Ben Soul

by Richard George

Spaniard from Lima. She ran away with him to Cuzco, and later, to Lima. He betrayed her, after stealing her virtue, as they said things in those days. Eventually she fled Peru for the City. A Bishop of the Episcopal Church helped her get to this country. Sadly, he was less honorable than a godly man should be. His mission work was a front for a white slavery ring.”

  “I do not know my mother’s Quechua name. Nor do I know her Spanish name. In the City brothel where the Bishop sold her services, she took the name ‘Fancy Danza.’ That was the name my father knew her by, and the name she used the rest of her life.”

  La Señora opened her eyes and looked at Ben. He nodded, to encourage her to go on. “My mother was a good woman, and abhorred her forced prostitution. She met my father in the course of her business. He was, I fear, no better than many unmarried men of his time were. My mother gave her heart to him, and he gave her his. Much to the scandal of my father’s family, he married my mother.”

  La Señora put her hand on the teapot. Evidently, it was sufficiently warm for her to take more. Ben declined a refill.

  “When I was born, my father’s family came to accept my mother. They kept her past from the neighborhood gossip, mostly by saying nothing about her time before she knew my father. The community came to accept her as well. She lived out her life in a comfort and a love she had not dreamed of as a child.”

  La Señora set down her teacup, took her cane for a prop, and gestured to Ben to help her stand. He went to her and helped her up.

  “Thank you, Mr. Soul,” she said. At my age shifting my bones is necessary to keep mobile.” She took his arm for support. “Come to the window,” she said. “I like to look out on the cove.” He went with her to the window.

  “I was nearly grown when a lawyer from Lima contacted my mother. Her father had died some years earlier, and had willed her all his property. It consisted of several ritual objects, which are now in a museum in Lima, a herd of llamas, and a modest sum of gold coins. My grandfather’s will was most specific that my mother must take in the llamas. Fortunately she had my father’s ranch to pasture them on.” She pointed with her face and chin at a spouting whale in the cove.

  “I do hope that whale doesn’t get stranded on the low tide in the Cove. It’s such a bother to keep them alive until they can swim out again.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “Once every few years, at the most. It’s been seven or eight since the last stranding.” She began to turn. “Please help me back to my chair. I cannot stand too long.” They made their way to her chair. He helped her sit again. “You are very patient, Mr. Soul, with an old woman’s infirmities.” She smiled her serene, moonlit smile again.

  “One of the llamas, my mother discovered from documents my grandfather left her, is no llama at all, but a unicorn in disguise.” He looked at his hands to hide his startlement. He wondered at this lucid La Señora slipping so quickly into a dotty dowager moment. He hoped she hadn’t seen the shocked arch of his eyebrows. She had.

  “I understand you don’t believe this, Mr. Soul. If it were not for the evidence of my own experience, I wouldn’t either. Once or twice a year, usually at Midsummer’s Night, the llama removes its disguise, screws in its horn, and bathes in the Cove’s waves. We commonly celebrate the night with a beach party. Your aura suggests you should be a villager, not just a resident of the village. The unicorn with the unique horn concurs. Please reserve Midsummer’s Night to be with us.”

  He decided humoring her was best; she was, after all, his landlady. “Of course, Señora. I shall be honored to attend.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Soul. And now, I must rest for the afternoon.” She rang for Elke. “Please forgive me for being too weary to converse any further.” She rang her small bell.

  “Yes, Señora, by all means.”

  Elke entered then.

  “Please see Mr. Soul to the Station, Elke,” La Señora said.

  “Of course,” Elke said. “Mr. Soul?” He got up to go.

  “Señora, thank you for a most delicious lunch, and a fascinating conversation. I hope you recover from your exertion.”

  “You are most welcome, Mr. Soul. We shall meet again, on Midsummer’s Night.”

  “Until then, Señora.” He followed Elke out to the funicular.

  Outside the house Ben asked, “Elke, is La Señora prone to flights of fancy when she’s very weary?”

  “She told you about the unicorn with the unique horn.”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait until you see it,” she said, and started the funicular on its downhill run. She said no more to him until they reached the bottom, where she bid him good afternoon, and immediately returned to the manor. Ben went home to a lonely Butter, and had to take her for a walk to redeem himself with her.

  Further Visit with Dickon

  Butter and Ben took to strolling along the beach every day after lunch. By then, most days, the fog had retreated to the sea or at least into the sky, and one could see out to sea, past the two great rock piles that guarded the cove. He had learned the names of the rock piles are “Obadiah” (on the south) for the ship that discovered the cove and “Obaheah” (on the north) just for the fun of it. Sometimes he saw other villagers, most often at a distance that kept interaction to a friendly wave. The beach was a place for solitude.

  Butter and Ben went down to the beach one blustery afternoon. The fog had gone skyward, to color it with unpolished steel. It had the feel of winter skies on the High Plains, heavy and oppressive. There, of course, such a sky would portend snow or sleet. In San Danson, it portended only fog and low cloud extending inland nights and mornings.

  He began a chain of memories of his childhood winters. He drifted with recollections of bitter cold searing his lungs and numbing his fingers. From those memories, he subsided into what the Victorians called a “brown study,” dark, dreary, and depressed. Butter sensed his subdued mood, and walked quietly at heel, occasionally touching his left hand that hung at his side with her nose.

  He stared mostly at his feet making prints in the sand, and might have stepped on Dickon, if Butter had not begun prancing around the man. Dickon sat quietly in shelter of a driftwood stump that Ben had sometimes used for a backrest and windbreak. He looked up at Ben, smiled, and patted the ground beside him. Butter immediately sat beside him and he rubbed her ears. Ben took a place next to Butter. He avoided acknowledging the small thrill of delight that stabbed him when he saw Dickon.

  They sat quiet for some minutes and stared out at the steel waves ruffling the cove. Dickon broke the silence. “Days like this I used to leave the house and sit anywhere outdoors that I could. I didn’t want to be near other people, especially my mother. Days like this depressed her, and she’d spend hours weeping and sniffling. The outdoors was fresher and cleaner than the stale air in the house.” Dickon hadn’t mentioned his childhood before.

  Ben let the wind whisper a little while. When the silence stretched a little long he said, “Skies like this used to mean snow where I grew up. Cold, unloving snow.”

  “I’ve always wondered what it’s like to live in snow country. I grew up in the fog and the rain.”

  “Snow’s a harsh adversary.”

  “It looks so clean and white and pure on TV.”

  “It doesn’t stay clean and white and pure. Doesn’t take long for footprints, tire tracks, or soot to smirch it.” He drew his knees close to his chest and wrapped his arms around himself remembering winters. “I’ve never understood people who liked to play in the snow.”

  “I think it’s romantic to be snowed in with someone you love, just the two of you.”

  “Only if you can stay warm, have plenty of food and drink, and don’t have to get up in the morning to slog off to work.”

  “Where did you grow up?”

  “In Berthoud, a few miles north of Denver. It was a farm town then. It’s a suburb now. I haven’t be
en back for a long time; most of my family’s dead, and I’m not much for visiting graves.”

  Butter whined; both Dickon and Ben had stopped rubbing and stroking her. They both began immediately to pet her again. Several times Dickon’s hand brushed Ben’s hand. Ben found he was hoping the contact would last a little longer than it did.

  “How did you get to the Coast?” Dickon asked.

  “Usual story. I wanted to be myself, and it was a lot easier to do in the City then than anywhere east of the Rockies.” He scratched Butter’s back where her tail joined her body. He knew she especially liked that. “It was easy, when I got fired for going into a gay bar.”

  “On company time?”

  “On my own weekend.”

  “There used to be a lot of that kind of crap. I grew up on the Coast, up in Seattle. It was pretty straight laced when I was young.”

  “How did you get into the church business?” Ben asked.

  “I was in college, starting an engineering major, when I woke up one night dreaming I was a preacher. It seemed like a ‘call’ as we say. I transferred to the state University to study English Literature. I eventually came to the City to go to Seminary.” Dickon sighed.

  “Did you like Seminary?”

  “No. It was hell, especially the first year. My classmates were all philosophy and theology graduates from church colleges. The work was pretty easy for them; they’d been exposed to a lot of convoluted arguing