“I could,” said Audubon, who’d never had less interest in discovering a new species. “I could, yes, but . . . I’m going to load my gun with buckshot.” He started doing just that.
“Good plan.” So did Harris.
Keep calling. Please keep calling, Audubon thought, again and again, as they rode through the forest toward the sound. The birds—whatever they were—did keep up the noise, now quietly, now rising to an angry peak as if a couple of males were quarreling over a female, as males were likely to do in spring.
When Audubon thought they’d come close enough, he slid down off his horse, saying, “We’d best go forward on foot now.” He carried not only his gun but also charcoal sticks and paper, in case . . . Harris also dismounted. Audubon believed he would have brained him with the shotgun had he argued.
After perhaps ten minutes, Harris pointed ahead. “Look. We’re coming to an open space.” Audubon nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He too saw the bright sunshine that told of a break in the trees. The birdcalls were very loud now, very near. “Would you call that honking?” Harris asked. Audubon only shrugged and slid forward.
He peered out from in back of a cycad at the meadow beyond . . . at the meadow, and at the honkers grazing on it. Then they blurred: tears of joy ran down his face.
“Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Who hast preserved me alive to see such things,” he whispered, staring and staring.
Harris stood behind a small spruce a few feet away. “Isn’t that something. Isn’t that something?” he said, his words more prosaic than his friend’s but his tone hardly less reverent.
Eight honkers grazed there, pulling up grass with their bills: two males, Audubon judged, and half a dozen smaller females. The birds had a more forward-leaning posture than did the mounted skeletons in the Hanover museum. That meant they weren’t so tall. The males probably could stretch their heads up higher than a man, but it wouldn’t be easy or comfortable for them.
And then they both moved toward the same female, and did stretch their necks up and up and up, and honked as loudly as ever they could, and flapped their tiny, useless wings to make themselves seem big and fierce. And, while they squabbled, the female walked away.
Audubon started sketching. He didn’t know how many of the sketches he would work up into paintings and how many would become woodcuts or lithographs. He didn’t care, either. He was sketching honkers from life, and if that wasn’t heaven it was the next best thing.
“Which species are they, do you suppose?” Harris asked.
Once, at least a dozen varieties of honker had roamed Atlantis’ plains and uplands. The largest couple of species, the so-called great honkers, birds of the easily accessible eastern lowlands, went extinct first. Audubon had studied the remains in Hanover and elsewhere to be ready for this day. Now it was here, and he still found himself unsure. “I . . . believe they’re what’s called the agile honker,” he said slowly. “Those are the specimens they most resemble.”
“If you say they’re agile honkers, why then, they are,” Harris said. “Anyone who thinks otherwise will have to change his mind, because you’ve got the creatures.”
“I want to be right.” But Audubon couldn’t deny his friend had a point. “A shame to have to take a specimen, but ...”
“It’ll feed us for a while, too.” The prospect didn’t bother Harris. “They are supposed to be good eating.”
“True enough.” When Audubon had all the sketches he wanted of grazing honkers and of bad-tempered males displaying, he stepped out from behind the cycad. The birds stared at him in mild surprise. Then they walked away. He was something strange, but they didn’t think he was particularly dangerous. Atlantean creatures had no innate fear of man. The lack cost them dearly.
He walked after them, and they withdrew again. Harris came out, too, which likely didn’t help. Audubon held up a hand. “Stay there, Edward. I’ll lure them back.”
Setting down his shotgun, he lay on his back in the sweet-smelling grass, raised his hips, and pumped his legs in the air, first one, then the other, again and again, faster and faster. He’d made pronghorn antelope on the Terranovan prairie curious enough to approach with that trick. What worked with the wary antelope should work for agile honkers as well. “Are they coming?” he asked.
“They sure are.” Harris chuckled. “You look like a damn fool—you know that?”
“So what?” Audubon went on pumping. Yes, he could hear the honkers drawing near, hear their calls and then hear their big, four-toed feet tramping through the grass.
When he stood up again, he found the bigger male only a few feet away. The honker squalled at him; it didn’t care for anything on two legs that was taller than it. “Going to shoot that one?” Harris asked.
“Yes. Be ready if my charge doesn’t bring it down,” Audubon said. Point-blank buckshot should do the job. Sometimes, though, wild creatures were amazingly tenacious of life.
Audubon raised the shotgun. No, the agile honker had no idea what it was. This hardly seemed sporting, but his art and science both required it. He pulled the trigger. The gun kicked against his shoulder. The male let out a last surprised honk and toppled. The rest of the birds ran off—faster than a man, probably as fast as a horse, gabbling as they went.
Harris came up beside Audubon. “He’s down. He won’t get up again, either.”
“No.” Audubon wasn’t proud of what he’d done. “And the other male can have all the females now.”
“He ought to thank you, eh?” Harris leered and poked Audubon in the ribs.
“He’d best enjoy them while he can.” Audubon stayed somber. “Sooner or later—probably sooner—someone else will come along and shoot him, too, and his lady friends with him.”
By then, the rest of the honkers had gone perhaps a hundred yards. When no more unexpected thunder boomed, they settled down and started grazing again. A few minutes later, a hawk soared by overhead—not a red-crested eagle, but an ordinary hawk far too small to harm them. Still, its shadow panicked them more thoroughly than the shotgun blast had. They sprinted for the cover of the trees, honking louder than they did when Audubon fired.
“Would you please bring my wires, Edward?” the artist asked. “No posing board with a bird this size, but I can truss him up into lifelike postures.”
“I’ll be back directly,” Harris said. He took longer than he promised, but only because instead of carrying things himself he led up the packhorses. That gave Audubon not only the wires but also his watercolors and the strong spirits for preserving bits of the agile honker. If he and Harris did what he’d told the customs man they wouldn’t do and drank some of the spirits instead of using them all as preservatives . . . Well, how else could they celebrate?
Audubon soon got to work. “This may be the last painting I ever do,” he said. “If it is, I want to give my best.”
“Don’t be foolish. You’re good for another twenty years, easy,” Harris said.
“I hope you’re right.” Audubon left it there. No matter what he hoped, he didn’t believe it, however much he wished he did. He went on, “And this may be the last view of these honkers science ever gets. I owe it to them to give my best, too.”
He wired the dead male’s neck and wings into the pose it took when challenging its rival. He had the sketches he’d made from life to help him do that. His heart pounded as he and Harris manhandled the honker. Ten years earlier, or even five, it wouldn’t have seemed so hard. No, he didn’t think he had twenty more left, or anything close to that.
Live for the moment, then, he told himself. It’s all there is. His eye still saw; his hand still obeyed. If the rest of him was wearing out like a steamboat that had gone up and down the Big Muddy too many times . . . then it was. When people remembered him, it would be for what his eye saw and his hand did. The rest? The rest mattered only to him.
And when people remembered agile honkers from now on, that too would be for what his eye saw and what his hand did. Even mo
re than he had with the red-crested eagle, he felt responsibility’s weight heavy on his shoulders.
The other honkers came out from the trees and began grazing again. Some of them drew close to where he worked. Their calls when they saw him by the male’s body seemed to his ear curious and plaintive. They knew their fellow was dead, but they couldn’t understand why Audubon stood near the corpse. Unlike a hawk’s shadow, he was no danger they recognized.
The sun was setting when he looked up from his work. “I think it may do,” he said. “The background will wait for later.”
Harris examined the honker on the paper, the honker vibrant with the life Audubon had stolen from its model. He set a hand on the painter’s shoulder. “Congratulations. This one will last forever.”
“Which is more than I will. Which is more than the birds will.” Audubon looked down at the dead honker, agile no more. “Now for the anatomical specimens, and now for the dark meat. Poor thing, it will be all flyblown by this time tomorrow.”
“But your painting will keep it alive,” Harris said.
“My painting will keep its memory alive. It’s not the same.” Audubon thought again about how his heart had beat too hard, beat too fast. It was quieter now, but another twenty years? Not likely. “No, it’s not the same.” He sighed. “But it’s all we have. A great pity, but it is.” He drew his skinning knife. “And now for the rest of the job ...”
BEDFELLOWS
When I was at ComicCon a few years ago, I got to talking with a fine San Diego poet, Terry Hertzler. We agreed that, in an odd way, the then-President and a certain terrorist leader had done more for each other than to each other. Stretch that to its illogical extreme and what you get is “Bedfellows.” I owe the title and several other fine suggestions to Gordon van Gelder, who bought it for Fantasy & Science Fiction. It’s not real. Of course it’s not real. It could never, ever happen. Nahhh.
There are photographers. There are strobing flashes. They know ahead of time there will be. They leave their rented limo and walk across the Boston Common toward the State House hand in hand, heads held high. They’re in love, and they want to tell the world about it.
W is tall, in a conservative—compassionate, oh yes, but conservative—gray suit with television-blue shirt and maroon neck-tie. O is taller, and his turban lends him a few extra inches besides. His shalwar kamiz is of all-natural fabrics. He’s trimmed his beard for the occasion—just a little, but you can tell.
“How did you meet?” a reporter calls to the two of them.
They both smile. O’s eyes twinkle. If that’s not mascara, he has the longest eyelashes in the world. Their hands squeeze—W’s right, O’s left. “Oh, we’ve been chasing each other for years,” W says coyly. Joy fills his drawl.
“It is so. Inshallah, we shall be together forever,” O says. “Truly God is great, to let us find such happiness.”
News vans clog Beacon Street. Cops need to clear a path through the reporters so W and O can cross. A TV guy looking for an angle asks one of Boston’s finest, “What do you think of all this?”
“Me?” The policeman shrugs. “I don’t see how it’s my business one way or the other. The court says they’ve got the right to do it, so that’s what the law is. Long as they stay inside the law, nothing else matters.”
“Uh, thank you.” The TV guy sounds disappointed. He wants controversy, fireworks. That’s what TV news is all about. Acceptance? One word—boring.
The State House. Good visuals. Gilded dome. Corinthian colonnade. The happy couple going up the stairs and inside.
More reporters in there. More camerapersons, too. O raises a hand against the bright television lights. More flashes go off, one after another. “Boy, you’d think we’re in the middle of a nucular war or something,” W says. He always pronounces it nucular.
“Nuclear,” O says gently. “It’s nuclear.” You can tell he’s been trying to get W to do it right for a long time. Every couple needs a little something to squabble about. It takes the strain off, it really does.
“Can we get a picture of you two in front of the Sacred Cod?” a photographer asks.
“I don’t mind.” W is as genial as they come.
But O frowns. “Sacred Cod? It sounds like a graven image. No, I think not.” He shakes his head. “It would not play well in Riyadh or Kandahar.”
“Aw, c’mon, Sam, be a sport.” W has a nickname for everybody, even his nearest and dearest. And he really does like to oblige.
But O digs in his heels. “I do not care to do this. It is not why we came here. I know why we came here.” He bends down and whispers in W’s ear. W laughs—giggles, almost. Of course, maybe O’s beard tickles, trimmed or not.
W gives the reporters kind of a sheepish smile. “Sorry, friends. That’s one photo op you’re not gonna get. Now which way to the judge’s office?”
“Chambers. The judge’s chambers,” O says. You wonder which one was brought up speaking English.
“Whatever.” W doesn’t care how he talks. “Which way?” There’s a big old sign with an arrow——> showing the way. He doesn’t notice till one of the reporters points to it.
He and O start down the hall. A reporter calls after them: “What do you see in each other?”
They stop. They turn so they’re face-to-face. They gaze into each other’s eyes. Now they have both hands clasped together. Anyone can tell it’s love. “We need each other,” W says. Even if he doesn’t talk real well, he gets the message across.
“My infidel,” O says fondly.
“My little terrorist.” W’s eyes glow.
You’ve seen couples who say the same thing at the same time? They do it here. “Without him,” they both say, each pointing to the other, “I’m nothing.” O strokes W’s cheek. W swats O on the butt. They’re grinning when they go into the judge’s chambers.
The justice of the peace looks at the two of them over the top of her glasses. How many times has she done that, with how many couples? “You have your license. I can’t stop you. But I do want to ask you if you’re sure about what you’re doing,” she says. “Marriage is a big step. You shouldn’t enter into it lightly.”
“We’re sure, ma’am,” W says.
“Oh, yes,” O says. “Oh, yes.”
“Well, you sound like you mean it. That’s good,” she says. “You’re making a commitment to each other for the rest of your lives. You’re promising to be there for each other in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad.”
“We understand,” O says.
“I should say we do.” W nods like a bobblehead, up and down, up and down. “We already look out for each other. Why, if it wasn’t for Sam here, my poll numbers would be underwater.”
O beams down at him. “My friends need infidels to hate, and W makes hating them so easy. Take Abu Ghraib, for instance. You’d think he did it just for me.”
“Nope. Wasn’t like that at all.” Now W’s head goes side to side, side to side, as if it’s on a spring. “We both had fun there. We share lots of things.” He grins at O. “See? I told you I’d bring you to justice.”
O laughs. “All right.” The corners of the justice of the peace’s mouth twitch up in spite of themselves. She doesn’t meet devotion like this every day. “Let’s proceed to the ceremony, then.” She reads the carefully nondenominational words. At last, she gets to the nitty-gritty. “Do you take each other to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, as long as you both shall live?”
“I do.” W and O answer together. Proudly.
“Then by the authority vested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I now pronounce you man and, uh, man.” Even though they’re legal, the judge is still new at same-sex marriages. Who isn’t? But she recovers well: “You may kiss each other.”
They do. In here, it’s nothing but a little peck on the lips. They wink at each other. They know what the cameras outside are waiting for.
An explosion, a fusillade of flashes when they come out int
o the hallway. You can see W’s mouth shaping nucular again, but you can’t hear him—too many people yelling questions at once. You can see O tolerantly nodding, too. He knows W’s not about to change.
A guy with a great big voice makes himself heard through the din: “Is it official?”
“It sure is,” W says.
“Have you kissed each other yet?” somebody else asks—a woman.
“Well, yeah,” W answers. The reporters make disappointed noises. W and O wink at each other again. Sometimes they’re like a couple of little kids—they seem to think they’ve invented what they share. “We could do it again, if you want us to,” W says.
The roar of approval startles even him and O. O grabs him, bends him back movie-style, and plants a big kiss right on his mouth. W’s arms tighten around O’s neck. The kiss goes on and on. Another zillion flashes freeze it in thin slices so the whole world can see.
Everything has to end. At last, the kiss does. “Wow!” a reporter says. “Is that hotter than Madonna and Britney or what?”
“Than who?” O doesn’t get out much.
W does. “You betcha,” he says. If his grin gets any wider, the top of his head will fall off. Is that a bulge in those conservative gray pants? Sure looks like one.
“Where will you honeymoon?” another reporter calls.
“In the mountains,” O says.
“At the ranch,” W says at the same time.
Not quite in synch there. They look at each other. They pantomime comic shrugs. They’ll work it out.
Still hand in hand, they leave the State House. “Massachusetts is a very nice place,” O says. “Very . . . tolerant.”
“Well, if they put up with me here, they’ll put up with anybody,” W says, and gets a laugh.
“Gotta take you to meet the folks,” W says as they start back toward the limo.
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