Ben Soul

by Richard George

being Beau’s therapist, there was Luis to consider, too.” Dr. Field took another long swallow of his drink. He slurred his words more than ever. Ben shook the whiskey cobwebs from his brain. He hadn’t understood that multiple personalities inhabited the one body.

  “How would I ever forgive myself if I’d been having sex with Juan, or even Beau, and Luis suddenly popped out? His emotional age probably never exceeded twelve or fourteen.” Ben stared at his drink. He’d heard more than he wanted to know about the doctor’s internal life. He interrupted the doctor’s reminiscence.

  “Do you need to be present when the sheriff comes?” Ben asked.

  “No, they know what I saw, and they know where to find me. I’ll wait for their report.” He drained his glass. He looked at the bottle, drowsily, but did not get up to fill his glass again. His head dropped, chin to his chest, and he began to snore softly. Ben took the empty glass from his nerveless fingers and put it on the sideboard next to the bottle. He put his own partially empty glass there, as well. Then he went into the bedroom, even though he felt rather like a prowler, and got a quilt from the bed. This he tucked around the sleeping doctor and quietly went out the front door. He joined Dickon and Butter to wait for the sheriff. When the sheriff came to take Beau’s shell away, Ben got the wig and hat from the bush and laid it on the body bag as it went into the helicopter.

  Strayed Arrow

  Noah left Beau dreaming by the fence. The wind was rising, rain on its breath. Noah headed toward the tool shed Vanna had said would shelter him. He had left his bow and arrows there, to keep them dry, while he reconnoitered the llama pastures. Instead of beasts, he had found an old acquaintance, Beau. How odd that Beau was out here in this wild place. He hadn’t said much, unlike his old self, but it had been good to share a joint with him. Like old times, when they were both younger.

  Nice to have smoke to share. Noah’s rations had been short for a very long time. This assignment from the woman with the frozen eyes and her ridiculous payment for that stupid drawing had let Noah buy this wonderful stuff. His head buzzed with a pleasant hum, almost a melody.

  Noah had been the star of the La Lechuga archery class. He had hit the target at least one time out of three, far better than the drooling companions in his class. Noah had not been the crack shot he’d let Vanna believe he was. Noah had never let the truth interfere with a good sale.

  Still, he felt obliged to provide some effort toward Vanna’s goal of killing off the llamas. If he could find them. He got to the shed just as the rain began to drench the land. He went in, lay on the cot, and listened to the rain dance on the shingles as he drifted off into a drugged state between dreaming and sleeping.

  Morning came, inevitably, and with it the evaporation of narcotic effects. Noah opened his eyes and squinted at the dim light invading the shed. Food did not interest him. His full bladder alone stirred him to rise, go outdoors, and relieve himself. He only realized the bathrooms were close by after he had watered the weeds in the tool-shed dooryard.

  His hands shook as he zipped up his fly. He held one out in front of him to watch it dance. Had the morning been warmer, he might have stood until noon watching his hand tremble in the gray sunlight. The need for warmth drove him into the shed to retrieve his denim jacket and put it on over his worn shirt. His faded jeans and ragged sneakers provided less than optimum warmth, so Noah lit another joint, which he consumed entirely before he remembered his promise to kill llamas.

  Noah wasn’t sure just what a llama looked like. He’d seen pictures, a long time ago, but years of substances had dimmed the picture in his mind. He vaguely remembered they were larger than rabbits and smaller than horses. “Time to find the beasties, don’t you know,” he said aloud to the uncaring room and took up his bow. He went forth to be a Nimrod in the morning air. He had proceeded several yards toward the fence dividing the Coastal Commission Park from La Señora’s property when he realized he hadn’t brought the arrows with him. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and returned to the shed to pick up his quiver.

  The arrows were steel tipped, but, for safety’s sake, had large round rubber balls on their heads. The balls were a fluorescent orange. Noah stood a moment, mesmerized by the color, before he slung the quiver over his shoulder, took up his bow again, and stalked toward the llama pastures.

  The stud llamas had their own pastures. It is an unfortunate truth that stud llamas tend to mate with female crías as early as they could possibly mate. In this they are little different from other herd beasts. Unlike bulls, and often rams, they get very lonely very fast, and need company. Willy Waugh, therefore, kept three studs together in a pasture near the Commission fence.

  Noah found these studs. It was probably fortunate for him he did not find the mothers and their crías. The studs were mellower, for they had no young to protect. When he came upon them, Noah’s head was singing with the dope’s symphony. Pearly streaks of lavender, silver, and gray suffused the midday light. The brown and white llamas moved like dreams cast loose on the ether of the mind over the green pastures.

  Noah lifted his bow, nocked an arrow, pulled back the string, aimed at a floating llama, and let fly the missile. It sped true toward where the target had been, and missed the llama entirely, for the beast had taken two or three steps forward. The arrow struck a flake of hay and fell to the ground. Noah had not removed the rubber protector on the tip.

  Again and again, so long as he had arrows, Noah nocked, aimed, released, and missed. The llamas went on unconcerned, until the last arrow of all, driven by a vagary of the wind, veered off course and struck a stud’s rump. By then it had spent its force, and it did little more than sting the beast. Noah approached the studs to count his kills. All three beasts “dry spat” at him in warning.

  Noah knew no better, and came on toward them. The nearest of the three sprayed Noah with half-digested grasses. Noah abandoned his bow, and fled the scene. In his drugged state, the stench begot visual hallucinations, slimy snakes slithered and twined about his person, lizards belched great clouds of poison gas into his nostrils, and poison toads spat wads of burning bile on his skin. Even after he reached the tool shed, and had washed under the frigid hydrant, reptilian beasts bedeviled him. They clustered around him to torment him and jeer at him, until he fell, senseless, upon the tool shed cot and slept off his intoxication.

  Willy Waugh came to the stud pasture with the evening hay. He found the curiously dulled arrows, and the bow broken under a llama’s foot. He puzzled over these things, determined to discuss them with La Señora.

  Farewell to a Fallen Warrior

  Beau’s autopsy revealed he had died of a heart attack. It also revealed he had ingested a large amount of cannabis before his death. Dr. Field expressed his puzzlement to the sheriff as to how Beau had gotten hold of the substance.

  Dr. Field arranged a private viewing and burial for people from the Village, with a more public memorial later in the week. The recent notoriety of the Village and La Señora in the affair of the murrelet hearing brought many of the curious public to the service. As it happened, the Las Tumbas Loyal Order of Mongooses Lodge was available. There was even an organ, rented for a wedding the day before, which the musical instrument shop allowed to stay in place one more day for free.

  Dr. Field had determined, after consulting with Dickon and La Señora, that they should only honor Beau in the service. “Let the others rest in anonymity,” he said. “We’ll do no good broadcasting to the world that three people lived in this one body.”

  Two large sprays of stock and calla lilies, white and purple, flanked a large portrait photograph of Beau in full white regalia on the stage. Beau had sat for it several years before. The organist played a prelude composed of Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling, Blessed Assurance, and Out of the Ivory Palaces, repeated as long as needed, until Dickon, garbed in clerical robes, rose. He went to the podium, itself sheathed in white lilies,
and led the assembled company in prayer (carefully worded to be non-religion specific), and allowed a time for silent prayer. The organist, a pious evangelical named Sara Moníz, softly played Whispering Hope through three times at full vibrato and a lugubrious pace.

  Dickon had expressed his despair to Ben at learning the mousy Sara’s repertoire. He had suggested several hymns, none of which the lady knew, or cared to learn. She knew certain gospel songs and Fanny Crosby hymns, and that was it. She had no need to clutter her mind with any high-church highfalutin’ music. She was a small woman whose entire appearance suggested the downtrodden and hopeless in a female package. She had set her shoulders in a perpetual slump somewhere in her childhood, and they would not straighten. Her wan face was pinched and narrow, with a point to her nose and a lack of presence to her chin. She dressed in a shapeless black dress with very tiny white polka dots. When Dickon had discussed Sara’s repertoire with Chester Field, the good doctor was delighted. Pastors in the cornfield and hog pen pulpits of rural Iowa, of course, had formed his taste in funeral music.

  Dickon rose again, and opened the great Bible that was there, and read two Psalms, numbers 23 and 121. He