Human for a Day (9781101552391) (18 page)

Last was the duck.

I'd animated the statue of Hans Christian Anderson, the famous fairy-tale author. The duck, representing
The Ugly Duckling
, one of his most notable pieces, and thereby a part of the bronze display, was an impulse to bring to life. They were cast at the Modern Art Foundry in Queens, so you'd think Hans would have spoken English, right? No, Danish. We couldn't communicate; I couldn't get across what we all needed to accomplish this day, and so he'd wandered off, probably looking for tourists from Denmark to read to. The duck stayed with me.

Bill was babbling again.

“What? I missed that.”

“I sayeth: the world is grown so bad, that wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.”

Both of my eyebrows rose.

“Act I, scene III,
Richard III
.”

“Well, I guess you got the gist of it. Things are bad in the park, which is why I used my magic to give you guys flesh so you could help me clean it up.” I watched a crow leap from a branch overhead and saw One-from-Seven shrink for cover. “Gangs and drugs are the worst of it, and that's usually at night. But overall, things are not nearly as bad as they used to be. I mean, a handful of years ago I would spend an entire morning catching muggers and kids toting cans of spray paint. But today . . . until that snatcher you nabbed, Bill, we've spent all our so-to-speak waking hours picking up trash in the North Meadow and the Great Hill and waving to the joggers. The park's a great place, safe, really, given the size of it and the number of people who come here every day.”

“Sir Hatter—”

“And after the sun goes down, let me tell you, the scores of hookers I used to . . .” I saw the look of incredulity on his face. “Hookers . . . streetwalkers, prostitutes, hos . . . whores, you know . . .” I did a little bump and grind.

“Ah.” Bill understood. “Fulsome wenches, callets.”

“There were plenty of callets. I guess for the most part they're plying their trade elsewhere.”

“Sir Hatter—”

“Mad, please,” I said. “I'm not much for last names, Bill.”

“Sir Mad—”

Another bird took flight, this a fat jay, and One-from-Seven sought cover beneath a low bald cypress branch.

“Prithee, let us endeavor to stop another micher, Sir Mad.”

“Yeah, let's be about it.” Bill fell in step at my shoulder, then marched One-from-Seven. The ugly duck waddled quickly to catch up.

Our meandering course took us across the Great Lawn and past the Delacorte Theater, where I directed Bill's attention to the sculpture of Romeo and Juliet, locked forever in a bronze embrace.

“It is the east,” Bill said.

“And Juliet is the sun,” I finished. “Act II, if memory serves.” I'd seen the play performed in the park a decade past, and sensed it played in years after that. I was connected to this park.

We hadn't traveled more than a dozen yards beyond that when Bill waylaid a pickpocket and returned the wallet to its grateful owner.

“Thou ruttish onion-eyed pigeon-egg,” Bill called the thief before literally ripping his arm out of the socket. We quickly moved along before he could do something to the teen's remaining body parts.

In the shadow of the Obelisk we helped an elderly woman regain her errant Maltese. She stared wide-eyed at us, pointing at my colorful garb and then Bill's out-of-date duds, her gaze dropping to the Mills bombs in One-from-Seven's hands, her mouth subsequently opening, but fortunately nothing other than a barely audible “Thank you” coming out. It was the first time today—I didn't count the after-dawn jogger ogling us over by the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir—that someone thought us dressed strangely. Through the years I've learned that most people don't give me and whoever I pick as my companions a second glance. This is New York, after all.

Next we chased a pair of persistent beggars away from a priggish-looking woman feeding a gaggle of pigeons.

“Thou adulterate motley-minded scurvy knaves!” Bill shouted after the pair, nearly grabbing the slower of the two by the arm.

One-from-Seven kept his distance, his terrified gaze locked onto the pigeons cooing prettily and strutting in front of the park bench. I understood the soldier's fear of fowl, but I didn't share it. My hat is tall, the brim broad, and so when I am bronze no poop plops on my shoulders or onto the lips of my overly wide grin. Lacking a helmet, One-from-Seven does not have such protection.

Just north of The Ramble, we came across a drunk trying to make off with someone's ten-speed.

“Thou loutish dizzy-eyed haggard,” Bill called him.

The drunk rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, fingers playing with the lock he'd managed to work free from the rear tire.

“Thou unmuzzled shard-borne bear-whelp,” Bill pronounced. “Thou accursed earth-vexing clotpole.”

The drunk belched loudly and glared defiantly.

The duck quacked menacingly.

Bill broke both the man's arms.

I was beginning to see a pattern in how Bill dealt with ne'er-do-wells, and so I moseyed us along. It wouldn't do for us to get arrested. We could only spend twenty-four hours in skin, and we'd turn back into our bronze selves a little after midnight. Whatever would the cops do with Central Park sculptures in lock-up?

I took my troops past the Boat House, and Bill, One-from-Seven, and I stopped to pick up fast food wrappers and Styrofoam cups while the duck enjoyed itself in the lake. The sun was angling lower, and it sent motes of molten yellow dancing across the water. It looked like a pirate had cast out a sack of doubloons, all of them floating.

The park was the best part of this massive city, as far as I was concerned. A half-dozen decades past, I'd spent my twenty-four tooling around the streets of Manhattan, nothing more than a lookee-loo taking in all the noise, color, and constant rush-rush-rush of people essentially going nowhere. Through the years the city has only gotten louder. But the park . . . ah, Central Park has remained a constant. It is sweet-smelling grass and a hint of simpler things and times. It is dogs and children, picnics with strawberry wine, lovers kissing, old men playing chess, and friends sharing conversation. It is the polished, red shiny bit of skin on the Big Apple, a blessed respite from the cacophony that surrounds it. It is my home, and I have no plans to leave it ever again. So I've vowed to help keep it clean . . . at least for a twenty-four hour stretch, and hopefully my deeds will have some impact well beyond these hours.

I figure if any purse snatchers read the newspaper tomorrow or listened to the evening news they'll think twice about trying to get a five-finger discount in my park.

Yeah, my park.

Near the Conservatory Pond—where the ugly duck decided to take another dip—I took Bill and One-from-Seven to see my crib, the spot where I'm forced to spend the other three hundred and sixty-four days.

“Yon statues are so—”

“Shiny? Yeah, they are that. Me, too, when I'm hanging with them.” The Alice in Wonderland statue, not far from East 74th in this part of the park, is a favorite with the children. There's Alice on a giant mushroom, fingers stretched out toward the pocket watch the White Rabbit has. The Cheshire Cat—who I animated a few years back and who disappeared on me for the rest of the day—peers over her shoulder. The dormouse and I—except for today—flank Alice. I'm sculpted with a crazed shit-eating grin splayed on my face, but never smile when I'm in skin. Gotta give the face muscles a rest. A fellow named George Delacorte Jr. had the Alice piece made in the 1959 in honor of his late wife, Margarita. The ensemble was shaped by José de Creeft, who on a blessed whim put magic in me. Old de Creeft was a wizard as well as an artist and gave me the gift to spring to life once a year, for a day at a time, and to bring four others with me. I suspect he figured I'd bring Alice—who supposedly looked like de Creeft's daughter—Cheshire, the dormouse, and Rabbit. Excepting for Cheshire those years back, I'd made my choices from elsewhere in the park.

“Why art they so—”

“They're shiny ‘cause the kids can't keep their hands off ‘em. Shiny from thousands of oily fingers that have polished the bronze to that patina.”

“It fairly glows,” Bill said. “Beautiful.”

“Yeah, it is that, ain't it?”

The duck quacked.

One-from-Seven didn't say anything.

Plaques around the sculpture were filled with inscriptions from Lewis Carroll's book. Bill went from one to the next, intently reading. He scratched his head when he came to a poem chiseled in the granite circle that surrounded the work.

The bard cleared his throat and recited: “Twas bril-lig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”

“It's from ‘Jabberwocky',” I explained, as I stooped to pick up an empty soda can.

Bill managed to break the arms of another purse snatcher before sunset. But we had more important villains to deal with.

Bill cleared his throat: “In peace nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, disguise fair nature with hard favored rage—” He paused. “
The Cronicle History of Henry the Fifth
.”

“Well, let's go imitate that tiger, shall we? I promise it won't be easy.” They followed me back toward the castle. “The purse snatchers, the drunk, the guys pestering the woman feeding the pigeons, that was nothing compared to what's ahead of us.”

The shadows were stretching long, giving us some cover. The park and I were connected, and so I knew there were a few more cops than usual on horseback and on foot... probably looking for whoever was breaking arms. I didn't want them to stop us; I had plans. Part of me didn't think they were looking too hard, though; no innocent folks had been injured, after all.

“Thou has in mind?” Bill prodded as we cut down a path lined with ginkgos, English and American elms, and hornbeams.

“Remember how I said things have gotten much better here?”

He nodded, as did One-from-Seven.

The duck quacked.

“And that there were some problems with drugs and gangs . . . that would be the Crips and Bloods.”

“Montagues and Capulets?”

“Uh, not exactly.” The path narrowed here and the shadows swallowed us. Park lights were coming on, and their glows showed through gaps in the branches. The scents from the food vendors were all but gone, most of the carts packed up. The park stayed open to midnight, but unless there was a concert or something else going on, most of the cart owners went home after sunset. “Anyway, the whole city's been cleaning up its act, but gangs and drugs are still—”

“Vexing, Sir Mad?” He drew his lips into a thin line. “Pragging rump-fed miscreants?”

“You have a way with words, Bill.” I stopped when One-from-Seven flattened himself against the trunk of a tall elm. The sky was suddenly filled with birds. When the flock passed, we resumed our course. “I can sense things in the park. Even when I'm bronze I can feel what's going on. I relish that, most of the time, ‘cause mostly what I feel is an infectious joy. People tend to be happy when they're on the grass.”

“But the miscreants?” Bill pressed.

“No joy from them. Greed, anger, all sorts of troubling thoughts. Hate. I can sense all those things, too. It's a real mix of emotions. A nasty head-trip.”

“Is that why thou art called Mad?”

I shrugged. “Oh, there's some happiness in the . . . miscreants . . . as they like taking people's money, getting high, and their emotions spike when they've made an impressive deal, scored something, beaten a rival gang member to a bloody pulp. But it's not the same joy as the good people of the city feel and that pulses through the ground and into my sculpted feet.” I paused as a sandhill crane passed by overhead and One-from-Seven cowered. “This park . . . this magnificent place . . . is the real heart of the city.”

Bill put a sympathetic hand on my arm.

“And those . . . pragging rump-fed miscreants . . . are twisting it.”

I knew the worst of them conducted their deals near the castle, in the shadows where the park lights didn't reach, and late in the evening when the dark hid their features and their vile transactions. Heroin and cocaine mostly, the park's heartbeat told me, and the people who traveled in this part of the park at night were looking to sell or buy.

I explained to Bill and One-from-Seven that we were aiming to stop them.

“They might have guns,” I warned them, not bothering to explain that to Bill. “Semi-automatics, switchblades, you-name-it. And we're flesh right now. They can hurt us. I got cut up pretty bad when we went after a couple of them last summer.” I touched the brim of my hat. “It was me and Christopher Columbus, Daniel Webster, and Duke Ellington. We came out of it all right, though. Managed to catch two dealers and chase off the third and their customers.”

The wind picked up, and the trees rustled. Faintly I heard a car horn and music, some bluesy piece featuring a soprano sax. After a few moments, the music faded. We were deeper in the trees.

“At the end of this path. I can feel them. More of them than last year. Something big is going down. There's only a few of us, and—”

“We few,” Bill said, as we crested the rise and the castle came into view. “We happy few, we band of bronze. From now until the end of the world, we shall be remembered. For he today that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother; be ne'er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition. And gentlemen in New York City now abed, shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks, that fought with us upon this midsummer's night.”