"I"ll bet you can, kid, I"ll bet you can."
And that"s where I left him, there on the trail.
I nodded good-bye and set off back the way I"d come. He gave me a minute or two and then started following me through the underbrush. I tried to shake him up a few times by breaking into a run. He got panicky and made too much noise in the undergrowth. If I hadn"t noticed him before, I sure would have now. But he was only ten, and for that age he was a regular Leatherstocking. When I was ten, I was living in my nice snug, middle-cla.s.s home232.and hunting ducks with my father in the salt marsh along Chesapeake Bay.
I didn"t have to support and sustain myself the way poor little Robert did.
I lay for two hours in my hut listening to the rain. It brought back memories of San Francisco when I was still living with my wife and daughter, who as a baby always asked, "Wet, Daddy? Is wet, Daddy?" when she saw crystal raindrops bead on the windows of our small apartment.
I slept, too, at least for a time, but it was the troubled sleep of an unhappy man, and when I came awake I did so with a yelp, the rock cracking my knee where it landed.
In the gloom and sweat of the hut, I jerked upward and grabbed the rock. Somebody had wrapped a note around it and then wrapped twine around rock and paper alike.
The note read: the clearing by the grailstone at dusk.
There was one inherent problem with the instructions. Given the rain and the gloom, how could I tell when dusk actually settled in?
I waited two hours in the top of a leafy tree by the clearing. A minty aroma of leaf filled my nostrils. The bark was as slimy as a dragon"s back.
Dark came. The rain continued. There is a melancholy that only cold rain can inspire in me, and it was with me there in that tree. I wanted to talk to my wife and daughter.
She wore cape and cowl, and at first I did not recog-233.nise her as she ran across the clearing from one edge of the forest to the other.
Just as I realised that I was seeing Arda, a small shape in the shadows stepped forth and fired off an arrow.
I heard the dead chunking sound of arrowhead sinking into flesh.
Then she screamed, a strangled sound m.u.f.fled by the fact that she was already pitching to the wet earth.
By now I knew who her a.s.sailant was, too. I wanted to go after Robert and slap him around to sate my rage, but I knew I"d better first attend to Arda.
She was light in my arms as I carried her upslope to the hut where she and Poe lived.
Poe must have heard us coming. Before we reached the hut, he was in the doorway. Then, dramatic as always, he ran toward us with his arms outstretched.
He ran alongside me as I bore her to the hut.
He didn"t offer to share my burden, nor did he do much but coo little plaintive nonsense words in her direction.
Inside, we propped her up by the fire.
"Can you take the arrow out?" Poe asked, face yellow from flames. He was frantic.
"I thought maybe you"d want to do it. She"s your woman."
"It would make me... sick. Feeling it slide out that way. I wouldn"t be any good at it." There was pleading in both his voice and eyes.
I sighed. Excising the arrow wasn"t something I relished either.
I went over to her and knelt down. She was unconscious. I felt her forehead. She was feverish already from the poison. Her pulse was faint.234.
235.I worked as quickly as I could.
When I was halfway through, I heard a noise in the doorway and looked up.
Robert, without his bow, stood there watching me. "How"s she doing, Mr. Hammett?"
He trembled with tears.
"Why the h.e.l.l would you care, kid? After what you did to her?"
He started to say something else, but I said, "Shut the h.e.l.l up. I"m trying to concentrate."
In the firelight, his eyes glistened with tears. Then the doorway was empty. He was gone.
It took about twenty minutes, and twice she came awake and started crying pretty hard and looked up at Poe with a love so obvious it embarra.s.sed me to see.
Why the h.e.l.l did she want some gigolo like Poe?
He stayed on the other side of the hut. He hadn"t been kidding about not wanting to see. He wouldn"t even glance down at the wound.
I got the arrow out and the wound cleaned and the shoulder covered up.
I was just about to get to my feet when I saw her eyes flutter open. She pulled me gently to her and pressed her soft warm lips to my ear and told me then the whole story.
The rain hit the water like bullets. There was no moon. I found him down on the bank, just sitting there, not caring about being wet or cold or alone. I sat down next to him in the darkness. The rain was cold and ceaseless. I said, "She told me." "I figured she would." "She could have been killed."
"I know." He sighed. "The other times were easy. We didn"t have to do anything. She just told him that somebody tried to drown her and push her off a cliff and shot an arrow at her. She didn"t actually have to get hurt or anything."
"But this time she asked you to really wound her."
"Right," he said.
She"d explained it all to me, back there in the hut she shared with Poe. She knew he was constantly unfaithful. She tried everything to stop him. Nothing worked.
She and her friend Robert concocted all the tales of somebody trying to kill her. She thought mat that would work for sure. Poe would be so worried about her, he"d give up running around. For a few weeks Poe was true to her, but then he went right back to slipping out at night and meeting other girls in the forest.
That"s when Arda came up with the idea of getting herself wounded. Robert would steal O"Brien"s bow and arrow-just as he"d stolen an arrow before to show to Poe-but this time he"d actually wound her.
Faced with Arda"s injury, surely not even Poe could be unfaithful any longer.
But then Robert got angry with her one night because he knew she didn"t love him the way she loved Poe. He wrote Poe a letter telling him about the plan Arda and he had concocted. O"Brien saw him writing this and s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper away. He planned to use it as blackmail with Arda. She would sleep with him or he would turn Robert"s letter over to Poe. Robert felt terrible. He knew he should never have written the letter, knew he would never have actually given it to Poe.
But now O"Brien"s having the letter was moot.236.By now, back in their hut, Arda would have told Poe everything.
"He"ll sneak off again on her, won"t he, Mr. Hammett?"
"Poe, you mean?"
"Uh-huh."
"I"m afraid he will, Robert."
"I don"t like him much."
"Neither do I."
"I just wish I didn"t love her so much."
"Someday you won"t love her at all."
"You mean I"ll be able to look at her and my stomach won"t get all knotted up?"
"You"ll be able to look at her and wonder why the h.e.l.l you wasted all that time loving her in the first place."
"Has that ever happened to you?"
"Many times."
"She"s awfully pretty."
"Awfully pretty," I said.
"And she"s nice to be in love with, because she doesn"t care when you hang around all the time."
"Well, there"s something to be said for that, I guess."
He sighed. "Maybe I"m not ready to stop loving her yet, Mr. Hammett."
"It doesn"t sound like you are, Robert."
"Maybe someday she"ll see Poe for what he really is."
"Maybe she will, Robert."
"And then maybe she"ll want to marry me."
"That"s always a possibility, Robert."
He kept quiet for a long time, then looked up at me and said, "You don"t understand this any better than I do, do you, Mr. Hammett?"
I sure as h.e.l.l had to laugh at that one. I tousled his hair and said, "I sure as h.e.l.l don"t, Robert. I sure as h.e.l.l don"t."
THE MERRY MEN.
OF RIVERWORLD.
John Gregory Betancourt
237.The man in green paused dramatically at the top of the rocky cliff, one hand shading his eyes against the sun. His shoulder-length hair, the colour of wheat, ruffled faintly in the breeze. He carried a yew longbow and had a quiver of bamboo-fletched arrows slung across his shoulder. With the sun on his face and a thick, dark forest at his back, he cut quite a striking figure.
Below, the River wound like an endless silver ribbon as far as he could see. On its far bank, half a mile up, stood a town-a ramshackle acc.u.mulation of forty or fifty log houses. Smoke rose from clay-brick chimneys, and men and women dressed in brightly coloured robes moved among the buildings.
He heard a woman"s low voice singing a tune he didn"t recognise in a language he didn"t know. His men would have warned him if there was any danger, but he still didn"t like surprises. He"d speak to Will or Tuck about it later.
Slowly, he dropped his right hand from his eyes. In a single movement he whirled, drew his bow, and nocked an arrow.238.It was a half-naked woman with skin the colour of chocolate, and she was carrying a bundle of bamboo. She dropped the bamboo in a clattering heap, her mouth gaping in surprise and fear. Her hair was long and black, Robin saw, and she wore a gra.s.s skirt. Her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s were small and deeply tanned.
"Ya linya!" she breathed. "Me tonfevin!"
Putting down his bow, Robin leaped onto a low boulder and looked her up and down. His voice was low, powerful, when he asked, "Do you speak the king"s English?"
The woman started to back away.
Robin gave a whistle. The woods around them suddenly erupted with motion-two dozen men from the trees, from the bushes, seemingly from the very air itself. All wore green and carried longbows.
"I am Robin Hood," he said. "Welcome to Sherwood, m"lady!"
Screeching in terror, the woman turned and fled into the trees. Robin threw back his head and laughed.
"Sir Robin!" said the tall man he called Little John. "On the River-"
Robin turned to follow his friend"s gaze.
Coming around a bend in the river was one of the strangest-looking riverboats he"d ever seen. They had encountered three others on the River, but this one- It was huge, easily two hundred feet from pointed prow to broad, flat stern, with a large wheel on either side and a third wheel churning water at the rear. Its three tall decks had intricate woodwork, and twin smokestacks rose from a central pilot"s cabin. Sunlight glinted off gla.s.s windows and what looked like bra.s.s railings. Several dozen men moved about various tasks on the upper two decks,239.while sword-bearing guards maintained a vigilant watch on the lowest.
"Incredible," Robin said. He stared, a thoughtful look on his face.
"What do you think?" a portly Friar Tuck asked.
"I"ve never seen anything like it," Will Scarlet said.
"Who could have built it?" asked Little John.
"A better question is, where did they get the metal," said Mutch. He"d been a civil engineer in the last life and tended toward practical questions. "Did you see those windows? That was gla.s.s! Real gla.s.s!"
"I think," Robin said, sitting down, "we"re going to wait for the riverboat"s return. Will, Ben-scout the hill. There should be a grailstone on the other side. If the natives are peaceful, we"ll spend the night here."
"Yes, Robin," Will Scarlet said. He and Ben Taylor slipped into the forest like shadows.
While Robin stared out across the River, deep in thought, the rest of his men began setting up camp: clearing the area, gathering wood, building a circle of stones to hold their fire. After a minute Robin opened his pack, took out a small square of cigarette paper, a tiny clay jar with a stopper, and a carved fishbone pen. He opened the jar, dipped his pen into a thin greyish ink, and began to write. His script was tiny, meticulous.
When he finished, he wrapped the paper around an arrow"s shaft, tied it in place with human-hair string, and returned the arrow to his quiver. Now it was just a matter of time.