Thirteen Ways to Water

by Bruce Holland Rogers

Julian looked away from the window. Randal had stopped reading some moments ago, and Julian was aware that he’d gone on staring out the window for some time after the secretary’s interruption. The secretary stood in the doorway, as if she had no right to cross the threshold. “Dr. Preston,” she said, “there was an emergency call for you.” She held a slip of paper.

  “Yes,” Julian said. It was time. Anna was going. He felt relieved, and then ashamed. “Yes, all right.”

  Julian’s mother-in-law had made the call from the hospice. She would collect Yvonne from school and Nick from day care and meet him.

  As he drove out of town toward the hospice, the snow fell thick and fast. It swirled in his headlights and sometimes blew in the same direction that he traveled. In his daze, it seemed that the car was standing still, that the wheels rolled and bumped but somehow didn’t carry him forward. He took his foot from the accelerator again and again, tried his brights, though that was worse. He opened his eyes very wide and fought to stay awake and on the road.

  There was no other traffic, and it was dark, astonishingly dark for the early afternoon. Why did the hospice have to be a dozen miles out of town? But he knew the answer to that. He understood.

  He almost missed the turn-off. The lights of the hospice were just barely visible from the road. The parking lot had not been plowed, and Julian half drove, half sledded to the far corner of the lot, away from the other cars.

  When he turned off his lights and killed the engine, the light outside seemed to shift. It was dark, but not too dark to see by. There was a sort of blue-gray glow to the woods that surrounded the parking lot.

  Now that he could release it, Julian felt how heavy the burden of staying alert and focused had been. He wanted to melt into his seat and keep on melting. Something gnawed in his stomach, and he realized that he was hungry. Famished. He couldn’t remember eating breakfast—he’d been so busy getting the kids ready for school and day care. Had he eaten lunch?

  They’d have something for him inside, if he asked. They were so good at this place, terribly good at noticing, terribly good at being concerned for everyone involved.

  He closed his eyes. He should go in. They were waiting for him—his son, his daughter, his mother-in-law. He wondered about Anna, wondered if his wife had already…

  But he’d know in a bit. He’d go in.

  Right now, though, he wanted, for just a moment, to rest here, to let all the effort fall away. He could hear the snow falling, hissing gently, gently, a cottony sound…

  A bell jangled.

  He opened his eyes. The window was open, and snow was blowing into the car.

  The bell jangled again. He squinted into the darkness, and he could see that there was an old-fashioned telephone mounted on the tree next to his car. When the bell jangled a third time, he got out of the car to answer it.

  “Yes?” he said. “Hello?”

  “Julian?” said the tinny voice in the earpiece.

  “Anna?”

  “Julian?”

  “Anna? Is it really you?”

  “Julian?” she said, and there was no doubting that it was her.

  “Anna! Anna, sweetheart!”

  “Julian?”

  “Yes, it’s me!” he said. “Oh, God, Anna!” He felt weak with relief. He could hardly stand. “It’s so good to hear you!”

  “Julian?”

  “Can’t you hear me? I can hear you fine. Anna?”

  “Julian?”

  “Anna!” he shouted into the mouthpiece.

  Only there wasn’t any mouthpiece, just a knot hole in the tree that he had wrapped his arms around.

  An orange glow came and went, and a voice from behind Julian said, “Bad connection?”

  He turned. He saw nothing but trees.

  “Bad connections won’t do you any good, you know,” said the voice. “In this world, who you know is a big part of who you are.” Then the orange glow returned, allowing Julian to make out an enormous caterpillar sitting on a tree branch and smoking a long hookah. The glow came from the tobacco burning in the bowl.

  “And by the way,” the Caterpillar went on, “Who are you?”

  When Julian didn’t answer, the Caterpillar said, “Well, speak up!”

  “I’m dreaming,” Julian concluded.

  “Yes, yes, of course you are,” said the Caterpillar. “Or else someone is dreaming you. You can’t tell until the very end! But in the meantime, you might be civil.”

  Julian pinched himself, or dreamed that he pinched himself. The pain felt real enough, and the Caterpillar was still there.

  “I’m Julian Preston,” he said, giving in. “Professor of English.”

  “Professor in English, you mean,” said the Caterpillar.

  “Of English.”

  “Don’t be rude. I heard you, just a moment ago, profess to be Julian Preston, and you didn’t do it in Latin.”

  “I mean that I teach poetry.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said the Caterpillar. “Poetry has a thing or two to learn. It has more feet than I do and they’re terribly difficult to keep track of. ‘A was an archer, who shot at a frog; B was a butcher, and had a great dog.’ When you say that one, you ought to beat your chest.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s written in Pectorals.”

  “That’s not the right term.”

  “No?”

  “No, but at the moment the correct term slips my mind.”

  “So you say. You’ve only professed in English to know poetry. I think you ought to repeat some. Know any Dickinson?”

  “Of course,” Julian said, and he recited:

  Because I could not stop for Toast—

  Toast kindly stopped for me—

  And brought along a shapely Egg—

  And Jam and Juice and Tea.

  We chatted long—Toast knows so much

  And speaks of all it knows,

  Such matters as the Feat of Rhymes

  And whether Verse has Toes—

  Then round about began to dance

  The Toast as it talked on

  Of how each day gets started with

  The Yeasting of the Sun—

  Toast passed the Juice, then passed the Tea—

  At last Toast passed the Milk—

  The Toast went racing by them all

  Until at last I spoke—

  Said I—This is all interesting

  Or would be if I knew

  How it relates to Any Thing

  I think or am or do—

  But as I haven’t dined as yet

  And as you’re toasted Bread—

  Instead of puzzling out your Thoughts

  I’ll eat you up instead.

  “That is not said right,” said the Caterpillar.

  “It does sound a little off,” Julian admitted.

  “It is wrong from beginning to end,” said the Caterpillar decidedly, “and revealing, too. I expect you forgot to eat breakfast today.”

  “I may have. I feel as though there are a lot of things I’m forgetting. When I was speaking to my wife a little while ago, I was quite surprised to be hearing from her, but I don’t remember why.”

  “Ah, that,” said the Caterpillar. “Well, it will be clear soon enough. Not that clarity helps.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to, did I?” said the Caterpillar. It put the hookah into its mouth and began smoking again. Then it yawned, shook itself, got down from the branch and crawled away over the black carpet of fallen leaves. “You’ve got to go deeper in to get further out,” it said. “That’s the nature of the tulgey wood.”

  “The tulgey wood?”

  “Where you are!”

  “Where you are!” said another voice, as if in Julian’s ear. He turned, but this time he was quite sure that there was nothing before him but the trees.

  “And as long as you are,” said another nearby voice, “you’ve got to be somewhere.”

  “
Until you aren’t,” said a third voice, “and sooner or later you won’t be.”

  “Won’t be what?” said Julian.

  “Whatever you are,” said the first voice.

  “Or anything else, for that matter,” said the third.

  Julian wasn’t sure, but he thought it might be the trees themselves that were speaking to him. They seemed to sort of sway in time with the words.

  “I wish I could see you,” Julian said. “It’s awfully dark.”

  “Awfully splendidly,” said the first voice.

  “Awfully wonderfully,” said the second.

  “Awfully terribly beautifully dark,” said the third. “Too dark to see the stars!”

  “No stars! How delightful!” said the first.

  Now Julian was positive—the voices were indeed coining from the trees, and they were swaying as they spoke. Not only did they sway from side to side, but the bare branches moved like arms. One branch bent down and pushed Julian backwards. Before he could protest, another was pushing him in the same direction.

  “Careful!” he said. “I can’t see where I’m going!”

  But the trees showed no sign that they heard him. They kept pushing him toward a part of the forest that was, if anything, darker than where he already was. And as the branches shoved him, the tulgey wood sang in voices that varied as he moved past different trees:

  Beautiful Dark in heaven so wide

  Through thine emptiness we glide

  How to escape you? There’s nowhere to hide,

  Dark of the nightfall, beautiful Dark!

  Dark of the nightfall, beautiful Dark!

  Beau—ootiful Daa—aark!

  Beau—ootiful Daa—aark!

  Darkness of Nightfall,

  Beautiful, beautiful Dark!

  Even in daylight thou seemst to say,

  I’m in the shadows, come, come away.

  Not long do we tarry, swift ends the day.

  Dark of the nightfall, beautiful Dark!

  Dark of the nightfall, beautiful Dark!

  Beau—ootiful Daa—aark!

  Beau—ootiful Daa—aark!

  Darkness of Nightfall,

  Beautiful, beautiful Dark!

  Creep in about us, comforting gloom,

  Without your predations, we’d run out of room,

  We welcome you, welcome you, welcome you, doom.

  Dark of the nightfall, beautiful Dark!

  Dark of the nightfall, beautiful Dark!

  Beau—ootiful Daa—aark!

  Beau—ootiful Daa—aark!

  Darkness of Nightfall,

  Beautiful, beautiful Dark!

  “Chorus again!” cried one of the voices, just as Julian found himself in absolute blackness. The branches stopped pushing. All the trees had just begun to repeat the chorus when a very different voice called out, “Time for the judging! He’s needed for the judging!”

  “Out, out, out, then!” said one of the tree voices while the rest continued to sing. Branches swept him forward again, but not, to Julian’s dismay, back into the light. It was as dark as ever when the words faded into the distance:

  Darkness of Nightfall,

  Beautiful, beautiful Dark!

  He realized, suddenly, that the branches were no longer urging him forward, though he’d kept on walking.

  Julian stopped.

  “You might go a little further,” said a voice.

  “Contrariwise, you might stop where you are,” said a voice much like the first. “It hardly matters to us. You be the judge.”

  “He is the judge,” said the first.

  “I don’t suppose,” said Julian, “that you would have a light?”

  “If you suppose we did, then we may not,” said the first voice.

  “Contrariwise,” said the second, “if you supposed we didn’t, we might yet. And if you didn’t suppose at all, we could still. That’s logic.”

  Suddenly, the sun was blazing overhead, and Julian found that he was standing on the edge of a cloud. If he only took a step to the left, he’d go plummeting toward the distant ground.

  The speakers, not to Julian’s surprise at all, turned out to be wearing identical outfits, and stood, each with an arm around the other’s neck, a little higher up on the cloud. Julian could see ‘DUM’ embroidered on one of the collars, and ‘DEE’ on the other. Of course, round the back of each collar would be ‘TWEEDLE.’

  What did surprise Julian was that Tweedledum and Tweedledee were not fat. In fact, they were almost skeletal.

  “Bring on the Ace!” said Tweedledum, and four playing cards entered through a door in the cloud. Two of the cards walked on either side of the Ace of Spades, who was struggling heroically against them.

  The fourth card, walking behind, carried a large axe on his shoulder.

  “I won’t! I won’t!” said the struggling Ace. “I positively refuse! Never! Never!”

  “What’s this about?” said Julian.

  “It’s about over,” said Tweedledee.

  The soldier cards dragged the struggling Ace behind a screen that was just short enough to show the axe rise a moment before it fell with a great CHOP!

  Three cards emerged from behind the screen and exited.

  “What do you think?” said Tweedledum.

  “Ghastly!” Julian said.

  “Quite,” said Tweedledee.

  “Contrariwise,” said Tweedledum, “it was heroic. But is it the best?”

  “The best?”

  “That’s right,” said Tweedledee. “He’s only seen one.”

  “The Deuce! The Deuce!” cried Tweedledum.

  Four cards emerged from the door in the cloud. This time, the prisoner was the Deuce of Spades.

  “He’s not struggling,” observed Julian.

  “Why should I?” said the Deuce. “The thing to do is accept what’s coming. There’s nothing to be done, anyway.”

  The cards went behind the screen. The axe rose and fell with a CHOP!

  As the surviving cards left, Tweedledum said, “Well?”

  “Horrid!” Julian said.

  “I was thinking philosophical,” said Tweedledee.

  “Better than the first?” asked his brother of Julian.

  “You’re asking me to compare them?”

  “He’s right,” said Tweedledee. “He has to see them all before he can decide.”

  Next was the Trey of Spades. He giggled as he was led toward the screen.

  “What’s funny about this?” Julian said.

  “It won’t really happen, you know,” the card said. “This is a big cosmic joke. What happens next is an illusion. Nobody really dies. I’ll be right back, you’ll see.”

  The axe rose and fell.

  “Foolish,” said Tweedledee. “There are some advantages to that one.”

  “They don’t last long,” observed Tweedledum. “Four’s next.” He called out, “The Four! The Four!”

  The Four of Spades emerged and actually led the way to the screen. He tried to hold himself up, make himself a little taller than his guards. “I give myself willingly,” he said. “Let there be a lesson in this. I permit, I invite it, so that you will all remember!”

  “Martyr’s death,” Tweedledee said as the axe fell.

  “Well I don’t think I will forget it,” Julian said, “or any of the others!”

  “You can hardly call it outstanding, in that case,” said Tweedledum, and he called for the Five.

  The Five of Spades had to be dragged to the screen. He said nothing, looked at no one.

  “Morbid sort,” said Tweedledee a moment in advance of the CHOP!

  “He has my sympathy,” said Julian.

  “But does he have your vote?” asked Tweedledum.

  “Yes,” said Tweedledee. “Which one wins?”

  “I can hardly say that any of them won,” said Julian.

  “A tie!” said Tweedledum and Tweedledee together.

  Tweedledum added, “Wonderful!”

&nbs
p; “Blue ribbons for all of them!” said Tweedledee, clapping his bony hands. “How democratic!”

  “Well done! Well done!”

  “And since we are done,” said Julian, “how do we get down?”

  “Well,” said Tweedledum, “you could jump.”

  Julian looked over the edge of the cloud. The ground was a very long way down. “Jump?” he said. “That would be suicide.”

  “Contrariwise,” said Tweedledee, “it could be homicide, with the proper encouragement.” And he gave Julian a push, then jumped behind him. Tweedledum followed.

  As they fell, Tweedledum said, “Jumping is to Suicide as Pushing is to Homicide.”

  “How about burning?” said Tweedledee.

  “Firecide,” said Tweedledum.

  “Drowning?”

  “Lakecide!”

  “Oceancide!”

  “Rivercide!”

  “Pondcide!”

  “Poolcide!”

  “Sewercide!”

  “Oh, that one’s especially good,” said Tweedledum.

  “Then there’s dying in your sleep,” said Tweedledee. “That’s bedcide.”

  “In an automobile: Roadcide.”

  “By falling: cliffcide or mountaincide.”

  “It’s not the falling that kills you,” said Tweedledum. “It’s the hasty stop at the end.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Tweedledee, “how about leaping from a tall building?”

  Tweedledum scratched his head with a skeletal finger. “Give me a hint?”

  “What are you likely to meet?”

  “The Cidewalk!”

  Until then, Julian had been too busy falling to take part in the conversation, but he noticed that although they seemed to be dropping like stones, the ground was not getting any closer. “I wonder,” he said, “if perhaps we’ll survive.”

  “We have so far,” said Tweedledum.

  “Contrariwise,” said Tweedledee, “that’s not always the best indication.” Then he said, “We haven’t asked if you like poetry.”

  “Some poetry,” Julian said cautiously. “When there’s time for it and my mind isn’t quite so occupied with death.”

  “That’s the very time!” said Tweedledum. “What shall we repeat to him? We barely have time for one before we hit, I think.”

  “‘The Tiger and the Engineer’ is the longest,” Tweedledee replied. “If we have time for just one, we should make it a long one.” And he began to recite.

  The void was empty as a pail