HUNTER TELLS KAIT THEY’RE taking a detour on the way to Pittsburgh to see medieval England. The Renaissance Faire, he says, will probably be their only chance on the trip to watch a live joust, so it’s worth at least thirty bucks.
Fifteen years ago, Hunter would have loved this place. Falconry displays, replicas of guillotines, the promise of semireliable historical information, the general sense of low-level spectacle, the underlying sexual tension inherent in any setting that involves so many people in costume.
He spends the morning attending various performances scattered throughout the fairgrounds, and when watching the joust, or the staging of the witch dunking, or the Court Jester’s variety show, he can’t help noticing that these people are terrible actors. Which is not to say they’re not trying; the palpable effort may be the most depressing aspect of their shows, in that Hunter can tell they care deeply about this performance, but mostly they’re just spouting non sequiturs in faux-British accents. They’re teenagers reenacting Monty Python routines, and surely some of them have spouses who are embarrassed to admit they’re married to a Renaissance Faire person. Maybe they thought it was cute ten years ago but were also hoping their husband or wife would grow out of it and move on, and when asked what does your husband do, the wives will say, oh, he’s a historian, hoping people will not ask any follow-ups and will instead be content to believe he is Very Deep and does Important Work.
After a few hours of experiencing the Renaissance, Hunter decides he has had enough. There is no benefit to staying here if he’s not going to enjoy the performances, and even though he and Kait have nowhere specific to be, he feels like he is already behind schedule. The park’s layout is intentionally labyrinthine, like a casino’s gambling floor. He wanders down a pathway lined with a number of small mercantile huts—some selling semi-authentic medieval souvenirs, others hawking T-shirts that feature vaguely sexualized illustrations of heroic knights and distressed damsels and say things like I GOT LANCED AT THE PA REN FAIRE!
The merchant at the last hut calls out to him: “Halloo, Sah!” Hunter nods, keeps walking. “What be the rush, m’lord?” the merchant says. He is an immense person, made larger by his powerful beard and padded tunic. His belt holds his prominent gut aloft, makes him look like a woman in her third trimester of carrying triplets. He performs with the enthusiasm and relative talents of a community theater actor.
“I just, I have to get on the road,” Hunter says.
“Ye be not from around here, I see,” the merchant says, appraising Hunter’s outfit. “You’ll need an ally in these parts. They call me Mordecai.” He extends a gloved hand toward Hunter.
Hunter shakes his hand, shares his name.
“A hunter! Will ye be accompanying us on the grouse hunt anon?”
“It’s just a name, really. I don’t know—”
“But surely you’ve come to regale us with tales of the hunt!”
“Look, I just came here because I was at the rest stop down the road and—”
Mordecai, still gripping his hand, pulls Hunter into the store. He leans in close, so that from a distance they probably look like they’re embracing: “Listen, kid, you’ll make my life a lot easier if you just play along.” His breath smells like boiled potatoes. “Don’t look, but I’ve got supervisors watching me, and I can’t afford another write-up.”
“Why are they watching you?”
“Just help me out,” Mordecai says, and then his voice thunders again: “Please, m’lord, peruse my wares and spare a few shillings for an honest peasant.”
“Um, sure, okay,” Hunter says, looks over his shoulder for the supervisor. “It shall be done!” he says, and Mordecai’s bellowing laugh rattles the hut.
What Mordecai sells is an amazing variety of heraldry-related products; anything that can be emblazoned with a coat of arms is so emblazoned, from traditional items like shields and cloaks to modern goods like lighters and lunchboxes. “What be your surname?” Mordecai asks, and Hunter tells him. “A fine name—fit for a Duke!” As Hunter rustles through the merchandise, trying to devise an exit strategy, Mordecai explains that the family crest is a window into the heart of a man, an illustration of his character, the perfect symbol of what he stands for. “When ye carry it into battle, ’tis the first thing your enemy shall see,” he says.
Hunter can’t find his name on anything, not even a keychain. Among thousands of surnames, his is not accounted for. “What if one doesn’t know one’s insignia?”
“The young Cady must look inside himself and allow the crest to reveal itself to him.” Hunter searches inside himself for the symbol that would represent him. He thinks about Willow, whose crest—a weeping tree—would be almost too obvious. Jack’s symbol would be a factory; for three consecutive years as a child, Hunter had to waste days of his summer vacation accompanying Jack on a Factories of Connecticut tour. Jack said he was trying to teach Hunter industriousness, didn’t want him to end up wasting his prime years on frivolous pursuits like Jack himself had. Kait is not quite as easy to pin down; it would take a hundred crests to include all the images Hunter would want included, and the only fair way to represent her would be through something more complex than a coat of arms—a wall-sized mural, or a mosaic made of twenty thousand tiles. Hunter imagines himself charging into battle wielding an unmarked shield, his slain body left in the field while a victorious general steps over him.
Mordecai summons him behind the counter. “Perhaps I possess the solution to the young man’s quandary!” he shouts. He produces a binder from beneath his desk and leans over Hunter as they flip through it in search of his name. Hunter runs his finger along the Ca- page mouthing each name, but his name is unlisted. He checks surrounding pages just in case there was an error in alphabetizing. If he can find his name and his insignia, a little description of its meaning, then the book can give him a sense of what kind of man he is supposed to be. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would give him a concrete goal; in Kait’s absence, Hunter needs whatever guidance he can find.
Mordecai slips back into his stage whisper: “Hey, can you do me another favor?” he says.
Every one of Hunter’s instincts tells him that a sentence like that, spoken by a stranger, always leads to trouble. But he is trying to suppress his negative nature. He’s trying to be fun. Fighting the urge to ask fifteen follow-up questions, he says, “What do you need?”
“You see the girl over there? Past the turkey leg stand? Looks kind of like the lady who does the weather on channel six?” Hunter nods. “That’s the Queen. You’d be doing me a huge solid if you just play along when she comes by.”
“Sure,” Hunter says. “But, like, what am I supposed to do?”
“We do these skits, kind of. All through the park, we pick regular people out and it’s a fun little thing. Makes people feel special and keeps the regulars coming back.” The Queen is approaching, trailed by her retinue. She carries herself with the haughty posture of actual royalty. One of her hangers-on holds a turkey leg for her and occasionally hand-feeds her a small chunk as if giving a treat to a trained falcon. “You ready? Get ready.”
Already, Hunter regrets being involved, regrets his failure to ask why Mordecai is in such dire need of scoring points with the Queen, regrets agreeing to engage in what is essentially an improv routine in front of a sun-baked and day-drunk audience.
Mordecai shouts, “Hail, Your Majesty!” He bows, and Hunter follows his lead. “ ’Tis a true honor to be graced by your divine presence!”
“Yes,” she says, the words slithering out the corner of her mouth. “I am certain that it is.” She is a pallid and waifish woman with dead eyes and lips like earthworms.
“Your Majesty, we have been granted a visit today by the honorable Hunter Cady.”
“Hey,” Hunter says. “Nice turkey leg.”
The Queen is silent.
“The young man is a stranger in these parts, Your Majesty,” Mordecai says. “Surely he does not recognize the impr
opriety of his speech!” He nudges Hunter. The crowd grows around them.
“Oh, yeah, no. Certainly I wouldn’t wish to offend royalty,” Hunter says and reaches out to shake her hand. He pumps her arm limply once before realizing he has compounded the offense with an even greater breach of protocol.
A lightning flash of rage crackles in the Queen’s eyes. “Peasant, has your insolent friend any business here?
“Your Majesty, I owe you eternal apologies for our visitor’s lack of social graces. But he has brought you an offering of peace.” Mordecai reaches for the cube and Hunter tightens his grip. It takes all of his strength to hold on.
“I think there’s been some confusion,” Hunter says.
The Queen’s assistant passes the turkey leg off to another lackey and then steps forward to help Mordecai wrest the ashes away. There are now six hands on the box and only two are Hunter’s. He feels all the blood in his body pooling up in his stomach and his limbs going cold. The assistant leans in so close his lips graze against Hunter’s ear, and he whispers: “We’ll give it back, man. Just roll with us for one minute.”
While this is a reasonable enough request, and there’s no reason to believe these men would steal his wife’s ashes, the idea of letting her go and trusting them to return her is too much for Hunter to handle. He wants to play along, wants to practice being more agreeable and spontaneous, but this is not possible.
“I’m done playing Harry Potter with you, dude,” he says. He digs his heels in and tugs back. Hunter feels like Samson calling on god for one more moment of great strength so he can pull down the pillars and destroy the temple. His grip loosens and then he is holding nothing and he tumbles backward to the shop’s floor.
Lying on the floor of the shop, he looks up at Mordecai and says, “Come on. Help me out here.” But they have already passed the point of no return; there’s an audience to appease, and it is clear that Mordecai and the others are working under a strict mandate to never break character, no matter what. Mordecai hands the cube to the Queen’s assistant, and the Queen orders it be opened on the spot. “Let us see if this interloper’s gift is generous enough to justify his abhorrent behavior,” she says.
Hunter scrambles to his feet, but Mordecai holds him back with one arm, and now the eager crowd closes in on them like a hand wrapping around Hunter’s throat. The box clicks open and the assistant lifts the lid, and suddenly everyone is silent. In a panic, he nearly drops it into the dirt and sends Kait sprawling through the park, but he regains his composure just in time to avoid disaster.
“It’s my wife,” Hunter says. “My wife is dead.” Mordecai goes limp and allows Hunter to reclaim the cube. Hunter snaps the lid shut and then inspects the edges to see if there has been any leakage or other damage.
The crowd now realizes what they’re seeing and they begin murmuring. The Queen has a crisis on her hands, and she acts quickly to control the damage. Mordecai towers over her, but with each step she takes toward him, he shrinks until he’s so small he can fit in her palm and be stuffed into her pocket. He tries to offer a defense for this disastrous moment, but she cuts him off. She banishes him into exile, effective immediately. “Now—off with you before I decide to be off with your head!” she says. The crowd cheers as the security guards (disappointingly not dressed as knights, but rather wearing standard-issue mailman’s shorts and blue polos, stretched over beginners bellies) escort Mordecai off the premises. Next, the Queen announces, “This most honorable young man will be knighted by my hand at the end of our festivities today.” The crowd applauds. She waves the people away and tells Hunter to follow her. He does not want to stay, but a hundred people are staring at him, expecting him to follow the queen, and last time he failed to play along, he nearly lost everything.
Their procession takes them through the heart of the village, bystanders photographing them while others shout declarations of love for the Queen; she does not respond to them, does not even turn to look at them, sometimes mutters to her guards that she cannot stand these peasants. Their destination is a gray office building hidden behind the jousting stage. Some of the park’s employees are here, on break but still costumed, sitting in what looks like a doctor’s waiting room, gobbling up homemade lunches, playing games on their cell phones, and watching daytime talk shows on wall-mounted TVs. The Queen introduces herself formally to Hunter: “Everyone here calls me Your Majesty, but you can just call me Queen Margaret.”
“I just want to get out of here, can I just get out of here?” Hunter says, and he can tell by the gasping of her followers that this sort of insubordination would be a fireable offense for them.
She inhales sharply and then apologizes for his maltreatment at the hands of a disorderly merchant. In addition to firing Mordecai, they’re willing to compensate Hunter with two season passes to the Ren Faire, a fifty-dollar voucher for the gift shop, a free meal, and a personalized signed photo of the Queen. “Also,” she asks, “were you planning to spread your beloved’s ashes here? Because I think it’s a violation of health codes and—”
“No. I mean, no way. That’s not what I want. At all. Why don’t I just pour her ashes in the dumpster out back?”
“Why would you bring them here in the first place?”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m the weird one,” Hunter says.
“This is my job,” she says.
“Well anyway,” Hunter says, leaving the gifts on the desk, and carrying Kait through the waiting room. The Queen shouts that he has to stay in order to be knighted, but does not follow him through the exit.
Approaching the parking lot, he passes the two security guards. One of them says, “Hey man, sorry. About. You know.”
The other says, “You ought to be careful. Mordecai is still out there, and he’s pretty pissed.”
Hunter crouches behind a parked car and weaves through the lot, like a SEAL maneuvering behind enemy lines. He feels like he’s sixteen again, sneaking out of the house overnight and tiptoeing past the creaky floorboards outside Jack’s office. Jack caught him once when he was sneaking back into the house at dusk; he was waiting in the darkened living room and said, “Kid, you cannot do this to us,” while Willow descended the stairs, phone in hand, ready to call the police to report her son missing. “You drove us half crazy,” Jack said. They grounded him for three weeks and Jack got in the habit of performing random bed checks, fining him ten dollars for every time he was caught out of place. Hiding in the parking lot now only intensifies Hunter’s anxiety; every footstep could be Mordecai closing in on him. His heart tap dancing, he darts through the final stretch to his car and has shifted into drive before even closing the door.
THE ADRENALINE RUSH OF his escape wears off quickly, and by the time he’s safely on the interstate, Hunter’s anger has largely subsided, replaced by a sense of envy he can’t quite articulate. Despite the bad acting and the anachronisms, the overpriced merchandise and the hokey décor, the employees and attendees all seemed to love that park. After perhaps years of searching, they’d finally found a place where they could be comfortable acting strangely without feeling strange. He’d assumed at first that they were unhappy, simply because he was unhappy there. But it would be liberating to find a place where you could be whoever you wanted to be and feel okay about it. That, he thinks, is what this whole drive is really about: figuring out who he’s supposed to be now, and where he can best be that person.
THAT NIGHT, IN A central PA motel, he leaves the bathroom light on, the door cracked to allow a thin bar of light passage into the room; Kait doesn’t like sleeping in total darkness. The first time they slept in the same room, in a hotel in New York City, roughly halfway between their respective homes, he had assumed she was making some kind of joke when she plugged in a night-light and so he laughed, and he knew immediately that he’d done something wrong, the way her smile caved in and her posture sagged like gravity had doubled on her. She told him she was afraid of the dark, and he asked what’s so scary about
a little darkness? “Why wouldn’t you be afraid? “she said, and then she stopped speaking, curled tightly inside the blankets as if trying to vacuum seal herself, and scooted to the edge of the bed against the wall. Over the course of the night, he caressed her side a few times, hoping she would awake and they could make up and forget the ugly business of him laughing at her fears, but it was as if she’d already left him. In the morning, she told him the light isn’t funny, it comforts her, and he shouldn’t laugh at someone for trying to make herself comfortable. All of which seemed fair enough, especially since she didn’t mock him for his fear of driving. They never discussed it again, but he bought a night-light for the guest room in Jack and Willow’s home, and when they purchased their own house, he made sure to plug in lights in every room, in case she found herself wandering the house at night.
The Young Widower's Handbook Page 5
