“Sure.”
I put on water, got down cups, and gestured to Jerry, “Sit, please.” Which Jerry did; he sat at the kitchen table and said, “Nice pit, Pete.”
“Thanks.” I suggested he get up close and check out Meredith’s spear tips. Then I told him that, in spite of Meredith’s excellent detail work, our pit was nothing compared to his; that his moat was very impressive from an overall engineering standpoint; that his design concept reinforced the thematic statement of the property in general, the house and grounds and so forth. I went on to note that the drawbridge had splendid workmanship in it, and that it was a rare thing to see that kind of wood-peg carpentry these days. I asked Jerry, “Tell me, do you anticipate problems with the moccasins? I mean, are they, do you think, likely to crawl out and, I don’t know, whatever?”
Water steamed. How had I managed to allow, into my home, this man who released lethal vipers into a residential area? I could hear him exhaling through his mouth, when he insisted, “Precautions have been taken.”
“Naturally. Of course. Milk and sugar?”
“Fine.”
“Decaf okay?”
“Sure.”
I measured grounds from bag to filter, took milk from the refrigerator, and said, “The funniest thing happened. I went down to the basement to get the plumber’s snake, and there were two of them. How about that. Two snakes. I knew I had one, I remember buying it, in fact. But not two. It was strange. Two snakes.”
“Let me get this straight. You thought you had one snake, but there were two?”
“Right.”
“That is strange.”
The pot whistled. I poured boiling water and considered the Freedom Field issue. Specifically, the wisdom of broaching this difficult topic in my own kitchen. You could hear everything in this old house, and Meredith might or might not have been soundly sleeping, and Jerry’s airplane hangar proposal, quixotic though it was, might appeal to my wife. Why risk that? No, my “home school” concept was definitely the way to go. Better keep mum on the subject of Freedom Field. Coffee dripped and I said, witlessly, “At any rate, now if I get a clog while you’ve got one snake, I’ll still be fine, because I’ll have the other.”
“That’s the truth.”
“That’d be quite a coincidence, wouldn’t it?”
“I’m of a mind, Pete, that there is no such thing as coincidence. I agree with some of the fellows down at Rotary who say the cosmos abounds in mysteries invisible to us in our waking state, worlds within worlds, and that our task in life is to open our inner eyes, perceive reality in its totality, and embrace the million levels of Universal Consciousness.”
It was my first indication of the nonsecular nature of the local chapter of Rotary International. It worried me. I sipped coffee and listened to Jerry say, “Friday we’re sponsoring a theriomorphism workshop luncheon at the Holiday Inn — why don’t you and your wife come as my guests?”
“Oh, gee, well.”
“This is going to be the Rotary luncheon of the year, not counting your informative and entertaining talk on persuasive methods of the medieval Inquisition. You don’t want to miss this. And Pete?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s potluck, so, if you could, if you wouldn’t mind contributing a salad?”
“A salad.” Why didn’t I just say no? Jerry offered, “Or dessert. Dessert or a salad, whichever’s easier. Would that be possible?”
“Sure, a salad.”
A nice tossed green one with fresh cherry tomatoes, lots of cukes, red and green bell pepper, basil, watercress, fennel, and many leaves of other things. Together Meredith and I and a crowd of red-faced Rotarians and their well-dressed wives (Rotary Anns) sat around hotel banquet tables and listened to a visiting anthropology professor at the junior college say, “Pick an animal, any animal, fish, fowl, beast. Concentrate on aspects of the animal. Is it big? Small? Cute? Does it eat other animals? What color fur? If the animal is a bird, what color are its feathers? What song does it sing?”
“This is stupid,” I whispered to Meredith.
“It’s your fault we’re here. Why don’t you give it a chance?”
The anthropologist said, “Why don’t we all think about it for a minute? Okay, everybody got one?”
“Yes,” “No,” “Wait,” people said. Meredith whispered, “What’s yours?”
“I don’t know, what’s yours?”
“Coelacanth.”
“The prehistoric fish?”
“I need a volunteer,” declared the professor. Meredith raised her hand, and the man at the podium said, “Yes, back there. Tell us your name and the name of the animal you’ve chosen to become today.”
“Meredith Robinson. Coelacanth. It’s a kind of fish that scientists believed extinct until one was caught off the coast of Africa.”
“Excellent. Come forward. Sit here. Would someone please dim the lights?” I watched Rotary guys watch my wife. Bill Nixon, Tom Thompson, Abraham de Leon, Dick Morton, Terry Heinemann, Robert Isaac — all the usuals, plus others. Jerry and his wife, Rita, sat up front. The professor soothingly said, “Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and tell us about the coelacanth. Everybody else, let’s all breathe deeply too, and be thinking about our own animals. Go ahead, Meredith.”
“Well, it’s five feet long, deep slate blue, with bony, protruding fins and big jaws with scary teeth. It goes back seventy million years. It moves slowly, it dwells in dark water.” The professor nodded. Audience members inched forward in their seats. Meredith said, “At night it swims upside down with its head pointed to the sea bottom, bobbing along.”
“A feeding technique?”
“Maybe.”
“How’s the water?” I could see Meredith’s head settle forward as she softly answered, “Cold.”
“Feel the cold. Breathe that cold. Inhale that water. What do you feel?”
“Colors.”
“Colors?”
“Blue, black, indigo.”
The anthropologist stepped from the stage and came forward into the crowd gathered around tables set with plates that were littered with discarded skeletons of poached red snapper (the luncheon’s fish course, provided by Jerry and Rita); he collected white small bones from several plates and carried the bones back to the stage area and scattered them in a circle around my wife’s chair. He produced a portable cassette deck and loaded a tape that played hollow drum rhythms. He intoned along with the drums, “There is a circle of sea and you are in it, Coelacanth, bobbing above the ocean floor where the lonely crab rests on rocks where no mollusk grows. Blue squid drift on black tides lit by lanternfish. The solitary shark pays a visit but that doesn’t concern you. You are the last of the ancients. Swim your swim!”
I watched Meredith’s head and shoulders gently moving. Rita Henderson clutched her husband’s arm. Men I knew and others I didn’t sat still with their wives, all focused on my wife’s feet suddenly dancing like bottom fish above bone-strewn hotel carpet. The visiting professor commanded, “Rise, Coelacanth. Cavort in the blue cold.”
Meredith did rise. She hopped from foot to foot inside her private bone circle, head hanging, arms shivering, hands with tapering fingers churning air — she was working up a sweat. People in the audience swayed along with the echoing taped drumbeats. Everywhere, heads oscillated and feet tapped. Abraham de Leon was particularly into it: his mouth fell open, his tongue wagged, his body visibly trembled. I couldn’t imagine what kind of animal he was. And Tom Thompson! Unlike Abe, Tom did not tremble so much as quake. He bounced in his chair in a violent manner that caused other guests to stare at him and cough suggestively, but Tom was immersed in his own head and taking no notice; and soon the whole room was shaking to the sounds of drums getting louder and the instructor’s voice calling out, “Single-celled protozoa, insects, small birds and wildfowl; warm-blooded animals and sleepy reptiles; crustacea, fish, aquatic mammalia — everybody join in with Meredith the coelacanth, let’s go, creatures, dance it!” Rotarians and their wives staggered from chairs and wobbled to the front of the room and encircled my wife in a bestial conga in which I alone did not participate. I remained at my table. I hadn’t even chosen an animal.