Fool on the Hill

by Matt Ruff

  The bird was quick, but love was quicker. All at once Aurora was at George’s side, shoving him to the floor while he was still caught up in his own tale. She had reacted instinctively—or so it seemed—and only barely in time; the Messenger missed clipping one of them by mere inches. Momentum carried it to the Head Table, where it crash-landed noisily in Lion-Heart’s plate, knocking bread crusts and chicken bones into the Bohemian King’s lap. Jinsei recognized it from The Boneyard and began to shriek, yet underneath her shock she was furious. She snatched up a mug of the ginger brandied drink and hurled it.

  The drink was scalding hot; steam rose from the Messenger’s wings and chest as it backpedaled. Its own shriek was like a gale whistling through a crack; it toppled backwards off the table, spraying melted bits of itself all over the floor.

  George was struggling to his feet. The Messenger oriented on him and came again, flying a good deal less steadily than before. George had the pages of his story in hand, and he hurled them at the approaching bird. The sheets sprayed in a perfect blinding pattern; once more the Messenger narrowly missed its target, skidding onto the surface of one of the side tables this time.

  “Give me that!” Aurora shouted, looking to Ragnarok. The Black Knight did not have to ask what she meant; he snatched up the lightning rod and tossed it underhand to her. Aurora reached up and caught it one-handed, even as the Messenger flew again at George. She turned and thrust, sizzling a hole through the ice bird’s throat, catching it, drawing not blood but water.

  The Messenger’s wings beat the air ferociously but it could not unskewer itself, and now George’s hands joined Aurora’s in gripping the lightning rod. Together they began to turn in place, swinging the rod around as if in some odd courtship dance. Three times they turned, and then, screaming for everybody to get out of the way, get out of the way, Aurora’s arms flexed, George’s arms flexed, and they hurled both bird and iron at the blazing hearth. For one instant it seemed as if the retreating bird glared at them with two pairs of eyes, one inside the other; then the Messenger plunged into the fire and vanished in a cloud of steam. The fire guttered out; frost settled on the coals. The bird was gone.

  “That’ll teach you,” said Mr. Sunshine. “See how you manage without it.”

  Another silence descended over the dining hall, this one very much like the silence on the Arts Quad some twenty-two days earlier, just after the Rubbermaid had slid to the ground. The parallel was apt; a good many of the Bohemians looked like mannequins as they gaped at the blackened hearth. A chill draft crept in through the window the Messenger had broken.

  Ragnarok was the first to break the paralysis. With careful, trance-like motions he picked up the fallen pages of George’s tale, setting them in order.

  “Finish it,” he said, handing the story back to the teller.

  BLACKJACK’S LAMENT

  The Bohemians were not the only ones on The Hill to have suffered a recent loss, but they certainly took it better than some: the day after Preacher’s wake found Blackjack crouched in the slush at the base of Ezra Cornell’s statue, consumed with self-pity. On the Arts Quad before him, a good half dozen dogs chased and frolicked in the snow, obscenely cheerful; if the sky had fallen in on the lot of them, the Manx would have rejoiced.

  Stupid mutts, he grumbled to himself. In particular his anger focused on Skippy, the ludicrous, hyperactive excuse of a Beagle who had brought him the news of his abandonment.

  “He was in this big car, with two Masters sitting up front, and he wanted you to know that he’d be back.”

  “Be back? What do you mean, be back? Where was he going?”

  “Well I’m not sure, exactly—I got a litle dizzy just then. I thought he said he was going to Heaven, but of course that’s silly, you can’t go there while you’re still alive. It’s funny how you get things wrong when you’re a little dizzy, isn’t it Blackjack? Huh? Huh? Isn’t it funny?”

  “It’s a betrayal,” Blackjack said now, claws extended. Oh, for a deserving muzzle to slash. . . . Yet even after being deserted he could not bring himself to hate Luther. He missed the mongrel son of a bitch, that was the problem, and it just added to his anger, made him wish all the more that some other dog or cat would pick a fight. Not that he expected any of these damned University animals to have the guts to try it.

  His emotions had run embarrassingly out of control since Luther’s disappearance. Denied the release of aggression, he had chosen another outlet for his feelings: at the moment, there were no less than five pregnant pusses roaming The Hill, all with Blackjack to thank for their condition. Sable, whom he had mated back in August had already littered half a dozen young; now the Manx threatened to be overrun by progeny. The irony of it was that Blackjack could not stand kittens, and was only too thankful that he had no responsibility toward their upbringing.

  Luther, where are you ? How far did you go this time? Once or twice he had considered trying to pick up a scent, searching for his lost friend. But if Luther had been in a car, there was no telling how far he might have been taken, or whether he would stay in one place. And all impracticality aside, Blackjack did not want to face the open road again. He had seen enough of it.

  Sorry, Luther. You left without telling me, this time you’re on your own. Unless the loneliness became more than he could bear. But until then he would keep to The Hill with its cold winds and snows, where Luther’s beloved Heaven scent was now suffused with another smell, like the smell of rat but far less tasty. For a stray, Ithaca was no paradise in winter, but the Bronx had been just as cold and food even harder to find. Yes, it was definitely preferable to the road.

  “You listen, caht,” the Puli Rover Too-Bad had said to him yesterday. “I an’ I got premonition ‘bout your Luther.”

  “Premonition?” Blackjack asked skeptically. He respected intuition even less than kittens.

  “Jus’ so. You don’t worry ‘bout him; that dahg, he come home wit’ Lady Spring.” After a hesitation he added: “If spring come.”

  “If?” The Manx was amused for the first time in weeks. “You mean that here in Heaven, even the seasons are optional?”

  “No joke, Blackjack, I an’ I jus’ want t’say you ought worry less ‘bout Luther, more ‘bout you. Don’t you smell it? Raaq—Raaq in the air. Bad time comin’ to this place.”

  “Bad time? Well, Jah love and all, Rover, but I don’t imagine a little stench in the wind is going to get me frightened, and as for your Devil, since I’m in the mood for a scrap it might be the best thing if he found me.”

  Before long the Puli had passed on, annoyed, leaving Blackjack much entertained . . . at least while he remained awake. But cats do not remember their dreams, and in the dark world of nightmare premonition becomes more than possible. That night in sleep the Manx was pursued relentlessly by a sharp-toothed monster that he knew all too well, that he had thought left behind but which now gained on him with the same implacable determination that drew Luther back toward Ithaca from the west. And when Blackjack awoke, he too was awaiting the black tidings of the Ides of March, though he did not realize it.

  Meanwhile, Rasferret decided to amuse himself by having another go at the young Asian who had escaped him on New Year’s Eve. The clock wound itself for another killing hour.

  RASFERRET AND THE BLACK KNIGHT

  I.

  Carl Sagan’s house perched on the rim of the Gorge, inviting speculation, as always, about what it might be like inside. Outside it looked more like a concrete bunker than anything else, proof against any meteorites or gamma rays that might pass by. Rumors about the interior, however, told of such wonders as a laser-lit jacuzzi, fully automated wet bar with robot butler, and a custom-made holograph room in which one could sit and watch the movements of billions and billions of computer-generated stars.

  “So what did Preacher tell you?” the Black Knight asked. “About me?”

  “What he could. No much. I wanted to understand your . . . attitude.”

  After
an evening of studied procrastination in which almost no meaningful words passed between them, Raganork and Jinsei had gone out into the winter night, Rag guiding his motorcycle carefully around the patches of ice that littered the road. Now, parked on the northern side of the Cayuga Heights Bridge overlooking Fall Creek (downgorge from the suspension bridge), it seemed that the silence was finally breaking. The lights of northern Ithaca, stretching off to the west, reflected off Ragnarok’s glasses as he peered over the side. Below, the Creek tumbled over a waterfall, whispering loudly in the darkness.

  “My attitude.” Ragnarok laughed. “You mean my emotional problem, don’t you?”

  “Whatever you want to call it,” said Jinsei. “It scares me. It scares the hell out of me. I’m just sorry if you think Preacher was wrong to say anything.”

  “Wrong? No, that’s not it, I never swore him to secrecy on it. It’s just . . . as far as understanding goes, I’m not sure if you can.

  “Violence. That’s my first reaction when I’m angry, or upset, or scared, extreme violence, and I’m good at it, Jinsei, but I can’t control it. The only other reaction I know is running away, and I don’t do that enough, and always at the wrong times.”

  “I don’t know,” Jinsei said. “Maybe it makes you feel guilty, but I’m still glad, that night in front of the Straight, that there was someone there who was more violent than those fraternity brothers, and on my side. And then that morning in Risley after the Halloween Party—whatever you were feeling, if you couldn’t stay and talk to us about it, I’d much rather have had you run away than take a swing at Preacher. I think you acted as well as you could both times.”

  “For the wrong reasons!” Ragnarok insisted. “I wasn’t being your knight in shining armor when I put the fear into Jack Baron that night. That was Klancraft, terrorism in action. Only thing missing was the hood. You know who taught me the Craft, my father, and you can bet he didn’t have the best interests of the Asian-American community in mind when he did it.”

  “Forget what he had in mind, what about you, Rag? You were just a boy, you cared about your father, and how could you help but believe what you were taught, at least at first. I’m still amazed that you managed to break away from it at all, from—”

  “I didn’t break away far enough! Not far enough, not soon enough. You’re right, I did care about my father, I was Drew Hyatt’s boy for sure. I hated the darks like he taught me—darks, what’s what I was supposed to call them, never niggers—and when I realized they weren’t the real enemy, I still had plenty of hate to go around. That’s the inheritance he gave me, violence and hatred, and I’ll never be rid of it. Don’t you see that?”

  “But . . .” Jinsei interjected.

  “But what?”

  “Just one question.”

  “What?”

  “Did you kill him?” Jinsei said. “Preacher knew you and your father had some sort of big fight at the end, right before you came north, and it was very bad, worse than Preacher thought he wanted to hear about. Did you kill him, Ragnarok? Is that what happened?”

  He looked at her, as if wondering where she found the gall or the courage to ask such a thing . . . and then nearly laughed again.

  “Kill him? Huh. No. No, I didn’t kill him.” The Bohemian turned again to stare out at the city lights. “The son of a bitch. But I wanted to More than anything else in the world, I wanted to.”

  II.

  The trucker’s name was Galatea Handel, and her eighteen-wheel rig, though not designed for livestock transport, was nonetheless loaded with a herd of pigs about ten hours overdue for an appointment with a Cortland County butcher. Engine trouble and navigation trouble had caused the extreme delay, and at this hour there was likely to be no one left to take delivery, but Galatea was damned if she’d keep charge of the animals any longer than absolutely necessary. Galatea’s rig had begun to stink to high heaven—or at least low heaven—and the choir of pig-voices became less and less bearable with each passing mile.

  She drove into Ithaca from the south on Route 13, took a wrong turn onto Seneca Street, and further improved her own temper by cruising aimlessly around downtown Ithaca for the next fifteen minutes. Several doublings back and misguided turns later she found herself at the base of The Hill, and, deciding higher was better, began following University Avenue upslope.

  The Boneyard was above her on her right when the rig’s engine gave out. Unlike earlier in the day, this time it went quietly, without clamor or smoke, just a sudden stall. The truck rolled to a swift halt and Galatea threw on the brakes before it had a chance to think about backing up.

  The pigs, seemingly impatient for their own slaughter, set up a squealing ruckus in protest of the delay. Galatea ignored them and climbed out of the cab, bringing a flashlight. Tensing at the chill in the air, she attempted to raise the cab for a look at the engine; it wouldn’t go up.

  “What the Christ . . .”

  Genuinely pissed off now, she made one more try, but the lift mechanism refused to cooperate.

  “I ought to bury you,” Galatea chastised the truck, conscious of the cemetery above her and not very comfortable about it. “You and the damn pigs.”

  Instead of whipping out a shovel, she crossed the road and went up to the nearest house, which was really more of a shack. There were no lights on in the place but that was ail right—if Galatea had to have a crappy night she saw no reason not to share the feeling.

  “Hello in there!” she shouted, rapping loudly on the front door. “Hey, wake—”

  The door shook under the force of her knock. The lock jiggered, clicked, and all at once the door swung inward. It was black inside the house. Very black.

  “What a creepy fuckin’ place,” Galatea observed. She pushed the door all the way open and took a step inside. “Hello, anybody home? I—”

  The house having been officially pronounced creepy, Galatea would not have been altogether surprised if something had come leaping out of the darkness at her. The soft rattle and thump of her truck leaving without her, though—that came as a shock.

  “Hey!” she shouted, spinning around. “Hey, hey who the f—”

  There was no who, not that could be seen. In the dark the cab looked empty, though of course that could not be. Stranger still, the unseen driver had somehow gotten the truck moving uphill without actually restarting it, for the engine made no sound. This was apparent even though the pigs were making an incredible racket, not just squealing but screaming, as if they had arrived at the butcher’s and hung upside down before the knife, at last comprehending their fate.

  The rig accelerated faster than would have been possible even with the engine running, yet Galatea raced after it, catching up with the cab before it could make good its escape. She threw herself up the side, grasping the driver’s door handle and struggling for a toehold. For a very brief moment she rode with the truck—just long enough to look in and verify that yes, there was no one behind the wheel. Then a jolt of the cab threw her off; her right foot shot beneath the truck trailer and was crushed by six of eighteen wheels.

  The rig drove on up The Hill, leaving her that way, and in her pain Galatea did not fully appreciate how lucky she was that it had not bothered to stop and reverse over her a few times. From her vantage point on the ground she could see right under the receding trailer, under the cab, to where the glow from the headlights splashed against the icy surface of the road.

  Blue, Galatea thought, beginning to scream. What the Christ, they’re shining blue . . .

  III.

  “It was over a batch of shingles, that’s what brought on the final blowup,” Ragnarok told her. “Preacher told you my Dad was a carpenter, right? From the time I was fifteen I was sort of a junior partner in the business, helped him out when I wasn’t in school. When I was nineteen, Lisbeth Folkers’ father decided to have his roof redone. I was in charge of buying the materials. I got the shingles from Gordon-Small lumber out of Durham.”

  “A black-owned
lumber company?” Jinsei asked.

  “Gordon was black. Small was a Jew.” He smiled. “It was time, past time, for me to do something like that. Daddy was furious when he found out, of course, but it was too late to send the shingles back—they were already nailed up. Who knows, if Pa Folkers had got wind of it he might have had them torn up and replaced anyway, but my father didn’t go out of his way to tell him.

  “So we had our fight. Started out as a lot of yelling, but I said all the wrong things and he just snapped, pushed me . . . we had a mirror, a wood-framed standing mirror that had been in the living room as long as I could remember, he pushed me right into it. Cut myself in about a dozen places. After that it wasn’t shouting anymore.”

  Ragnarok swallowed drily. “I had a piece of glass in my hand, sliver from the mirror, like a knife. I thought I’d cut his throat with it. Almost. Almost . . .”

  “But you didn’t,” Jinsei said.

  “I dropped it. When I went for him it just wasn’t in my hand anymore, so I punched him instead. More times than I had to. Then he fell down, started crying. You know the only thing worse than hearing your father cry is hearing him cry and knowing you did it to him. . . .” He trailed off. Shrugged. “Anyway, that was that. I walked out of the house, just kept walking. Starved off and on for a while on the road, least until I met Preacher’s family, but I never went back home again. I couldn’t; next time we had a fight it would have ended a lot worse.”

  “OK then,” said Jinsei. “So why don’t you give yourself a break, give it a rest?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You scare me,” she told him. “You scare me a lot. I think you scare yourself even more. You’ve got this image of yourself as a . . . I don’t know what, a storm trooper waiting to happen, maybe. And you may be too violent for your own good, that’s true, but I still don’t see the lack of control you’re so worried about. You beat up Bobby Shelton, you probably wanted to break Jack Baron’s neck, but you didn’t. God knows what you first had in mind to do when you saw me together with Preacher, but you didn’t. And your father—I don’t know what it must take to turn against nineteen years of . . . that sort of upbringing, but it doesn’t surprise me that you’d have to be angry, very angry, to do it. Angry enough to want to kill him. But you didn’t, Ragnarok.”