help but comply. Nodding, he too vaulted the fence and followed Walter down to the old tree stump, where they talked about their respective unorthodoxies for as long as conversation was still possible.
A long time they were out there, smoking by the stump; the sun finished setting, the stars flickered into life, and a cold breeze blew, bothering them not at all. They only went back to the house when Aurora came and got them—her eyes wide at the sight of the two men
capering beneath the moon like mad priests—and long before that they were visited by the original aurora borealis, the glimmering Northern Lights. Caught up by that unearthly glow, a spectacle sent from a higher place, Walter Smith at last found peace, for now he knew, whether it ended well or poorly, his daughter’s life would not be average. George, never at peace—for storytellers and saints are not afforded such a luxury in this world—nevertheless appreciated the Lights as much as Walter did, for in that glow he could sense the soul of creation itself, and creation always made him smile.
SURPRISE PACKAGES
I.
Breakfast the next morning was almost exactly as it had been in Aurora’s dreams. They had fresh eggs specially purchased for the occasion, bacon, toast, butter, milk, and orange juice. Very traditional, but at the same time not, for once again Luther was up on the table partaking alongside them. The dog was the one element she had not dreamed in advance, but all else was the same: she and George smiling at each other across the bacon plate, her father laughing from the corner at some joke or other. Both men were red-eyed from the previous night’s smoking activity, but Aurora tactfully did not mention this.
When the last bit of egg had vanished from their plates, Aurora stood up and led George out of the house in much the same way as Walter had last evening. George did not even ask where they were going, for he had decided overnight that anything this family did after a meal was bound to be enjoyable. While Walter saw to the dishes, Aurora took George on a long, meandering journey through the surrounding countryside, stopping here and there to show him the memory-places of her childhood. Once they knelt to drink with cupped palms from a partly frozen stream, and she asked if this wouldn’t be a good site for destiny to bring two lovers together. George said he thought it would, and Aurora grasped his hand and pulled him to his feet, making him run upstream with her to an open field where a farm had once been. The field was heavily overgrown now, the only outbuilding left standing being a dark and weather-stained barn. The barn looked less than inviting—it looked haunted, in fact, perhaps with the spirits of long-departed milk cows—but it was to this very place that Aurora gestured.
“Inside,” she told him.
“What’s in there?”
She grinned and kissed his mouth. “It’s a surprise.”
II.
Many miles east, a snowball fight had whipped up on The Ithaca Commons. Two teenagers had started it, but it had rapidly spread to their friends and then to a group of younger children from the local elementary school, let loose for the holidays. Preacher and Jinsei—out to take advantage of the sunny Christmas Eve day—got caught somewhere in the middle of the fray and, laughing, began to pelt each other with armloads of snow.
About this same time, a particularly juicy slushball winged out of control and knocked off the hat of a beefy lthacop who was just stepping out of McDonald’s. The cop grunted and fixed a baleful stare on the eight-year-old pipsqueak who had thrown the slusher.
“Hey, cop!” piped the pipsqueak, who last evening had snuck into his parents’ bedroom to watch Blackboard Jungle on late-night TV. “What’s ya name, cop?”
“Doubleday,” the cop roared. “Sam Doubleday.”
“Ooooooh!” replied the pipsqueak, matching bellow for bellow. “Ooooooh, Double-day!” And he winged another slushball, hitting dead center on the chest this time.
Doubleday, murder in his eye, unhooked his nightstick from his belt and did a lumbering buffalo’s charge at the pipsqueak. The pipsqueak, immature but not stupid, made an immediate run for it. What followed was an uneven chase, for Doubleday, with his considerable bulk, was restricted to the paths an early plow had cleared on The Commons, while his small tormentor scrambled easily over the highest snowbanks.
It was into one of these snowbanks that Preacher and Jinsei had collapsed in a tight embrace. Both of them would have been content to remain locked together until the spring thaw, but the passing of the pipsqueak (the bellowing Doubleday remarkably close on his heels) disturbed their intimacy. Preacher raised his head to glance around at the commotion, receiving a severe shock from what turned out to be an optical illusion. His eyes at a low angle, he spied a nearby pair of black boots, black pants, the hem of a black trenchcoat . . .
“Rag!” he blurted out, an instant before realizing that the head sticking up above the collar of the trenchcoat was that of a jaundiced woman with coke-spoon earrings. The woman made no attempt at recognition but walked onward in search of leather goods, leaving the two lovers to their business in the snow. Jinsei reached up to the touch Preacher’s face; he shied back, the mood ruined.
He had long since given up feeling guilty, of course; guilt is a difficult emotion to maintain when you know you have done nothing wrong. But the loss of a best friend—you can agonize over that forever, even if, again, you rest assured of your innocence. Ragnarok had done a heroic job of avoidance over the last two months, yet while Preacher had not seen him personally he kept encountering reminders of him, which were no less upsetting.
“Let’s walk,” Jinsei said, forcing him to stand. Down at one end of The Commons, Doubleday had successfully chased the pipsqueak up a traffic signal pole and was shouting the most dire threats at him; they turned and headed the other way. Speaking in soft tones, Jinsei tried to lull Preacher back to pleasanter thoughts, only to be thwarted by the appearance of another figure garbed in black. This fellow, a mime, wore a bulky robe rather than a trenchcoat, but his face was painted an obscene pale white and he stood within an inch of Ragnarok’s height.
The mime was handing out flyers; Jinsei and Preacher moved to avoid him but he sidestepped even as they did, thrusting a paper in Preacher’s hand and then whirling away with a wink.
“What does it say?” Jinsei asked him. Preacher shrugged and handed her the flyer, which read:
THE NEWLY FORMED BARDIC TROUPE OF ITHACA
gives advance announcement
of a wondrous Shakespearean event Coming in March
ROMEO AND JULIET
“A tale of star-cross’d lovers . . .”
and
JULIUS CAESAR
watch for further details
in the coming weeks
Jinsei looked at Preacher and smiled.
“‘Star-cross’d lovers,’” she said, squeezing his hand. “I like the sound of that, don’t you?”
III.
The hayloft was high above the barn floor, the ladder leading to it rickety enough that you were quite content just to make it safely to the top, though there was precious little to see. The last bales of hay had long since been removed, and all that remained on the hard wooden platform were some rusting farm implements, a scattering of chaff, and a pair of plaid quilts that were a little moldy but good for sitting on. It was warm in the loft, surprisingly so; a draft whined somewhere off in the rafters but did not disturb them.
“So what do we do?” George asked when they had got themselves settled. “Enjoy the view?”
“The view’s exciting,” Aurora said seriously, glancing down at the distant barn floor, “but I had something else in mind.”
She lifted a loose plank near the corner of the platform, and in what seemed to George an act of pure magic, produced a bottle of red wine and two crystal goblets from the space beneath.
“How did that get up here?” he gasped. “What did you do, sneak out in the middle of the night?”
“No, silly,” Aurora laughed, wiping the goblets with the sleeve of her coat. “These have been here since I was twelve.”
“Since you were twelve?”
“Yep. This was my secret hideout when I was little. All of the other kids were afraid of it because there were supposed to be monsters inside, but I had a great time playing here. This loft makes a great pretend balcony for a Princess to address her loyal subjects.”
George nodded, smiling. “But what about the wine and the cups? Where’d you get them in the first place?”
“A man gave them to m
e.”
“What man?”
Aurora shrugged. “I don’t know. A stranger who was standing outside in the field one day. Southern European looking, Spanish or maybe Greek. Friendly eyes. Maybe I should have been afraid of him but I wasn’t. He said he had a present for me, something I should save until the time was right.” She handed George the wine, and a silver corkscrew. “Here, you do the honors.”
George studied the bottle in his hand.
“Interesting label,” he said. “‘Leidenschaft von Heiliger . . . ‘”
“‘Doctor Faustus Vineyards,’” Aurora finished for him. “‘Vintage 1749.’”
“Sounds like a joke,” George decided. “And there’s no way it could be that old. I’ll bet it’s just grape juice laced with codeine—that stranger was probably a drug pusher out to get you hooked.”
“I took codeine once,” she said. “For an car infection. It’s not all that terrible.”
“Might be poisoned, too.”
She shook her head. “It’s not poisoned.”
“How do you know?”
“The same way I know it’s time to open it. I just do.”
Nodding, George argued no further but broke the wax seal on the bottle and inserted the corkscrew. The cork came out with a pleasant ease; the wine murmured comfortably as he poured it.
“Tell me about the monsters,” George said, when they had toasted each other.
“Hmm?”
“The monsters that were supposed to be inside the barn when you were little.”
“Oh, that.” She shrugged. “Plain old ghosts, I suppose . . . whose I don’t even know. I guess I couldn’t bring myself to be scared over what was dead and buried. It was nice, really, having a private place where nobody else would bother me.”
“Nice,” George agreed, his tongue already heavy though his goblet was not yet half empty. Heady stuff.
“You know I’m still a virgin,” Aurora said next, and the wine must have affected him, for the sudden change of topic did not, as it normally would have, cause him to choke, drop his cup, or otherwise lose control of his bodily functions.