Death at King Arthur's Court

by Forrest, Richard;

  Harnell’s face brightened. ‘You do see it then?’

  ‘It’s unmistakable. There’s a remarkably close similarity.’ Lyon looked up at a formation of scudding off-white clouds crossing directly overhead. He was rather surprised to see his two imaginary Wobblies fly in perfect formation to a position just below the cloud layer. To his further astonishment, the two benign monsters began flying extremely complex patterns of outside loops. They had both positioned their front paws at right angles to their bodies in an imitation of wings. Their hind feet were pressed closely together, with the claws acting as ailerons and their long tails as rudders. Their aerial acrobatics were perfectly executed. He reflected on these surprising maneuvers, since during all the years he had written about his monster creations, he had never before realized that they could actually fly. Perhaps this was only a temporary aberration.

  ‘It doesn’t mean a damn thing to him,’ Ernest said with an unmistakable tone of deep belligerence.

  ‘Well, that’s understandable,’ Lyon answered. ‘Hemingway’s been dead for a number of years now.’

  ‘I don’t mean the writer. I mean Morgan.’ He gestured toward the driveway, where a long RV was parked. ‘When’s he coming out of his goddamn Trojan horse? Or could we be so lucky that he’s been entombed in there forever?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him all day,’ Lyon said. ‘He told me yesterday that he had a journal deadline, so he’s probably sealed himself inside to get some work done. Another drink, Ernest?’

  ‘Never ease off till the soldier’s dead.’ He reached for his empty glass balanced on the edge of the parapet and handed it to Lyon. ‘For Christ’s sake, build a man’s drink this time, Went. Fix one like they mix them at Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West.’

  Lyon stepped through the French doors into the living room and over to where the bar cart was parked. He smiled as he carefully mixed a potent double for his guest. He held the drink up to examine it in the light and decided it was not of a hue acceptable at Sloppy Joe’s. He laced it with more liquor until it darkened to an acceptable shade.

  ‘As a matter of curiosity, Ernest, where did your mother meet Hemingway?’ he called through the doors.

  ‘I was conceived during a romantic afternoon in Hong Kong. Papa was in China to cover the Chinese-Japanese War. My mother was the daughter of missionaries and was attending a convent school in Hong Kong. On that particular afternoon she was having tea at an outdoor café … She was very young, and in those days Papa was really quite handsome. He graciously commented on her beauty and she coyly responded. One thing led to another that exquisite day and …’

  Lyon returned to the patio and gave Ernest his fresh drink. ‘All this happened in one afternoon?’

  ‘That’s all it takes, Wentworth.’

  ‘So I’ve heard.’

  ‘They were only able to share a few precious hours together. Their love affair may have been brief, but the height of their passion made up for its brevity.’

  ‘I’m amazed that your mother would discuss these intimate details with her child.’

  ‘Mother was too much the lady of the old school to talk about her sexuality. She never revealed any intimate details, but there were enough facts for me to piece together what actually happened.’

  ‘Ernest, did your mother ever specifically say that she had an affair with Hemingway and that you are the offspring?’

  ‘Not in so many words, but the evidence is irrefutable. Look at the facts. She named me Ernest when I was born. Mother and Hemingway were in Hong Kong at the same time. She was forced to leave the convent when they discovered her pregnancy. Her lips remained sealed for the rest of her life and she never told anyone who my father was. But look at me!’ He thumped his chest. ‘You can see the family resemblance. My God, man, the evidence is practically prima facie. And most important of all, when I put all the facts together and presented them to her, Mother just smiled enigmatically and never denied it.’

  So be it, Lyon thought. Men have died for lesser truths. ‘I suppose it’s all harmless,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean harmless! Damn it, man, not only am I proud of my heritage, but I have always acted with grace under adversity. In addition to that, like any true man, I’ve got the proper cojones.’ He paused in his tirade and lowered his voice. ‘Have I mentioned this to you before?’

  ‘Oh, possibly you’ve made some brief allusions, a hint here, a sprig of suspicion there.’

  ‘The Hemingway family has never recognized me, of course. But I know my heritage and I’ve spent the majority of my adult life dedicated to the study of my father’s work.’

  ‘Some people consider your book, Machismo, a benchmark in American literary criticism,’ Lyon said.

  ‘You wouldn’t know that from reading the crappy articles Morgan writes. That junk he published in New Forward really got to me. “Bloody Rights or Bloody Rites.” If the goddamn Brotherhood of Beelzebub hadn’t vowed to get him, I might have contracted a hit myself. I probably should have gone ahead and made arrangements as job insurance, since the bastard is never going to give me that endowed chair.’

  ‘Morgan doesn’t have the final word on that, you know,’ Lyon said. ‘The department head only recommends, and the full faculty council has to vote.’

  ‘There are only two of us in the department who have published enough to be really eligible. And no one in their right mind would vote the chair to Garth Wilkins.’

  ‘That might depend on literary taste,’ Lyon said. ‘And whether or not you preferred writers like Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. His book, The Gentle Americans, was well received in the academic community.’

  ‘His writers are a bunch of pantywaist scribblers! It’s a wonder that a bunch of limp wrists like that could hold pens long enough to create anything.’

  ‘I agree that they are quite a contrast to your machismo group of Hemingway, James Jones, and Norman Mailer.’

  ‘Some men have true cojones, and others …’ He broke off the sentence to watch a bright yellow Ford Escort slowly proceed up the drive and park carefully behind the RV. The driver was a tall man of an incongruous size for the small car. He unwound from the front seat and hesitantly approached the RV. Garth Wilkins had a narrow cadaverous head which was in direct proportion to the rest of his lanky frame. His height created the impression that he was barely in control of his physical movements, as if he had to constantly wage battle to force his limbs to obey mental commands. He knocked softly on the RV door.

  ‘Some men don’t seem to have any,’ Ernest said as a completion of his thought. ‘Like Garth over there, who’s not about to attract anyone’s attention with his timid taps.’ He flipped a contemptuous finger gesture in the direction of his competitor.

  Lyon’s front chair legs clanked as he rocked forward and turned to watch the tall man knocking on the metal door. ‘Over here!’ he called out.

  Garth stepped back from the door, gave it a last wistful look, and started up to the patio. ‘Are you sure he’s in there?’

  ‘I saw him go in this morning after we had breakfast,’ Lyon said. ‘Are you two speaking?’

  ‘Unfortunately I can’t avoid having to speak with Morgan,’ Garth said.

  ‘I mean you two,’ Lyon said as he gestured toward Ernest, who maintained his back to them as he resumed his pose at the wall.

  ‘Only one of us is going to get that endowed chair,’ Garth said. ‘And if that poseur should be selected, I will immediately resign from the university.’

  ‘The Gay Alliance will be devastated,’ Ernest snorted.

  Garth ignored the remark and went through the French doors to the bar cart, where he poured a pony of Dry Sack sherry and one of brandy. He handed Lyon the sherry and sipped on the remaining pony. ‘Most psychiatrists feel that extreme homophobic reactions are indicative of severe inner conflicts over sexual identity.’

  ‘Jesus, what bilge water!’ Ernest pulled on his drink as if the amount consumed established a certain ben
chmark of masculinity.

  ‘I wish you were back in the department, Lyon,’ Garth said. ‘While you were around, at least there was one person who brought some sanity to faculty meetings. I sometimes feel that Morgan backs dissension. One week he’ll back me on a question and the next he’ll be in the camp of the great white hunter over there.’ He shrugged a shoulder toward the man by the wall.

  ‘He not only encourages trouble, he precipitates it,’ Ernest said without turning from his mental emplacement of gun positions across the river. ‘That’s how he gets his jollies. What’s the gen, for Christ’s sake? Why is he hiding in his tin can? He’s the one who invited us out here for a discussion of the vacant chair.’

  ‘He’s working on a new literary pastiche for the journal,’ Garth said. ‘This one really strips Papa naked. I believe he calls it “The Moveable Beast”. I understand it’s a very funny piece written in an exact replica of the Hemingway style. You know the formula. It’s filled with lots of “It was good”, and “the wine was cold”. The juices run a lot and everyone including the women have mucho cojones.’

  ‘That’s it!’ Ernest said menacingly. He advanced toward the other teacher until Lyon inserted himself between them and steered Ernest through the French doors.

  ‘Time for a refill,’ Lyon said as he escorted him into the living room.

  The bearded man began to mix a huge drink. ‘I’d appreciate it if you kept confidential the discussion we had before Tinkerbell arrived.’

  Garth had stretched out along the top of the stone parapet. ‘I do hope your tête-a-tête wasn’t about being the bastard son of a certain Nobel winning author.’

  Ernest stopped pouring. ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Ernest! You’ve been using that Hemingway’s bastard bit to hit on every pretty grad student we’ve had for the past five years. I’ve often wondered if it ever worked.’

  ‘I’ve had my share of conquests.’

  ‘They don’t give points for misfires.’

  ‘You’re taking a header into the river, faggot!’ He started for the patio but was stopped by Lyon’s reflexive grasp of his shirt tail.

  Garth laughed and shook a limp wrist. ‘Why don’t I just fly across the river and into the trees?’

  Rocco Herbert strode around the corner of the house carrying an empty can of spray paint. He shook the can until it rattled and then slammed it down on a glass-topped table. ‘OK, who’s the joker?’

  ‘Hopefully someone has painted dirty limericks on Morgan’s RV,’ Garth said.

  ‘How about graffiti on the side of the construction project crane down the road?’ Rocco said.

  ‘Illiterate kids,’ Ernest said.

  ‘Kids don’t write “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” on condominium projects built out in the middle of nowhere. People who live out in the middle of nowhere next to ugly construction projects spray those things,’ Rocco said.

  ‘Abandon hope? They could have picked up that little phrase on Jeopardy,’ Ernest said.

  ‘Not in Latin.’

  ‘They stopped offering Latin in Murphysville High School four years ago,’ Lyon said. ‘If that’s of any help?’ He walked to the edge of the patio and stared toward the skeletal iron structure which seemed to sprout a new story each day. The crane was lifting the last of the day’s steel up to what was becoming the third-floor frame. ‘We fought that project as best we could, but they cheated and sneaked it around us.’

  ‘And that justifies your use of spray paint?’ Rocco asked.

  ‘Don’t admit another thing, Wentworth,’ Garth said. ‘Anything you say will be used against you.’

  ‘All condo developers should be castrated,’ Ernest added, and for the first time Garth nodded in agreement.

  ‘Last week someone let the air out of a back hoe’s tires,’ Rocco said.

  ‘That was an ecologically concerned youth,’ Lyon answered. ‘A family of fox lived on that site before they began blasting. A vodka and tonic, Rocco?’

  ‘Thanks, but I have a man out on sick leave and have to work. The week before that the crane’s ladder disappeared.’

  ‘I gave you permission to search my barn,’ Lyon said.

  ‘I was afraid of what I might find,’ Rocco said. ‘Where’s Bea? Maybe she can talk some sense into you.’

  ‘She’s in Washington for a convention,’ Lyon answered, ‘and won’t be back until late tomorrow.’

  ‘I hope she can talk some sense into you about this,’ Rocco said as he stalked back across the lawn toward his cruiser, parked at the construction site.

  A whir of electric motors and the clank of metal against metal made them turn toward the RV. The solid door leading into the RV’s living quarters slowly opened. The interior of the vehicle was dark, and since it faced away from the late sun, deep shadows fell across the doorway. The door automatically clamped open against the side.

  No one emerged from the vehicle.

  ‘Waiting for Morgan’s entrance is similar to anticipating the second coming,’ Ernest said.

  ‘Who’s out there?’ A deep bass voice boomed from the darkened interior of the RV.

  ‘Ernest and Garth,’ Lyon called back.

  ‘Has the area been swept for intruders?’

  ‘The pickets are out on the flanks and the balloons are doing air surveillance,’ Lyon yelled at the motor home. ‘The King’s Guard have individually sworn personal allegiance, and the food tasters are on standby.’

  ‘You and those court jesters surrounding you have a rotten sense of humor, Wentworth,’ Morgan said as he stepped warily out of the RV.

  ‘He really creates a warm feeling of camaraderie around all he touches, doesn’t he?’ Garth said in a voice too low for Morgan to overhear.

  ‘If you had two dozen room-temperature-IQ fanatics in black hoods pledging your destruction, you’d be rather wary too,’ Morgan said as he carefully spun the combination to relock the RV door.

  Lyon watched Morgan approach the patio. His former compatriot had aged well physically. He was one of those individuals who, like certain wines or cheese, gained a deeper depth of character with additional layers of time. It was as if it required a certain number of years for him to grow comfortably into his own features. Deep facial marks that had been unbalanced worry creases on a youthful face became deep character lines when flanked by premature white hair and a short goatee. What had been a young man’s slight and non-athletic physique became a trim figure when measured against stouter cohorts. Morgan was well aware of the increasing maturation of his looks, and as they coalesced he began to dress dramatically. While others in the academic world often opted for a tweedy comfortable look, Morgan dressed formally and conservatively in dark hues. His clothes, purchased during biannual trips to London, would have been stylish at a Mayfair high tea. The total physical effect he conveyed culminated in a deep resonant voice inherited from Welsh forebears.

  The day’s last sun splashed paths of light across the valley and ran bright color spectrums along the surface of the river. The total effect was an eerie Goyaesque landscape of tilted hills, fields and water. Morgan turned away from the view.

  ‘All of this unbridled nature is underwhelming, Wentworth.’

  ‘I’ll ask God for a change of venue, Morgan.’ Lyon smiled. ‘What can I get you to drink?’

  ‘These days I never drink from opened containers, so that rather limits my choice. If the seal is unbroken, a taste of Pernod would be adequate.’

  ‘I guarantee the Pernod is unopened,’ Lyon said as he stepped over to the bar cart.

  When he was served, Morgan sat at the glass-topped table facing Garth and Ernest, and looked over the narrow rim of his pony as he delicately sipped the Pernod. His two subordinates shifted nervously by the parapet. ‘I thought we should meet on neutral ground. Since Wentworth was once a member of our department and is now a university trustee, he understands our goals and problems. This house is a logical place to settle our difference
s. Even if the location does somewhat resemble a buzzard’s aerie.’

  Lyon choked on his sherry. ‘I thought this was the endowedchair problem, not a bird watch.’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, but it also involves the whole future direction of the department,’ Morgan said. ‘Your book, The Gentle Americans, was an attempt, Garth, but flawed. Let’s face it, Tennessee wrote the same play seventy-two times. Ernest’s Machismo has some qualities, but as far as Hemingway is concerned, let us say he is extremely easy to satirize, because he wrote with a big fat phallic Crayola.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell us something, Morgan?’ Ernest asked.

  ‘I have asked Thomas at Yale to accept the Ashley chair,’ Morgan said.

  ‘That’s not right!’ Garth said in a strangled voice. ‘Thomas is a deconstructionist!’

  ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing,’ Ernest Harnell said.

  ‘You two forced me into this position with your constant bickering,’ Morgan said. ‘If I appoint either one of you, the other would be most unhappy and even more disruptive than you are now. And besides, you are both traditional. It’s about time we joined the twenty-first century, and took a modern approach to literary criticism. Both of you are fighting age-old battles that were abandoned long ago. In Thomas we get a strong man from an excellent university with a voluminous publication history. Actually, you should both be grateful that the department has taken this stance.’

  ‘You’re a sadistic son-of-a-bitch, Morgan,’ Ernest said.

  ‘You’ve set us both up,’ Garth added; ‘You played one against the other while never intending to make it a true contest. You didn’t play fair with us.’