Some Enchanted Place — Chapter Eight, Part Three

I turned back from the lack of Immaculada and gave my nemesis a good, hard stare. He’d delivered his line, but there was no mirth in it. His expression never changed. You could have put him in a window to sell a suit. He was a snake with a conspicuous bulge in the middle — not hungry right now. Still a snake. Always a snake.

I crossed a line just there. Angel was right; this place was some sort of mundane house of horrors. Not quite right. They tore the tags from mattresses, or were cannibals — or something in between, most likely. You could smell it on the breeze in the dooryard, a whiff of padlocked orphanage ablaze over the horizon somewhere. But Pecksniff had gone beyond the beyonds. He’d gotten familiar.

Pecksniff was a toady, no different than me. He had trotted out the one-way camaraderie to shame me a bit. He was wearing another man’s boots, but it was still on my neck. If we were any other place, I would have had to throw hands with him. Face.

My father told me he’d met Roosevelt once. Father was an old school Tammany Hall Democrat. He was slaving away at some defense plant and Roosevelt breezed through. Roosevelt clapped him on the back and called him by a singsong nickname, and told him what a swell job he was doing, asked him a question, turned his back on him without hearing the answer, and then disappeared in a cloud of flunkies.

Mom would always tell the story and the neighbors would ooh and aah and pop would glower. Once his friend pressed him on it, and I thought he’d explode. “No man has the right to treat me like a horse in a stable. I’ll not be given a joke for a name and patted like a beast by a stranger. No man. Why in the hell did we drag our sorry asses halfway around the globe? Not for this. Not for this.”

I knew the one-way familiarity when I saw it. Condescension masquerading as bonhomie. If my father had slapped Roosevelt on the back and called him Frankie in return, he’d have had his taxes reviewed twice yearly by J.Edgar Hoover, forevermore, while he was tied to a chair in Hoover’s office, probably. I learned a long time ago to beware any authority acting like your pal. It rarely is. Pecksniff was poking me through the bars. I was the fly and he was pulling off my wings. It was no less than that, and I knew it, and he knew I knew it. We came from the same place, he and I. So it was fight or flee — or grumble and take it, which is the most malignant kind of fleeing. Pecksniff knew there could be no fighting. I couldn’t even raise my voice or I’d never work another job within driving distance of this pile of bricks again.

It was a contest now. Angel was smarter because he wouldn’t play from the get-go, but I was in for a penny, so I had to go in for a Pound now. You’ll not chase me out of here, you creepy drudge. I’ll outlast you, you bastard, even if you call every person in every portrait on every wall in here back from the dead, and they climb down from the picture rail to pull at my sleeves while I work, and fill my dreams with dread.

I’ll pull up to the front door, Pecksniff. The front door. And I’ll take Immaculada out of here. I’ll spray you with peastone and we’ll wave to you like Roosevelt from a car. And someday, when you’re dead, we’ll come to your funeral, and Immaculada will wear a red dress, and I’ll throw rice in the hole you’re fitted for.

Some Enchanted Place — Chapter Eight, Part Two

I don’t know who the Secretary of the Interior is. I don’t know how to hit a curve ball. I don’t know how to do differential equations. I’m not sure exactly where Sri Lanka is, or why they didn’t want to be called Ceylon anymore, either. So maybe in the vast scheme of things, I don’t know very much — but I’m dead certain that if Pecksniff The Amazing Human Cattle Prod sends one more dose of his electricity through me, by turning up behind me unannounced, they’ll be able to bury him in a sponge.

I turned to face him and noticed my mistake right away. Never waste your time out in the prison yard by turning your face from the little blue tent of the sky. Pecksniff was the dripping stone walls, and the keeper, too; the moon, the stars and the sun were behind me now.

Pecksniff knew how it worked. I was powerless. If offered a chance to wrestle a rabid tiger to get a lottery ticket with a one in a hundred shot at winning a picture of Immaculada Doyle wearing a burlap sack, I’d have jumped at it. But no one was offering anything. The customer’s representative was speaking. I was unable to look away from him.

The Montessori kids would never understand this. They’re born and bred to go after everything in this life the way piglets go after the teats. Me first, second, and third. The rest of us go to Catholic School and line up and learn which cog in life’s machinery we might be, if we stand quietly in line long enough. It was a dark thing, and ancient. You might talk all sorts of treason in a pub, but you tipped your hat when the patrician passed by. It was involuntary, really; a rubber hammer to some kneecap in your head.

People would point to some preening Fitzgerald, and say: See? The Irish are just like the WASPS now. But they weren’t the same breed as us, really. Put us in charge and we just end up stealing the spoons from our own house. We were all born to be James Michael Curley, running for alderman from a jail cell. We won’t deny our crimes — if caught dead to rights — so we say “I did it for a friend,” instead. We can’t ever claim any privilege, just wallow in a kind of magnificent stubbornness. Refuse to be bloodless and your blood will never turn blue.

So Pecksniff knew he was no better than me, but that as long as he embodied the voice of who’s who, I was going to stand there listening to what’s what. Manners are a dreadful thing.

“The bannister leading down from the butler’s pantry shall want an additional screw in all of its brackets…”

Stop talking stop talking stop talking…

“…the previous mechanic sent by your patron neglected to fasten it properly…”

…Oh God stop talking like that and stop talking stop talking stop talking…

“… and although the master of the house has no truck with these stairs they are a constant necessary for we who labor here…”

… if you don’t stop talking right now I’m going to kill you with my hands I swear it …

“… and Miss Doyle has often remarked to me of her concern…”

Bingo! Rumpelstiltskin had uttered Rapunzel’s name for a change, the iron grip of decorum was lifted, and I turned back to see — the dining room door swinging back and forth in the frame.

Just then, Pecksniff did the unthinkable. He said something funny.

“Oh; you seem to have dropped your spear, Sir Lancelot.”