- Chapter 10
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A RARE BREED
by Elizabeth Ann Scaroborough
I met my first unicorn, appropriately enough, when I stepped into an enchanting forest glade. It was enchanting for a couple of reasons.
The first reason was that it was out of shouting and phone distance from my place, where an unexpected visitor snoring in my bed reminded me never to wish for anything too much lest it come not only to pass but to remain for an indefinite stay.
The other reason was that I normally don't venture out in the morning too far from the house because I take blood pressure medicine. This medicine displaces the pressure on your heart by creating pressure on another bodily system. That morning, however, I had to go out or go nuts so even though I did think of it before I left home, I had a certain personal function to perform. The strategically placed trees surrounding the glade provided cover from the road as well as from the hiking trail.
It requires a little extra agility for a female wearing sweatpants to assume the position in semi-bondage without falling over, of course, but I'd had considerable practice while living in the woods in Alaska. With sufficient privacy, such a moment can be ideal for achieving a calm, earthy oneness with nature. However, the occasion is not, as I discovered, the ideal moment for a close encounter with a unicorn.
Up until recently, unicorns were never a problem. No one I knew had seen one except in the movies or in books. Then all at once, people started seeing unicorns. This was my first one. I wasn't crazy about its timing.
It lowered its head, its little goatee quivering and its long spiral horn aimed right at me. Before I could - er -point out to the beast that it was supposed to be mythical, extinct, or at the very least an endangered species and therefore should have better things to do than menace me, it charged. Fortunately it was a good few yards away - the enchanting forest glade was a largish one.
I stood, hastily rearranging my attire for maximum mobility, and did a bullfighter twist to one side at the last minute as the damned thing galloped past me.
Undeterred, it turned, gave me an annoyed look, and lowered its head to charge again.
Clasping my garments to my loins, not from modesty but practicality, since they weren't properly fastened and would hinder movement otherwise, I recalled my meagre store of woods lore and pondered my strategy.
With a mountain lion, you're supposed to make yourself big like an angry cat and back, not run, slowly away. This will make the lion think you're too big to swallow in one handy bite sized chunk. With a bear, you make a lot of noise and hope it really is as scared of you as you are of it (though it couldn't possibly be). If it's a mother bear, you don't interfere with cubs. If you're camping, you hide your food in a sack in a tree well away from where you sleep, praying the bear eats your food and ignores you, mummied in your sleeping bag. But what in the hell you were supposed to do in the event of a unicorn attack had never been covered in any literature I'd ever read.
The unicorn galloped forward again, an ornery look in its green eye. "Hey, you," I said to it, side-stepping awkwardly. "You just cut that out. I didn't do a damned thing to you that you should go harassing me. Go find a virgin to impress!"
Shaking its head and emitting a snort that sent a cloud of steam rising from its nostrils, it turned to charge again. I ducked behind a tree long enough to fasten my pants, and prepared to duck again, but by this time the unicorn was pawing- or rather hoofing- at the place where I'd formerly positioned myself. It was covering my -er- scent, the way a cat would cover its scat.
"Prissy damn critter!" I muttered, and used its preoccupation to scoot away back to the road. I was not followed.
I definitely needed human company then and a latte. My guest would no doubt follow his life long custom and sleep till noon, so I headed down to Bagels and Begonias Bakery. It was Wednesday and on winter Wednesdays particularly, when the tourists were all back at work in their own towns, groups of friends met to gossip and pour over the Port Chetzemoka Listener, our town's weekly newspaper.
I grabbed my latte and a plain bagel and joined a table. Conversation was already in full swing but I broke in, which was okay etiquette for Wednesdays at the bakery. "You'll never guess what happened to me!" I said to the two people nearest me while Ramona Silver continued to regale everyone with the problems her friend Cindy had been having since her fifty something boyfriend had gone back to drinking. The AA group in Port Chet has a much larger and more prestigious membership than any of the lodges with animal names.
Ramona stopped in mid-sentence and turned to me, "What?" she asked.
"I got attacked by a unicorn."
"Where at?"
"Walking up the Peace Mile at Fort Gordon. It just came out of the woods and tried to gore me." I didn't mention the circumstances. It didn't seem important then.
"Oh, well. The paper's full of that this morning," Inez Suunderson said and directed me to the front page.
Local authorities, the Listener said, attributed the recent proliferation of unicorns in urban areas to the effects of deforestation and development.
"It's said that a unicorn won't even step on a living thing," Atlanta, the real-estate saleslady turned psychic reader told us.
I snorted. "If that were true, they'd only walk on concrete. The one I saw walked on grass and was getting ready to walk all over me - after it shish ka bobbed me, that is. I think the only thing that kept me from panicking was that I couldn't believe it was real. I've been writing about unicorns for a long time now and I always thought they were make-believe."
"Oh no," Randy Williams said. "The Raven people have several legends in which the unicorn is an important transformative figure. Of course, they refer to unicorns as the One-Horned Dog."
"Surely they're not indigenous?"
He shrugged. "The legends are pretty old. Of course, they might have been prophetic instead of historic, I guess. I don't speak the Raven tongue very well."
"You mean the Indian legends maybe foretold that the unicorns would be here?" asked Ramona, a jeweller and artist who like every other artist in town works four minimum wage jobs to sustain herself. She twiddled the silk flower she always wore in her hair, an orange one today. She always twiddled when she was thinking particularly hard. Her "Wow" was so reverent I understood it to actually mean "Far out."
Lance LaGuerre, our former Rainbow Warrior and present head of the Port Chetzemoka Environmental Council, said, "That doesn't necessarily mean the unicorns are indigenous or even a naturally occurring species. Some Indian legends also foretell such events as space travel and nuclear disasters, isn't that true, Randy?"
Randy just gave him a look. He doesn't like Lance very much. Lance is the kind of guy who would probably have grown up to be a religious-right wing industrialist if his father, whom he detested, hadn't been one first. So he brought all of his genetic judgmental Calvinistic uptightness over to the other side. Thus he was a liberal, except that he wasn't awfully liberal when it came to being empathetic or compassionate or even reasonable with anyone who didn't agree with all of his opinions. And he had an awful lot of opinions.
"I mean, now the forest service is acting as if they knew about the unicorns all along but up until now, who ever heard of them? I'll bet they're the result of a secret genetic engineering program the government's been conducting . . . "
"Yeah," Ramona said, "Or maybe mutants from toxic waste like the Ninja Turtles."
Lance nodded encouragingly, if a bit patronizingly. I doubt the patronizing had anything to do with the Ninja Turtles. I don't think he knew who they were.
"Well, whatever they are," said Inez Sunderson, "They've been stripping the bark from our trees, digging up my spring bulbs, and terrorising the dogs and I mean to plug the next one I catch in our yard."
The men gently, supportively encouraged her to do so. Inez, you have to understand, gets that kind of response to everything she says. I think the reason is that she is one of those incredibly ethereally beautiful Scandinavian blondes who look really good in navy blue to match their eyes. She used to be a model, I know, and was almost as old as me, but she looked about twenty-five. She is also intelligent and well-read in the classics and has a good knowledge of music and only watches PBS when she deigns to watch TV and never sets foot in a mall. All that is fine but sometimes her practical, stoic Norski side makes her sound like Eyore.
I didn't say much more. I was still bemused - and amused, because by now the incident seemed funny to me - by my first meeting with a unicorn. I wasn't quite ready to go home and face my other problem though, so I hung out till everyone left, though Randy was over at another table talking with some of his other friends. He's lived in Port Chet for years and has all these close personal ties with the other folks who worked for the Sister Cities group, were with him in South America with Amnesty International, or used to live in school busses at the same time he did.
My alma mater is a little different from that of most of my friends. I wasn't living in school busses and going to peace marches. I was nursing in Vietnam. So was Doc Holiday, whose real name is Jim, but since he was a medic in Nam, and has sort of a Sam-Elliot-gunfighter presence, everyone calls him Doc. It's appropriate. He's the local Vietnam vet counsellor, Amvet co-ordinator, and how-to-avoid-the-draft-should-it-come-back-into-fashion resource person. He's a Virgo, which Atlanta has explained means he's very service oriented.
He walked right past me and sat down at a table by himself.
I figured he didn't see me and I wanted to tell him about the unicorn, so I got up and walked over to his table and said. "Hey, Doc. How ya doin'?"
"Hey, Sue," he said, shaking his head slowly. I could tell right then that he'd sat down where he was because he figured he was best off alone. He gets these depressions sometimes, but then, so does Randy. They belong to the half of the town that isn't already on Prozac. "Not so good, lady. I lost another one."
"I'm sorry, Doc." He was referring to clients. He told me once that more than twice as many Vietnam vets had died from suicide since the war as died in battle during. He still lost several more the same way every year.
"Can't win 'em all, I guess," he said with a deep sigh.
Randy wandered back our way just then. "Doc, hi. Sorry. I heard about Tremain."
Doc shrugged. "Yeah, I'm sorry about your buddy too."
I hadn't heard about that one. "Flynn?" I asked. They both nodded. "God. AIDS is so awful," I said completely unnecessarily. But then, most things you say about how someone dies are unnecessary.
Randy's mouth quirked. "Well, hey, we never thought we'd live to thirty anyhow and look at us - old farts now. I guess it's just the time when your friends start dropping. But we never thought it would be us."
"Too cool to die," I said."Old Boomers Never Die They Just - finish that sentence and win a free all expense paid trip to Disney World."
They nodded. We all understood. The three of us were graying lone wolves. Armchair analysts would say we had each failed to bond due to post traumatic stress disorder - Doc's and mine from the war, Randy's from a number of things including the wars he observed with Amnesty. Actually, I think I'm in the club under false pretences - I bond only too well and stay bonded, whether it's a good idea or not. Doc and Randy didn't care, as long as I didn't try bonding with them in any significant way, but it was good having a woman in the group since they both felt they had a lot of shit to work out about women. So, okay, it's tokenism, but nobody ever asked me to make the coffee so I didn't care.
"Doc, you know what happened to me this morning? I got charged by a unicorn."
He gave me a slow grin. Twenty, thirty years ago it would have made my heart flip flop. Fifteen years ago it would have sounded fire alarms that my feminist integrity was about to be breached. But now I just waited politely as he asked, "Oh, yeah? What was the offence? Did you get his badge number?"
"Very funny. I see my first unicorn after all these years of writing about them and all I get is cop jokes."
Doc's known me for, what? seven or eight years now, but he still takes my joking kvetvching seriously.
"Sorry, Sue. I'd be more impressed except that our facility down by Port Padlock is about overrun with the critters. They're all over the place, and they fight constantly. It's sort of hard to teach people to be at peace with themselves when there's all these unicorns going at it cloven hoof and horn out in the back forty. Makes me want to get out my huntin' rifle again, but I swore off."
"I think I'll go for a walk. See if I can spot any," Randy said, and left. I followed reluctantly. I didn't want to go home.
Jess Shaw, my houseguest, was on his first cup of instant coffee when I returned. He had the remote control to my TV in his hand and was clicking restlessly between channels. The MUTE sign was on the screen. None of the cats were in sight. I think the smell drove them off. They're not used to people who reek of cigarette smoke and whiskey fumes, half masked by men's cologne. There was a time I couldn't get enough of that scent. Now I wanted to open a window, even though it had started to rain and the wind was whipping up the valley from the Strait. It wasn't that I didn't care about him any more, it was just that ever since my first youthful infatuation more than twenty-five years ago, the emotion I felt toward this man was something like unconditional ambivalence. It was requited.
After not bothering to pick up the telephone for the last couple of years, the man had just driven two thousand miles to see me. In the years I'd known him, he'd gone through several live-ins and marriages. Since my own divorce, I'd done a lot of thinking about who and what I was and who and what the man I'd married and the men I chose tended to be, with the result that I'd pretty much retreated into my own private nunnery. So I just said, "Is your own remote at home broken? Is that why you came to see me?"
"Mornin', darlin'," he said, his voice as soft and growly as ever. The darlin' was nothing personal, however. To him everything that can be remotely construed as being of the female gender is darlin'. He sighed deeply and kept flipping channels.
"You'll never guess what I saw on my walk this morning," I said.
He obviously didn't give a rat's ass.
"A unicorn," I said.
"That's nice," he said.
"It almost killed me," I said.
"Huh," he said.
But two cups of coffee later he was up pacing a dented place in my splintery softwood floors and talking a mile a minute. He wanted to get his gun out of his van and go looking for the critter.
"Not a good idea," I said. "In this wind, a tree could fall on you."
"Well, bring the sunuvabitch on then," he said in that bitter tone he gets when he's both grieved and pissed about something. "It's not like I'm gonna live that long anyway."
"You've made it farther than I thought you would," I told him, a little tartly. He's like a quadruple Pisces and prone to throwing pity parties, so I wanted to head him off at the pass.
He stopped pacing and sipping coffee long enough to look over at me and grin. "Yeah, me too," he said. Then he shrugged, "But I pushed the edge of the envelope, babe, and now the doc says I've ruptured the sunuvabitch."
"What do you mean?"
"The big C, darlin'."
"You've got cancer?" I asked. "Where?"
"Liver," he said. "Just like you always told me."
I used to warn him about cirrhosis but after all the ups and downs he'd been through, I figured he was probably made from good old pioneer protoplasm and would end up grossing out the staff of a nursing home some day. I also figured I might hear about it from one of the mutual friends I was still in contact with. Funny that I hadn't. Now I didn't know what to say. Finally, I resorted to being clinical. "Did you get a second opinion?"
He lifted and dropped a shoulder. "Yeah. No good. They wanted me to go through chemo and all that crap but I figured, hey, I'd rather keep what hair I got and go finish up a few things while I feel like it."
I swallowed. "You know, doctors are wrong about a lot of stuff. And I have several friends who were supposed to have cancer and just got over it. How about alternative therapies? Have you tried that?"
He just shook, kind of like a dog, kind of like someone was walking over his grave. Now I noticed that his color under his tan was terrible. He'd always been thin but now he looked like he was made of matchsticks. He took a long shuddering breath and said, "It hurts, Sue."
"I'm real sorry," I said. Another friend I would have offered a hug but though he always talked like he could barely wait to jump any woman in his vicinity, he was weird about hugs when he was upset. So I put my hand in the middle of the kitchen table and waited to see if he'd take it. It seems to me that we had always taken turns being White Fang. He being wild and needing to trust and me being, at least in some ways, blindly loyal.
He took my hand and gripped it hard for a moment, then got up to pace again. By that time the wind had died down a little and the rain was just a drizzle. "Look," I said, "Do you want to walk someplace instead of just around the room? That way you can smoke and I'll show you where I saw the unicorn."
"It's still raining," he said.
"We'll be in the trees. Are you up to it?"
"I ain't dead yet," he said.
His breath was even shorter than mine but he enjoyed the walk and picked up the unicorn's tracks right away. We followed them back into the woods but then it started pouring rain again and I felt bad because I'd encouraged him to come out and he was shivering, despite his Marlboro man hat and sheepskin jacket, by the time we got back to the house.
I felt worse (and so did he) when the his chill didn't go away, in spite of a shower and being tucked back in bed. The cats showed up again and curled up next to him. He seemed to appreciate the warmth. I asked him for the name of his doctor but he wouldn't give it to me, said he was going to "ride it out." Well, I respected that, but by the second day, when he still hadn't improved, I called my own doctor as well as the mutual friends to find out if any of them had any ideas. He had no kin left, I knew, except for a couple of ex wives. Finally Brodie Kilgallen told me that Jess had walked out of the hospital, telling the doctors what they could do with their tests and treatments, and that was the last anyone had seen of him down there. Brodie knew the name of the hospital, so if everything went well, I could have my doctor call and get his records from there if need be.
He slept all through the day while the wind drove the rain against the windows, made the trees do the hula and the wind chimes ring. I tried to write but finally, after the storm outside caused two brownouts and one brief power failure, I gave it up for fear my computer would be ruined. The TV's old, though, so after dinner I settled into my nest of pillows on the end of the couch and with cats, remote, hard-wired phone and a bag of pretzels, flipped on the evening news. The wind was booming now, window-rattling, and house-shaking, a thug growing bolder in the dark.
According to the news, the storm was raging throughout the Puget Sound area. Trees were across the roads, across power lines everywhere. One motorist had been killed already. Highway 101 was closed along the Hood Canal, and both the Hood Canal Bridge and the Narrows Bridge, which joined the Olympic and Kitsap Penninsulas with the mainland, were closed. They often were, especially the Hood Canal Bridge, during high winds. Right after the bridge was built, the first big storm blew it away and people had to drive around or take a ferry for a couple of years until it was repaired. With 101 closed, you couldn't even drive around now.
Pretty soon Jess padded into the room, wearing only his jeans. He walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on for his first transfusion of the day, then, for a wonder, came and sat down on the couch next to me.
"I didn't know y'all got hurricanes up this far north," he said, and we sat in one of the only companionable silences I can remember in our association, just touching, watching the tube. He didn't drink or pace or smoke or anything but watch the tube, making a brief remark occasionally or responding to one of mine without rancor at me for interrupting the sacred broadcast.
Then the kettle went off and he got up to fix his coffee, even inquiring if I wanted any.
Just as he returned with the tea, the TV winked off, along with the lights and the fan on the propane stove and we were left staring at a ghostly blue screen.
I found a flashlight, lit a couple of candles, and called the power company. The line was busy, of course.
Jess started telling me about hurricanes he had lived through along the Gulf of Mexico and continued into a rambling story about his boyhood. I'd heard it before, many times. He always revises it in the retelling. I opened the blinds to try to see how far the power loss extended. The whole neighborhood was dark, as was the hill above us and the streets all the way into town, as far as I could see.
"Jess?"
"Yeah, babe?"
"Play me something, will you? I haven't heard you play since you've been here. You up to it?"
"Hell, yes," he said, and got out his guitar and began playing a song about the death of the Nez Perce appaloosas. He kept on singing one after the other, songs he had learned since I'd last seen him, songs he used to play constantly, new songs he admired but had only learned bits of. I heard a sort of tapping sound and looked toward the window.
Four whiskery mouths were pressed against the glass, above them the tips of four horns. I touched Jess on the shoulder and turned him, still singing, to look. He caught his breath and gave me the same "Oh, my god," look he'd worn when we saw the Marfa Lights together. But he kept singing, segueing from "Blowin' in the Wind" to the Shel Silverstein unicorn song. At this the critters gave a collective snort and turned tail for the woods between my house and my northern-most neighbor's.
"I never cared for that one myself, actually," he said, shaking his head. "Damn, Susie-Q, what the hell do you folks do around here when this happens?"
"I was thinking we might go see my friend Doc and seeing if he's up to a visit," I told him. "He's a vet counsellor who lives out in Port Padlsock at old Fort Chetzemoka, which is a pretty interesting historical site. I think you'd like him and find the area interesting."
"Okay with me. You think he's got a beer?"
"Could be," I lied. Doc's been dry for fifteen years, six months and he'd have to tell you the rest. "We should take some candles though."
Soft light glowed from Doc's windows when we drove into the park grounds. Several pale four-legged shapes lurked at the edge of the woods, down by the water, and behind the house and the caretaker's buildings at the park. Randy's truck was in the driveway beside Doc's.
I felt immensely relieved. Randy and Doc would know how best to help Jess. I could get him medical help, of course, but Jess has been in the habit most of his life of turning over the unattractive practical details of daily existence to some woman until she had control over all of his associations, jobs, and where he'd be and who he'd be with at any given time. Then he'd rebel and sabotage her, chewing his own foot off to escape from the trap he'd laid for himself. I was too old for that game and he was too sick. I wasn't going to turn my back on him, and I didn't want to do a whole co-dependent number either. What was left of his life was his to do with as he wished and if he was going to drink it away, I was going to need backup to deal with it.
"Hi, Doc," I said, sticking my head in the door. Doc likes to adapt Indian ways when he's off duty and it's rude to knock. Usually you try to make a lot of noise outside the door but there was no way we'd be heard over the storm and I wasn't going to expose Jess to another chill.
Doc and Randy sat in the recycled easy chairs Doc keeps by the fireplace. A candle burned in the window and on the table between them.
"Don't you have sense enough to come in out of the rain, young lady? Getcher buns in here," Doc said.
I walked in, half pulling Jess behind me and as we shook the water from our ponchos I introduced him.
Randy said, "I was just warning Doc to start filling up water containers, Sue. I heard on the scanner that the flood water's reached the point where it's within an inch or two of compromising the reservoir."
"Holy shit," I said. "That'll shut down the town and the mill."
"You betcha," Doc said. "I got some extra jerry cans though. I could let you have a couple."
"I wouldn't want to run you short," I said, "But I'd appreciate it."
Jess was standing at the window, staring out at the rain and the pale shapes dancing in it. Randy looked over his shoulder. "Wonder where they all come from."
"I don't know, but they're getting bolder," I told him. "Jess was singing me some songs and they came right up out of the woods and crossed the yard to listen."
"No kiddin'? They're music lovers?"
"Good to know they like something besides destroying trees and flower bulbs," Doc said. "You folks want some coffee?"
"Sure," Jess said, his hand going to the jacket pocket with his flask.
"I'll hold a flashlight for you while you find stuff, Doc," I told him, catching his eye with a meaningful look that he met with a puzzled one. But he nodded me toward the kitchen and we left Randy and Jess to stare at each other.
"So, you're going to tell me who this guy is, right? Long lost love?"
"Close enough," I said. "He's lost anyway." I filled Doc in while he made loud noises crashing around the shelves of the white tin cupboard he packs both dishes and nonperishables in. The coffee was instant, not that big a deal.
Randy was regaling Jess with some of his better stories about Central America. Like Jess, Randy can be so quiet you can't get a word out of him or so garrulous you can't get a word in edgewise.
Jess seemed content to just sit and listen. Doc handed him his coffee and after giving his a splash from his flask, he offered it to the others. He didn't have any takers.
By the time the coffee was gone, Jess, Doc and Randy were swapping stories. Jess felt compelled to keep his hand proprietarily on my knee, though I knew from long experience he had no interest in that knee at all - it was a territorial thing, about as romantic as your cat pissing on your shoe. But aside from that, everyone was getting along famously. Both Doc and Randy liked music and at one point someone said something that reminded Jess of a song with a yodel in it and he started singing again, but this time he winked and half-turned to the window. Sure enough, there was a whole herd of unicorns out there, their faces blurred impressionistically by the rain.
"That's the damndest thing I've ever seen," Doc said. He peered more closely at the creatures in the window. "You know, I haven't looked at these guys this close up before. There's something a little funny about them."
"Funny how?" Randy asked.
"Funny familiar," he said. "I'm getting one of those psychic things I used to get in Nam -"
"Maybe we ought to call Atlanta," I said facetiously. " We could have a storm party."
Doc turned away, chewing his lip. Without another word, he pulled on a slicker and went out in the yard. I watched through the window while Randy and Jess pretended not to notice he'd done anything out of the ordinary.
The unicorns scattered at first, then Doc hunkered down beside a mud puddle and waited. I thought, oboy, he's going to look like a sieve by the time they finish with him. A couple of them did feint towards him and I saw his mouth moving, his hands making gentling gestures.
After a bit Randy asked, "What's he doing?"
"Talking to the unicorns."
"What about?"
"Your guess is as good as mine." So then he had to go out too and Jess put on his coat again to join them. I wanted to say, don't go out there and stand around in the rain like the other damn fools, you'll catch a chill and die this time and then I guessed he probably knew that. I used Doc's phonebook, found Atlanta's number, and called.
"Sue! How nice of you to call. Do you have power at your place yet?" she asked.
"Not that I know of. Actually, I'm out at Doc Holiday's in Port Padlock."
"He caretakes the grounds at Old Fort Chet doesn't he? Is he okay? No trees down on the house or anything?"
"No. Nothing like that. But he said something about thinking he was having a psychic experience with the unicorns."
"Really? I haven't gotten close enough myself to pick up anything specific but there's definitely something about them. I'm not the only one who's noticed it, either."
"No," I said, looking out the window at the three men sitting on their haunches in the rain, a loose circle of unicorns surrounding them. "Do you think you could come out here?"
"In this?"
"Yeah, I know. And it might be for nothing. But it could be interesting too."
"Okay."
I put on my own coat and went out in the yard to join the boys. Two unicorns danced skittishly sideways to let me inside the circle. They were learning manners since my first encounter, maybe? I was as skittish as they were. I didn't hunker down either. My knees aren't that good. The rain was letting up at least and the wind quieting a little.
None of the men said a word. They stared at the critters. The critters stared at them. Then the lights came back on and the unicorns, startled, scattered to the edges of the woods surrounding the house. About that time, Atlanta arrived.
Doc seemed to have a hard time snapping out of his trance but he did give her a little wave and say, "I was just thinking about you."
"So Sue said," she said, not smiling but looking sympathetic and receptive. "Where are the unicorns?"
He nodded toward the woods. Some of them were creeping back out, watching. A couple were brawling up in the north corner of the property.
"Will they let me touch them?"
"I think so, maybe. I'll come with you."
The two of them headed for the nearest of the beasts while the rest of us stayed behind for fear of spooking the one Doc and Atlanta were stalking.
"Well, so much for the virgin thing," I said, surprised to hear myself sound so disgusted. "They're not real unicorns."
"Of course they are," Randy said. "Just because they don't do what you were led to expect they would doesn't mean they're not real."
I felt let down and excited at the same time. On the one hand, they weren't turning out to be what I thought they should. On the other hand, it promised to be a kick seeing what they did turn out to be, other than a nuisance.
Doc approached the unicorn first, and it let him lay his hand on it's neck in a friendly way. With his other hand, he took Atlanta's forearm and guided her hand toward the beast's nose.
The unicorn tolerated that closeness for a second or two before it bolted. Doc and Atlanta rejoined us.
When we went back inside the house, the phone was ringing and Doc's TV, set on our local news bulletin board, was saying that the recent rains had caused the flooding to overflow the reservoir and we should all used bottled water for drinking until further notice.
Doc apologised for not getting out his jerry cans sooner. I introduced Atlanta to Jess and he gave her the best of what charm he still had to call on, to which she responded with girlish confusion. I fought off a pang of jealousy and asked, "What did you think of the unicorn?"
"I think Doc's right," she said.
"Right about what?" Randy asked.
Jess just sank back onto the dilapidated couch and closed his eyes. His mouth and nose had that strained look about them I've seen so often on people who were suffering but afraid to ask for pain meds. After a moment, he drew out his flask but from the way he shook it, I could tell it was empty.
Doc cleared his throat. "I know this sounds a little crazy, but the unicorns remind me of some of my clients. I'm pretty sure the one I was trying to talk to at first out there in the yard was Tremain."
"It would explain why you have so many of them around here, anyway," Doc said.
And these were the guys I turned to for practical help for Jess! "You think that's what they are too, Atlanta?" I asked her.
She did a Yoga inhale-exhale number then said, "They're frightened. Disoriented. And - I don't know how to say this. They aren't quite real."
"What do you mean, not real?" Doc asked.
"They're all adult males for one thing, and none of them seem to have been unicorns very long. They're not sure what to do, where to go, how to act. They're like souls in limbo."
"So you think they're reincarnations of the vets?" I asked. "Then why did one try to attack me while I was taking a leak in the park the other day?"
"Maybe that one was the reincarnation of LaGuerre's old buddy Jenkins? Remember? The guy who took potshots at the sewage plant when they started building over by the lagoon?"
"Yeah," Randy said. "He didn't want you polluting the pristine parkland, I bet."
"I still don't get it," I said. "Why should they come back as something that was just mythical before? I mean, even taking reincarnation as a given, why not come back as another person, or a worm if you've behaved in a pretty unevolved fashion or one of my cats if you deserve to be spoiled?"
Atlanta shrugged. "I don't know. But it seems to me like maybe, well, because there's too many of them dying at once? Maybe there isn't really an established place for them?"
"Yeah," Doc said. "And a lot of these guys weren't bad or good, just confused. Maybe Great Spirit didn't know what to do with them either. Take Tremain. He was well educated, for awhile after Nam he was a mercenary, then he switched and became an agent for the Feed the Children foundation, meanwhile going through three families before he tried settling down and working as an electrician. Then he kills himself. Who'd know what to do with a guy like that?"
Atlanta nodded soberly. "There's a lot of people that way now. Too many maybe. Well educated, semi-enlightened, lots of potential but just never could quite find a place among so many others - even after, I guess . . . " her voice trailed off as she looked out the window toward the woods again.
"So all our contemporaries who are dying are coming back as horny old goats?" Randy asked, chuckling. "I like that. That's real interesting, folks. I think I'll wander over by Flynn's place and see if he's around. Maybe he'd like a game of ring-toss."
These were the people I was counting on for practical help with Jess? They were nuttier than I was. I just wrote about this stuff. They believed it.
"So what do you think of all that?" Jess asked in the car on the way back to my place.
"I hate to say it but I think the sixties were way too good to some of my friends," I said.
"Maybe that's why they're comin' back as unicorns," Jess laughed. "They're all hallucinations."
"Or something," I said.
"If I come back as one I promise not to gore you when you try to pee, darlin'."
"Gee, thanks."
Just as we were pulling into the drive he said, "Susie?"
"Yeah?"
"Say your buddies are right about the unicorns. Why are they only around here?"
He was serious now. And it occurred to me that questions about the afterlife, however ludicrous they might sound to me, were probably of urgent interest to him right now. So I said, "I dunno. Maybe because there's such a high concentration of guys kicking off around here, but it's a small place. Maybe it's like some sort of cosmic test area or something."
He nodded, very soberly for him.
While he slept in the next morning I spoke with my doctor, with a friend in Hospice work, trying to figure out what to do if Jess chose, as he seemed to be doing, to die at my house. I half wished they'd tell me it was against the law. It had taken me a lot of years and miles to find a place to work and be peaceful while I got over him. I didn't much want it polluted with his death. On the other hand, I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I sent him away. Ordinarily, I'd figure whatever ulterior motive brought him to me would take him on his way soon enough but now he was dying and I knew about that. The bullshit stopped here.
Ramona called me about two that afternoon. "Sue, it's awful. They're going to start shooting the unicorns."
"Who?" I asked.
"The public works guys from the city. They're trying to get in to fix the reservoir and the unicorns won't let them."
"I don't think they can do that legally, Ramona," I said as soothingly as possible.
"They don't f-ing care! They're going to just do it and take the consequences afterward. I'm calling everybody to get their butts up there and stop it."
"Okay, okay. When?"
"Now!"
"What's to stop them from doing something after we leave?"
"I'm not leaving," she said but she was a little overwrought. In her hippie days she could have chained herself to a tree. Now she's got a son to think of and an elderly mother to care for.
I was just debating whether to wake Jess or to go by myself and leave him a note when Doc and Randy drove up.
"Jess still here?" Doc asked, without even greeting me.
"Yeah," I said. "But he ought to be up soon. You can stay and wait for him if you want. Ramona just called and said the city workers are planning to kill the unicorns blocking work on the reservoir and they're organising a protest."
"I know," Randy said. "I called Ramona."
About that time there was the sound of bare feet hitting the floor in the bedroom and Jess padded out and peered benignly but blearily around the corner before disappearing into the bathroom. A few noisy minutes later he was back out. In the light of day he looked worse than he had before, his skin stretched tight and dry over his cheekbones, his eyes feverishly bright. The smile he greeted us with was more like a grimace and he walked stooped a little, his hand pressed to his side.
I didn't want him to go, but for once he didn't insist on six cups of coffee. He took one with him. He threw it up on the ground outside when we got to the reservoir.
Armed men in uniforms squared off with Ramona, yellow silk flower quivering with indignation, and a small crowd of people, only some of whom I recognised from the bakery. Lance LaGuerre for one, Eamon the Irish illegal, Mamie who used to run the gallery downtown, lots of others. A rerun of the sixties, except for the unicorns stomping, splashing, bleating, fighting, kicking, biting, and diving in and around the reservoir and the flooded river overrunning it.
Doc strode over to talk to the city workers. Some of them were clients of his, others Amvet buddies. Gunhands relaxed a little. Randy hauled Jess's guitar out of the back of the truck.
He nodded at Jess, Jess nodded at him and spent a minute or two tuning.
"Shit, oh dear, they're gonna sing Kumbaya at us," one of the city guys said.
Instead, Jess swung himself and his guitar into the back end of the truck while Randy started the engine. I joined the protesters, as Jess began to sing in a voice that never did really need a sound system.
The unicorns that were in the reservoir climbed out and dried off and followed the others, who were already trotting down the road after the truck while the pied piper of Port Chet sang the National Anthem. Doc saluted and the city workers put their hands over their hearts while the unicorns, brown, black, white, spotted, dappled, gray and reddish, their horns uniformly shining white, passed by. Jess kept singing the National Anthem until they were well down the hill and into the trees ( and out of rifle range). Then I heard him launch into Hamish Henderson's "Freedom Come All Ye" in lowland Scots with a fake Irish accent.
"Wow," Ramona said. "Some guy. How'd he do that?"
I shrugged. "He's been doing it all his life."
"For unicorns? He got some special thing with them?"
"I don't know. I expect a ghetto blaster with loud rock'n'roll will work as well for some of them, or maybe the Superbowl on a portable TV, but we already knew they were attracted to Jess's music so this'll get them out of harm's way while everybody cools off. Maybe someone would like to call a lawyer for the unicorns and get a restraining order against the city? Before Jess runs out of breath and the critters return?"
But that wasn't necessary. Five o'clock came first and the city workers climbed back into their vehicles and went home, and pretty soon the protesters did too. Doc hitched back into town to help Ramona see about hiring the unicorns a lawyer. He asked me to stay and see if any of the beasts came back or new ones came. He said Randy and Jess were supposed to come back for us when they'd taken the unicorns safely off into the national forest on some of the back roads Randy knew.
It wasn't a bad wait. The water was so pretty and clear that even the turbulence of the river mingling with the still water couldn't mar its beauty. You could still see clear to the bottom, like in a mountain stream. And the reservoir was plenty deep.
It was getting dark by the time the truck returned for me, and it had started to rain. I picked up the lights all the way down the road and Randy parked and honked for my attention. When I stood up, Randy yelled, "We got to get back to your place. Jess wore himself out - he's running a fever and he's looking pretty bad."
But about that time there was a thump and a crunch of gravel and a splash.
"Where is he?" I asked, peering into the cab.
"Still in the back."
But he wasn't. His guitar was there. I ran to the reservoir. He was laying face down in it, the ripples still circling away from him in the pallid moonlight beyond the truck's headlights.
When I pulled on his arm, it was hot as a poker. Randy leaped out and helped me and did mouth to mouth and got him in the truck. I couldn't help thinking on the way to the hospital that it was a blessing this had happened. He'd apparently gotten delirious from fever, half drowned himself trying to cool off, and now we had to turn him over to someone else.
My relief turned to anger and dismay when they took him away from us into ICU and not even Randy's friends on the nursing staff could help. Nobody but next of kin allowed. Randy took me home and I sat there crying and hugging my cats, waiting for a phone call to tell me my friend- my oldest, dearest love who was now my friend- had gone out with his boots on and was now, if Atlanta and Doc were right, on his way to unicorndom to be chased through a country where he had no real niche, even in the afterlife.
The call came at about six in the morning.
I scared all three cats grabbing for the receiver. "Hello?"
"Sue Ferman?"
"Yes?"
"Mr. Shaw in bed six wishes to check himself out now. He said to call you."
The damned fool, I thought, briskly brushing the tears away and cleaning my glasses so I could see to drive, he was determined to die here. I drove into the hospital lot and walked through the door, afraid of what I might see. What I saw was Jess arguing with an orderly that he didn't need a goddamn wheelchair, he could walk out on his own two feet.
"Susie-Q get me outta here, will you?" he said. "I thought I told you no hospitals."
"Yeah, well, you didn't tell me you were gonna drown yourself," I said, hugging him whether he wanted me to or not. He did. And to my surprise his hug was strong, and cool, if not as fragrant as usual. I took a good look at him. His eyes were tired and lined and he was still thin, but the pain was gone from his face and when he stood up to get into the car, he stood erect as he ever had, moving with an ease I'd almost forgotten he possessed.
He hung around another day or two to see if the unicorns returned but you know, they never did. We're still not sure why. Then he said, "Well, darlin', I love the audiences you got around here but I guess if I ain't gonna die, I'd better haul ass home."
I surprised myself by laughing, not even bitterly. "Yeah, we already know we can't live with each other."
He grabbed me and hugged me and kissed my ear rather sloppily. "I know it. But I sure do love you. I don't know what the hell you see in me though, I truly don't."
I returned his hug and kissed him on the bridge of the nose where I kiss my cat and where his horn would one day sprout if the present trend continued. "I don't either except that you're almost always interesting as hell."
"I'll stay if you want me to," he said, like he was going to make the ultimate sacrifice. "You damn near saved my life."
"Nah," I said, "I love you more than I've ever loved anyone but you get on my nerves. Go back and find some younger woman who's not got to cope with you and menopause at the same time."
And he did.
He's called every so often since then however, even though he hates the phone, just to stay in touch.
"How's our horny little friends?" he asked the first time he called back from the road in Boulder. "Do they miss me?"
"They must," I told him. "Since you led that bunch off that day, nobody's seen much of them. Do you suppose Atlanta was right and they were just on their way to some other place?"
"Either that or it was just the cosmic testing ground like somebody said and somebody else saw the test was failin'."
"Well, it's the city that feels it's flunked now," I told him. "Do you know, when they tested that water, even after the flood supposedly polluted it, they found it was free of all impurities? We had the taps turned on again right after you left. Three cases of hepatitis C, two cases of AIDS and several more cancers supposedly made miraculous recoveries in that time, but then, of course, the good water got all flushed out of the system. The city would pay the unicorns to come back now. But I guess you can't just have magic when you want it."
"Nope, which brings up somethin' I been meanin' to discuss with you. Do you know that ever since I got out of the hospital, I haven't been able to enjoy a good drink? It's like it turns to water the minute it touches me."
I expressed my sympathy with cheerful insincerity and hung up to take a couple of bags of daffodil bulbs out to the woods, just in case.
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