Nebula Awards Showcase 2013 (14 page)

I sat down at the computer and fed in
Hamlet.
“Look on the bright side. At least we've got the E-and-R programs. We don't have to do it by hand the way we used to.”

She sat down behind the stack. “How shall we do this? By group or by line?”

“We might as well take it from the top.”

“Line one. 'Who's there?' The National Coalition Against Contractions.”

“Let's do it by group,” I said.

“All right. We'll get the big ones out of the way first. The Commission on Poison Prevention feels the 'graphic depiction of poisoning in the murder of Hamlet's father may lead to copycat crimes.' They cite a case in New Jersey where a sixteen-year-old poured Drano in his father's ear after reading the play. Just a minute. Let me get a kleenex. The Literature Liberation Front objects to the phrases, 'Frailty, thy name is woman,' and 'O, most pernicious woman,' the 'What a piece of work is man' speech, and the queen.”

“The whole queen?”

She checked her notes. “Yes. All lines, references, and allusions.” She felt under her jaw, first one side, then the other. “I think my glands are swollen. Would that go along with pneumonia?”

Greg Jefferson came in, carrying a grocery sack. “I thought you could use some combat rations. How's it going?”

“We lost the queen,” I said. “Next?”

“The National Cutlery Council objects to the depiction of swords as deadly weapons. 'Swords don't kill people. People kill people.' The Copenhagen Chamber of Commerce objects to the line, 'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.' Students Against Suicide, the International Federation of Florists, and the Red Cross object to Ophelia's drowning.”

Greg was setting out the bottles of cough syrup and cold tablets on the desk. He handed me a bottle of valium. “The International Federation of Florists?” he said.

“She fell in picking flowers, “ I said. “What was the weather like out there?”

“Just like summer,” he said. “Delilah's using an aluminum sun reflector.”

“Ass,” Ms. Harrows said.

“Beg pardon?” Greg said.

“ASS, the Association of Summer Sunbathers objects to the line, 'I am too much i' the sun,'” Ms. Harrows said, and took a swig from the bottle of cough syrup.

 

* * *

 

We were only half-finished by the time school let out. The Nuns' Network objected to the line, “Get thee too a nunnery,” Fat and Proud of It wanted the passage beginning, “Oh, that this too too solid flesh should melt,” removed, and we didn't even get to Delilah's list, which was eight pages long.

“What play are we going to do?” Wendy asked me on my way out.

“Hamlet,”
I said.

“Hamlet?”
she said. “Is that the one about the guy whose uncle murders the king and then the queen marries the uncle?”

“Not any more,” I said.

Delilah was waiting for me outside. “'Many of them brought their books together and burned them,'” she quoted. “Acts 19:19.”

“'Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me,'” I said.

 

* * *

 

It was overcast Wednesday but still warm. The Veterans for a Clean America and the Subliminal Seduction Sentinels were picnicking on the lawn. Delilah had on a halter top. “That thing you said yesterday about the sun turning people black, what was that from?”

“The
Bible,
” I said. “Song of Solomon. Chapter one, verse six.”

“Oh,” she said, relieved. “That's not in the
Bible
anymore. We threw that out.”

Ms. Harrows had left a note for me. She was at the doctor's. I was supposed to meet with her third period.

“Do we get to start today?” Wendy asked.

“If everybody remembered to bring in their slips. I'm going to lecture on Shakespeare's life,” I said. “You don't know what the forecast for today is, do you?”

“Yeah, it's supposed to be great.”

I had her collect the refusal slips while I went over my notes. Last year Delilah's sister Jezebel had filed a grievance halfway through the lecture for “trying to preach promiscuity, birth control, and abortion by saying Anne Hathaway got pregnant before she got married.” Promiscuity, abortion, pregnant, and before had all been misspelled.

Everybody had remembered their slips. I sent the refusals to the library and started to lecture.

“Shakespeare—” I said. Paula's corder clicked on. “William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon.”

Rick, who hadn't raised his hand all year or even given any indication that he was sentient, raised his hand. “Do you intend to give equal time to the Baconian theory?” he said. “Bacon was not born on April 23, 1564. He was born on January 22, 1561.”

 

* * *

 

Ms. Harrows wasn't back from the doctor's by third period, so I started on Delilah's list. She objected to forty-three references to spirits, ghosts, and related matters, twenty-one obscene words (obscene misspelled), and seventy-eight others that she thought might be, such as pajock and cockles.

Ms. Harrows came in as I was finishing the list and threw her briefcase down. “Stress-induced!” she said. “I have pneumonia, and he says my symptoms are stress-induced!”

“Is it still cloudy out?”

“It is seventy-two degrees out. Where are we?”

“Morticians International,” I said. “Again. 'Death presented as universal and inevitable.'” I peered at the paper. “That doesn't sound right.”

Ms. Harrows took the paper away from me. “That's their 'Thanatopsis' protest. They had their national convention last week. They filed a whole set at once, and I haven't had a chance to sort through them.” She rummaged around in her stack. “Here's the one on
Hamlet.
 'Negative portrayal of interment preparation personnel—'”

“The gravedigger.”

“'—And inaccurate representation of burial regulations. Neither a hermetically-sealed coffin nor a vault appear in the scene.'”

We worked until five o'clock. The Society for the Advancement of Philosophy considered the line, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” a slur on their profession. The Actor's Guild challenged Hamlet's hiring of non-union employees, and the Drapery Defense League objected to Polonius being stabbed while hiding behind a curtain. “The clear implication of the scene is that the arras is dangerous,” they had written in their brief. “Draperies don't kill people. People kill people.”

Ms. Harrows put the paper down on top of the stack and took a swig of cough syrup. “And that's it. Anything left?”

“I think so,” I said, punching
reformat
and scanning the screen. “Yes, a couple of things. How about, 'There is a willow grows aslant a brook/That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.'”

“You'll never get away with 'hoar,'” Ms. Harrows said.

 

* * *

 

Thursday I got to school at seven-thirty to print out thirty copies of
Hamlet
for my class. It had turned colder and even cloudier in the night. Delilah was wearing a parka and mittens. Her face was a deep scarlet, and her nose had begun to peel.

“‘Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings as in obeying the voice of the Lord?'” I asked. “First Samuel 15:22.” I patted her on the shoulder.

“Yeow,” she said.

 

* * *

 

I passed out
Hamlet
and assigned Wendy and Rick to read the parts of Hamlet and Horatio.

“'The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold,'” Wendy read.

“Where are we?” Rick said. I pointed out the place to him. “Oh. 'It is a nipping and an eager air.'”

“'What hour now?'” Wendy read.

“'I think it lacks of twelve.'”

Wendy turned her paper over and looked at the back. “That's it?” she said. “That's all there is to
Hamlet?
I thought his uncle killed his father and then the ghost told him his mother was in on it and he said 'To be or not to be' and Ophelia killed herself and stuff.” She turned the paper back over. “This can't be the whole play.”

“It better not be the whole play,” Delilah said. She came in, carrying her picket sign. “There'd better not be any ghosts in it. Or cockles.”

“Did you need some Solarcaine, Delilah?” I asked her.

“I
need
a Magic Marker,” she said with dignity.

I got her one out of the desk. She left, walking a little stiffly, as if it hurt to move.

“You can't just take parts of the play out because somebody doesn't like them,” Wendy said. “If you do, the play doesn't make any sense. I bet if Shakespeare were here, he wouldn't let you just take things out—”

“Assuming Shakespeare wrote it,” Rick said. “If you take every other letter in line two except the first three and the last six, they spell 'pig,' which is obviously a code word for Bacon.”

“Snow day!” Ms. Harrows said over the intercom. Everybody raced to the windows. “We will have early dismissal today at 9:30.”

I looked at the clock. It was 9:28.

“The Over-Protective Parents Organization has filed the following protest: 'It is now snowing, and as the forecast predicts more snow, and as snow can result in slippery streets, poor visibility, bus accidents, frostbite, and avalanches, we demand that school be closed today and tomorrow so as not to endanger our children.' Buses will leave at 9:35. Have a nice spring break!”

“The snow isn't even sticking on the ground,” Wendy said. “Now we'll never get to do Shakespeare.”

 

* * *

 

Delilah was out in the hall, on her knees next to her picket sign, crossing out the word “man” in “Spokesman.”

“The Feminists for a Fair Language are here,” she said disgustedly. “They've got a court order.” She wrote “person” above the crossed-out “man.” “A court order! Can you believe that? I mean, what's happening to our right to freedom of speech?”

“You misspelled 'person,'” I said.

The inexorable pull to move south grows. The sun hums to me all day long that it's time to go, go, go. The night sky is even more persistent—every constellation in the big Montana sky makes arrows pointing south. My appetite increases and I develop a layer of fat on my belly. My senses grow more intricate—smells carry layers of meaning, gnats and mosquitoes become visible everywhere I look, and the normal sounds of human civilization hurt my ears with all their chaos.

And now my eyes have changed. The cornea and pupil widen so that the white is barely visible. A mercy that the genetic modifications left me normal eyes for summer and winter, but when it changes, it is unsettling for everyone. My vision increases three-fold. It is the last sign that it is time.

“Your eyes look funny,” Marion says. My wife drops her fork onto her plate and starts to cry.

This is another sign, as real and inevitable as all the others.

“Josiah, don't go this time. Stay here. Stay safe. We'll manage, somehow.” She cries harder. Marion is beautiful when she cries. She breaks my heart every time. “Why won't they ever leave you alone?”

We've been avoiding this for the last month as though time was not passing—as though summer was not heading toward fall. I don't know what to say to her. I never know what to say.

“I'll be leaving tomorrow morning.” I reach out for her hand, but she pulls away from me. She doesn't want to touch me, to be any more vulnerable than I have already made her. Later there will be an intensity burning in her as she takes me into our room and undresses me, touches every part of my body as though there will be a test later and she must memorize it all. This too is another one of the signs.

 

* * *

 

Marion drives our old griesel out to a lonely stretch of road in Glacier National Park. She doesn't say goodbye to me, but holds me tight and then lets me go. Despite her words, she and I both know what I will do, if I have to. There are three other men waiting on the road.

“Good summer?” Scotty asks.

“Yep,” I say. “Hot enough for you?”

“Yep.”

There's Keith who's twenty-eight, the youngest and darkest skinned of us—he's mixed; Scotty, gay, thirty-seven, and a beast of a rider; and Hector, forty-four, Mexican but from the US. He doesn't speak Spanish but his wife and kids do. We're a strange migrating flock, not much in common, nothing like the huge numbers of wild birds who used to travel across the US and wore a monotony of feathers on their bodies. But once you see us dance, then you know we belong together.

“How you been, Josiah?” Hector asks. I feel his eyes looking me over, wondering about me now that I'm the oldest: now that Siv's dead.