Toward noon, Eric put on jeans and dragged the futon into the alley for the trash men to take away, while Chris used the phone to dump Mr. Scheisster (who billed them anyway for services not rendered). A month-long second honeymoon ensued, leading to a far deeper reconciliation when Eric and Chris discovered that she was pregnant.
After the customary gestation period, she gave birth to a fine fat babe duly named Eric, Jr., but always called Little E. Eric had not quite shed his old suspicion that Chris might have had a lover, back in the days when they were fighting. Was it possible that somebody else had begotten Little E? He secretly had a swab of the baby's abundant spit tested and the DNA compared with his own. The results left him feeling ashamed, because—by odds of billions to one—Little E really was his child.
Despite the stinking diapers and the nightly squalling, Eric's cup ranneth over. The year that followed transformed the Mumfords’ lives in another way. Eric needed badly to make more money, and his Mama—as wacko as any other woman over her first grandchild—not only reconciled with Chris but used the savings of a lifetime to help him embark on a new career. With her loan and a ton of practical advice from Mr. Pocatelli, who'd followed Eric's marital trials with the breathless interest of a soap-opera addict, Eric and Chris opened a steak-and-seafood house in Annapolis they called Beefeaters. After a slow start it began to do pretty well, serving besides steaks such standards as Maryland crab cakes and surf'n'turf and stuffed potatoes with chives and sour cream.
Along the way, Eric and Chris found that working together—really working—did wonders for them and their marriage. Properly motivated, the lazy nitwit he'd married turned out to be a shrewd and incredibly energetic young woman. During Beefeaters’ tough startup days, he often watched her in the restaurant office—balancing the books, making out tax forms, taking reservations, sweet-talking creditors, and pausing now and then to change the baby or pop a nipple into his rosebud mouth—feeling the sight was more astounding than any vision he'd ever had. And speaking of visions, Eric stopped having them. He was too busy and too absorbed in real life and too damn tired when he went to bed for anything but sleep.
In order to be close to their work, he and Chris moved to an Annapolis townhouse with an egregious mortgage. Their first Christmas night in a burb named Camelot was warm and cheery and Dickensian, even though the chill and murky waters of a brackish tidal inlet called South River lapped at the development's communal dock. The night of the twenty-fifth, with the restaurant closed after dispensing turkey and cheer, Chris was in the kitchen making nog while Eric's Mama held Little E in her arms and tried to con him into a smile. The minute fireplace flared and shadows flickered on a sheepskin rug, and the Christmas tree, exhaling the scent of boreal forests, shimmered in the baby's wide blue eyes with Druidical splendor.
Sprawled on the couch, Eric was browsing a present he'd just received, a scrapbook Mama had made him, with records and pictures of his early years. He viewed again the Frogg Prinz, and Mama at long last told him the true story of their fling, and his father's name, which she felt almost positive had been either Ragnar Harmunsson or Harman Ragnusson. Eric asked casually why she called him the Frog Prince, and she explained that he had webbing between his index fingers and thumbs, “just like Kermit."
Eric, she added, had had the same defect, but the surgeons at the clinic where she worked had fixed the problem, and because he was so young at the time, the scars had healed invisibly. Little E didn't have the webbing, but then it sometimes skipped a generation.
"Don't worry, your grandchildren will probably be bullfrogs, too,” she concluded. “Just don't let them eat any flies."
Eric tried to smile, but suddenly the contents of his head were whirling madly and rearranging themselves, like a well-shaken kaleidoscope, into entirely new patterns.
* * * *
Tired as he was, he lay awake for hours that night, brooding about his ancestor, the Viking. He wondered how he could have failed to spot the connection long before.
It wasn't just the webbing, though that was what gave him the clue. It was everything—the way Hrothgar channeled for him, the way that Eric could rouse that alien body, set it moving, even take it into battle. Across the vast gap of forty or so generations, the barbarian and the steakhouse proprietor were linked, cell to cell, by the molecular chain that binds the ages. And if Hrothgar was his ancestor, then surely Brünnhilde must be his ancestress. Why else could she have channeled for him too?
So far, so good. Only ... that wasn't the whole story, was it?
He grunted and rolled over and gnawed one thumb. A green-lit clock said three-twenty-nine. What obsessed him now was that long-ago sleepwalking episode. What if—Eric rolled over again, drawing a murmur of protest from Chris, though she didn't wake up—what if shamanism, like the webbing, were hereditary? What if Hrothgar had visited Eric's world in his absence, had floated into a strange (yet not totally strange) body, had gone blundering around a house full of baffling objects, accidentally turning on the shower, tracking up the rug, busting Aunt Mae's stupid little table, leaving his host with a large painful bruise on one knee and no recollection of how it got there?
There was worse to come. What if he'd visited again during that long, deep sleep of his following the first day's battle? What if he'd waked in the rowhouse in Baltimore—more knowledgeable this time, believing the fight was over, in a mood to revel, and well aware that a woman was sleeping upstairs? What if, while Eric was saving the big stinking barbarian's castle, Hrothgar was cuckolding him and using his own body to do it?
Was that why Eric found himself in bed with Chris next morning, awaking post coitum with no memory of doing the coitum? Was that right? Was that fair? And did a raping and pillaging barbarian give a monkey's fart whether it was right and fair or not?
The more Eric thought about it, the madder he got. Maybe it was fighting the Huns, or maybe it was sheer bloody-minded macho rage at this fugitive from the Iron Age snatching his body, screwing his woman, begetting his child for him. By morning, Eric had determined on revenge: he would return to the Viking's castle, watch for an opportunity to take over his smelly carcass, and do unto Brünnhilde what Hrothgar had done unto him. So it was incest, so what? Could you commit incest at a distance of forty generations?
"Two can play at that game, big guy,” he muttered.
Cunning was needed. He couldn't leave Chris open to a second, uh, Viking raid while he was off conducting one of his own. Fortunately, Beefeaters closed for inventory between Christmas and New Year's Eve, and Mama Malone in Timonium—suburban jewel of Baltimore County—had been begging Chris for a visit, with cherub, of course. Next morning she was easily persuaded to take Little E and make a day-and-night of it.
That evening Eric's preparations were cool and deliberate. He drank Bass ale instead of wine, and ate a couple of sandwiches of stone-ground bread and partially charred cow from the restaurant freezer. At bedtime he dropped Carmina Burana in the Bose, hit the button that made the CD repeat ad infinitum, and went to bed with a dusty volume of medieval literature left over from his college days. He was deep in Chaucer's bawdy masterpiece “The Miller's Tale,” when—as usual, without any sense of transition—he fell asleep, and found himself back on the wall.
* * * *
The distant woods were leafless and dour. A shower of slow sullen rain was drifting away with the sullen clouds that had made it. Every sign of the besiegers had vanished and the castle looked, and somehow felt, empty.
Eric drifted to the wooden bridge, passed through the gate—it was standing open, no guard—and into the Viking's chamber. No Hrothgar, and yet he felt that old sense of something drawing him on. Again he looked out at the slow ripples of a leaden sea, then passed—leisurely as a cloud—through the arrow-slit window. He floated over the castle's seaward wall, and finally saw where everybody was. They were down below, crowding a narrow strip of gray shingle around the prow of the half-beached longboat.
On deck, surround
ed by piles of firewood, Hrothgar's body lay stiffly. His face and hands, pale as ivory, protruded from a robe embroidered with runes. So that single Hun arrow, by puncturing the subclavian artery, had been enough to do the big man in. Death came easily in the Dark Ages, even to the strong. Beside the Viking rested the body of the wolfhound, slain to free its spirit to go hunting with him again, once he reached Valhalla.
Oh shit, thought Eric. There goes my revenge.
Gently as an autumn leaf, he drifted over the crowd of ragged serfs, men-at-arms leaning on spears, hefty women cradling naked babies, young warriors with thick red hands and corn-silk beards, girls adorned in bright tresses and bright dresses. Brünnhilde stood beside the ship, gorgeously arrayed in scarlet and ermine, brooches and buckles of hammered gold glittering on her robes, a silver fillet binding her torrent of yellow hair. She held a burning torch, and as Eric drifted down beside the Viking's body, her powerful arm flung it into the firewood.
Young men put their shoulders to the longboat's bow and shoved until it floated free, spun once and drifted slowly on an ebbing tide toward the glimmering horizon. Around Eric the flames crackled and roared up, but he didn't feel heat or smell smoke, because his channeler was dead and gone, and he would never hear or feel or smell this world again. He floated free, rising above the pyre into a stray weak sunbeam that had penetrated the clouds. Suddenly the air was opalescent and glittering and a rainbow formed, making the bridge the Vikings believed connects Earth to heaven.
And Eric woke, back in his bedroom.
Only ... something wasn't right.
His body lay sprawled on the bed, breathing stertorously. But Eric couldn't seem to enter it. He tried to push his way in, but somebody was pushing back.
All at once he understood what was happening. Raging, he forced his way into his own head, shouting silently, “You can't steal my wife, my son, my life!” In reply, a burst of probably obscene Old Norse issued from his own mouth.
He and the warrior grappled, two ghosts fighting for a single machine. The body that was their field of battle tumbled out of bed, came to its feet, gave itself a hard punch in the eye, growled like a dog, bit itself on the right forearm, got itself by the throat, pulled its hand loose, crashed into a wall, crashed into another wall, tumbled and flopped around the floor like a freshly landed tuna, tried without success to kick itself in its own balls, used both hands to pound its own head against the floor. Then the body was up again, and the dresser fell over and the bed collapsed as it threw itself down to finish the fight on the mattress.
And quite suddenly, everything went quiet.
* * * *
"Good Lord,” said Chris next morning, staring at the man who opened the front door for her. “What happened to you? And why in the world are you naked?"
A bitter wind redolent of ice, salt, and dead marsh grass swept up the Chesapeake and across South River and whistled through the doorway. But the man standing there in his bare skin only smiled, exhibiting the loss of one front tooth to complement his two black eyes. He put a finger to his lips, took the baby in its carrier from her and set both on the floor by the Christmas tree. At his movement, the ornaments winked, little bells tinkled and green branches stirred. The smell of resin was intense.
He licked a drop of blood off his remaining teeth and drew her masterfully into his arms.
"Here? On the rug? Now?” She sounded both outraged and fascinated. “Well, at least let me close the door!"
The door slammed. The Viking raid proceeded. But which Viking it was, she only found out later.
[Back to Table of Contents]
All in Fun by Jerry Oltion
As the holiday season approaches, Jerry Oltion offers us glad tidings from the Pacific Northwest.
Toby always makes a wish for Christmas. It almost always comes true. The only time it doesn't is when he wishes for too much, and even then he always gets at least a part of it.
The gift only seems to work at Christmastime. The rest of the year he can wish all he wants, but he has to work just as hard as everyone else to make anything happen. At Christmas, though, he only needs to make his wish, go to sleep on the night of the twenty-fourth, and by New Year's he gets what he asked for.
It has worked like that ever since he was a kid. The candy truck that crashed in the front yard; the house fire that didn't kill Bobby Dorton, the school bully, but did make his family move away; the exhibitionist who moved in next door when he was a little bit older—all were manifestations of Toby's peculiar gift.
None of his wishes are ever delivered in a package under the tree, but Toby has always thought it must be Santa Claus who grants them just the same. Who else could it be? Certainly not Jesus, unless the Son of God is going through a rebellious phase. Toby doesn't ask for anyone's death anymore, but he doesn't use his wishes on goody-goody stuff, either. He tried that a couple of times, and once had the great joy of watching Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin sign a peace treaty brokered by President Carter, but it had taken nine months to happen and it hadn't lasted. And the other time, when the Berlin Wall came down, hadn't exactly turned out rosy for the Russians, either.
He doesn't muck around with world politics anymore, but he doesn't waste his gift, either. He spends the entire year mulling over his next wish. He has notebooks full of possibilities, but he's always open to new ideas. In fact it has become a bit of an obsession. With only one wish a year, he wants to make the most of them.
Except this year he can't decide. He doesn't have everything a man could wish for, but he's comfortable. He has money, a nice house, a wife whom he loves and who loves him, popularity, talent, and good looks. What he doesn't have, despite all that, is much fun.
So he goes to bed thinking, “I want to have fun.” It's a bit nebulous, and therefore a bit dangerous, but that only adds to his excitement. What will the universe come up with?
When he wakes up, nothing obvious has changed. Sonya doesn't have an extra pair of boobs or anything, which is a relief. He doesn't think his gift would do something like that to her, if only because his happiness pretty much depends on hers, but he had worried just a little.
He checks his penis in the shower. It's not any bigger.
The first hint comes when he opens the cupboard for his breakfast cereal and discovers that the box of Cheerios has become a box of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. Never mind that those haven't existed outside of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon until this morning; he has some in his cupboard.
They aren't bad. Certainly sweet, but if he dilutes them with enough milk ... hmm. Wow, “caffeine” is certainly high on the ingredient list, isn't it?
He opens the paper and reads while he's eating his cereal, and sees that there will be a Christmas concert in the bandshell today featuring 100 tubas—and nothing else. He can't imagine what that would sound like ... but then he doesn't have to imagine it, does he? In a couple of hours, he can find out.
Sonya is surprised when he suggests it, surprised and pleased. That's not usually the sort of thing he likes to do.
"Maybe we should go see a movie, too,” he says.
"Which one?"
He feels a little stab of irritation, just the tiniest twinge of tarnish to his perfect morning. He hates poring over the movie listings to figure out which one is least likely to suck, and then they have to figure out what time to see it, and whether they'll eat first or eat afterward. It's more trouble than a movie is usually worth. So today he says, “Let's just go to the theater when we're ready to watch something, and pick whatever is showing next."
Sonya raises an eyebrow. “What if it's a Spielberg flick?"
"Then we'll sit in back and make out."
She considers this, then smiles and turns away to get ready for their day on the town.
It's raining out, a soft drizzle that Toby has come to call Northwest photons. He wished for sunnier weather once, but after the worst drought in Oregon history he learned not to mess with the weather. He and Sonya put on their ja
ckets and gloves without complaint.
On their way to the tuba concert, Toby at the wheel of their hybrid Toyota, a big white Ford Excursion roars past them in the right lane, then cuts them off and turns left in front of them, but the driver is apparently blind because he turns into the path of an approaching Humvee, and the impact is like the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The sound is nothing like car-chase movies have led Toby to expect. For one thing, the whole event happens in less than a second. The initial impact is like a box being flattened all at once, then there's a grinding squeal that rises quickly in pitch, mixed with the pop of window glass shattering, and finally another deep thud as the two vehicles’ engines meet. Toby has to swerve hard to avoid tail-ending the Excursion, but he clears the bumper just as the Excursion rolls onto its side with the Humvee astride it, and then they're past. A rearview mirror bounces alongside Toby's car for a few feet, then smacks into the grille of an oncoming pickup truck.
"Should we stop?” asks Sonya.
Toby pulls into a parking lot and looks back at the accident. The driver of the Humvee opens his door and climbs down—why is it always weaselly short guys driving those things, Toby wonders?—where he is angrily accosted by the driver of the Excursion, who climbs out the back of his destroyed vehicle and begins shouting at the Humvee driver as if everything were his fault. There were apparently no passengers in either vehicle, because the two drivers get right down to pushing and shoving, and soon fists are flying.
"I don't think we're needed here,” Toby says, and he pulls out onto the street again.
The scene is repeated ten blocks later with a Chevy Suburban and a Dodge Ram. And five blocks after that, a Trooper runs a red light and tears the back end right off a minivan. The van's gas tank rips open and bursts into flame, but both drivers have time to get away before the tangle of wreckage becomes a burning pyre to the gods of excess. Of course there were no passengers in either of those vehicles, either.
FSF, January 2009 Page 9