“What’s it about?” he asked.
I took the book from him without answering and set it back down on the counter. “Wait here,” I said.
Arthur was just waking up when I entered the room. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Our two favorite policemen are back. They’re looking for Travis.”
“But he’s not here,” said Arthur, still half asleep. “Go tell them that. They want to look around.”
“Okay,” said Arthur.
“Oh, and Kevin’s run off again.”
“Great.”
I handed Arthur his jeans, which he put on without underwear. “Cigarettes are on the fridge.”
Back in the kitchen Detective Yancy was helping himself to some burned coffee. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said.
“Make yourself at home,” I replied. I sat down at the kitchen table. “Arthur will be here as soon as he’s had a chance to use the bathroom.”
We didn’t have much to say about Travis. Arthur told the police about the typewriter and about how Travis’s clothes had been in the washer and dryer. He asked how Mrs. Connor was doing and told Detective Yancy how he hoped we’d find Travis soon, that if we heard from Travis, we’d let them know right away. Arthur had even written down the date that Travis had left, worried that he might forget. We all went to stand in the room at the end of the hall—once Johnny’s, then Travis’s—where Detective Yancy took note of the pile of bottles. Then Arthur asked if it was okay if he went to look for Kevin and Detective Yancy said that would be fine. He had a sly look on his face and I knew that he wanted to talk to me alone, away from Arthur. Then he would probably talk to Arthur alone, away from me. Then compare our stories. I knew what they were up to.
When Arthur had located Kevin’s leash and a lighter that worked, he took off for the woods. And I sat down for my chat with Detective Yancy.
There was a tense, silent few minutes. We all looked at each other, then finally I said, “Did you ever find out whose body that was?”
“We’re very close,” said Detective Yancy. “We should know in a couple of days. How does that make you feel?”
“Me feel? I’m curious, but I suppose everyone is.”
“Did Travis say anything to you, anything at all, the day he left?”
“He said several things, none of any importance.”
“What were these things?” Detective Yancy nodded to Officer Brown, who began scribbling in his notepad.
“Well, when he got up and we ran into each other in the hall, he said ‘Good morning.’ Later, he asked me if we had any half-and-half. I said we’d run out, causing him to respond, ‘Remind me to get some when I go out.’”
Half an hour later, I was still relating whatever inanities I could think of when the front door popped open and slammed shut. I waited for Arthur to appear, but it was only Kevin, alone and muddy. I figured that Arthur must be taking off his boots outside. Kevin’s front paws were caked with mud. He looked like he was wearing a pair of galoshes.
“Look’s like you’ve been digging for something,” said Officer Brown, scratching under Kevin’s chin.
Suddenly I heard the sound of Arthur’s van start up, which, after a moment, I heard taking off down the drive.
“Where’s your boyfriend going?” asked Detective Yancy.
I looked over at the door, then back at Yancy. I managed a smile. “Arthur,” I said, “is going to the store.”
27
I suppose it’s in the nature of some men to take off without saying why, to romp at their leisure. Women are supposed to accept this—it’s only natural, and has something to do with the need for men to inseminate wildly in order to keep the species going, while the girls stay close to home. But I knew Arthur well enough to understand that he would not take off without telling me why unless it was perfectly justified. He would return, I was sure, and make his explanations. Or maybe he wouldn’t tell me what he’d been up to, and that would be better, as in the Tale of Bisclaveret. My mother always said that that the truth was not for everyone.
The Tale of Bisclaveret, from the Lays of Marie de France, is possibly, next to the tale of Lycaon, the most widely known tale of a werewolf, although there are many. Werewolves, werejackals, were-foxes, and other werebeasts (if you include American Indian lore, you end up with everything from werecougars to werecrows) crop up in literature reaching far east and far west until they are touching at the far side of the globe. We love anything that weds man to animal, our chest-beating men of the jungle, our paw-shaking dogs on the hearth.
Our tale begins in Brittany where Bisclaveret, noble baron, and his comely wife live in their imposing castle where, no doubt, the constant drafts shiver the tapestries and blazing torches cast long shadows on the sooted stone and winding stairways. Bisclaveret and his wife retire peacefully—or passionately—to their bed four nights a week. But the other three nights, the baron is at large.
“Don’t ask me why,” the baron tells his wife.
But of course she asks and asks and asks. She cries pitifully, plies him with wine. She lures him to their bed and kisses him sweetly until finally he divulges his secret. It is not the bar wench in the next village, which would have been acceptable to the wife—she could have demanded the end of such an affair. Bisclaveret is a werewolf. He spends those three mysterious days roaming in secret, hidden by the eternal night of the forest.
“How is such a transformation accomplished?” she asks, the horror clear on her face.
“I have no control over the wolf. It asserts itself and I must follow. I remove my robes and soon become woolly, toothy, close to the ground.”
“And how do you return?” she asks, her icy fingers knitting at the edge of the blanket, her husband’s naked body warm beside her.
“At the close of the third day I return to where I’ve placed my robes,” the baron, still huffing and puffing, replies. “It is clothes that make the man.”
If he should not find his clothing, he would be unable to make the transformation back.
Life in the castle does not return to normal. The hogs still snort in the yard. Young men still practice at swords and jousting. Knights on their way east still clink goblets in drunken toasts. And minstrels still make merry music as deformed jesters leap and juggle. But as the baron feared, his wife no longer wishes to share his bed. Marie de France says, “She no longer dared lie at his side, and turned over in her mind, this way and that, how best she could get her from him.”
All this time her salvation has been right before her, yes, right across the table from her winking, that knight drunkenly, putting his hot, sweaty foot on her slender leg. Never before has she found this man attractive, but now, now that her husband has revealed himself to be a wolf, he is suddenly handsome. She smiles slyly at him over her grizzled lamb hock and soon the two are behind the velvet curtain in the audience chamber hatching a plan.
“There’s a hollow rock beside that old chapel. Check the bushes around the side. Bisclaveret says there’s an overgrown path that should act as a marker. Bring the robes to me. Then you can have whatever you want.”
“Your bed?” says the knight.
“My castle,” says the wife.
Some time in the next week we presume that the baron is left sniffing and howling beside the chapel, clawing madly at the bushes by the hollow rock. We presume he is also cursing his wife, and rightly so, for within the next year, the knight is married to the baroness and living in the castle, while Bisclaveret, poor trusting soul, is left dodging arrows, eating raw rabbit, and sleeping on the cold damp ground.