Armageddon In Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut [35]
“Hmmm?”
“Ivy—I understand about the blue dress all shot through with little gold crosses,” said Elmer. “I want that for you, too.”
“And the drawers for you and Ethelbert,” said Ivy. “It wasn’t all just for me.”
“Ivy,” said Elmer, “what I’m doing—it’s more important than those horse drapes.”
“That’s my trouble,” said Ivy. “I just can’t imagine anything grander than them.”
“Neither can I,” said Elmer. “But there are such things. There’s got to be.” He smiled sadly. “Whatever they are,” he said, “they’re what I’ll be dancing about when I dance on air tomorrow.”
“I wish Ethelbert would get back,” said Ivy. “We should all be together.”
“He had to check his trap,” said Elmer. “Life goes on.”
“I’m glad them Normans finally went home,” said Ivy. “It was allo and hien and hélas and zut and poof till I thought I’d near go crazy. I guess they done found Robert the Horrible.”
“Thus sealing my doom,” said Elmer. He sighed. “I’ll go look for Ethelbert,” he said. “How better could a man spend his last night on earth than in bringing his son home from the forest?”
Elmer went out into a pale blue world of night under a half-moon. He followed the path that Ethelbert’s feet had worn—followed it to the high, black wall of the forest.
“Ethelbert!” he called.
There was no reply.
Elmer pushed into the forest. Branches whipped his face, and brambles snatched at his legs.
“Ethelbert!”
Only the gibbet replied. The chains squawked, and a skeleton fell rattling to earth. There were now only seventeen exhibits in the eighteen arches. There was room for one more.
Elmer’s anxiety for Ethelbert grew. It drove him hard, deeper and deeper into the forest. He came to a clearing, and rested, panting, sweat stinging his eyes.
“Ethelbert!”
“Father?” said Ethelbert in the thicket ahead. “Come here and help me.”
Elmer went into the thicket blindly, his hands groping before him.
Ethelbert caught his father’s hand in the perfect darkness. “Careful!” said Ethelbert. “Another step, and you’ll be in the trap.”
“Oh,” said Elmer. “That was a close thing.” Playfully, to make the boy feel good, he filled his voice with fear. “Whoooooey! I guess!”
Ethelbert pulled his hand down, and pressed it against something lying on the ground.
Elmer was amazed to feel the form of a big, dead stag. He knelt by it. “A deer!” he said.
His voice came back to him, seemingly from the bowels of the earth. “A deer, a deer, a deer.”
“It took me an hour to get it out of the trap,” said Ethelbert.
“Trap, trap, trap,” said the echo.
“Really?” said Elmer. “Good Lord, boy! I had no idea that trap was that good!”
“Good, good, good,” said the echo.
“You don’t know the half of it,” said Ethelbert.
“It, it, it,” said the echo.
“Where’s that echo coming from?” said Elmer.
“From, from, from?” said the echo.
“From right in front of you,” said Ethelbert. “From the trap.”
Elmer threw himself backwards as Ethelbert’s voice came out of the hole before him, came out of the earth as though from the gates of Hell itself.
“Trap, trap, trap.”
“You dug it?” said Elmer, aghast.
“God dug it,” said Ethelbert. “It’s the chimney of a cave.”
Elmer stretched out limp on the ground. He rested his head on the cooling, stiffening haunch of the stag. There was only one flaw in the thicket’s roof of verdure. Through that flaw came the light from one bright star. Elmer saw the star as a rainbow through the prisms of grateful tears.
“I have nothing more to ask of life,” said Elmer. “Tonight, everything has been given me—and more, and more, and more. With God’s help, my son has caught a unicorn.” He touched Ethelbert’s foot, and stroked its arch. “If God listens even to the prayers of an humble woodcutter and his son,” he said, “what can’t the world become?”
Elmer almost slipped away to sleep, so much at one was he with the plan of things.
Ethelbert roused him. “Shall we take the stag down to Mom?” said Ethelbert. “A midnight feast?”
“Not the whole deer,” said Elmer. “Too risky. We’ll cut some choice steaks, and leave the rest hidden here.”
“Have you got a knife?” said Ethelbert.