The Knights of the Cornerstone

by James P. Blaylock

  “That’s the one,’” she read, apparently baffled. “I don’t get it.” She looked at him blankly.

  His heart sank. “Well, I guess I wanted to imply that …”

  “You’re so easy,” she said. “Okay, it’s funny. It really is. What do you do with these, mail them out to magazines?”

  “Sometimes, I guess.”

  “Sometimes? Like you did it once?”

  “Maybe two or three times. Take a look at this.” He flipped back a couple of pages to a drawing of a sheep floating through space. The caption read “To boldly go where no sheep has gone before.” “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Okay, this time I really don’t get it. Is this one of your Martian things? The brothers upstairs, or whatever it was? The sheep upstairs?”

  “No! Are you kidding? It’s a line from Star Trek!”

  “Sheep?”

  “In Star Trek it was people—mankind. Look at this one.” He turned the page. This time the sheep was climbing a pyramid. On the adjacent page the same sheep was swimming under the ocean. There was a jellyfish going past and a starfish on a rock.

  “I’m not sure ‘to boldly go’ sounds right. I’d write, ‘to go boldly.’”

  “Right. Me, too. It’s a split infinitive. But you must have seen Star Trek at least once or twice. …”

  “I don’t think so. But I’m absolutely certain that if I had seen it I’d be laughing like crazy. I swear it.”

  “Don’t swear it if you don’t mean it,” he said, giving her a hard look.

  She nodded her head seriously. “I do mean it,” she said. “Under those other circumstances I’d be laughing. Hey, here’s one for you. You could draw a cartoon for it. What happened when the boardinghouse exploded?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Roomers were flying! That’s pretty good, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You should be the cartoonist.”

  “Except I didn’t make it up. It’s about a hundred years old. I heard it from Miles.”

  “Okay, I’m going to show you my most recent.”

  “Not another drawing of a sheep?”

  “No. This is an Attila the Hun gag. Check this out.” He flipped to the back of the book, grinning despite himself. She looked at the sketch—a picture of a perfectly round, perfectly flat man with a tiny little helmet on, holding a bottle that said “Mead” on it. Next to him stood a woman who looked like a cinnamon roll. The caption read ‘Tortilla the Hun and his Honey Bun.” He nodded at Donna. “Eh?” he said. “Is that funny, or what?”

  For a moment she stared at him poker-faced, but she apparently couldn’t keep it up, and she started laughing. Then she leaned forward and kissed him. He was silenced for a moment, and then realized that he was smiling stupidly at her, and that she knew she had struck him dumb. “We haven’t had enough champagne yet to …”

  “No. So it’s not the liquor talking.”

  “Speaking of the liquor talking, did you know that Attila the Hun drank himself to death on his wedding night?”

  “What a guy,” she said. “I bet it made his bride happy, though. Hey! I bet he drank mead! That explains the bottle.”

  “And the ‘honey bun’ in a way. Sort of.”

  “I get it—mead, honey wine. That’s so obscure. …” she said doubtfully.

  “Yeah, but that’s all right. People don’t have to get the whole thing.”

  “God knows that’s true. Lots of people never get the whole thing. Why don’t you put your sketchbook back into the bag? Your cartoons are really funny, by the way.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Thanks.” He got up and put the bag back into the Whaler. When he turned around he saw that her chair was empty and that she had spread a big beach towel down on the sand and was sitting on it.

  “Either you pitch some woo at me or I’m going to pitch you into the river and steal your cartoons,” she said. “It’s your choice.”

  “Give me a moment to decide,” he said.

  ON THE PAYROLL

  They ran the Whaler up to the dam, past the casinos and ferry docks, and then turned around and headed back downriver toward New Cyprus, catching up with and passing the New Cyprus ferry not far from home. His aunt was on board the ferry, with her back to them, and he saw Betty Jessup turn to say something to her. Nettie swung around and shaded her eyes, spotted the Whaler, and waved. He waved back. It was a solidly good thing, seeing Nettie out on the river.

  There was a wind coming up, but it seemed to cool things, like a trade wind, and he realized that for ten cents he’d be happy simply staying on the river, stopping here and there to launch the lawn chairs, watching the stars come out over the hills, maybe, and returning to their cove in the shelter of the Dead Mountains to sleep under the stars. Right now it sounded like the plan of a lifetime to him—a long lifetime. He looked at Donna, whose hair caught the sunshine and seemed to flare up. Ideally a really long lifetime, he thought.

  A crowd of people in a speedboat blasted past them heading upriver toward the dam, towing two children on big, flashy, canvas-covered inner tubes. He waved at the people in the boat, and they waved back cheerfully, and he wished at that moment that he could wave at the whole wide world, but instead he waved at the children on the tubes, one of whom, a little boy of maybe five or six, let go with one hand to return the wave, but immediately flew off the tube and went cartwheeling away across the water. Calvin turned to watch, feeling like a criminal as the speedboat slowed down to rescue the victim. Heck, he thought, every silver cloud …

  He watched New Cyprus approaching on the right. Donna swung the Whaler into the bay, cutting the engine way back, the boat sort of ghosting along over the smooth water. The fisherman was still out there, fifty yards downstream from where he’d been earlier, his line still slack. He apparently had all the patience in the world. He tilted his head back to take a drink of something, and just at that moment there was the gurgling roar of an approaching boat, which angled out away from the shore where it had apparently been hidden by cottonwoods—very near his uncle and aunt’s house.

  Calvin watched it swerve tightly around the end of the ferry dock and shoot downriver past the fisherman, passing so close that from Calvin’s perspective it looked like they had run him right down. But then he saw that they hadn’t. The fisherman stood up and shook his fist, and then grabbed on to the edge of the boat for balance as it rocked back and forth in the wake.

  Drunks, Calvin thought, out having a little fun, but suddenly Donna gunned it, and they were shooting in toward Taber’s dock at warp speed. She throttled down again at the last moment, backing water, and bumped softly against the dock, cutting the engine. “Tie it up!” she shouted, and headed up the dock at a run toward the house. The ferry came in behind them, moving strangely fast toward the dock on the island, and he had no sooner finished putting a couple of loops of line over the bollard than his cell phone rang, surprising him. He dug it out of his book bag and flipped it open, glancing at the long-distance number, which he didn’t recognize. A man was already talking, although about what Calvin had no idea. Then he realized it was Warren Hosmer, calling out of the blue like God in the Old Testament. “Sorry?” Calvin asked. “I didn’t hear that.”

  “I said they got him.”

  “They got who?” Calvin thought about the man in the rowboat, but why would Hosmer … ?

  “Lymon,” Hosmer said. “They got Lymon. Are you listening now, or should I get out the bullhorn? Betty Jessup rang through to me twenty seconds ago. Nettie went into town and left Al resting out on the river, in one of those chairs they have. When the ferry was coming back down just now, Betty caught sight of a boat down there along the shore—must have been a jet boat, because it came right out of shallow water, moving fast. They snatched him from right out behind the house. It was a bold damn stroke. They headed back downriver toward Needles, and I mean just now. Betty saw the whole thing.”

  “Good God,” Calvin said. “I saw
it, too. What should I do? Donna went up to tell Miles.”

  “I don’t know any Donna,” Hosmer said. “So what you’re saying conveys no meaning to my mind. Pipe down for a moment and listen to me. There’s only one thing to do—get him back. They’ll want the veil—maybe they already have it—but don’t be fooled. That’ll just be the start of it. What they really want is the whole nine yards, the whole ball of wax, the enchilada, and they mean to get it this time. They’ll ask for a ransom, but they won’t play ball once you throw it to them. They’ll knock it right back at you and ask you to buy another round, right up to last call, because they’re lying sacks of crap, every man jack of them. You hear what I’m saying? This is match point we’re talking about. Do what you’ve got to do, Cal. You’re on the payroll. Your time has come.”

  What do you think, Calvin?” his aunt asked him after Taber said he was stumped. “What would you have us do?” They were sitting in the Temple Bar, the swamp cooler sounding loud in the silence.

  “I’ve got no experience with this kind of thing,” Calvin said. “I didn’t even know it went on in the world.”

  “Well, it does,” Taber told him. “All kinds of things go on in this part of the world. What did the boat look like?”

  “It was blue or purple. Metal-flake, from the way the sun was shining off it.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” his aunt said. “Betty saw a name on the back. Looked like ‘paint’ or something.”

  “Painted Lady,” Calvin said. “I got the second word when they buzzed that fisherman. Maybe we can find the name of the boat owner by tracking the name of the boat.”

  “A boat doesn’t have to have a name,” Taber said, “so there’s no reason its name would be registered. We’d want the license number on the side, which we don’t have. We can ask around easy enough. It’s got to be a local, probably out of Needles. We have to find out why they took him—what they want.”

  “Obviously it’s the veil,” Calvin said. “That’s what Hosmer told me, anyway. I don’t know why they had to snatch Uncle Lymon, though, after Bob Postum offered me a bribe to deliver it out at the Gas’n’Go tomorrow. Why couldn’t he wait a day?”

  “Either he’s upping the ante or he doesn’t trust you to make that deal happen out at the Gas’n’Go, so he’s giving you more incentive. I’d have thought Lamar Morris would be enough to throw at you, but apparently he wants to push it a little further. He figures you’ll run, otherwise. They’re in an all-fire hurry to get this thing done.”

  “How about George Fowler? Maybe he can do something.”

  “George is just one man out there in a little bitty substation. If he needs a deputy he calls down to Ludlow. We don’t want to put in any calls down to Ludlow or anyplace else. And besides, this is bigger than that. We want to keep it in-house.” He fell silent for a moment and then said, “How are you getting along, Nettie?”

  “I’m doing well, Miles. Awfully well. Today was my first trip into town in I don’t know how long. It’s like a miracle. Prayer is what did it. That’s what Al says.”

  Calvin glanced at Taber, who nodded heavily. “I’ve got to ask,” Taber said to her. “Did Al tell you much about the veil?”

  “Which veil would that be?” she asked.

  “The one that Calvin brought out”

  “Not a thing, although when I was under the weather my mind wasn’t worth a nickel. Today’s different, but like I said, I haven’t felt like this in a couple of years. It’s like a weight’s been rolled away, and I’ve come out into the light.”

  “Good,” Taber said. “That’s good, Nettie.”

  “I praise God for it. What’s this veil, though? Is that what they’re after? That’s why they took Al?” Her eyes narrowed, and it was clear to Calvin that she wanted an answer, and he decided to let Taber give it to her.

  “Yes, it is. What Cal brought out here was the Veil of Veronica, which I believe you’ve heard of.”

  “I remember it, yes. I know the story well. They say it has healing powers. Al and I saw a carving in stone in Rosslyn Chapel, in Scotland, when we were out there in the nineteen sixties. We were traveling with Warren Hosmer and his wife, and I remember that he and Al made a connection concerning the veil with a man named MacLaine, but nothing came of it, as I recall. Al and Hosmer were always on the trail of something.”

  “Well, Hosmer got hold of the veil some time back. He’s had it out in Orange City, and he sent it on to us when things started to heat up out there. Our old friend de Charney and his crowd want it, and they know we have it. I expect we’ll hear a ransom demand, so we’ve got to figure out where it is.”

  “You just said you had it,” she said. “Didn’t you say that Calvin brought it out here?”

  “Yes, I did,” Taber said. “It was here in the Temple on that first night Cal arrived—Al brought it over with him—but now it’s not here. At least it’s not in the antechamber, where we put it.”

  She nodded slowly. “And you think Lymon took it over to the house? You think that’s why I’m here right now. Why I’m better? He made use of the veil?”

  “That’s what I believe, Nettie. I think he wanted to use it to take up some of your burden. To take it on himself.”

  She sat for a moment thinking, staring straight out in front of her, as if putting two and two together. “Yes,” she said finally. “He must have had it over to the house. I’m sure he did. Of course he did. That explains the change.” She began to cry silently, and Calvin looked away. “Did he take on the cancer?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, Nettie. We can’t …”

  “Yes, that’s it. I don’t even have to ask. He took on the cancer. I can feel it’s gone. He used it to heal me. He was laid up pretty bad this morning. I shouldn’t have left him alone. I should have known.”

  “You couldn’t have known, Nettie. You didn’t even know about the veil. You said so yourself. And what’s done is done. The faster we sort this out, the more chance we’ve got to put things right. If they got hold of the veil when they kidnapped Al, we have to know.”

  She nodded. “Then let’s take a look.” She wearily got up out of the chair. Calvin wondered suddenly if she still wanted to thank God for the way she was feeling, but the question was unworthy, and he pushed it out of his mind.

  “Cal,” Taber said, “why don’t you go on up to the house with Nettie and see if the veil’s there. Bring it back down if it is. I’m going to do some telephoning. We’ve got to be ready before that ransom call comes in.”

  Calvin and Nettie went out into the sunlight and crossed the footbridge. The afternoon had somehow turned into evening. His aunt stopped and looked out over the river, down toward Needles, as if she could see something on the water—the ghost of hope, perhaps. “He’s a good man,” she said, “but he’s a God-blessed fool sometimes.”

  Calvin’s cell phone rang again, and he flipped it open, ready to make his report to Hosmer. But it wasn’t Hosmer. It was Bob Postum.

  “Cal,” he said heartily. “I just wondered whether we were still on for that little meeting tomorrow out on the highway. From where I stand, it looks like a better idea now than it did yesterday, and yesterday it looked pretty good. Pot’s bigger now, too. Too high for a player like you to try to bluff. Like the man used to say on the news, Cal, ‘See you at ten, see you then.’”

  Calvin listened to nothing for a moment before flipping the phone shut.

  THE MEETING OF THE ELDERS

  They won’t buy it,” Whitey Sternbottom said. “A fake? Not a chance. They’d grab you, too, and then we’d have another person to spring. Except they’d probably just shoot you and dump your body in the lake out behind the Gas’n’Go. Lymon’s got too much stature for them to kill him without any gain, but you don’t, Cal—no insult intended.”

  “None taken,” Calvin said. “But if it really looked like the original, how would they know for sure? They’ve never seen it. I’d deliver the box, wait till they opened it, walk out, and
drive back toward Needles with the money in the trunk and Al in the front seat and give you a call on the cell phone. You could be waiting up the way to run interference if you had to.”

  “You’d never leave the parking lot,” Taber said. “Forget about any money. And what about Lymon? What if Lymon isn’t there? What the hell did Postum say, that the stakes were higher? That doesn’t mean they’ll have Al along with them. That means they can do what they please.”

  “Okay,” Calvin said, “then what if I took along a jar of kerosene and a lighter. If they don’t have Uncle Lymon, or won’t agree to let him go as a condition, then I threaten to dump kerosene over the box and burn the veil right there in the parking lot.”

  “Then they’ll know for damn sure it’s not the genuine article,” Taber said. “We’d never do a thing like that.”

  “You wouldn’t, but I would,” Calvin said. “Why not? It’s like burning an old flag or a bale of old money. It seems like a big deal, but once it’s gone, it’s gone—it’s just ashes. And right now it’s just a legend anyway, as far as anyone knows for sure, except us.”

  “Dust to dust,” his aunt said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Betty, what do you think?” Taber asked.

  “Whitey’s right,” Betty Jessup said. “It’s a fool’s errand. Even if they thought they had the veil, they wouldn’t let that money go. At best that pillowcase in the trunk will be stuffed with bundles of cut-up newspaper. Even if you asked to see the money before you handed the veil over—which anybody would—it wouldn’t make any difference. You’ve got no leverage.”

  “So what? I won’t ask to see it. I’d take the cut-up newspaper and drive away.”

  “You’d be lucky if you went anywhere,” Whitey said. “Even if you were good enough to convince them it was the veil, they wouldn’t tell you where they were holding Lymon. And your fancy analogy won’t work. This isn’t old money and it isn’t a worn-out flag. It isn’t any kind of symbol. It’s the Veil of Veronica. And just to put it in perspective, this transaction is the start of things, not the end. You’re thinking short term, but they won’t be.”