The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (16 page)

It was Windimar's old room. There was no bathroom, but there was an antique washstand with a bowl set in a hollowed-out shelf and a pitcher of steaming water. I washed my face and brushed my teeth in the warm water from the pitcher, and then I looked around the room.

A rocking chair sat beside a small fireplace on the wall opposite the bed, where a silver and gold crucifix was hung over the headboard. On that side was a tapestry that looked very old but couldn't have been that old, because there was Mr. Samson mounted on a great white horse in full armor and around him eleven men dressed in purple and holding shields painted with a horse and rider. At least it looked like Mr. Samson—there was the same large head and flowing golden hair, and I picked out a tall knight that could have been Bennacio and a knight with bright blue thread for eyes, Windimar, I guessed, staring right at me, and he was one good-looking guy; he looked a little like Brad Pitt, except for those bright blue eyes. Jealousy never did anybody any good and I wasn't really the jealous type, but this guy was learning swordplay and how to ride a horse and pledging his sacred honor to die for a noble cause when I was sitting by my mom's hospital bed watching her die and getting the stuffing beaten out of me at football practice.

I opened the closet door and inside was a full suit of armor, shined to a mirror finish, with a six-foot lance leaning against the wall beside it. It was fully assembled and I gave a little yelp when I opened the door, thinking I was the victim of a medieval ambush.

I stared at that suit of armor for a long time. It was polished so bright, I could see little shards of myself reflected in the metal, twenty-five Kropps at least, distorted like funhouse images. Shaggy brown hair, brown eyes, average-sized nose, chin, ears, teeth. If there was one trait these knights in the tapestry shared, it was that none of them looked average. Not all were as pretty as Windimar, as noble-looking as Samson, or as intense as Bennacio, but there was a set to their jaw, a certain look in the eyes they all had in common. I wondered if I put on the armor in the closet something like that might happen to me, the way even the geekiest guy in school looked macho in his ROTC uniform. I had this nutty urge to pull the armor off its stand and put it on. Then I thought that would be the ultimate gesture of disrespect, donning the armor of the knight who died because of me. I closed the closet door.

I turned out the light and crawled into the bed fully dressed and it bothered me, Christ hanging right over me, looking down like,
What the heck are
you
doing here?
that it took a long time for me to fall asleep. It didn't help that I could hear Miriam crying down the hallway, a low moaning sort of weeping. For a crazy second I thought about finding her and telling her I was sorry, which I kind of did already but not really in the kitchen. But Miriam didn't want to hear about me being sorry; she wanted her son back. Probably if I went in there she'd find the nearest heavy object and bash me over the head with it.

Her crying went on for a long time. I had cried for my mom when she died, but not the way Miriam was crying for Windimar. It was while I listened to her cry that I realized what I did went beyond Uncle Farrell, Mr. Samson and the knights, Bennacio and Windimar. What I did was slamming people I didn't even know about, like Miriam, the shock waves of my boneheadedness spreading out in ever widening circles, like a boulder the size of Montana landing in the ocean or that huge asteroid that hit the earth millions of years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs.

I finally fell asleep and dreamed I was scrambling up this rocky slope, not exactly a mountain, more like a slag heap of broken rock and tiny glittering shards of quartz or maybe those crystals you see growing inside of caves, sparkling like big wet teeth in the moonlight. I kept slipping and sliding as I tried to reach the top. The palms of my hands and my knees were all cut up and bleeding. Every time I gained a couple feet, I lost one, but it seemed very important I get to the top. I caught ahold of a big boulder near the summit and pulled myself up.

I rested awhile, looking at the shimmering shards littering the hill beneath me, feeling kind of proud of myself that I made it at least this far.

Finally I stood up, turned, and jumped the rest of the way. The top was perfectly flat and covered with long grasses whose tips reached up and caressed my aching legs as I walked toward this yew tree.

Under the tree sat a lady wearing a white robe, and her hair was long and dark, and her face almost as pale as her dress.

I don't know why, but she seemed familiar to me, and when I got close she lifted her head and smiled.

She looked at me with her sad, dark eyes, as if she knew me, and something I had done or failed to do had disappointed her. Then she asked me a question and I woke up.

“You have been dreaming,” a voice said.

I scooted up in the bed and saw Bennacio sitting in the rocker by the fireplace.

I brought my hand to my face and it came away wet. I'd been crying.

“There was this . . . lady,” I said. I cleared my throat. “All in white, with dark hair.”

“Did she speak to you?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“She asked me a question.” I didn't want to talk about it. Bennacio had a bemused expression on his face, as if he knew what I'd been dreaming.

“What was the question?” he asked.

“She asked me . . . she asked me where the master of the Sword was.”

“And what was your answer?”

“I didn't have an answer.”

“Hmmm.” He was smiling at me. Not a big, wide smile, but a secret little smile, like he knew what my answer should have been and that maybe I knew it too, and all that was holding me back was my reluctance to think things through.

“Who was she, Bennacio?”

“That is not for me to say.”

“How come?”

“She came to your dream, Alfred.”

I remembered him talking about angels as if they were real and wondered if the Lady in White was one. But why would an angel talk to me?

“I never believed in angels and saints or even God, much,” I told Bennacio.

“That hardly matters,” he said. “Fortunately for us, the angels do not require our consent in order to exist.”

Everything about this Bennacio guy reminded me of my own insignificance. I didn't think he was trying to put me down, though. He had stepped up to a different level long before he met me. It wasn't his fault I was still scrubbing around at the bottom of the slag heap.

“I never really gave much thought to stuff like that,” I said. “I guess one of my biggest problems is I don't take the time to think things through. If I did, the Sword would still be under Mr. Samson's desk and Uncle Farrell would be alive. Everybody would be alive and Miriam wouldn't be crying but maybe sewing on a tapestry. Did she make that? It must have taken her a very long time. What happened to Windimar, Bennacio?”

“I have told you. He fell near Bayonne.”

“No, I mean, what happened to him?”

“Do you really wish to know?” He studied me for a minute, and I wondered why he had come in here while I slept. It was like he knew I would be waking up and he wanted to be there when I did.

“Very well. He was traveling by rail to Barcelona, the rendezvous point for our assault upon Mogart in Játiva, when he was set upon by seven of the Dragon's thralls. He might have escaped, but he chose to fight.

“He was the youngest of our Order, impetuous, idealistic—and vain. He never believed that our cause might fail. His pride undid him, Alfred. For though he fought well and bravely, besting five before he was overcome, in the end the two that remained mutilated him while he still drew breath.”

His voice had dropped to a whisper. He wasn't looking at me anymore, but at some point over my head.

“He was found with no eyes, Alfred. They killed him, and then they cut out his eyes.”

His gray eyes turned to me then, and they were hard. “The enemy has been gathering such men to himself for two years now, Alfred, since Samson expelled him from our Order. You have not lived very long, but surely you have heard of such men. Alas, the world is full of them. Men without conscience, their hearts corrupted by greed and the lust for power, their minds twisted past all human recognition. They have forgotten love, pity, remorse, honor, dignity, grace. They have fallen, mere shadows of men, their humanity a distant memory. Mogart has promised them riches beyond human imagining, and in their lust they have descended to barbarity beyond divine imagining. Remember that before you judge me for what I did in Edinburg. Remember Játiva. Remember Windimar's eyes, and then you may judge me.”

21

At sunrise the next morning I stumbled into the kitchen, where Miriam had laid out blueberry muffins and these little buttery rolls that melted in my mouth like cotton candy. I wouldn't have stayed to eat—Bennacio was nowhere to be seen and Miriam acted as if I were this large empty space, like a bubble, floating around her kitchen—but those rolls were delicious and the muffins were about the size of my fist. Finally I couldn't stand it any longer and I said, “Where's Bennacio?” because he had made such a big deal about getting an early start. Loudly too because I was nervous around her and she wasn't too good with English and, like a lot of people, I spoke louder to people who did not share my native tongue. She jerked her head toward the little window over the sink, so I figured he had gone outside and in another instant I leaped to the conclusion he wasn't out on his morning constitutional but had actually taken off without me. I ran out the front door and was relieved to see the Ferrari still parked outside.

A heavy fog had rolled in during the night, and the early-morning sunlight was red and ghostly in the wispy moisture around the dark tree trunks of the woods around Miriam's house. I heard a thudding sound in the trees off to my right, and I turned toward it as it became louder. I think I knew what was coming before it came bursting through the trees, and I fought the impulse to dash back inside.

Bennacio exploded from the woods astride a huge white horse, bending low over its massive neck, both hands gripping its halter because there were no reins or bit.

They drew up beside me. The horse's dark nostrils flared and its tail slapped its flanks as Bennacio smiled down at me.

“We're riding horses to Canada?” I asked.

“Wouldn't that be grand?” he laughed. “The hour darkens, and we must make haste now, but I could not resist one last ride.” He held out his hand.

“I'm scared of horses,” I told him.

“Fortunately, I am not,” he said, and he grabbed me by the forearm and swung my big self onto that horse's broad back as easily as if he were throwing a coat over his shoulder. Then he leaned over and whispered something into the horse's ear and we were off.

Just a few hours before, I had been racing down the interstate at a hundred miles an hour, but that seemed like crawling next to that horse ride through the Pennsylvania countryside. The trees whistled by my ears as I wrapped my arms around Bennacio's chest, my face pressed against his back, my eyes clenched shut. I slipped right and left on the horse's back, and I pressed my teeth together because I was terrified I might bite my tongue in two.

I don't know how long we rode before I felt this lessening of pressure in my chest and a light-headedness that made me crack my eyes open and sit back a little, my death grip loosening around Bennacio's middle—maybe fifteen minutes, but it seemed like an hour or two. I leaned farther back and opened my eyes wide, and the spring air was sweet and swift against my face, the trees blurs of brown and bright green, and the sound of this steed's hooves was like muffled thunder in my ears. I actually started to laugh out loud, whooping it up like a kid on a carnival ride, while Bennacio spurred on our mount. Bennacio, the Last Knight of the Round Table, astride a white stallion, riding to the rescue of the whole darn world, with Alfred Kropp hanging on for dear life behind him, shouting and crying at the same time, glad just to be along for the ride.