Will Sparrow's Road (3 page)

The man climbed onto the wagon. He clucked to his great black horse, and they drove slowly alongside the boy. "From the appearance of your dusty attire and your dirty feet, I suspect you would not be disinclined to ride to wherever you are headed,” said the man. "Do I have the way of it?”

Will's tired feet pleaded, "Aye, aye, we want to ride,” but the boy shook his head.

"Be you mute or merely thrifty with your words?”

"I can speak,” said Will, "when I have reason,” but he did not stop.

"Good. I wish to come to an agreeance with you. I seek your aid, if you'd care to—”

"Nay, I care for no one but myself and nothing but my belly.”

"A prudent stance, I do say. But I have business awaiting in a village yon, and, if you will assist me, I will remunerate you.”

Will crinkled his face in puzzlement. Was that a threat? Should he run?

"
Pay,
boy. That means I will pay you,” said the man.

Pay? Will stopped. "How much?” he asked. "Show me.”

"I do not precisely have the coins now,” the man said, and Will shook his head again and walked on. "But with your help, I shall be earning a great many, which I shall use to buy us supper. Juicy fat beef ribs. Pork pies. And crumb cakes.”

Will slowed. He had seen fine folk eat such at the inn, but he himself had had only the leavings.

"We shall sit by the fire and eat our fill,” said the tooth puller.

"With new bread? And mugs of ale?” It was more than he had hoped for, willing to be satisfied by smoked herring or jellied eels.

"Certes,” the man said, nodding his head until his chins wobbled.

"What you would have me do—be it painful, gruesome, or disgustful?”

"Not at all. You will merely serve as an exemplar of my work.”

Will did not understand what that meant, but since it was not painful, gruesome, or disgustful, he said, "I might, if I choose.” He walked even slower. "And there will be beef ribs afterward?”

The tooth puller nodded again.

"Then 'tis possible I will do it,” Will said, still wary of the man but eager to feel the grease of the beef on his lips.

"Climb up, then, young master,” said Doctor Hieronymus Munster, and Will did.

The man shook the reins, and the big black horse began to move. "Where be you headed?” he asked.

Will motioned vaguely toward the road ahead. "Up there.”

"Good,” said Doctor Munster. "That is precisely where I am going.”

"What is it you will pay me to do? You do not expect me to pull teeth as you do?”

Doctor Munster chuckled. "Pish, as if a slip of a boy like you could pull out anything more difficult than a fish from a stream. You will only show folk how easy and painless it be to have a tooth drawn.”

"You mean to pull my teeth?” Will made ready to leap from the wagon.

"Nay, nay, not in truth, but it will appear so. You will be doing folk a boon, calming their fears and assuring them of the safety and painlessness of the procedure.”

"You mean I shall lie,” Will said, nodding. "That I can do.”

"Lie? Lie? I never thought of it as lying, more as ... representing and ... encouraging. I often use some lackwit fellow I pick up—” The doctor stopped talking and cleared his throat. "Nay,
usually
I use a lackwit fellow, but you seem a bright and likely boy.” Handing the reins to Will, the tooth puller put his hand into his own mouth, clutched a front tooth with his fingers, tugged a bit, and held up a bloody tooth.

Will nearly dropped the reins. How had the man done that? How could he pull out a tooth with his fingers? And the blood—did it not hurt?

Then the tooth puller smiled. His tooth was still there.

"But I saw you pull that tooth with my own eyes,” Will said.

"Things are not always what they seem, boy.” The tooth puller put the tooth in his pouch and took the reins back from Will. "It takes but practice and a bit of chicken blood. Now let me hear you moan.”

"Moan?” Will asked. "Why moan?” Again he made ready to flee if he liked not the answer.

"If you are to assist me, you must seem so distraught with pain that you have come to me to have your tooth removed. Now moan.”

Will frowned. He would not perform like a trained dog at a fair. Even so, at the thought that he might lose the beef ribs and warm bread, he moaned,
“Ohhhhhh.
" He coughed a bit from the dust as they bounced and swayed down the road, and he moaned again, "
Ohhhhhh.
"

"Just so,” said the tooth puller, "but louder. Think of some injury you have suffered.”

Will thought of the time he ripped the nail off his toe as he was climbing the stone fence around Odo Waterman's orchard, and he moaned louder.

"Good,” said the tooth puller. "Now make it a bit deeper.”

Will remembered slamming his finger in the door of the inn the day he arrived. The finger dangled broken and useless until Magda the midwife forced it straight and tied it tightly with two sticks and a length of cloth torn from her underskirt. Will moaned deeper.

"Better, better, but with more pain.”

Will considered the time his father sent him to catch a fish for their supper and Will lay on the bank, his feet dangling in the water, enjoying the way the fish nibbled at his toes, until his father found him and cuffed him so hard that he fell and cracked his head on a rock and blood trickled from his ear. Will heard less well on that side now, and sometimes the ear ached fiercely. "
Ahhhh-ehhh-owww!
" Will bellowed.

"A truly prodigious effort, my boy!” Doctor Munster said, slapping his knee. "Now I will pull the tooth from your mouth and hold it aloft. You will give me many good thanks and disappear before anyone do look too closely at your teeth, which will all be there.”

They practiced again and again as the wagon slowly rumbled along. By and by, Doctor Munster called, "Whoa, Molly,” and they bounced to a stop. "Here I will ready myself for my entrance into the village.”

He climbed down, a curious Will following him. Behind the wagon, the man shrugged into a cloak of russet wool and placed a pointed hat securely on his head. Lastly he settled around his neck a string of rugged brownish stones.

Will looked closely at the string. Not stones but teeth. He shuddered.
Teeth.

"I am ready,” said Hieronymus Munster. "Molly and I will ride into the village, but you must come around through those trees there lest the village folk see us together and grow suspicious. I will set up in the churchyard, and you will meet us there. Do be moaning and staggering from pain when you arrive.”

"When do we sup?”

Doctor Munster waved his hand at the boy. "Anon, anon. After you leave the churchyard, come hither. I will meet you when I have finished relieving folks of their teeth and their coins.” He lifted from the wagon a small drum and tapped it twice. "Be ready to leave at once. We will depart in some haste, for folk grow testy when they discover tooth pulling is not as easy or painless as promised. Then we shall visit a coaching inn I know of that offers the fattest beef and the freshest ale. Now begone. I will see you soonly.”

Will patted his empty belly and soothed it with promises: "We hoped for someut to eat besides apples, and here it be. We shall be stuffed full and satisfied ere the day be out.” Hope again flickered within him.

He did as he was bid and cut through the trees to the village. Cottages leaned and tumbled on both sides of a dusty road that was playground for children and supper table for chickens. He saw the church some way down the road.

The wagon with its waggling tooth stood nigh a tree stump, where a small crowd was gathering. Doctor Munster was next to the stump, banging his drum and shouting, "Do your teeth trouble you more than the tax collector? Do you fear you will never again bite into a crisp apple or a crust of bread? Do you lie awake by night in sore distress? I can free you from your pain—I, Doctor Hieronymus Munster, trained by masters of the dental arts in far-off Arabia. I have with good success and without pain pulled teeth from the crowned heads of Europe, and I can do the same for you here in this celebrated community of, er...” He looked around.

Someone called out, "Lesser Oakbridge.”

"Indeed,” Doctor Munster continued, "here in Lesser Oakbridge.” He beckoned to his listeners. "Come and be made sound again, goodmen and ladies. Be not afeared, be not afeared.”

No one came forward, so the tooth puller signaled to Will, who put his hand to his cheek and let out a tremendous moan. "Ah, lad, I hear your suffering. Come up, come up, and experience the painless artistry of Doctor Hieronymus Munster. A shilling to draw forth a stump, or but sixpence if the tooth be whole.”

Will moved nearer, and Doctor Munster pushed him down onto the tree stump. "Moan, you lumpish rascal! Moan!” the tooth puller whispered to Will, who moaned. The tooth puller put his hand into the boy's mouth, Will wriggled, and finally Doctor Munster held a bloody tooth above his head. "Success!”

Will felt his teeth with his tongue. They were all there. "Painless?” the tooth puller asked. Will nodded.

The tooth puller whispered, "Go now, boy, make haste.” Will nodded again.

People pressed closer and examined the tooth in the tooth puller's hand. "Be there anyone else with pain I can relieve? You see how simple and how quick it be. You, goodman,” Doctor Munster said to a gray-bearded man holding his chin, "you look as if you suffer. Only sixpence will see you restored.” The man dropped coins into Doctor Munster's outstretched hand and sat down on the tree stump.

The tooth puller slipped the coins into the purse at his waist and took up pliers and a knife. "Open wide,” he said. The gray-bearded man opened wide. So did the folk standing near, listening and watching closely. And so, without thinking, did Will, who, intent on watching, had not gone from the churchyard.

Doctor Munster poked and scraped and wrestled the tooth while the graybeard moaned and groaned and squirmed. Finally the tooth puller held a bit of a tooth aloft, but the old man was not relieved. He howled, and the crowd murmured and pointed.

"Sixpence more to remove the stump,” said Doctor Munster with his hand out.

Will, fearing what might happen if the crowd turned against the tooth puller, drew closer. "Master Munster,” he whispered, "I will take coins instead of beef ribs, and I will take them now.”

"Get away, young fool,” the tooth puller growled, and he began backing toward his wagon.

"Sir,” Will said, "I have done what I was bid, and you promised—”

"Look!” shouted a large woman in russet kirtle and grimy wimple. "Look at the boy! See his teeth! The tooth puller pulled nothing!”

The crowd turned from Munster to Will. Someone grabbed him and forced his mouth open wide, revealing his teeth—large and strong and a bit crooked, with a gap he could whistle through, but all there. "She be right!” the someone cried. "The man took no tooth! He is a fraud! And the boy, too!”

The crowd took up the cry. "Fakes! Frauds!”

Doctor Munster pushed the gray-bearded man away and leapt onto the wagon seat. He took up the reins, and the wagon began to move.

Will twisted away from his captors and ran after him, shouting, "Wait for me! My coins! My supper! Beef, you said, and bread!”

The gray-bearded man ran after Will, crying, "My sixpence! Give me back my sixpence!”

Other folk called, "Fakes! Frauds! Come you back, you rascals, and face our wrath!” But Doctor Munster was whipping Molly out of the town. The giant tooth overhanging the wagon wobbled and swayed.

Puffing and panting, Will cut through the woods to the place where he and Doctor Munster were to meet. He waited. And he waited. The tooth puller did not come.

Will's head felt heavy with weariness and hunger. Finally he knew that the tooth puller was gone and the promised dinner with him. "A pox on you, you lying ratsbane and villainous varlet!” he shouted into the deepening darkness. "May the Devil gnaw your bones!” Will had seen diners sneak from the inn without paying for their dinners; he had known drinkers to finish someone else's mug, watched folks help themselves to the contents of others' purses. Why had he believed the tooth man to be anything but another kind of thief? Once again he had been deceived. From now on it would be coins first, proof first, Will first!

The air grew cool, but Will was warmed by his anger. His mother, his father, the innkeeper, Nell Liftpurse, the tooth puller—all of humankind, it seemed—were liars and deceivers. None of them could he rely on, none of them had a care for him.
And no more do I care for them,
he added.
I care for no one but myself and nothing but my belly.

Would that the misbegotten tooth puller were here now,
Will thought. The man would produce beef ribs and ale for Will or suffer dire consequences. Shameful! It was shameful of the man to cheat a hungry boy who was good enough to assist him in cheating villagers. Will punched the empty air a time or two.

The rain started again as he began to walk up the deserted road. In the distance was a cottage, its window lighted by a candle. As a child he had often lingered outside such a cottage while day turned to evening and watched while men ate and women tended and children laughed and wrestled and shrieked.

Will sighed a gale of a sigh. It was likely warm inside that cottage and fragrant with new bread and stew simmering on the fire. He curled up beneath a tree and, supperless and wet, fell asleep.

CONCERNING WILL'S ATTEMPTS TO
FILL HIS EMPTY BELLY

C
OME MORNING
, Will started off on the road again,
scritch-scritching
at the start, but he found no pleasure in it this day. He was too hungry, too tired, too disheartened, and too alone. He was tired of apples and berries. He wanted the beef ribs the tooth puller had promised. He had not thought of such food until the tooth puller's offer, but now he wanted ribs and roasted chicken, fresh bread and cherry walnut cake. He wanted a fire of his own, a mug of ale, and a place to sleep out of the rain.