The Life of Hope (17 page)

How come?

Well, she’s got this friend, June. And—hold on, hold on. What am I telling you for?

I’m interested, that’s all.

But who the hell are you?

Bum
bum
bum
bum
 …

Ol’ Mossback?

Right first time out of the box.

A likely story.

You think perhaps I am but a figment of your pickled imagination?

Wouldn’t put it past you.

So, am I right in assuming that you and this girl June engaged
in sex, thereby occasioning said action on the part of your wife?

Pretty smart, for a fish.

Why’d you do it?

I was drunk.

Hey, buck, come off it! I wasn’t born yesterday.

I don’t know why I did it. June’s got great tits.

And your wife doesn’t?

Sure she does.

As you may know, fish don’t have tits. But I’m doing my best to understand. I’ve seen a few in my time. Those lumps of fat that women have on their chests, right?

Right.

And you’re saying that some are better than others?

I suppose.

Well, gosh, it’s hard for me to relate to this. The tits I’ve seen looked by and large the same. I mean, all my wives have dorsal fins, but I don’t go around saying one’s got a great set of dorsals and another’s are only so-so.

Well, aren’t some of your wives prettier than the others?

Hell, no. They’re all fish! Excuse me.

Where’d you go?

Just popped off to chomp a fingerling.

Ah.

Are June’s tits prettier than your wife’s?

They’re different.

How so?

Mostly because they’re on June’s chest.

Now we’re getting somewhere. Look out! What the hell is
that?

What?

What’s that gizmo your buddy is fishing with?

It’s called the Hoper.

Mostly because you got to hope that I’m either crazy or blind if you think I’m going to go for it.

Well, Gregory Opdycke says it works.

That putz! Him and those crazy stirpicults.

Speaking of that …

Hey! I’m going to give your buddy the thrill of his lifetime.

What are you gonna do?

“Whoa!”

Harvey’s cry made me sit up on my rock, just in time to watch him execute what looked like a triple half-gainer before he disappeared into Lookout Lake.

The trouble all began this way. Joseph Benton Hope had seen Polyphilia Drinkwater Davies on the street one day, in the company of her new, fat husband, Buford Scrope Davies. If Davies had simply been fat, Hope reflected, he would have been grotesque enough—but Davies added to this quality those of shortness (like his father-in-law, he approached dwarfdom) and facial unsightliness. Then Hope saw the painful catch to Buford Scrope Davies’s gait. Davies had a clubbed foot—it met the ground sideways and was pulled behind rather than propelled forward in any sort of perambulatory manner. The sight of Polyphilia had turned Hope’s root to stone; the sight of Scrope Davies had the same effect on his heart.

That night, alone and by candlelight, Joseph wrote a letter. He addressed it to Adam De-la-Noy, for no particular reason, other than the fact that Adam was a worldly man and not likely to be shocked by what Joseph had to say.

Hope spent the first three pages reviewing the doctrine of Perfectionism.

Adam De-la-Noy read this in his bedroom, by candlelight.

He had just finished making love to Mary.

Mary lay on the rumpled bedsheets, naked and dead to the world. Adam spent a long time staring at his wife’s body. Even in slumber her bosom was pitching, a subtle heave with each whispered breath. Mary’s legs were spread-eagled, her cunnicle glistening. Adam realized what J. B. Hope was getting at. It did not anger him in any real way. Adam refolded the letter and replaced it in its envelope. Then he crossed over to the bed and woke up Mary. They made love once more, consecutive sex for the first time in their marriage.

The following day George Quinton showed up at the De-la-Noy household to fix a door. George wasn’t much good at these household repairs, but somehow he always ended up doing them, even for handy, practical men like Abram Skinner. George didn’t manage to truly fix the door at the De-la-Noys’, which refused to shut tightly, but after hours of beating on it George convinced the door to remain shut, at least as long as he was around. As George was leaving, Adam met him at the door, and handed him an opened letter.

“Take this back to Reverend Hope,” Adam instructed quietly.

George stared at the envelope, recognized his master’s handwriting. “What is it?”

“It is the philosophy of Perfectionism,” said De-la-Noy. “He sent it to me because I was unsure on a few accounts. But now I am satisfied and I’m sending it back to him to illustrate that fact.”

George grinned heartily. This made him very happy.

George headed for the harbor and the Free Church, but he
absentmindedly crossed two streets over to the west before descending to the docks. There he found The Sailor’s Wife.

“Ho!” George was startled, even astounded, to have stumbled across the tavern. “Heah’s the gwoghouse,” he commented aloud. “I think I’ll just pop inside.”

In Boston, that season, the favorite topics of barroom conversation were the uppity South, the alleged liaison between Senator Archibald Guy Tollery and a twice-divorced woman, and Theophilius Drinkwater’s attempted expedition to the moon.

George entered The Sailor’s Wife, taking the cap off his head and crumpling it humbly in his massive hands. He nodded to the men in a very general way, for quite a few were staring at him. George took two steps over to the bar; the clutch of men beside him laughed, and George found himself grinning from ear to ear.

“Yes, George?” asked the barkeep.

George was astonished to hear his own name. For a long moment he forgot what he’d intended to drink. Then it came to him. “Ale, please.” George Quinton held a coin up, and as the publican drew the draft, George polished the piece on his shirtfront.

The men beside him laughed again.

“And they’re all at St. Mary’s!” one roared.

“All of them?”

“All except Theophilius, ’cause he never jumped!”

George knew what they were discussing. Theophilius Drinkwater and seven of his most devoted followers (Abigal Skinner’s mother among them) had tried to go to the moon. They’d all donned huge wings, wooden frames covered with chicken and goose feathers, and they’d jumped from the roof of Drinkwater’s tiny house.

“They was naked as the day they was born!” one man added, evoking another great howl of laughter.

It didn’t seem funny to George that the people would be naked, if only because he couldn’t think of what attire would be most suitable. George briefly imagined that Polyphilia and Jezreel were among the moon-voyagers. (They weren’t—Polyphilia was pregnant and Jezreel thought the whole thing
stupid.) George had no clear concept of the naked female form, but he knew basically where and what the lumps should be, knew there should be a triangular patch of hair where a man would have a peter. George had, of course, seen Martha naked, because she had no concept, or need, of modesty. When she bathed, Martha often ordered George to scrub her back, and while he did that Martha would methodically scrub away at various protuberances and orifices. But George had no way of extrapolating Martha’s huge, muscular nudity to Polyphilia and Jezreel. So he made do with a little knowledge, and memories of a William Blake illustration he’d once seen and of a statue in a museum.

“Mostly they have cuts and bruises,” another man went on, “but the old lady broke both her legs.”

George’s ale came in a pewter tankard. He picked it up, placed it to his lips and in a few seconds the mug was empty. George scowled, then politely asked for another. He hadn’t been concentrating; he’d been distracted by the talk of Drinkwater’s moon voyage.

Fortunately for the lunar travelers, Drinkwater’s roof was only seven feet from the ground, because by and large, a neighbor reported, they plummeted earthward like great sacks of rocks. The exception was old Mrs. Chandler (Abigal’s mother), who managed, perhaps because of her aged frailty, to sail some twenty feet away from the house. According to some observers, Mrs. Chandler even managed to execute an aerial maneuver, the Loop-de-loop—although they didn’t describe it that way because no one had ever done a Loop-de-loop before (or, for that matter, any aerial maneuver). Then Mrs. Chandler had fallen from the sky, mostly because of the weight of the Mason jars she had harnessed to her back. The air-filled Mason jars, Theophilius Drinkwater acknowledged, had been a mistake. He recorded in
The Battle-Axe
that his error had been one of scientific oversight, in that, “air, although lacking material substance, still has weight. Although I had made the appropriate arithmetical allowances for the jars
per se
, the added poundage of the air prevented our escape from the atmosphere.” Theophilius Drinkwater was in no way discouraged. His new thought was to transport the air in balloons, which would even
assist the actual flying process. Theophilius optimistically set a date for the new expedition, some two months hence. Abigal’s mother, unfortunately, would not be able to participate. She died of pneumonia a few weeks after the accident.

As one of the tavern-dwellers had commented (George’s second ale came—he took a small sip and rolled it around in his mouth, savoring the cool foam, then he became distracted and drained the tankard dry), Theophilius had not himself jumped. The reason, Drinkwater claimed, was that he had to orchestrate the launching, which he did by counting backward from ten and then screaming, “Off we go!” He then fully intended to bung himself heavenward, except that he saw with sudden clarity his scientific boner. According to Theophilius, he’d even warned the moongoers, shouting after them, “Come back!”, but they were too intent on their mission to heed him. Theophilius was forced to watch them all fall, cracking like eggs upon the cobblestones.

“One moah beah,” said George. He produced another coin and brandished it for the barkeep. When his ale came, George drank it, smacked his lips appreciatively and announced to no one in particular, “I am a pehfectionist!”

Most of the men sidled away from George, having heard it all before, always immediately following George’s third beer, but the man beside him at the long wooden counter looked up quizzically. George Quinton assumed that the man needed and desired clarification. “I adheah to the philosophies of Joseph Benton Hope! It is his belief that a sinless perfection is attainable …”

George stopped to watch the man. The man wore a pair of tiny round spectacles; upon hearing the name “Joseph Benton Hope” the man had torn them from his face, fished out a soiled handkerchief, and was now cleaning the glass furiously.

“… in owah lifetime,” George concluded.

“Yes,” agreed the man. He was tiny and fat, although his features, his chin, nose and ears, seemed to be fashioned for a very tall and slender type. Even George was startled by the unpleasantness of this fellow’s aspect. Quinton smiled briefly and returned to his (empty) mug.

“Do you, do you,” stammered the little fat man, “know him?”

“Wevewend Hope?”

“Yes.”

“Yes,” answered George simply, hoping to end the conversation. Then pride overcame him. “I live with him. It is my gweat fohtune to be counted among his intimates.”

“I see. May I buy you a drink?”

The thing was (and even George remarked inwardly at the strangeness of this), Quinton didn’t like this man. Still, George assumed that this was some failing on his part, and that with familiarity a kinship could be established. “Yes, thank you,” he answered the man, and surrendered his empty tankard to the publican.

The fat man was still cleaning his spectacles. He was very drunk, and spectacle-cleaning seemed to be a measure taken toward sobriety. “Yes, yes, yes,” the man said. “A sinless perfection. Attainable. Yes.”

George Quinton said, “Theah cannot be two pehfections, one foah the wookaday wohld, the otheh some spuwious pehfection attainable only by pwiests and clewics!” George was delighted at the ease with which J. B. Hope’s words tumbled out of his mouth.

“What does he do?” asked the fat man quickly, his nose twitching.

“Beg yoh pahdon?”

“With all the young girls? All the pretty ones?”

“Oh. He teaches them about pehfection.”

“And then? Then does he stable his naggie?” The man put his spectacles on and blinked. “Then does he poke his piggie?”

George was puzzled by these references to livestock. He drank some beer, searching for understanding.

“Does he plant his oats in all the little rows?” persisted the strange fat man.

“No, he doesn’t,” said George firmly. “He is not a fahmah.”

“No, but does he put old Nobby out to grass?”

George Quinton was exasperated. Suddenly, however, he had an inspiration. “Heah,” said George, pulling the envelope out of his pocket. “Witten heah—in the hand of the Wevewend himself —is the philosophy of pehfectionism. Take it. And when you ah feeling betteh, weed it.”

“I feel bully,” snarled the tiny man, and he ripped open the letter and savaged it with his eyes. “Aha!” he ejaculated. The man pocketed the paper and then placed an enormous three-cornered hat on his head. “Must dash,” he told George.