“What do I know of puppets? I would like to say it was the Greeks who invented the puppet, but they are older than that by thousands of years. The Egyptians buried clay puppets with the mummified corpses in their tombs. Pull the strings, and their marionettes could knead bread. Even the dead get hungry in the afterlife. In India thousands of years ago, they made a terra-cotta monkey who could be made to climb a stick, and there are puppets mentioned in the Mahabharata and the Kama Sutra.”
“Kama Sutra, you don’t say,” Egon whispered an aside. “I’d like to see that.”
“Shadow puppets of ancient China, the bunraku of Japan, the wayang of Java, still in use to this day. The American aboriginals had their totemic dolls with movable arms and legs, and Cortez, who brought along his own puppeteers, encountered such figures among the Aztecs. They have been with us for millennia all over the world. An ancient impulse.”
Theo cleared his throat. “There was one of those primitive aboriginal dolls in the window of the Quatre Mains. Native American. Inuit, maybe? Kay fell in love with it.”
“The doll and the puppet are really an expression of our desire to create and control life,” Mitchell continued. “We make a little man—”
Egon wriggled in his chair and scowled.
“I beg your pardon,” Mitchell said. “Figuratively, hah, in every sense, a simulacrum. A homunculus, a human machine. Like us, but not like us. A stand-in, an actor that can be put in motion, made to speak, and suffer indignities or lift us to transcendence. You see it as well in icons and idols. These effigies that you showed me on the computer.”
On the edge of his seat, Egon interjected, “Giant puppets. Life-size. And larger than life.”
Setting down the pottery shard, Mitchell leaned across the desk. “Small or large, on the end of a finger or lifted by a dozen men, the idea is the same. What did Horace say? ‘Man is nothing but a puppet on a string’?
“You know, when I was about eight years old, I saw a Punch-and-Judy show, and the whole time Punch fought with Judy, the crocodile sneaked up behind him, and the man lifted the slapstick to strike the woman and hit the crocodile on the backswing. Completely by accident. Again and again. We kids shrieked and hollered, ‘Look out, look out!’ but Punch never bothered to glance over his shoulder. Those jaws would open wide, a mouth filled with sharp teeth, and slap, down he would go. After a few rounds, the croc got wise and sneaked around to the other side. Behind Judy.”
“What happened next?” Theo asked.
“He ate her up. First try.”
Egon laughed. “There’s a lesson there.”
“And then Punch started deliberately hitting the crocodile with the slapstick, and all the children roared. What the lesson is depends upon your point of view. Turns out all right for Mr. Punch, not so much for Judy and the crocodile. I can remember it like yesterday.”
“So you will help us?” Theo asked.
“I had nightmares about that crocodile for months. One bite and she was gone.”
Thumping his fist on the desk, Egon said, “Enough of your Greek and crocodiles. Your car, man. We came to ask if we could borrow your car.”
“To hunt for puppets?”
“Or at least the puppeteers,” Theo said. “To see if we can find out what happened to my wife.”
“And you think she is a puppet? She underwent a metamorphosis?”
“Precisely,” Egon said.
Theo contradicted him immediately. “Well, no, not exactly. We just need a car. To go to Vermont for a few days. See my mother-in-law and learn what we can about this puppet that looks like my wife.”
“Why didn’t you say so? Of course you can borrow my car,” Mitchell said. “On one condition. I want to help. You let me drive.”
“Our bags are packed,” Egon said. “We knew you couldn’t say no.”
“An adventure,” Mitchell said. “Boys, I would go to Hades and back for a good quest.”
* * *
They took the scenic route along the Hudson River shrouded in the gloom of an early November Friday afternoon. Mitchell drove his old Ford station wagon slowly and carefully, regaling his captive passengers with tales from the classical myths. Egon kibitzed from the backseat, pointing out the state police lurking on the shoulders long before the others noticed. They passed into Vermont, almost without realizing the time and the landscape flying by. The mountains rose dramatically from the road on the way to Bennington. Using the map on his smartphone, Theo barked out the directions, and they arrived just north of town at his mother-in-law’s farmhouse by dusk.
After all that had happened, he was not prepared to see Dolores again. Now that they were back in touch, he had heard a note of forgiveness and hope over the phone, especially after she had shared the news about the Halloween parade. Still, he could not be sure what she might say or do in person. And certainly not how she might react to his two friends in tow.
Mitchell and Egon walked up the wheelchair ramp to the porch, and Theo took the stairs. Waiting for them at the front door stood Mrs. Mackintosh. He had forgotten about the Scottish next-door neighbor who often looked in on Dolores and helped her with the domestic chores. With a crook of her index finger, she bade them be quiet as they entered the house.
“The poor dear was up to high doh,” she said. “Now she’s dead tired from all the anticipation ever since you called to say you were coming. I tucked her into bed for a wee nap, and she’ll be cracking to see you after a spell.”
The travelers settled in the front parlor, and Mrs. Mackintosh went into the kitchen for the tea things. The house held memories of Kay in unexpected places. Dozens of framed photographs on the wall marking Kay’s childhood and a few more recent shots. Her father had been the photographer in the family, and it was clear that he had doted on her. Their only child. But the objects held an associate power, a reminder of the world from which she had come. The feel of the doorknob in his hand, the cones of lamplight on the corner tables, the cut-glass dish of hard candies centered on the coffee table. A roast in the oven reminded him of Sunday nights. On the mantel, a great clock ticked, an antique machine with painted oval portraits of Washington and Lincoln said to have once belonged to the latter’s son Robert, down at Hildene. The click of nails on the hardwood floors preceded the appearance of a great beast sauntering from the back rooms. Their old bluetick coonhound named Sal, a last connection to Kay’s father, recognized Theo at once with a look from her mournful brown eyes. Her tail spun in circles as she trotted to his side and buried her head in his lap, and when he reached down to greet her, she drank in the scent of him and rolled onto her back, begging for attention.
“Get on offa that,” Mrs. Mackintosh scolded the dog. She set down a pot of tea and the service, complete with a plate of shortbread, and the men fell to it, pushing aside the dog’s curious nose.
“I want you to know, Theo, just how sorry I am for your loss. Miss Kay was a fine young woman, much loved, and sorely missed.”
Theo looked up from the dog. “Missing, yes. But not yet gone.”
The smile melted from her face. “Dolores says as much. She has been going on about those puppets ever since they showed up on the telly, but I’m afraid there’ll be no good of it. You mustn’t get her hopes too high.”
Mitchell and Egon munched their cookies, staying out of the way.
“It could be a wild goose chase,” Theo said, “but we aim to find those people who made that puppet that looks like Kay. You have to admit the resemblance. I’ve reason to believe they might tell me something.”
“Aye, but it’s a lang road that’s no goat a turnin’.”
“Inscrutable as ever, my dear.” Dolores had rolled silently into the parlor. The dog left Theo’s side and loped over to greet her. Looking older now, and careworn, she lifted her arms to Theo, and as he embraced her, he fought back tears. She was a ghost. He had forgotten how much she looked like her daughter, a resemblance that pierced him yet again and opened the hole in his heart.
* * *
They put Noë in a corner and wrapped her in a musty old horse blanket, and for the next three nights, someone always sat beside her, holding her hand and telling her everything was going to be all right. She pulled at the paper skin of her scalp, peeling back layers, so Firkin and Nix forcibly bound her hands in gloves crafted from twine. The hardest moments were just after midnight when everyone woke, groggy from slumber, and just before dawn when everyone had to return to their places and forgo control. Noë yelled upon waking and cursed before sleeping, always the same plea to be allowed to go home, and at first they reminded her just how impossible that was, and how she would survive in any case, as a puppet in the wind and the rain, not to mention the coming ice and snow. Such bitter foreshadowings of winter only made matters worse.
On the fourth night, Kay took her turn to watch over Noë. She sang to her, tunes her mother used to sing, lullabies and nonsense songs, and the music seemed to ease her troubled mind. They nestled in the corner of the stall, warm against the chilly night. “You’re the only one who cares,” Noë said. “The only one who understands. There is something inside my head. Please untie my hands.”
“You know I can’t do that,” Kay said. “The Queen would have my head.”
“You must let me be free. Pay no attention to the Queen.”
“But Mr. Firkin would catch us.”
“Surely you jest. He’s nothing more than a tub of hot air.”
“I can’t, Noë, I wish I could.”
She let out a drawn-out hiss. “Listen, then, and tell me if you hear it, too, and perhaps once you hear the noises in my brain, you’ll change your mind.” Opening her mouth wide, Noë pressed her lips against Kay’s ear and held still. All Kay could hear was breathing, and she shook her head. So Noë shifted and pressed her ear against Kay’s ear, and they sat cheek to cheek for some time until the hum, faint and distant, began. An electric current going up and down in volume like an oscillating fan.
Alarmed, Kay faced her. “There is something in your head besides thoughts and ideas.”
“And I can’t very well do anything about it like this.” Noë held up her twine-bound hands, useless as mittens. “My brain is going to explode. I’ll go mad.”
“I can’t untie you.”
“Poke a hole in it,” Noë said. “It doesn’t have to be big. A little puncture, just enough to let out the pressure, or I’ll just burst.”
The thought of stabbing her friend in the head mortified Kay, but she could see the agony and need in her eyes. Making sure the others were occupied, she searched for a sharp object. When she dropped to her hands and knees, Kay had to fight off the advances of the little dog, who thought she was playing a game. On the floor, she spied wedged in a corner an old horseshoe nail, a bit rusted but keen enough. She pricked a hole in her thumb, surprised by how little pain she felt, and returning to Noë’s side, she double-checked on the weird noise by pressing ear to ear. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“It won’t. Just a small incision, somewhere no one will notice.” Noë turned and bowed her head, exposing the base of her skull.
The nail punctured the varnished paper with ease, but Noë jerked at the sensation, and a two-inch vertical cut opened. Kay gasped at what she had done.
A pearl of amber liquid formed at the bottom of the wound and oozed in a long strand that dripped to Kay’s lap. Noë groaned with relief as the buzzing grew louder, and from the slit emerged an orange and black honeybee, which perched on the fold of paper skin, tasting the air and testing its wings before flying away. A second bee followed quickly, likewise departing from her head, and then all at once, dozens of angry bees emerged, their buzz grinding louder and louder. Nix was the first to notice the swarm. Dropping a hoop, the clown shouted a warning, and the stalls were suddenly busy with flailing arms and shouts as the bees poured forth, swirling pell-mell around the puppets’ heads, alighting and taking flight again. Mr. Firkin rolled about, calling for order. The Sisters screamed with fright, and the Old Hag cradled the Dog against her chest as it yapped at the insects, desperate to bite and swallow these bizarre toys.
The honey flowed freely and pooled on the floor behind Noë, who had crumpled to her knees and thrown back her head, and some of the bees raced to the spot to collect their spilled food. As soon as her head emptied, Noë fainted, and a few bees crawled on her resting body, buzzing angrily as they looked for a way back inside. Squeezing the nail in her hand, Kay crouched next to her, wondering if she had killed her. When she tried to brush them away, she felt a bee land on her hand and plunge its stinger into the web of skin between her thumb and index finger. She watched in fascination as it took flight, ripping the weapon from its abdomen, and stumbled in the air and plunged to its death. They were dying all around her. Those that hadn’t sacrificed their stingers fell victim to Mr. Firkin’s ingenious trap. He had spaded the honey from the floor into a gunnysack and lured them to it, tying the end with twine when most of the hive had gathered. The few bees that had avoided either fate eventually found their way out of the room and flew off to parts unknown.
While the bees were herded away, the Good Fairy attended to Noë. She cleaned her best as she could of the sticky honey, and taking the horseshoe nail from Kay and a length of twine, she sutured together the ragged ends of the paper wound. The whole time Noë said not a word, the expression on her face as blank as a doll’s. Kay watched the operation, torn between guilt and hope, and when order was finally restored, she was held for an accounting. The puppets arranged themselves in two rows along the stalls, and the Queen paced back and forth between the troops, boiling her thoughts.
“And just whose brilliant idea was this? To plague us with this swarm?”
“Mine, Your Highness,” Kay volunteered. “Though I had no idea about the bees—”
“You don’t think. You hear a sound inside a head, so you cut a hole? What on earth gave you the idea that it was allowed?”
Noë spoke for the first time. “I asked her to, Your Majesty. I was going mad and needed some relief.”
“And you thought that poking a hole in your brain would help? Did you not consider that if you open your mind, you will release everything it holds?”
Kay pondered the question and thought it most unfair. “She had bees in her brain.”
“And that gives you the right to let them out where they might attack the rest of us? Have you not heard of keeping your thoughts to yourself? Had Mr. Firkin here not been as clever, those nasty things might have flown up my nose or into your ear, and then where would we all be? Mad as hatters. Mad as March hares. Mad as your friend there, missy.”
“I beg your pardon, but I was only trying to help.”
Noë stepped up to her own defense. “I feel much better now, I do. No more racket in my mind.”
“Have you stopped to consider,” the Queen asked, “that these bees were not the cause of her problems but a symptom of them? I didn’t think so. There will be no more poking of holes in anyone’s head, do you understand? No more fraternizing at all between the two of you plotters.”
The heartbreak showing in her eyes, Noë could not bear to look at Kay. The Queen stepped before her and with a wave of her hand demanded that she bow down. “You are to no longer complain of bees in the brain. I command you to give up this nonsense of madness and the desire to escape. You are a puppet of the Quatre Mains, and it is high time you started behaving like one.”
Her robes sweeping the air, the Queen quickly turned to Kay. “And as for you, learn your place and like it. Or I shall lump you till you do. I want you to go to the corner and stay there, until I say you may be excused. You are hereby charged with ensuring that no bees will come near our person … not one, you understand? And you will clean up the bodies. Well, what are you waiting for?”
Kay felt like a little schoolgirl, sitting by herself in the corner, but she was glad that she had tried to help Noë, who seemed better already, the madness drained, a pleasing
dullness in the way she moved. As for the petty tyrant who ruled their world, the Queen must be obeyed, but loyalty is best earned and never coerced. Kay would bide her time. She would find a way to show that hearts trump the Queen.
20
They gathered around the television set like a nuclear family. Theo, Egon, and Mitchell on the sofa, Mrs. Mackintosh perched on an ottoman, and Dolores in her wheelchair, the dog dozing at her feet. The Yankee pot roast had disappeared, the apple tart as well, and night had settled into the restive hours between supper and bedtime. Through sheer persistence, Dolores had been able to track down a copy of the video recording from the TV station in Burlington, and they were all ready for another point of view on the Halloween parade.
The biggest difference between the recordings was the quality and higher resolution. The whole piece had been constructed like a story and not merely a series of images marching across the screen. However, one did not see as much of the puppets on the news as they had on the home movie. More intercuts of the children and parents watching the parade go by, and a cute ten seconds of a little girl telling the reporter which puppet was her favorite. “The sticks one,” she had said. Kay had appeared twice in the story, both times fleetingly—in the parade and in the aftermath in the parking lot.
“I’m surprised you spotted her,” Theo said.
“She’s sharper than you think,” Mrs. Mackintosh said.
“Quiet, the both of you,” Dolores said. “I badgered them to send the B roll as well.”
Mitchell leaned forward. “B roll?”
“All the background stuff they shoot and then splice into the main story. Just watch.”
The cameraman had started with a panorama of the decorated streets of the small town, the children gathered at the edge of the sidewalk, sitting on the curb, waiting for the show. The footage jumped to the actual parade, three full minutes, with good shots of each of the puppets, from the tubby barrel man at the head to the giant queen at the end. Kay appeared from a different angle than in the home movie. She was clear and crisp and the shot stayed with her longer as her handler wobbled her forward. At the moment the puppet’s face was closest to the lens, Dolores froze the picture.
The Motion of Puppets Page 19