Prodigal Blues

Rebecca was sitting nearest me, on the edge of the room's second bed.  This close, and at this more natural angel, two things about her were obvious:  one, her long, black hair was a wig and, two, her features were just as smooth and without lines or character as False-Face's.  I stared at her a moment longer, then sniffed the air; the odor of makeup was quite strong—and I don't mean your typical, over-the-counter compact, blush, cosmetic-counter makeup, no; what I was smelling was theatrical makeup:  base, greasepaint, pancake, powder, latex and spirit-gum; do any amount of theater in high school, college, or even with community players (as Tanya and I had done in the early days of our marriage) and those smells, once experienced, stay with you for the rest of your life.

I looked next at Arnold, and was slightly surprised; his face, just as phony as those of his traveling companions, was of a different hue; he was black.  This surprised me because there had been nothing about his speech—I had, after all, only heard him up to this point—to hint at his ethnicity.  A lot of the guys on my crew are black, and I guess that I had come to associate their slang and speech patterns as being representative of all blacks.  I promised myself I'd be careful about jumping to conclusions like that in the future… providing I even had a future beyond the next eighteen hours.

Arnold wore a small, floppy fisherman's cap, the type used to hold hooks and flies, and sported a bright white, long-sleeved cotton shirt.  It didn't take a genius to figure out why; if asked to describe him, a witness would say, "A black kid in a white shirt."  They'd remember only the colors, nothing more.

He was sitting on the opposite side of the bed from Rebecca.  In front of him was a cheap metal typing stand, the kind on rollers that you can buy at any office supply store for ten bucks.  An expensive laptop computer was set on the stand, while another, equally expensive laptop was on the bed, by his right side.  Both computers were ru

The boy in the wheelchair coughed, made a hawking noise, then swallowed loudly and resumed his song, this time singing it in a whisper.

"The crooner in the corner," said False-Face, "is Thomas.  Until Denise, he was the youngest of us."

Denise.

Jesus.

This was the first time since the restaurant I'd really thought about her and not myself.  I turned back toward False-Face.  "In the restaurant, Denise said that she wasn't traveling with the man who took her."

"That is true."

"Who took her?  Do you know?"

"Yes."

"Where is he?"

His eyes narrowed, then he gave his head a quick shake.  "It does not matter anymore."

"Has Denise… had she been with the four of you since she disappeared?"

He sighed.  "What do you think?"

"She didn't"—False-Face winced again—"talk like the rest of you."

"Of course she did not."

"She used contractions when she spoke."

I'm real sorry, mister.

I now understood why she'd said that:  she knew False-Face and the others had targeted me for… whatever it was they had in mind.  God, she must've felt terrible about it.  I wished I could see her to tell her that it was okay, that she didn't have to feel bad—poor little thing had more than enough to deal with without feeling guilty over me.

"She used contractions," said False-Face, "because Grendel did not have her long enough to… teach her otherwise."

"Grendel?"

"Our master," said Rebecca.

"Our watcher," said Arnold.

"Our keeper," said Thomas from under Elmer Fudd's face, then went back to humming.

"Our Eternal Lord of life, of death, of reward, of punishment," said False-Face.

"Grendel," said Rebecca.  Or it might have been Arnold.  Even Thomas.  For the next few minutes, as they spoke rapidly in turn, their tones and inflections became so similar in my ears they might as well have been one voice; I suppose, in a way, they were.

"…'So the company of men led a careless life…"

"…all was well with them…"

"…until One began to encompass evil, an enemy from Hell…"

"…Grendel they called this cruel spirit…"

"…the fell and fen his fastness was…"

"…the march his haunt…"

"…this unhappy being had long lived in the land of monsters…"

"…since the Creator cast them out as kindred of Cain…"

"…for that killing of Abel the eternal Lord took vengeance.  There was no joy of that feud…"

"…far from mankind God drove him out for his deed of shame…"

"…from Cain came down all kinds misbegotten—ogres and elves and evil shades—as also the Giants…"

"… who joined in long wars with God…"

"…He gave them their reward…"

"…and so with the coming of night came Grendel, also…'"

I couldn't even begin to grasp—let alone understand—this:  how in the hell would a bunch of children know Beowulf well enough to recite it from memory?

Then False-Face said:  "Our Eternal Lord Grendel did not allow the abbreviation of speech…"

And the litany started again, spoken by them in the rapid, well-practiced cadence of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance or the alphabet or basic multiplication tables:

"…contractions are for the lazy…"

"…the simple-minded…"

"…the disrespectful…"

"…and the ignorant…"

"…and there is no place in the House of Heorot for the discourteous…"

"…and there is no room in the burg of the Scyldings for the ignorant…"

"…Grendel was proof of that…"

"…he told us over and over and over…"

"…and over and over…"

"…there is no forgiveness…"

"…not for forgetting that…"

"…for lessening the flow and music of God's language…"

"…no forgiveness…"

"…only a new lesson…"

"…a different approach…"

"…God does not reward the lazy…"

"…He does not love the simple-minded…"

"…He does not tolerate the discourteous…"

"…to Him, they are as monsters…"

"…and there is no heaven for monsters…"

"…so lonely…"

"…and how do monsters begin…"

"…they are born first with lazy tongues…"

"…careless grammar…"

"…which makes their voices ugly…"

"…and the songs they sing shrill and tuneless…"

"…and that ugliness spreads to their faces, and then to their souls…"