But the fact is, at this point he has no idea where he’s going, and he has no idea how he came to be here. When he is thirsty, he finds a public fountain and bends down to drink. When he is sleepy he finds a bench and lies on it, or spots a relatively flat area beneath a bush and stretches out to nap, and when he wakes again he is curiously unrefreshed, his thoughts as hazy as ever. When it is hot, he unbuttons his cardigan. When it is cold, he buttons it — that’s the nice thing about a cardigan, he thinks — but beyond that thought he does not care about the weather or the clothes he wears or anything that is not present at that moment. Whenever that moment actually is. Wherever.
Actually, Ballerina Mouse takes dance lessons only for a short time — maybe two, three lessons at most — then quits because she’s no dummy. It doesn’t take her long to figure out that a mouse with one foot turned practically in the opposite direction of the other is never going to be a prima anything. So, okay, she thinks. It’s not in the cards, no matter what my name is, just like the fact that every boy who happens to be named Roy or Rex isn’t going to grow up to be a king, either. As a result she spends the rest of her life pursuing something not very interesting, some sitting-down job, a clerk at a government office or reading to blind mice, and every year her foot twists a bit more, almost as if it has a life of its own, until by the time she’s fifty in mouse years, she needs one of those aluminum platforms on wheels to roll in front of her to keep her from toppling into a gutter. Anyway, things go on that way for a while, and then, because getting back and forth to work is just too tough, she takes early retirement. Ballerina Mouse — a name she has almost forgotten by now, it having been replaced by her original one, Wendy — doesn’t have family or any real friends, and the years — mouse years — pass: sixty, sixty-five, seventy.
Then one morning in her bed she doesn’t move at all, not her good foot, not her bad one, which by then is truly, horribly bad, and has turned completely in the other direction and is actually on its way to coming back around the other side if she could only live another seventy years, which she can’t because she’s dead. But in heaven, to her surprise — and she finds this out almost immediately — guess what! Her crippled foot is perfect, and she can dance and dance and dance straight through eternity, without ever missing a day, and so she does.
Oh, Ballerina Mouse, you were named correctly after all!
Yes.
Maybe.
Suppose, just suppose, the Captain thinks, one day there is a knock on the door of my luxurious home and when I get up to answer it, whom should I see there but my son — or at least one of them — who somehow managed to scrape up the money for an economy ticket, or maybe stowed away in the wheel well of a jetliner, or worked his way on a cattle boat, to track me down. And there he is, this young adult, wearing his cheap suit or inexpensive loincloth, and carrying a cardboard suitcase, or a backpack. What will I do? Will I invite him in and offer him a cup of coffee before I send him on his way again? Will he want to tell me the story of his life? Of course he will, and I’ll listen. But after it’s over, after he has finally finished, and he has picked up his suitcase or backpack to go back to wherever it was he came from in the first place, what exactly will his story have to do with me? How will his story be different than the story of any stranger, any random visitor to town who just happens to be passing through, or an actor, mindlessly reciting a part written for him by someone else? And, for that matter, come to think of it, what do the stories I tell have to do with all the reverential dolts who hear them and believe that, having made them a part of their memories, they will become better people for having heard them?
Episode One, The Burrow, Scene Seven
All the residents of the Burrow stand at the front door, which is a heavy-looking brown slab with numerous bolts and a large brass handle. No one dares to make a move, but MADELINE holds a recipe file, and JEFFERY has a copy of his script, still in progress, tucked under his arm. RAYMOND cradles the decoy of a redhead duck, while VIKTOR clutches a CD that, according to MADELINE, contains a list of his bank accounts. He also has a sock filled with marbles. HEATHER holds a music box with a ballerina on top. It’s empty, but it’s the place she imagines one day she will hide her most precious object in, as soon as it comes along.
Jeffery:
Is everyone ready? This shouldn’t take long, and then we’ll know.
Viktor:
Come on! It’s taken too long already. Let’s get it over with. I don’t have all day. I have other things to do.
VIKTOR strides to the door and turns the knob. Then he stops, a look of puzzlement on his face.
Viktor:
It looks like it’s stuck.
Jeffery:
Okay. So let’s see.
JEFFERY walks to the door, turns the knob, and pushes his shoulder against it. He pulls it toward him, just to be sure, but there is nothing happening in that direction, either.
Jeffery:
It
is
stuck. Raymond, you want to come over and give us a hand here?
RAYMOND gives his decoy to MADELINE to hold and runs at the door, hitting it with his shoulder. It doesn’t move. All of them, even HEATHER, begin to push against it, but the door remains shut.
Madeline:
My Lord. I didn’t think it was possible, but you may be right, Jeffery! I heard you, but, honestly, I didn’t think there was a chance in hell that something like this could be happening. So what are we going to do now?
Jeffery:
I wish I knew. Let me think. Wait. Whoever or whatever is keeping us here is also bringing us food, and dropping off those chunks of wood for Raymond to carve, right? So it must mean they don’t hate us. But it must also mean there has to be a way into the Burrow besides this door.
Madeline:
Yes, that’s it? Somewhere there
must
be an extra door, maybe one that’s hidden. That’s what we have to find!
Heather:
But where do we start to look? It can’t be in one of our rooms, or someone would have noticed people coming and going. Can anyone think of a place where there isn’t someone hanging around 24/7, a place where a person could enter and exit unnoticed?
Everyone looks at one another, each coming to the exact same conclusion.
Alclass="underline"
The kitchen.
The Captain stands in his kitchen, preparing a fruit smoothie with some bran for extra fiber to help regulate his bowels, when suddenly the image of that young man in the lumberjack shirt, the one who brought up that stupid Mellow Valley incident, pops unbidden into his mind — Plaidman. What is his game? The Captain wonders. The man looked familiar in a way. Could he be the son of some old shipmate, or possibly the jealous boyfriend of one of those women who were having such a pleasant time taking a shower together on that day until the rest of the cast and the police with their unnecessarily wailing sirens burst into that idyllic moment? Did Heather have a boyfriend he hadn’t heard about? Could such a person still be out for revenge after all those years? If so, why hasn’t the man surfaced earlier? Is it possible that he has become permanently unhinged by grief after being spurned by Heather, and this is his pathetic attempt to worm his way back into her favor? Or, deranged from the very beginning, the man’s mental illness had been held in check by one or more stays in a hospital for the criminally insane and liberal doses of psychotropic medication, but now that he’s been released, he is out for blood and he doesn’t care whom he strikes?