Wildcard (43 page)

“That sounds like the hardest thing I’ve
ever heard anyone do.”

“Yeah, it was pretty hard, in a way. But I
didn’t have any choice. I didn’t know anything different, did I?
So, in a way it wasn’t hard. I never expected Hazel. She just
showed up. That was a good day. You were so shy.”

“You, too.”

The bottle of poison burned a hole in his
mind. In the end, they made it ridiculously easy for him. The old
man said, “Gotta poop,” and jumped up. “Gonna be awhile.”

Hazel was just coming back with three pieces
of pie and hot chocolate. “Oh, golly. I better call the dog. He’s
been gone two days. He probably needs to come home.”

“Let me,” said the boy, jumping to his feet,
nearly knocking over the wooden chair. “Let me call him. Can I call
him, please?”

The old woman was puzzled. “ You are such a
beautiful young man.” She stroked her hand through his hair,
combing it with her fingers. “Wildcard has set you a hard road. I
can see that. ‘All who come to the heart have a difficult path,
before and behind.’”

“Wildsong?”

She nodded. “What else? What shall I call
you? Sergeant won’t do for me. You’re just a child. Do you have a
real name?”

He looked down at his shoes. “No. Why don’t
you call me Broken Boy? That’s what the old man called me and it
seemed true enough.”

“Well, all right, then. Broken Boy
‘tis.”

She reached up to hold his face in her
hands. “You have some difficult choice to make. That’s all I can
see. The dog is not yours to call. He’ll not come to you. It is
sweet that you’re so eager. Touching, really. But you must face
this choice alone I fear. I hope you make the right one. I’m
heartbroken to see you wish to avoid it. But you must face it.”

She walked outside. He heard her calling the
dog. The Sergeant sat back down at the table, looking at hot
chocolate and pie, his hand on the poison in his pocket.

“Guilty.” Karl laid on his back, laughing.
The Jester’s outline occluded the serene blue. “How about some food
here?” Karl shouted at the sky.

“To whom do you speak?” The Jester was
sitting again, legs crossed, belled shoe-points dangling and
jingling over opposite knees. “Are you crazy? You scream at the
sky?”

“Sorry, I was talking to you. I got carried
away.”

“That’s OK,” said the Jester amiably. “I get
carried away, too, sometimes. What did you ask the sky?”

“I asked it for food.” Karl pulled a long,
circular shoot of grass with a cottony bob at the end, put it in
his mouth like a farmer. They were on a nice blanket, a Jester
colored plaid.

“What a great idea, Karl.” The Jester
reached into the basket. “Would you like to eat something from my
pikanik basket, Boo-Boo.” He looked like a cartoon bear for an
instant.

“Who was that?”

“What was what ?” he said innocently.

“That bear.”

“Yogi bear. A cartoon character.”

“Cartoons. Never saw too many, myself.”

“Me, neither. Actually, I guess I did. I
kind of made them up.”

“Were you isolated, somehow? Or am I
speaking to some central aspect of Wildcard?”

“Just a joke.”

“It was a weird joke,” said Karl. “A bad
joke. Do you know what a joke is?”

“Please tell me.” The Jester was on his
hands and knees, pleading. “I am but a simple jester. How could I
possibly know what a joke is?”

“A joke is funny.”

“I knew that.” He sounded like a petulant
child. He pulled out two Dagwood sandwiches, 15 centimeters high.
“Not all jokes are funny, Karl, and not everything that’s funny is
a joke.”

“How did you get to be so wise?” Karl
mocked.

“When did you become sarcastic?” the Jester
countered. “You were not always this way. Once you trusted the
world.”

The remark stung. “Is it a change for the
worse?”

“Not if you resist taking it as serious.
Irony can prove a useful tool in wildspace, probably necessary. At
least for some. It isn’t who you truly are. It’s just a game you
play. Just don’t play it too much.”

“I guess not,” Karl replied. “But thank you
for pointing it out.”

“You are absolutely welcome,” said the
Jester. “It is why I am here,” he made a grand arm gesture as he
said it. “To help people more deeply understand themselves.” A
comically pompous tone of voice. He pulled out a champagne bottle.
A loud popping noise came from behind Karl, who had sat up.

“What was that?”

“The cork.”

“But it’s still in the bottle.”

The Jester tilted his head, leaned forward,
and kissed Karl on the nose. “Think outside the box, Karl.” He
pushed the cork off and a high-pitched screaming, like a woman
seeing a monster in a B-movie, came out of the bottle. Karl put his
hands over his ears. The screaming lasted for about the 30 seconds,
trailing away at the end, and then liquid fizzed out the top.
“Sounds like a good year,” said the Jester.

“What was that?”

“So many questions, Karl. I don’t know what
it was. Maybe it was a genie. Who cares?” He pulled two wine
glasses out of the basket. They were huge, the size of soccer
balls, and the two of them could not possibly fit into the basket.
The Jester poured a deep golden liquid into the glasses, about a
third full. The bottle should have been emptied twice. Karl reached
for his glass. “Ah-ah, Karl. This is a mixed drink.” He poured some
more from the same bottle into each glass. Now the liquid was
purple, and very thick. After he finished pouring, sparkles of
rainbow colored light and fairies floated, a few dozen of them, out
of the now many-colored liquid. The emanations popped within a few
meters. “Sad,” said the Jester. “They die so young.”

He raised his glass, looked meaningfully at
Karl’s as if to say, “pick it up for a toast.” Karl ignored the
hint to see what would happen. One of the colored circles on the
Jester’s costume turned into a rubber ball and struck Karl in the
face. He picked up his giant glass.

“To the perfect puzzle.”

“To the perfect problem.” Karl wanted to be
contrary.

“Exactly.” The Jester smiled, nodded, and
touched his glass to Karl’s. The sound of two sword blades sliding
across one another came from the touch. They sipped their
drinks.

Karl looked at his towering sandwich. The
plate was tiny, all four corners of the sandwich hanging over the
edge. The Jester pretended to look away, but made sneaky eye
movements back to Karl and the sandwich. No help there, thought
Karl. He picked it up. He tried to put his mouth at the top and eat
to the bottom. He attempted to eat it from one edge by tilting his
head to ninety degrees. It made a huge mess, turkey, tomatoes,
lettuce, ham everywhere. His face was covered in mustard and
mayonnaise.

“My gosh, what a messy eater.” The Jester
rummaged in the basket while Karl sat there, covered in condiments
like an idiot. Comic, impossible noises came from the basket,
pieces of metal banging, squeaking bicycle horns, faint gunfire, a
car starting. “Ah, here it is.”A woman’s voice shouted from inside,
“Gimme those back.” The Jester handed Karl a roll of paper towels,
slapping, in a girlish way, the hand that came out of the basket.
He closed the lid and the hand went away.

Karl wiped his face off. “Would you prefer a
more compact sandwich, Karl.” He practically shouted compact.

“Thanks.” Karl put his hand on top of the
sandwich and pushed down. It made ratcheting noises and began
collapsing in levels. Ka-chunk, ka-chunk. It was quite loud. It was
a normal sandwich at the end, and he ate it. It tasted… silly.

The Jester blew bubbles from a pipe. They
came out as figures: lions, princesses, knights, castles, lepers,
and acted, or lived out, fairy tales. The figures talked and
interacted. They seemed to believe they were real. They had been
doing this a lot the last few days. The Sergeant seemed to be gone
for a while, and it passed the time well. Karl wondered if he would
be stuck here forever.

One scene, which particularly caught Karl,
was three pregnant women who seemed to be doing odd things. One
seemed to be trying to poison the other two. Karl looked closer,
they were very tiny, or perhaps far away. He saw Martha, and
another Martha, only not Martha, the Benefactor. And another woman,
whom he did not know, but who seemed familiar. He liked her. She
seemed to drift closer. She was writing. She was pretty, in a plain
way, medium blond hair, built a bit square, but nice. She had a
comfortable feel. She wore jeans below her bulging belly and a
stretched man’s t-shirt. He could see her inverted belly button
below the bottom of the shirt.

“What is this?”

“One of your futures,” said the Jester. Then
it was gone. Karl asked more questions, but if the Jester knew
more, he wasn’t telling.

They played a game called Twister for a
while, a perfect Jester game. The Jester would snap his fingers to
spin the arrow around the colored wheel. When both his hands were
engaged awkwardly, a mouse or squirrel or rabbit came out and spun
the wheel for them. They played for a few hours, then Karl slept.
He had odd prophetic dreams, but couldn’t remember the content
afterwards.

He went for a walk alone. He crossed the
river, but just ended up back on the first side. He did it a number
of times, because it was so enjoyably disorienting. He walked back
to the Jester. They played a game similar to Charades, then some
other games. The Jester pulled out spaghetti in coffee cups for
lunch. They ate it with their hands.

“Do you think he’ll kill them?” Karl
asked.

“Do I think who will kill who?”

“Do you think the Sergeant will kill the old
couple?”

“Do you?”

“Not sure. I think it would be hard even for
him.”

“I think so, too.” The Jester smiled. “We
will see, won’t we.” He seemed a bit confused.

“What if he kills them and nothing happens?
What if everything goes on like before?”

“Quite possible,” said the Jester. “Anything
can happen.”

Hazel came back with the dog a few moments
later. She sat down. “Well, how about your choice, did you make the
proper one?”

“Yes,” said the boy. “I couldn’t do it. I
was supposed to kill you and I didn’t.”

“Really,” she said. “Kill us.” As she said
the words, her eyes moved to one of the overhead beams and her head
tilted back. She said it as if she didn’t understand what the words
meant. She patted her hair a bit, looked back at Karl and said,
“How strange, you came here to kill us. And you weren’t able. How
were you supposed to do it?”

“With this,” he said, “pulling the bottle of
poison from his pocket, setting it on the table.”

“Oh, my,” she said, just like a real
grandmother. “Well I am glad you didn’t, dear.”

CJ nuzzled his nose and his crotch, begging
for attention. He seemed to like attention more than food.

“Broken Boy, will you teach me how to taste?
Please?”

“I’ll try,” he said. “How?”

“Well, just hold my hand and eat and
remember what it tastes like. Actually, just sit here and talk and
remember what it tastes like.” She filled another plate, then sat
and stroked his hand.

“Can I stay with you?”

“It is so wonderful to have a boy in the
house,” she said. “I’ve never had a boy in my home. You’re the
first person I truly wanted to stay in this house. But you can’t.
I’m sorry.”

He ate, and started crying when he did. The
food tasted like wood.

“You have to remember what it tastes like.
Please? I do want to taste my cooking.”

He closed his eyes, put a spoonful of mashed
potatoes and gravy in his mouth. He had eaten them before. This
body had eaten them before. He sought that memory with all his
heart. He looked at her, wanted to give her something, just because
she was so kind. He concentrated, found the memory. Put it right,
adjusted, made the flavor right. “Here is how you taste.”

It was delicious. He ate the rest of the
meal and it all tasted perfect. Hazel beamed, but barely touched
her food. She watched him, squeezing his forearm now and again.

“Brush your teeth. There’s a spare
toothbrush in there. Then you must go to bed.”

He went. She came up and he asked her
again.

“Can I stay?”

“No, sadly, you cannot. You must go. I’m
sorry, too. I am so sad. I want a boy here. I want a child in my
home more than anything. I want you to stay.” She ran her fingers
through his hair.

The old man called from below. “Goodnight,
Sarge.” He didn’t come up.

“May I read you something?” Hazel asked.

“I’d like that.”

She opened wildsong.

“This will not be easy

something happened in the dream last night
when you let live the enemy you love

sworn against by an insane vow which you
keep, but never made

what can you do now

are you beyond hope

are you one who cannot be saved

will you know the blessed touch of neither
right nor wrong.”

She closed it, and they sat in silence for a
minute.

“Thanks. Sorry I cried tonight.”

“Not a bit. Sometimes children need to
cry.”

“Can I stay for a few days?”

“You can’t even stay the night.” She kissed
him on the forehead and walked out, turning the light off as she
went.

As she pulled the door, he called to her,
“what happens tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow you are a man.”

The Sergeant woke up under a tree, felt his
stubble, and sat up. He knew what he needed to do, but he still had
to find the old couple. The dream was real; the poison would have
killed them. Oh well, good the boy hadn’t, he wanted to meet them,
but didn’t want to kill them. Orders were orders, though. He picked
an apple from a tree and ate it for breakfast.