Fool on the Hill (11 page)

AT HEAVEN'S GATE

I.

The first to return to Cornell, some as early as mid-August, are the Orientation Counselors and Residence Advisors, those whose job it is to make the army of newcomers feel at home and see them safely through their first year. Then on August twenty-third the dorms open, and the Freshmen begin to arrive, wide-eyed and unsuspecting. They have one free week in which to sample the pleasures of Ithaca—swimming in the gorges, hiking the countryside, drinking in the Collegetown bars if their phony I. D. is good enough, drinking in the dorms if it isn't—and once again the brick and cinderblock of West Campus echo with the pitter-patter of little Nike-clad feet. On North Campus there is a smaller-scale parody of this, most of the noise coming from Mary Donlon and Clara Dickson Halls (and, of course, Risley, the Bohemian dorm).

That August twenty-third, and the twenty-fourth and-fifth also, it rained hard most of the day, as if Ithaca were making a special effort to acquaint the Freshmen with its climate. During those three days, when the showers were interspersed with periods of heavy mist, Stephen George went for long walks in the town proper as well as on the campus. He sorted through the faces he passed, searching for old friends, making a few new ones. He flew his kite often, regardless of the weather, and only once did the wind fail him. That time, the early afternoon of the twenty-third, he gave up no more than ten minutes before a monster thunderstorm swept through the area. Two Ithaca men who had chosen the wrong day to go sailing were struck by lightning and killed on Cayuga Lake, but George was safely indoors, sipping tea in the Temple of Zeus in Goldwin-Smith Hall.

On the morning of the twenty-fourth he wandered down to The Ithaca Commons at the foot of The Hill and stopped for breakfast at McDonald's. While he sat in meditation over three pancakes in a beige styrofoam tray, a
grizzled old man with an Eddie Bauer T-shirt came into the restaurant. The old man was obviously a McDonald's regular whose name, it quickly became apparent, was Wax. The women behind the counter nearly fell over themselves greeting him and presenting, with much fanfare, “Wax's morning coffee.” George craned his neck to see if the coffee were black or with cream (for as a writer, such minor details held great significance for him). Wax accepted the styrofoam cup, bowed deeply, and found a seat alongside a chubby woman who looked to be in her seventies.

“Howdy,” he said to the woman, who was a librarian in decline. “My name's Wax. Know why they call me that? ‘Cause I'm
so
slick . . .”

Two minutes and he had her giggling like a schoolgirl. Three minutes and they were sharing hotcakes and sausage.

True love,
George thought, and caught sight of a familiar face two booths down from where Wax was putting on his moves. “Stay here,” he told his pancakes, and went over to say hello.

“Hey, lady.” Aurora Smith looked up and smiled as George slid into the booth.

“Hi, George,” Aurora returned the greeting. They had met two years earlier on the Arts Quad, George literally knocking Aurora off her feet as he moved to avoid a Bohemian on a runaway mare, and become good friends. They got along well, although George had never been completely comfortable with Aurora's boyfriend. “How was summer? Write any more stories for strangers?”

“One,” George admitted. “I whomped something up for my landlord's daughter, of all people. Short novella. The editor of a fiction magazine over in Vermont wants me to make a serial out of it. Oh, and then there's this.”

“What is it?” Aurora asked, as George took a folded envelope out of his pocket.

“Claims to be from a professor of Eugenics at the University of Iowa. She liked my first novel and wants to breed me with some of the women from the Writers' Workshop there.”

Aurora laughed, louder than she might have in the presence of her boyfriend. “Are you going to take her up on it?”

“Nah.” George shook his head. “I'm too much of a wimp. No stamina. U. of Iowa has a
big
Writers' Workshop. Maybe if I had Mormon blood . . . Anyway, how about you? I low was your summer?”

“Oh, you know . . .” she trailed off, shrugging. It was a common gesture with her; George got it almost every time he asked her something even remotely personal. “Life is good. I'm happy.”

“Yeah?” George said

“Yes, really . . . hey, I finally read one of your books!” She brightened. “
The Knight of the White Roses.
I found a copy of it in a Milwaukee bookstore when we drove up there in July.”

“What'd you think of it?”

“I loved it,” she told him honestly. “How did you ever come up with the idea for th—”

“What are we all talking about?” said Brian Garroway, appearing suddenly. The McDonald's men's room was located in the darkest reaches of the building, and Brian, so to speak, had been on safari.

“My action-packed literary career,” George replied, as Brian sat down beside Aurora and put an arm around her. “Aurora was just telling me about how she read one of my books.”

“
The Knight of the White Roses?
"

“That's the one. You read it, Brian?”

“I skimmed it.”

“And what'd you think?”

“You have a fair writing style,” Brian granted him. “It's good in an unpolished sort of way. Other than that I thought your entire premise was far-fetched—a New Wave Camelot?—and there was way too much profanity. The whole thing struck me as being too romantic, too, by the way.”

George was impressed. “All that from just a skimming? You missed your calling, Brian. You should have been an English major.” He looked at Aurora. “Did you think it was overly romantic?”

“Well . . .” Aurora said. She shrugged automatically, inadvertently throwing off Brian's arm. “Not really. It was all
supposed
to be a little exaggerated like that, right?”

She shrugged again, then went back to picking at her hash browns. Brian laid a hand lightly on the back of her neck. A moment later he said:

“You about ready to go? I'm supposed to be up at Dickson pretty soon to talk to Michael Krist.”

“Sure,” Aurora said, putting her fork down. “I'm done.”

“Good, Let's go.” He stood up. “Sorry to rush off like this, George.”

“That's all right. You'll probably be seeing me around on campus this semester.”

“I hope we will. You're teaching this year, right?”

“That's right,” George agreed. “I get to pass along some of my unpolished writing style. Should be fun.”

Brian laughed politely. “Good luck. See you around, George.” Aurora stood up, gave George a small wave. “You take care,” she said. He nodded to her, and then Aurora and Brian were on their way out of the restaurant. As the front door swung shut after them, a voice spoke up behind George. “Now there's an unhappy marriage shaping up.”

George looked back at the sound. The ever-popular Wax was sitting alone while his newfound librarian went to powder her nose.

“What do you mean?” George asked.

“The expressions on their faces,” Wax explained. “The look in their eyes.
It's subtle, you understand, but it reminds me just exactly of my brother and my sister-and-law before they tied the knot. Bad shakes, my young friend.”

“What happened to your brother and your sister-in-law?”

“Too much tension. Made for a bad match. Third night of the honeymoon she got fed up and shot him in the leg. Hell of a thing; he hasn't walked straight since.”

Wax shook his head and sighed, then turned away. “You want to be a Good Samaritan, young man?” he added, giving his coffee a stir. “Steal that woman's heart away for yourself—save that boy from a lifetime of limping.”

“Right,” said George. He too shook his head—grinning—and a moment later went back to his pancakes.

II.

“How do I look?”

“Absolutely ridiculous, if you want the truth.”

“I'm serious, Blackjack. Do I look like a Purebred?”

“You look like a neurotic dog who went and dipped himself in a mud puddle. Which proves that looks don't always deceive.”

The flatbed had taken them upstate, to the vicinity of a town the humans called Watkins Glen. Now they were walking due east, with only a short march left until they would be at the site of what Luther still insisted was Heaven.

“Funny, I was expecting a much longer trip than it's been,” Blackjack said. “But if Heaven is so close, Luther, then why even bother trying to disguise yourself? If it's what you say it is, you won't have any trouble with Purebreds there.”

“This is just in case,” Luther told him. “You never know, Raaq might have some sort of guard around it, to keep dogs from getting in.”

“But if Raaq's guards kill you,” Blackjack pointed out, “won't you wind up in Heaven anyway?”

“Well . . .” The thought was unsettlingly logical, but Luther didn't want to give up his disguise. “Well, I might, but there's no sense taking chances.”

“As you like it, then. But I think it'd take a pretty stupid Purebred not to notice there was something unusual about you, Luther.”

Luther did, as Blackjack had said, look like he'd just been dipped in a mud puddle. He'd rolled in one, actually a thick brown pool left by recent rains. Two squirrels had watched him curiously as he'd done it. Now his coat stuck out and curled in odd ways that bore no resemblance to natural hair growth, but at least the color was uniform. On a good day he might have passed for a Terrier of some sort, a Terrier who had just bulled his way through a dirt wall.

“I just feel more comfortable this way, Blackjack,” Luther said. “If Dragon were to walk by now, I bet he wouldn't even recognize me.”

“You're probably right. Not that I plan on seeing him again, the way those ‘catchers were treating him. But you smell like shit. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some in that puddle.”

“I don't care about my smell. I can still smell Heaven, stronger than ever, and that's what counts. We'll be there soon, tomorrow maybe, and then everything will be fine. It'll be so good to see Moses again. . . .”

Blackjack said nothing for a moment. Part of him, the carefully guarded part where he kept his conscience and sympathy hidden, was beginning to wonder what would happen if they didn't find Heaven. Obviously, the cat thought, they
couldn't
find it, not the traditional Heaven anyway, and it was equally impossible that Moses would be there. The events of the journey had done nothing to dispel Blackjack's atheism. If anything, the run-in with Dragon had strengthened his disbelief; surely no just God, or gods, would allow such mindless prejudice to exist.

“Listen, Luther,” he began, “if . . . if Heaven really was only a short distance away from here, wouldn't there be some sort of sign by now?”

“Sign?”

“Like the lights from the City reflecting off the clouds. Heaven ought to be bigger than Manhattan, at least, but still we haven't seen any sign of it, any change. Oh, the air's cleaner here, but it's been that way for days. There's no change in the countryside, no sign that we're leading up to something big. And don't you think there should be, if we're so close?”

“What you're trying to say is, you still don't believe I leaven exists?”

Blackjack stared down at his paws.

“And,” Luther went on when he made no reply, “you don't want my feelings to be hurt when we don't find it?”

“Luther . . .” Still he did not look up. “Luther, you're a good friend, and you know I don't want to see you hurt, but . . . I can't believe such a place is real. Not some big doghouse in the sky, full of angel-dogs or whatever and the souls of the dead. It's too much like something you'd see in a dream, and it'll take more than a short march for this landscape to melt into something dreamlike.”

“Why did you come with me, if you didn't believe we'd find Heaven?” Luther asked. The question was emotionless; Blackjack couldn't tell if Luther was angry.

“Because you're my friend,” Blackjack replied, as if ashamed to admit his own emotions. “And maybe . . . maybe because I thought the journey might be worth it. Not that I minded living in the slums, you understand, that's good ratting territory, but I could get enthusiastic about settling somewhere with real trees, and grass that doesn't just grow up in the sidewalk cracks. I'm sure this place we're going to is nice, Luther. Maybe even nice enough to
justify this damn trip. I know your nose wouldn't lead you completely wrong. But Heaven . . .”

“You don't believe we'll find Moses, either, do you?”

“No,” Blackjack said, as gently as he could. “I don't think Moses exists anymore, except as a memory. That doesn't lessen him any, though, because we're all going to cease to exist sooner or later . . . sorry to be so blunt, but I don't want you to be too disappointed when we don't find him. I hope you aren't angry with me.”

“Angry?” Luther sounded surprised. “You're just saying what you feel, Blackjack, and after all, you're a cat. Even if you turn out to be right, that won't be your fault. I know you don't
want
Moses to not exist anymore.”

“No, I don't,” Blackjack agreed. “I want us to find him. But when we don't—”

“
If
we don't,” Luther insisted. “Let's say if, until we're actually there. Who knows, it might still turn dreamlike. Maybe we'll have to do something special, yet, before we're really there. Like . . . I don't know, like a cross a magic river, or climb a mountain. It smells like it's got big hills, at least. You should really try to be more optimistic, Blackjack,” he said as they started off again. “
I
think things are definitely improving.”