Ben Soul

by Richard George

she got older, more and more of the kids had divorced fathers, or had lost them in some war or another. She adjusted.” Emma stood, too, and went to Haakon to offer him a shoulder.

  “Here, I’ll help you back to bed. I’ve given you quite a shock, I see.” She could feel his trembling. She realized she was unsteady herself. “I’ve shocked myself a bit, too,” she said. Haakon let her help him from the room to his sickroom. His mind whirled around his skull like a berserk carousel with wonderment at his fatherhood. Emma felt a shaky, but hopeful that a long, dark, emptiness in her life could be filled.

  Dickon Goes for a Ride

  Dickon met Elke and La Señora at the foot of the funicular. He helped Elke support La Señora toward the car. She wore a green velvet gown today of a very old-fashioned cut. It made her an empress. Elke wore a plain gray suit with a simple white blouse. Her ample bosom strained the cloth. Dickon wondered if she had been putting on weight. He forbore to inquire. He and Elke settled La Señora in the back seat of the touring car. Elke got in the driver’s seat and backed the vehicle out when Dickon opened the garage door. Dickon closed the door and started to get in the front seat with Elke.

  “Ride with me, Dickon,” La Señora commanded him. He got in with her at once. Elke put the car in gear and smoothly entered the highway headed toward Las Tumbas.

  “The unicorn has been speaking to me,” La Señora told Dickon as she leaned forward and pressed the button that elevated the privacy glass between the back seat and the front seat.

  “Yes?” Dickon said, lifting an eyebrow.

  “Matters are muddy between you and Ben,” La Señora said.

  “Yes. I offended him. He hasn’t been ready to hear an apology.” Dickon blushed.

  “Indeed,” La Señora said and pressed her lips together as if she were clamping down on more words.

  “I invited him for a night in Pueblo Rio. Then I spent most of the evening getting drunk with an old friend.” Dickon stared out the window at the passing trees. He did not want to look into the fierce eyes of La Señora.

  “Dickon, Dickon,” she murmured. “You are a fool, man.”

  “I suppose so,” Dickon said. “I don’t know how to make it up to him. He’s shut himself off from me.”

  “The storm will break upon us before long,” La Señora said. Dickon wondered what she meant.

  “Ben will need a helpmate to weather that storm,” she went on. “He doesn’t know it yet, but he has been chosen to do a great work.”

  Dickon turned to stare at the old woman. “Ben? Chosen?”

  “Yes. The unicorn has said it.”

  “Oh.”

  “He will need a companion who supports him and strengthens him.” She sighed. “I had hoped you would be that companion.”

  “I really messed things up with Ben. We were supposed to have a romantic getaway. We didn’t.”

  “Because you ran from it.”

  “No, I just got to talking and drinking with an old friend…”

  “Who helped you run from intimacy?” Her voice was heavy with irony. Dickon looked out the window again. Everything in him resisted La Señora’s statement. He knew it hit too close to the mark. Intimacy had never worked for him. They were passing through Pueblo Rio. The streets this early in the morning were empty, except for the immigrant laborers standing on the corner by the Safeway, waiting for a day’s work.

  “I have known you over twenty years,” La Señora said. “In all that time you have avoided a close relationship with anyone, male, female, canine, or feline.” She coughed. Speaking so forcefully had tired her throat. “You have let that Vanna woman destroy so much about you. You are getting to an age where you won’t have much more opportunity for intimacy. Though I have not been there, I presume the grave offers little in the way of loving comfort.” She coughed again.

  “La Señora, should I ask Elke to stop? Would you like some water?” Dickon hoped to deflect La Señora’s criticism.

  “No. Hand me my reticule. I have a cough suppressant in it.” Dickon reached down and got the string bag near La Señora’s feet. She unknotted the string tie and extracted a small bottle. She unscrewed the cap and swallowed a modicum of the contents. Slowly her rasping breath calmed.

  “Dickon,” she said, “I have spent my life without a loving companion. Oh, I have many around me who support me and help me, including you, but I let a broken love affair in my youth prevent me from forming any further intimate attachments. I erred in this, grievously.” She put a shaking hand to her chest and breathed slowly. “Reach down into yourself, Dickon,” she said. “Find the fear that sabotages your love life, and uproot it.”

  “Señora,” Dickon said, “I’m afraid to reach down into myself. I might not make it back up and out. I’m afraid I’ll drown in my own muck.”

  “You’re drowning now. How much worse can it get?” La Señora held up her hand as Dickon was about to say more. “Think about it, Dickon. It will keep your mind off this hearing.”

  They had arrived at the Las Tumbas courthouse, and Elke drove up in front of the door. She and Dickon helped La Señora out. Elke left La Señora in Dickon’s care while she parked the car. When Elke returned she and Dickon helped La Señora into the hearing room. Ben, Emma, and Notta were already in the room. They took seats right behind them. Dickon looked around for Vanna. She hadn’t come yet. He kept a keen eye on the doors, fearing her entry.

  Day in Court

  Ben looked around. Everyone in the Village had come. La Senora and Elke Hall were present, too. Only Willy Waugh was missing. Ben presumed he had stayed behind to guard the llamas.

  The bailiff proclaimed, “Hear ye! Hear ye! All rise! The Administrative Session of the Las Tumbas Court is now in session, the Honorable Dina Sauer presiding.”

  The judge, a diminutive woman in black robes, with carefully coiffed silver hair framing her heart-shaped face entered the courtroom and took her place at the bench. She sat.

  “Be seated,” the bailiff intoned. When the rustle of seating bodies ceased, the bailiff continued. “This Administrative Session of the Las Tumbas Court is convened to hear a complaint from the Coastal Commission, represented by the Honorable Vanna Dee, against the Village of San Danson, a cluster of cottages and a large house owned by one, Salvación Mandor, represented here by counsel, the Honorable John Diss. Let the proceedings begin.

  The judge spoke. Her voice was reedy, yet carried its authority to every corner of the room. “Commissioner Dee,” she said, “take the oath from the bailiff.”

  The bailiff intoned, “Raise your right hand. Put your left hand on the Book. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth as you know it?”

  “I do,” Vanna said. She stood straight and tall and stared the bailiff in the eye. He dropped his eyes first. Today Vanna wore simple gray, with a strand of black pearls around her throat. No lace softened the severe cut of her dress.

  “Be seated,” he said.

  “State your name and your business,” Judge Sauer said.

  “I am Vanna Dee, Commissioner of the Coastal Commission, and I am here today to show cause why the Village of San Danson should be closed, and all its inhabitants evicted.”

  “Proceed,” the Judge said.

  “The San Danson marbled murrelet is an endangered sub-species of an endangered species. Its only known nesting ground is on the seaward cliffs of San Danson Mountain.” Vanna paused, took out her handkerchief and dabbed at her right eye as though she were about to shed a tear. The Judge shifted on her seat; the rustle of her robes sounded very like a lady’s reprimanding a reprehensible remark. Vanna quickly put her handkerchief in her lap and continued.

  “Human habitation is disruptive of nesting patterns,” she said. “The murrelets are a shy species, easily dissuaded from their nesting habits by intrusive hikers, and their dogs and cats that attack both the adult birds and the nests
themselves.”

  “Explain, please,” Judge Sauer interrupted. “Are these nests on the ground, or in the cliffs?”

  ``Both places. The dogs disturb the nests on the top of the cliffs, and the cats, of course, often climb down to the cliff nests.”

  “I see,” the Judge said. “Continue.”

  “Worse yet than the human intrusion, Senora Mandor keeps a herd of llamas. Their unnatural dung pollutes the watershed and pastures of San Danson Mountain with South American toxins. They also damage the grasses, which leads to erosion of the nesting grounds and choking of the rivulets the murrelets rely on for water during their winter mating season.” Judge Sauer held her hand up. Vanna ceased talking. Judge Sauer asked, “What information source are you using for these facts?”

  “My personal observation and the observation of Coastal Commission staff.”

  “Are any of them present to testify today?”

  Vanna nervously fingered her pearls. “No, your honor, I didn’t know their testimony might be required.”

  “Do you have anything to add?”

  “Only that the Coastal Commission was founded to preserve the natural environment for the appreciation and enjoyment of all future generations. We acknowledge the difficulties for people who uprooted from their homes, but humans, dogs, cats, and even llamas, are not endangered species. The San Danson variety of marbled murrelets is trembling in the footsteps of the dodo and the passenger pigeon. We at the Commission take it as