Ben Soul

by Richard George

stuff.” He went to the kitchen, calling over his shoulder to Ben, “Tea? Wine?”

  “Wine,” Ben said, taking a chair. Butter leaped into his lap and settled herself. Dickon brought Ben a glass with a pale red wine.

  “White Merlot,” he said, handing it to Dickon. “It’s a blush wine. Enjoy. I’ll just tend to a couple of things in the kitchen, and then we can eat.”

  Dickon was gone several minutes. Ben sipped at the wine, closed his eyes, and let the flavor warm his tongue and throat. Butter thumped her tail on the chair arm; Ben’s fingers had stopped rubbing her. He immediately set to rubbing her again. He put the wine glass, still more than half-full, on the table by the chair and put both hands to work on Butter. He set his mind adrift. Dickon’s call to supper interrupted Ben’s unfocused reverie.

  “It’s ready,” Dickon said. Ben ordered Butter to get down. She looked at him in disbelief. He had to push her off.

  “I’ve got a little plate for you, Butter, with people food,” Dickon said. She forgot Ben’s dumping her and raced ahead of Dickon to the kitchen. Ben looked at the table with surprise. Dickon had set it formally, with candles, napkins, and copious flatware. He turned out the overhead light in the kitchen, and the drab little room turned into a cavern of romance.

  “Beautiful,” Ben said. Dickon held the chair for him. Ben sat down, a large smile on his face.

  “First course is the soup,” Dickon said, “from a can, as I promised.” It was chicken noodle, but Dickon had garnished it with bits of parsley and a very thin slice of lemon. He put a small amount in Butter’s bowl. She lapped it up eagerly.

  When they had finished the soup, Dickon brought the fish course. It was tuna salad on toast points. Again, Dickon had surpassed the ordinary with a touch of chili pepper in the sweet relish and mayonnaise. Butter had her own toast point, as well.

  The meat course followed. It was Spam Tropicale, grilled slices of the canned meat sauced with pineapple and candied ginger. Butter ate a generous portion of this delicacy. The salad was a slaw of shredded cabbage and carrot in a dilled mayonnaise. Dessert was vanilla ice cream with a cherry sauce. Butter, of course, had her small share of these treats as well.

  Dickon cleared away the dishes and set them to soak in the sink. Then he and Ben went into the living room. They sat on the sofa together. Butter lay at their feet.

  “Where did you learn to do such things with canned foods?” Ben asked Dickon.

  “Church potlucks,” Dickon said. “I used to organize them as often as I could. Church cooks can be very creative, when they’re competing with each other.”

  “Do you miss that? The church and all the potlucks?”

  “The potlucks, yes, I miss those. Some of the church work—I miss that too. The ugly politics, no, I don’t miss that.” Dickon smiled a rueful smile. “Everything has its dirty politics, of course, but most jobs don’t require you to forgive the politicians.”

  The two men were quiet for a while. Dickon leaned his head against Ben’s shoulder. Ben extricated his arm to put it around Dickon. After a while Dickon said, “I like to listen to your breath go in and out. It’s so comforting.”

  “It’s nice to sit with you this way,” Ben said. “I’ve missed this closeness since Len died.”

  “Did you and Len sit like this often?”

  “Frequently, at first. Less so as we lived together longer. Cuddling is like sex, I guess. A couple needs it more before they have a history of other ways to be together.”

  Dickon sat upright, still cradled in Ben’s arm. “Do you think a couple outgrows a need for sex?”

  “No, but they do slow down.” Ben rubbed his knee against Dickon’s.

  “Did you and Len slow down?” Dickon rubbed back with his knee.

  “Yes, from hot and heavy and often to warm and glowing and less frequent.”

  “Right up till he died?”

  “Right up till he got too sick. Several months before he died, his heart was too wonky to take a chance on sex.” Ben slid his arm from around Dickon. “Sorry,” he said. “My arm’s going to sleep.”

  “Sometimes the spirit is more willing than the flesh’s weakness can support,” Dickon said. “Would you like some tea?”

  “Sounds good. Can I help you with the dishes?”

  “Sure,” Dickon said. “I’ll wash, if you’ll dry. We can do them while the kettle is heating.” He stood, bent over, and kissed Ben. “Can you stay tonight?”

  “Yes,” Ben said. “I was hoping you’d ask.”

  “Still early days for us, I guess,” Dickon said, taking Ben’s hand and drawing him upright.

  “Yes, early days,” Ben said. “We can still make out over a dishpan.” They went hand in hand to the kitchen.

  Dickon washed while Ben dried. “The only long-term relationship I’ve had was with Vanna,” Dickon said as he drained the soapy water from the sink and rinsed the last of the suds down the drain. “When I think back about it, sex, or any kind of affection, physical or otherwise, was more of a weapon than anything else with her.” Dickon dried his hands on a towel. “I guess I’ll have to learn new ways of being with somebody.”

  “I think every new person we meet gives us something new to learn about being in the world with other people,” Ben said. The kettle whistled. Dickon made them each a cup of tea. They sat at the kitchen table to drink it. Butter came in and lay at their feet.

  Hooters

  Dickon heard the “hu-hu-hoo-hoot” of a screech owl in the night. He drifted up from sleep into drowsy wakefulness. The owl called again, and another answered it. Owls didn’t visit the Village often, preferring to keep to the forests east of the highway. When they did come, the Villagers considered it a stroke of good luck to hear them in the night. Rodents were less inclined to restrict themselves to the woods than the owls were. The small beasts proliferated more rapidly than Prime Pussy could control, even with Ermentrude’s visiting help.

  “Welcome, owls,” Dickon whispered. He didn’t want to wake Ben sleeping beside him. Softly he laid back the covers on his side and slipped from the bed to the window. The moon was filtering through the thin fog, casting a gilding of gray silver over the foliage’s blackness. The owls spoke to each other again. Dickon angled his head to look upward toward the top of the tree outside his bedroom window. He fancied he saw a flutter of movement in the moon’s shadow. He shivered. The chill sea wind had cooled the cottage. Behind him he heard the click of Butter’s toenails on the bare floor. He heard the soft thump she made as she jumped on the bed. He smiled. The bed would be warm for sure when he returned.

  Dickon opened the window, somehow balanced on the sill, and then soared into the tree to perch on a branch. The branch swayed as the Great Owl swooped to a landing beside him.

  :”Hello,” he said to the Great Owl. It did not respond. He could smell the musty dust odor of its feathers. He heard the surf sigh over the rocks at the foot of the cliffs, and the lament of the wind in the leaves. Heaviness fell on him, the heaviness of judgment that found him wanting. He trembled, anticipating a severe sentence.

  “You are found wanting,” the Great Owl intoned. Its voice was very like a church bell tolling for the dead. “You have lost the capacity to trust.”

  There came a chorus of “Hear! Hear!” from an attendant audience of tree frogs. A sudden shift in the moonlight had illuminated a broad branch across from the one Dickon and the Great Owl perched on. Hordes of small green and blue bodies lined the branch. Dickon shuddered before their collective accusation.

  “I have no reason to trust,” Dickon said to the assembled ranids. “Everyone I have trusted, except La Señora, has betrayed me.”

  “An advocate, he needs an advocate,” one frog piped in its ragged voice. The others took up the cry, “An advocate! An advocate!”

  The Great Owl nodded, and carefully raised one claw, foot outward, to quell the outcry. As thoug
h all on the same switch, the frogs went silent.

  “Is there one among you who will argue this wingless one’s cause?”

  Silence fell over the tree. Dickon heard the sighing surf and the winds, but no one raised a voice for him.

  “Who will be this one’s advocate?” the Great Owl intoned again, almost as if it asked a rhetorical question that could have no answer.

  “I will,” a rasping voice raked across the symphony of breeze and sea sounds.

  A weasel came slithering up the tree. The frogs all huddled closer together; weasels sometimes prey on frogs. Owls sometimes prey on weasels. Dickon had never heard of weasels up a tree, but here one was.

  “Identify yourself to the Court,” a frog called out.

  “Willis Wallace Weasel, for the defense,” the advocate replied. “Who speaks for the prosecution?”

  “I, Victor Victorinus, do,” a vole said, appearing suddenly out of the darkness. Great round glasses framed its tiny beady eyes. Dickon giggled at the sight.

  “Order in my court!” the Great Owl intoned. Dickon hushed. The owl glared at him, and then turned to the vole.

  “How say you, prosecutor?”

  “If it please the Court,” the vole said in a shrill voice, “the Accused no longer trusts anyone or anything, including the Creator.”

  “If it please the Court,” the weasel spoke up in an oily voice, “the Accused has been thrice betrayed, first by Vanna the vicious, secondly by Vin Decatur, and thirdly, by his church.