Ben Soul

by Richard George

shell covering you. Sort of like a social condom or something.” She took a forkful of chocolate cake from her plate and ate it. It gave him a few seconds to formulate an answer.

  “I moved here to retreat and reflect,” he said.

  “Why? What are you running from, to rephrase my question?”

  “I lost my lover. I’m still sorting out who I am now.”

  She frowned at the remnant of frosting on her plate. “Elke tells me your lover was Len DeLys. Is he the same one who ran the emergency hospital during the quake?”

  “Yes. That’s where I met him.” He could hear the strain in his voice covering up the sore place in himself.

  “You’re that Ben, then,” she said, “the twink that stole his heart.”

  “I hardly qualify as a twink!”

  “Not now, perhaps,” she said. “I grant it’s been a few years since the quake.” She scraped the frosting from her plate with her fork and licked it off the fork. “What happened to Len?”

  “Heart attack.”

  “That’s quicker than some things. How long ago?”

  “Not quite two years.”

  “Time for you to mix into the world again.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “The village is a good place to start. You seem to fit in well, from what Dickon’s said about you.”

  “Have you known Dickon long?”

  “Years and years. We were in Seminary at the same time.” She looked for a place to put her empty plate and used fork. “He’s in an opaque shell, too. The two of you should get together. At least you could hide in the same shell, save on shell upkeep.” She smiled at Ben over her shoulder, and turned to answer some comment The Swami made.

  Toward the end of the meal, when they all were half drowsing and half conversing, a woman came from the Station end of the beach. She was statuesque, Rubenesque of figure, and wore an evening dress whose chief feature was a ruffle that began just over her left breast, ran under her right breast, around her body at the small of her back, curved round her left buttock, under her derriere, and down to her right ankle. On most anyone else, the effect would have been gross. On Rosa Krushan, the effect was magnificent. Elke went to Rosa, and kissed her. Rosa returned the kiss with restrained passion.

  Willy Waugh appeared from the gloom along the cliff and began to pack away the picnic things. Elke and Rosa helped him, talking in low tones. Willy said nothing. Willy packed the hampers with leftovers and stacked them against the cliff. Then he brought two large thermoses, one of tea, and one of coffee. He served each of them, seeming to know what each wanted without asking. When he came close, Ben could smell the clean outdoors on his skin over the aroma of the tea he offered.

  La Señora suddenly said in a penetrating voice, “It is nearly time.” The group turned toward the stairs that led from the beach to the village. Ben turned with them. The northern sky glowed, as though the moon were rising in the north. Whiteness lightened the dark. Then the unicorn came down the stairs to the beach. Its whiteness was the whiteness of stars and moons and pearls. It paid them no mind, but went down to the waves and strode into the surf, going deeper into the Cove waters, until only its horned head rose above the wavelets. When it reached the middle of the Cove, the waters turned silver. He glanced up at the distant forest east of the Station. The moon had come up from behind the trees. It perched on the top of one tall redwood, like a cluster of angels dancing on a pin’s head, poised to soar through the night.

  The unicorn turned and came to shore not far from them. They watched it rise from the sea, shedding the Cove waters like droplets of molten silver as it came onto the beach. It turned and looked at them, nodded three times, and bounded up the steps and beyond the village to the Mountain. At sea great waves crashed into Obadiah and Obaheah. White spume curled and broke on the rocks.

  “Perhaps,” La Señora said, breaking the awed silence that held them, “we should light the fire and toast marshmallows now.”

  Kokopelli Dreaming

  Ben went home to Butter and his waiting bed. He opened Mae Ling’s book and began to read. His eyes soon closed, and he slept.

  He has hoed weeds between the bean rows for hours, and the hot sun has drenched him with sweat. He looks up, and the rows of beans seem two times longer than they were when he started hoeing in the cool morning.

  A line of shrubs with gray-green leaves marks the river’s bed. On either side, canyon walls rise above the river’s summer trickle. Buff and white layers sandwich brown basalt and red sandstone layers to make the cliffs.

  He hears a flute caroling on the wind that whispers over the sands beside his bean field. The melody haunts him with an almost familiar pattern. It calls to him in his bean field, bidding him leave his hoeing until another cool morning. He slings his wooden hoe over his shoulder and turns toward the mesa and the town on its top. His short shadow walks ahead of him on the dry path from the river to the mesa.

  The sun glints on the pebbles, fragments of the distant mountains. The river has tumbled and polished them as it rolled them down. One, a bit of shale with an embedded speck of turquoise, scintillates in the sun. The bean weeder stoops to pick it up. Perhaps he will make an ornament from it.

  The flute is closer. The melody changes. Before the melody echoed the melancholy wind; now it sings of the sun’s power. The bean weeder knows now who plays. It is Kokopelli, the wanderer, come to visit the mesa town. He hastens his steps. Kokopelli will have trade goods and news of other towns along the river. Tonight they will dance and feast.

  He comes to the switchback trail that climbs the mesa’s cliff. He signals the guards who watch from hiding places along the way. They know his face. They know he is of the People. Ahead of him, Kokopelli climbs the steep path as he plays a light, pure tune that celebrates the unclouded blue sky.

  Night comes. The bonfire blazes beside the Kiva. The young men dance the deer-hunt dance. The young women murmur together as they cook cornmeal mush and roast venison. Kokopelli flutes for the dancers, stamping his feet to mark the rhythm. He is bent-backed as always, yet more vital than any of the young men. Fire and desire flare in his eyes as he sways his head to the melody he plays.

  Elders choose mates for the young men. An elder with a long nose and shaggy hair brings Two Spirits to the bean weeder. Two Spirits is a young man who lives as a woman among the women. The bean weeder thanks the elder and gives Two Spirits the token rattle he carries. Two Spirits shyly takes his hand and smiles at him. The other elders grumble; the town disapproves such unions. The long-nosed elder falls on his hands and serenades the moon before running into the night. Coyote, the trickster, laughs at the joke he has played on the elders. They shake their fists at the howling spirit.

  Butter barked at the door. Ben had slept through the night in his chair. Ben put down his book and went to the door to let Butter out. Dickon was passing and waved from the lane. Ben waved back. Butter ran to greet him. He stopped to rub her head, and sent her back to Ben. He walked toward the station, obviously intent on some business there.

  Ben’s dream held his mind. He let Butter back in. “Butter,” he said, “you do like Dickon, don’t you?” She laid her head on his knee and gazed up at him with her deep brown eyes. When he said Dickon’s name, she thumped her tail on the floor twice. He took that to mean yes. “He is pretty likeable, isn’t he?”

  Dickon Goes Berserk

  Ben saw Dickon a few days later when he went to get his mail. Dickon was getting his mail, too. Ben was ready to make his move; he had Butter’s approval, and he had the urge. While he plotted an approach, he went to his postal box. He had a single letter and two catalogs. He put the catalogs in the trashcan. He looked at the letter’s return address. It had a state office logo on it, and a name.

  “Dickon,” he said, “who is Vanna Dee?”

  “Coastal Commissioner, among other things,” he said. “What brings her name t
o your sweet lips?”

  He opened the envelope and scanned the letter inside. “She’s asking for an appointment with me. Something about the legality of my residence.”

  “Watch out for her. She’s a wily one. She’ll try to get you in a corner, and turn the tables on you. I think she’s a witch, maybe.” Dickon’s voice was harsh.

  “That’s pretty strong talk, coming from you.”

  “I know the woman all too well. She’d love to shut San Danson down, turn it into an environmental paradise for some murrelet or other.” Dickon threw his junk mail in the trashcan. It slapped against the catalogs Ben had discarded.

  “What’s a murrelet?”

  Dickon scowled. “A small chubby diving bird. Several species inhabit the North Pacific. Ms. Dee” he made the name sound like a curse “thinks one species was here, on the cove, when the early explorers came. She thinks it ought to be re-introduced.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  Dickon nodded emphatically. “Yes, if you take her corollary, which is, that everybody west of the highway should be evicted, the cottages torn down, and the non-native trees and shrubs grubbed out. Most of all, she wants to kill off La Señora’s llamas.”

  “She sounds a little bit fanatic,” he said.

  “Fanatic doesn’t begin to describe her. It’s got as much to do with revenge on La Señora and me as it does with anything environmental. Vanna hates La