Ariel (13 page)

* * *

Small talk continued until Mrs. Neiman announced dinner.

Dinner was strange.

Not the food itself. That was plentiful, hot, and good—better than I could remember having in a long, long time. Chicken (cooked outside on a charcoal grill, it turned out), string beans and mashed potatoes (canned, but so what—they were both heaped and steaming on my plate), home-made vegetable soup, fresh fruit ("Help yourself, Pete," Mrs. Neiman said hefting the huge fruitbowl with both hands. I did), and two loaves of fresh-baked
bread
.

Mr. Neiman said their family'd always had a half-barrel Franklin stove out in their junk shed, and when the power had gone out and stayed out they'd carted it in, cleaned it up, and put it to use.

Ariel stood at the foot of the table, opposite Mr. Neiman and rather dominating the view; the Neimans couldn't help glancing at her throughout dinner. In front of her was a saucer, and on it were unwrapped peppermint candies. I thought she looked damned silly, but I said nothing. The Neimans were only trying to be hospitable in the face of something they'd never quite had to deal with. What would Emily Post have said about proper etiquette for having a unicorn over for dinner?

I sat to Ariel's right, beside George. Mr. Neiman talked to me between mouthfuls of soup. I tried to listen and not be rude while shoveling food into my mouth as fast as I could.

"There's a lot to be said for tradition," he said during a lull between slurped spoonfulls. "It preserves the family way. Hell, when I was a young man—about your age, Pete, maybe even younger. How old are you?"

"Twenty." I fingered my soup spoon. I pulled the brimming bowl of thick soup toward me, trying to be subtle. It clinked against my plate and brown soup sloshed onto the table. I looked around self-consciously but nobody seemed to notice. Or care. They were all sneaking glances at Ariel, who munched quietly on her candy.

Another loud slurp from Mr. Neiman. "There, you see? Way before I was twenty I was out on my own like you are now. See the world, right? Those were some of the worst times of my life, and some of the best." He set down the spoon, raised the bowl to his mouth, and sucked loudly. When he lowered the bowl with a satisfied "Ahhh," bits of vegetable clung to his beard. I dunked my spoon in my own bowl and tasted. Salty, but good.

"Believe it or not," continued George's father, "I wouldn't trade those times for anything. Taught me a lot. Now, George, here, he needs to get out on his own, too. Six months, maybe a year. Do him a world of good, teach him to deal with what's out there. It was strange enough before, but now?"

I "mmm"ed noncommittally, still working at my soup. Mrs. Neiman was looking at her husband sharply. George stared at his plate, not eating. Evie, food on her chin, stared frankly at Ariel.

Mr. Neiman lifted the bowl to his mouth, drained it, dragged his left arm across his beard, wiped that on his pants, cracked his knuckles, and belched. "I've always wanted to get some kind of family tradition started, you know? Something George could pass on to his son."

I finished my soup and attacked my plate. That food was better than I remembered food being. "Tradition is useful," I said, staring at the crispy drumstick I was trying not to shove whole into my mouth. "As long as it doesn't make you close-minded."

He nodded. I glanced at George. His lips were pressed tightly, white-bordered. The candlelight showed faint peach-fuzz on his upper lip. He'd be shaving before too long.

"Smart man," Mr. Neiman said. "You know, one time right after all this Change business happened, I was out in the woods a couple miles from the house, setting traps." To his right, Mrs. Neiman stared at her plate, face getting tight. "That was before we realized that the sporting-goods section in any department store was ours, if we wanted, and we were doing things the hard way. Man, what I wouldn't have given for George's Indian bow then!"

"We always left money at those stores," Mrs. Neiman muttered.

I said nothing, not wanting anything to come between me and the end of this meal.

"So there I was in the woods," Mr. Neiman continued, ignoring his wife, "and I heard something behind me making all kinds of racket, clomping on dead leaves and branches. I turned around, and damn if I'm not looking at the biggest, meanest-looking bear I ever saw." He grinned. "You know the expression 'bear hug'? You ain't felt nothing 'til you get one from a real bear." A Southern accent that had not been present ten minutes ago was filling his speech. "It just picked me up and squeezed, easy as if you'd decided to grab little Evie. Broke two a my ribs before I stabbed it to death."

"We're at the dinner table, if you don't mind," Mrs. Neiman told her plate.

"I'm just saying." He grinned at me. "I just managed to get out my Bowie and make short work of that creature. I tried to stuff his big ole head and mount it up on the living room wall, but it rotted. Made an ungodly stink."

"Tom." Mrs. Neiman looked pained.

"I hear ya." He looked at me as if we shared a secret. "You know, if that bear had taken a swipe at me there wouldn't have been a thing I could do? Don't understand why it just grabbed me like that. I didn't come away clean, though." He pushed his chair back and lifted his work shirt to reveal the pink earthworm of a scar burrowing around the side of his stomach.

I still didn't say anything, but I figured his story had probably changed with time and elaboration. The bear might have been a mother and Neiman came too close to her cubs. Its first instinct might have been to grab him, get him the hell away from them. I doubted he stabbed it to death with a hunting knife right there. More likely he'd wounded it until it let him go, then followed it until it had bled to death. Still—credit where credit's due. I wouldn't have wanted to figure out how to fight a bear. If that was what he'd done; for all I knew, he went into the woods with a six pack and tripped on his own knife.

Mrs. Neiman sat very straight in her high-backed chair.

"I don't want anyone to think I'm bragging or anything," he continued, "but I'm proud of this scar. I earned it. I didn't kill something out of an old-time story, that's true—" he was looking at George now "—but if the opportunity had come up, I know I'da done my best. That's what I'm talking about."

He looked back to me. "Pete, is it true about there being dragons up around North Carolina and Virginia?"

"Huh? I mean, I—" Oh, shit; suddenly I saw what was coming. Poor George. "I've only heard it as a rumor," I said carefully. "I wouldn't know first-hand."

Mr. Neiman rocked back on the chair's hind legs, then came forward and leaned toward George, elbows on the table. "Son," he said, "I want you to go slay a dragon."

* * *

"A dragon!" Evie squealed, delighted.

"Tom." Mrs. Neiman sounded weary. None of this was news to her. "You heard the boy; you don't even know if there are any dragons. I thought we talked about this."

"A dragon." George said it as if he were repeating a hanging judge's sentence—which in a way I guess he was.

A crunch punctuated the silence. I narrowed my eyes at Ariel, who only tossed her head at me.

"We don't know that there are any dragons," Mrs. Neiman repeated to George.

"I've talked to travelers," Mr. Neiman insisted. "They've said a lot of the woods around the Appalachians and the Blue Ridges have been burnt."

Well, yeah, I thought. What's to stop 'em?

"Dragons do have a penchant for mountains and caves," said Ariel.

I leaned toward her. "You're not being very helpful," I whispered. "Don't you see what's coming? He's about to ask if—"

"Excuse me—Pete?" Mr. Neiman had leaned forward with a gleam in his eye and a chicken leg in his hand. "You and your, uh, Ariel, you wouldn't mind taking George along with you when you leave, would you? Sort of look out for him? As far as Tennessee, is all."

"We're trying to get up north as fast as we can," I said, trying to think my way out of this. "We're leaving tomorrow."

"That'd be perfect! My son here can travel light, and he knows how to live off the land. He'll be more help than burden, I promise you."

"But why do I have to kill one?" asked George, who up to now had been showing admirable restraint.

His father colored. "Because you got to prove yourself. You think that's a world for boys out there? Look at Pete here—you think he got through everything being a boy?"

I wanted to tell him I preferred not to be dragged into this, thanks very much, but his attitude didn't really allow for interruption. Mostly I was just looking for a good opening to get the hell out of there.

George's father folded his arms and dug in. "I earned my damn scar, and now it's time for you to be a man and earn yours, and that's all there is to it."

It dawned on me that you don't have to be stark raving to be mad. This guy was nuts.

* * *

In the end I couldn't bring myself to refuse Mr. Neiman's request, mainly because I felt sorry for George. Poor kid—he was toast.

Dinner broke up with what could euphemistically be called a downbeat air. Ariel and I were to sleep in the living room.

I was on the couch, cleaning Fred with a shoft chamois cloth and cleaning oil, as Malachi had instructed. I'd been practicing every day on the road.

Rubbing the bright metal, appreciating the blade's simple beauty, made me think of Malachi. I wondered where he was now, and if we were following the route he'd taken. I'd figured the fastest route would be to slant over toward the coast and follow the interstates straight up the map to New York.

Ariel was out back with Evie, playing ring-toss with a small rubber hoop by torchlight. I wondered how she abided little kids. Their innocence, I guess. Normally I couldn't stand the little crumb-snatchers, but I had to admit they were certainly forthright, no-bullshit creatures. It's not easy to fool kids, and if they think you're lying they'll say so to your face.

I gripped the twined handle and turned the blade to work on the other side. I worked slowly and methodically from tang to tip and back to tang. One slip and I'd lose fingers.

Mr. and Mrs. Neiman talked in the kitchen. I kept polishing my sword and didn't bother to move. Eavesdropping might save my bacon someday.

"Tom, why do you press him so hard? He's still a boy; he's not ready for something like that."

"He's fifteen. I'd been on my own a year by that age."

"You might not of seen that age if your daddy'd sent you chasing after dragons."

He snorted. "If he's not ready now, he never will be. You know what the world's like now."

"I know what you think it's like. I also know me and my family live just fine on a farm about the same way my grandparents did."

"You can't keep him here forever. He's got to make his way in the world, Ellen."

I wondered what books this joker had been reading.

"Not tomorrow morning, he doesn't. He's not ready and he doesn't want to go. You know that kind of thing don't hold no glory for him."

"You're saying he's afraid."

"I'm saying think about what you're sending our son out to do."

Mr. Neiman was silent as dishes clattered. "Why do you always make him feel like he's got to do at least as good as you, or better?"

A pause. "When, then? We wait another year and he's sixteen and he's still too young. Another year and he's seventeen. One day you look and there's a full-grown boy living in your house who don't know a thing about being a man and would curl up and die if he had to take care a himself. In the old world he'd be old enough to drive, old enough to see girls, old enough to—"

A plate slammed into the dishrack, followed by a tense silence.

"He leaves tomorrow and that's all there is to it. I'm not kicking him out, Ellie, I'm growing him up. He'll be back. And when he comes back he'll come back a man."

"Will he."

I sheathed Fred and went out the front door, puzzled. If my father had pulled something like this, I think I'd have left home just because he was crazy. I sure as hell wouldn't come back with a dragon's head for a trophy.
Yeah, you bet, Dad, I'm off to kill a dragon just for you—gotta go; don't wait up
! Riiiiiight. Not to mention my mom would have been screaming bloody murder: what do you mean, sending our kid off on some damn-fool crusade that'll get him killed. You kick him out and we'll
both
leave you.

But I guess if you live with somebody long enough—especially your parents, whom you can't compare to anybody, really—you don't realize they're a little off, because you're used to it. Families are like those petri dishes: they grow on their own, isolated, using rules that seem obvious to them to keep them going on, until you end up with a pretty different kind of germ from what you'd find in another petri dish.

George sat with his back to a tree, elbows on knees, chin on palms. A cricket Woodstock was being held around us.

I squatted in front of him. "Cheer up. It could be worse."

"How?"

I had to think a minute. "Well, he could have asked you to bring one back alive."

He didn't think it was funny.

Giggles made me turn my head. Evie and Ariel had come around the house. I wondered if the little fart ever stopped giggling. Ariel still had a hoop around the base of her horn where Evie had scored a successful toss. Boy, would I give her hell about that—she looked like something on a merry-go-round in Disneyland. The thought saddened me: Ariel and I had nearly gotten killed when we went through Disney World in Orlando. It had grown dangerous and just plain weird.

"Whatcha doin', Georgie?"

"Nothin'. Ain't you supposed to be in bed?"

She ignored him. "Thinking 'bout the dragon, I bet."

"Yeah, well."

"Do they really dive outta the air and eat people?"

"Be quiet, punk."

"Ariel says they can throw a whole cow in the air and eat it on the way down." She tossed a hoop and caught it in her mouth, then wrung her head and made a little-girl version of monster-gobbly noises.

George glanced at me and I shrugged.

Evie pulled the ring from her mouth, grinning. "You're gonna get et, Georgie."

"Shut up!"

I doubt George slept much that night.