I wondered if I should rouse my father from his absinthine slumbers, but my panic was too great. Ducking my head, I crossed the street and sank into the shadows of an alley. From this safe vantage I observed the meeting of the two parties. They were decidedly hostile and I half expected them to meet like opponents in battle. Instead they joined forces at the door, and in the manner of allies called for my father’s immediate appearance. His head, still decked in a nightcap, soon emerged from the window above. He looked completely confused by the manifestation.
“We’ve been had!” someone shouted up at him.
“Duped!” said another.
“Confound you—we’ll have back the monies we paid, or else we’ll have your hide!”
My father looked from one face to the other. I could see he was at the verge of a trembling fit.
“What—what do you mean?” he asked. “What is this nonsense?”
“‘Strapon Thing,’ bah!” shouted a curator of the Museum. “A cursory reading of your ludicrous forgery shows a thousand inconsistencies, including outright lies about the cause of the Turbulation! Had you bothered to check your histories, you might have avoided some of the more obvious errors—but many are secrets of Prior History in any case, reserved in the confidential comparative archives to protect society from exactly such hoaxes as this. Your little game is up. Now come down from there this minute!”
“A forgery, you say?” my father cried, his astonishment not quite as thorough as he pretended.
“But—but I had a gentleman’s word!”
“There is no gentleman, I’m sure,” said Professor Lickman. “It’s all the product of your fevered imagination, wrought by absinthe and uncontrolled greed.”
“No,” my father said. “You must be mistaken.”
“I assure you, we are not. You have cast unforgivable stains on the name of Strapon Thing. Had your facts not given you away, the dreadful clumsiness of the prose would have considerably degraded our appreciation of all his true masterworks!”
My father looked wildly about the street now, as if seeking some means of escape. By chance, he noticed me. My trembling must have betrayed me, even in the shadows. His arm shot out; his finger pinned me to my place.
“There!” he cried. “You can see plain enough how the truth affects him. There’s your forger, there’s the boy who duped you—just as he duped me! I’ll disown you for this, Maven! I’ll disown you, do you hear?”
Two dozen heads turned toward me; black coats and striped frocks grew flurried with the agitated motions of the historians. For a moment I was frozen but then they made their charge. I stumbled backward with a shout and fled for my life down the narrow alley.
Fortunately, I was well acquainted with the byways of the neighborhood, and I soon left the houndlike sound of their pursuit behind me. But I was desolate, with nowhere to go, no home to call my own, no confidant, no friend in the world. I had not even the money for a ticket that might carry me far from the scene of my crimes. Already I regretted the day that I had ever learned to type.
As I wandered in a sulking mood, a face sprang up from my memory. I thought of one man who might understand me, who might hear me out without passing judgment. Surely Professor Tadmonicker, I thought, would appreciate the truth.
I hastily made my way to the College. Avoiding the departments of History and Literature, I went on to the Science wing, the Department of Artifactual Analysis.
I found the Professor in his office, reading from a huge volume spread open on the desk before him. He was laughing aloud with all his might, but when he saw me he shut the book with a thud and was all seriousness again, as he had been on our first encounter.
“I’ve just been reading Good ’n’ Evil,” he said. “I believe at last my colleagues will be exposed for the fools I’ve known them to be all along.”
I nodded, still speechless.
“And what brings you here, my friend? You must have read the manuscript. Even you must realize that it is a clumsy bundle of lies and fabrications. Or has your gentleman friend fooled even you?”
I found my voice at last. “No, Professor Tadmonicker. I was never fooled. Of course it is nothing but lies. No one knows it better than I.”
“So,” he said, his mood lightening. “You’ve come to confess then, have you? I think that would be wise. Why don’t you have a seat?”
I accepted his offer gratefully. “I’ll tell you everything I know,” I said, “if only you will promise not to betray me. I need a friend. I need your advice.”
“Betray you? But what do you have to fear, Maven?”
And so I told him everything.
Father, dear Father, now you know that I did it all for you. What the public believes is of little importance to me. It is your opinion alone that matters. Look kindly upon your son; find forgiveness in your heart, if you can. I had hoped that my actions would bring us closer, but I was cruelly disappointed. Even so, can you not see how I was motivated by filial affection?
I will deliver a copy of this confession to your cell in the Debtor’s Prison, and another to the news printers who have agreed to lay the whole story before the world. Perhaps then your reputation will be restored, and the judges will mercifully see fit to free you, so that we might be reunited. Our house, I realize, has been taken by creditors; but surely we do not need a mansion to keep us warm. As long as we understand each other, and speak only truth from now on, will not our affections sustain us?
“Good ’n’ Evil, or, The Once and Future Thing” copyright 2016 by Marc Laidlaw. First appeared at marclaidlaw.com.
LOVE COMES TO THE MIDDLEMAN
Upon the wall, the neighborlings were arguing. Jack listened to the piping voices with increasing anger. The problems of the little people sounded all too much like his own, except smaller.
He opened his eyes and searched for the offending home among the array of tiny buildings stacked to the ceiling of his room. In most, the lights were dim or out completely; in a few, tiny shadows moved against the curtains. The smell of almond tobacco smoke drifted from half-open doorways; newspapers rustled. As a rule, the smaller citizens went to sleep early, and those who stayed up kept their voices down once he’d turned off his light.
Tonight, the Pewlins were the noisemakers:
“If you can’t stay inside your budget, pretty soon we won’t have a budget!”
“It’s not me wasting money on drink and gambling.”
“It’s not you making money, either. I need my recreation.”
“Recreation? You’re a drunk with bad luck. It’s not like you’re developing a skill. You just get drunker and unluckier. And the next time—”
On his knees now, Jack rapped sharply on the door of the Pewlins’ house with a fingernail. “Hey, in there. I’ve got a heavy day tomorrow.”
At the sound of his voice, curtains stirred in the windows of other houses. The Pewlins, too embarrassed to face him, merely began to mutter.
“Told you you’d wake him. We’re going to lose this house and end up in somebody’s sock drawer.”
“Oh, shut up. I’m going to bed.”
As Jack crawled back into his bed—a lumpy mattress laid out on the floor—someone scratched on his door. With a sigh, he got up and opened it.