"And might I be assured from the testimony we have heard today that the audience may look forward to some good sword-play in this work?"
"Oh, yes, my lord."
"Good. I far prefer such plays to thy comedies."
"If I may be so bold, sir, I believe thou will then enjoy this piece," William Shakespeare said and joined Cooper and his wife as they left the dark room.
*
Near candle-lighting that night, three men sat in the Unicorn and Bear tavern in Charing Cross, tankards of ale before them: Charles Cooper, Stout and William Shakespeare.
A shadow filled the doorway as a man walked into the tavern.
"Behold, 'tis the mysterious gentleman on the wharf," Charles said.
Hal Pepper joined them and was served up an ale of his own.
Charles lifted his tankard. "Thou did well, my friend."
Hal drank long and nodded proudly to acknowledge the compliment. His role in the daring play, as writ by William Shakespeare and Charles Cooper in collaboration, was critical. After Charles had stopped Murtaugh on the wharf and, as he'd told the Court, piqued the knight's interest with the promise of an appearance onstage, it had been Hal's task to snare a passerby at just the right moment so that he witness the exchange of dialogue between Charles and Murtaugh at the start of their mock duel. Hal had then given the lackey Rawlings a half sovereign to raise the hue and cry with the constable, whom Shakespeare, as master plotter, had decided should perforce be a witness to the duel as well.
Shakespeare now examined Charles gravely and said, "Regarding thy performance in Court, friend, thou need some study as a player, yet on the whole" -- the man from Stratford could not resist a smile -- "I would venture to say that thou acquitted thyself admirably."
Will Shakespeare often deflected the course of the conversation to allow for the inclusion of puns, which he loved. But neither was Charles Cooper a stranger to wordplay. He riposted, "Ah, but 'tis sadly true, friend, that my talent for bearing witness in Court is no match for thy overbearing wittiness in taverns."
"Touche," cried Shakespeare and the men laughed hard.
"And here is to thee too, my friend." Charles tapped his tankard against Stouts.
It had been the big man's task to wield his barrel-maker's tools with sufficient skill to loosen the railing at Temple wharf just the right degree so that it would not give way under casual hands but would fall apart when Murtaugh stumbled against it.
Stout was not as quick as either Shakespeare or Charles and attempted no cleverness in reply. He merely blushed fiercely with pleasure at the recognition.
Charles then embraced Shakespeare. "But thou, Will, were the linchpin."
Shakespeare said, "Thy father was a good man to me and my family. I will always remember him with pleasure. I am glad to have played a small part in the avenging of his death."
"What might I do to repay thee for the risks thou took and thy efforts on my behalf?" Charles asked.
The playwright said, "Indeed thou have already. Thou have bestowed upon me the most useful gift possible for a dabbler in the writer's craft."
"What might that be, Will?"
"Inspiration. Our plot was the midwife for a sonnet which I completed just an hour ago." He drew a piece of paper from his jacket. He looked over the assembled men and said solemnly, "It seemed a pity that Murtaugh knew not the reason for his death. In my plays, you see, the truth must ultimately out -- it needs be revealed, at the least to the audience, if not the characters. That Murtaugh died in ignorance of our revenge set my pen in motion."
The playwright then read the sonnet slowly:
To a Villain
When I do see a falcon in the wild
I think of he, the man who gave me life,
Who loved without restraint his youthful child
And bestow 'd affection on his wife.
When I do see a vulture in its flight
I can think of naught but thee, who stole
Our family's joy away that evil night
Thou cut my father's body from his soul.
The golden scissors of a clever Fate
Decide how long a man on earth shall dwell.
But as my father's son I could not wait
To see thy wicked soul entombed in hell.
This justice I have wrought is no less fine,
Being known but in God's heart and in mine.
*
"Well done, Will," Hal Pepper called out.
Charles clapped the playwright on the back.
"It be about Charles?" Stout asked, staring down at the paper. His lips moved slowly as he attempted to form the words.
"In spirit, yes," Shakespeare said, turning the poem around so that the big man could examine the lines right-way up. He added quietly, "But not, methinks, enough so that the Court of Sessions might find it evidentiary."
"I do think it best, though, that thou not publish it just yet," Charles said cautiously.
Shakespeare laughed. "Nay, friend, not for a time. This verse would find no market now, in any case. Romance, romance, romance... that be the only form of poesy that doth sell these days. Which, by the by, is most infuriating. No, I shall secrete it safe away and retrieve it years hence when the world hath forgot about Robert Murtaugh. Now, it is near to candle-lighting, is it not?"
"Very close to," Stout replied.
"Faith, then... Now that our real-life tale hath come to its final curtain, let us to a fictional one. My play Hamlet hath a showing tonight and I must needs be in attendance. Collect thy charming wife, Charles, then we shall to the ferry and onward to the Globe. Drink up, gentlemen, and let's away!"
Gone Fishing
"Don't go, Daddy."
"Rise and shine, young lady."
"Please?"
"And what's my little Jessie-Bessie worried about?"
"I don't know. Nothing."
Alex sat on the edge of her bed and hugged the girl. He felt the warmth of her body, surrounded by the peculiar, heart-swelling smell of a child waking.
From the kitchen a pan clattered, then another. Water running. The refrigerator door slamming. Sunday-morning sounds. It was early, six-thirty.
She rubbed her eyes. "I was thinking... what we could do today is we could go to the penguin room at the zoo. You said we could go there soon. And if you have to go to the lake, I mean really have to, we could go to Central Park instead and go rowing like we did that time. Remember?"
Alex shivered in mock disgust. "What sorts of fish do you think I'd catch there! Icky fish with three eyes and scales that glow in the dark."
"You don't have to go fishing. We could just row around and feed the ducks."
He looked out the window at the dim, gray horizon of New Jersey across the Hudson River. The whole state seemed asleep. And probably was.
"Please, Daddy? Stay home with us."
"We played all day yesterday," he pointed out, as if this would convince her that she could do without him today. He was, of course, aware that children's logic and adults' bore no resemblance to each other; still, he continued. "We went to FAO Schwarz and Rockefeller Center and I bought you two, count 'em, two hot dogs from Henri's a cote, du subway. And then Rumple-meyer's."
"But that was yesterday!"
Youngsters' logic, Alex decided, was by far the most compelling.
"And what did you eat at Rumpelstiltskin's?"
When logic failed, he was not above diversion.
The eight-year-old tugged at her nightgown. "Banana split."
"You did?" He looked shocked. "No!"
"Did too, and you know it. You were there."
"How big was it?"
"You know!"
"I know nothing, I remember nothing," he said in a thick German accent.
"Thisssss big." She held her hands far apart.
Alex said, "Impossible. You would've blown up like a balloon. Pop!" And she broke into giggles under his tickling fingers.
"Up and at 'em," he announced. "Bre
akfast together before I leave."
"Daddy," she persisted. But Alex escaped from her room.
He assembled his fishing tackle, stacked it by the door and walked into the kitchen. Kissed Sue on the back of the neck and slipped his arms around her as she flipped pancakes in the skillet.
Pouring orange juice for the three of them, Alex said, "She doesn't want me to go today. She's never complained before."
For the last year he'd taken off a day or two every month to go fishing in the countryside around New York City.
His wife stacked the pancakes on a plate and set them in the oven to warm. Then she glanced down the hall where their daughter, in her purple Barney slippers, wandered sleepily into the bathroom and shut the door behind her.
"Jessie was watching the tube the other night," Sue said. "I was finishing up some homework and wasn't paying attention. Next thing I knew she ran out of the room crying. I didn't see the program but I looked it up in TV Guide. It was some made-for-TV movie about a father who was kidnapped and held hostage. The kidnapper killed him and then came after his wife and daughter. I think there were some pretty graphic scenes. I talked to her about it but she was pretty upset."
Alex nodded slowly. He'd grown up watching horror flicks and shoot-'em-up westerns; in fact he'd found Saturday matinees a sanctuary from his abusive, temperamental father. As an adult he'd never thought twice about violence in films or on TV -- until he became a father himself. Then he immediately began censoring what Jessica watched. He didn't mind that she knew death and aggression existed; it was the gratuitous, overtly gruesome carnage lacing popular shows that he wanted to keep from her.
"She's afraid I'm going to get kidnapped while I'm fishing?"
"She's eight. It's a big bad world out there."
It was so difficult with children, he reflected. Teaching them to be cautious of strangers, aware of real threats, but not making them so scared of life they couldn't function. Learning the difference between reality and make-believe could be tough for adults, let alone youngsters.
Five minutes later the family was sitting around the table, Alex and Sue flipping through the Sunday Times, reading portions of stories that seemed interesting. Jessica, accompanied by Raoul, a stuffed bear, methodically ate first her bacon, then her pancakes and finally a bowl of cereal.
The girl pretended to feed Raoul a spoonful of cereal and asked thoughtfully, "Why do you like to fish, Daddy?"
"It's relaxing."
"Oh." The bits of cereal were in the shape of some cartoon creatures. Ninja Turtles, Alex thought.
"Your father needs some time off. You know how hard he works."
As the creative director of a Madison Avenue ad agency, Alex regularly clocked sixty-and seventy-hour weeks.
Sue continued, "He's a type-A personality through and through."
"I thought you had a secretary, Daddy. Doesn't she do your typing?"
Her parents laughed. "No, honey," Sue said. "That means somebody who works real hard. Everything he does has to get him closer to his goal or he isn't interested in it." She rubbed Alex's muscular back. "That's why his ads are so good."
"The Cola Koala!" Jessica's face lit up.
As a surprise for the girl, Alex had just brought home some of the original art cells of the animated cartoon figure he'd created to hawk a product its manufacturer hoped would cut large chunks out of Pepsi's and Coke's market shares. The pictures of the cuddly creature hung prominently on her wall next to portraits of Cyclops and Jean Grey, of X-Men fame. Spider-Man too and, of course, the Power Rangers.
"Fishing helps me relax," Alex repeated, looking up from the sports section.
"Oh."
Sue packed his lunch and filled a thermos of coffee.
"Daddy?" Moody again, the girl stared at her spoon then let it sink down into the bowl.
"What, Jessie-Bessie?"
"Were you ever in a fight?"
"A fight? Good grief, no." He laughed. "Well, in high school I was. But not since then."
"Did you beat the guy up?"
"In high school? Whupped the tar out of him. Patrick Briscoe. He stole my lunch money. I let him have it. Left jab and a right hook. Technical knockout in three rounds."
She nodded, swallowed a herd, or school, of Ninja Turtles and set her spoon down again. "Could you beat up somebody now?"
"I don't believe in fighting. Adults don't have to fight. They can talk out their disagreements."
"But what if somebody, like a robber, came after you? Could you knock him out?"
"Look at these muscles. Is this Schwarzenegger, or what?" He pulled up the sleeves of his plaid Abercrombie hunting shirt and flexed. The girl lifted impressed eyebrows.
So did Sue.
Alex paid nearly two thousand dollars a year to belong to a midtown health club.
"Honey..." Alex leaned forward and put his hand on the girl's arm. "You know that the things they show on TV, like that movie you saw, they're all made up. You can't think real life is like that. People are basically good."
"I just wish you weren't going today."
"Why today?"
She looked outside. "The sun isn't shining."
"Ah, but that's the best time to go fishing. The fish can't see me coming. Hey, pumpkin, tell you what... how 'bout if I bring you something?"
Her face brightened. "Really?"
"Yup. What would you like?"
"I don't know. Wait, yes, I do. Something for our collection. Like last time?"
"You bet, sweetie. You got it."
Last year Alex had seen a counselor. He'd come close to a breakdown, struggling to juggle his roles as overworked executive, husband of a law school student, father and put-upon son (his own father, often drunk and always unruly, had been placed in an expensive mental hospital Alex could barely afford). The therapist had told him to do something purely for himself -- a hobby or sport. At first he'd resisted the idea as a pointless frivolity but the doctor firmly warned that the relentless anxiety he felt would kill him within a few years if he didn't do something to help himself relax.
After considerable thought Alex had taken up freshwater fishing (which would get him away from the city) and then collecting (which he could pursue at home). Jessica, with no interest in the "yucky" sport of fishing, became his coconspirator in the collecting department. Alex would bring home the items and the girl would log them into the computer and mount or display the collectibles. Lately they'd been specializing in watches.
This morning he asked his daughter, "Now, young lady, is it okay for me to go off and catch us dinner?"
"I guess," the little girl said, though she wrinkled her nose at the thought of actually eating fish. But Alex could see some relief in her blue eyes.
When she'd wandered off to play on the computer Alex helped Sue with the dishes. "She's fine," he said. "We'll just have to be more careful about what she watches. That's the problem -- mixing up make-believe and reality... Hey, what is it?"
For his grim-looking wife continued to dry what was already a very dry plate.
"Oh, nothing. It's just... I never really thought about you going off to the wilderness alone before. I mean, you always think about somebody getting mugged in the city but at least there're people around to help. And the cops're just a few minutes away."
Alex hugged her. "This isn't exactly the Outback we're talking. It's only a few hours north of here."
"I know. But I never thought to worry till Jessie said something."
He stepped back and shook a stern finger at her. "All right, young lady. No more TV for you either."
She laughed and patted his butt. "Hurry home. And clean the fish before you get back. Remember that mess last time?"
"Yes'm."
"Hey, hon," she asked, "were you really in a fight in high school?"
He glanced toward Jessica's room and whispered, "Those three rounds? They were more like three seconds. I pushed Pat down, he pushed me, and the principal sent us both home with notes t
o our parents."
"I didn't think you and John Wayne had anything in common." Her smile faded. "Safe home," she said, her family's traditional valediction. And kissed him once more.
*
Alex turned off the highway, snapped the Pathfinder into four-wheel drive and made his way along a dirt road toward Wolf Lake, a large, deep body of water in the Adirondacks. As he progressed farther into the dense woods, Alex decided that he agreed with his daughter: The monotonous countryside needed sunlight. The March sky was gray and windy and the leafless trees were black from an early-morning rain. Fallen branches and logs filled the scruffy forest like petrified bones.
Alex felt the familiar anxiety twisting in his stomach. Tension and stress -- the banes of his life. He breathed slowly, forcing himself to think comforting thoughts of his wife and his daughter.
Come on, boy, he told himself, I'm here to relax. That's the whole point of it. Relax.
He drove another half mile through the thickening woods.
Deserted.
The temperature wasn't cold but the threat of rain, he supposed, had scared off the weekend fishermen. The only vehicle he'd seen for miles was a beat-up pickup truck, mud-spattered and dented. Alex drove fifty yards farther on, to the point where the road vanished, and parked.
The airy smell of the water drew him forward, his tackle box and spinning rod in one hand, his lunch and thermos in the other. Through the white pine and juniper and hemlock, over small, moss-covered hummocks. He passed a tree with seven huge black crows sitting in it. They seemed to watch him as he walked beneath their skeletal perch. Then he broke from the trees and climbed down a rocky incline to the lake.
Standing on the shore of a narrow cove, Alex looked over the water. Easily a mile wide, the lake was an iridescent gray, choppy toward the middle but smoothing to a linenlike texture closer to shore. The bleakness didn't make him feel particularly sad but it didn't help his uneasiness either. He closed his eyes and breathed in the clean air. Rather than calming him, though, he felt a surge race through him -- a fear of some sort, raw, electric -- and he spun about, certain that he was being watched. He couldn't see a soul but he wasn't convinced that he was alone; the woods were too dense, too entangled. Someone could easily have been spying on him from a thousand different nooks.
Re-lax, he told himself, stretching the word out. The city's behind you, the problems of work, the tensions, the stress. Forget them. You're here to calm down.
Twisted: The Collected Stories - 1 Page 17
