Hocus Pocus - Kurt Vonnegut [91]
That would certainly teach them a lesson.
At least they hadn’t been put into that great invention by a dentist, the electric chair.
“Where there is life there is hope.” So says John Gay in the Atheist’s Bible. What a starry-eyed optimist!
THESE 3 OLD geezers hadn’t had a visitor or a phone call or a letter for decades. Under the circumstances, they had no vivid ideas of what they would like to do next, so they were glad to take orders from almost anybody. Other people’s ideas of what to do next were like brain transplants. All of a sudden they were full of pep.
So I had them drink a lot of black coffee. Since I was worried about what might have happened to the Warden, they acted worried, too. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have. I did not tell them that there had been a mass prison break and that Scipio had been overrun by criminals. Such information would have beer useless to them, would have been like more TV. They were supposed to stay where they had been put, no matter what in the real world might be going on.
THOSE 3 WERE what psychologists call “other-directed.”
I TOOK THEM over to my house and ordered them to keep the wood fire in the fireplace going, and to feed Margaret and Mildred when they got hungry. There were plenty of canned goods I didn’t have to worry about the perishables in the refrigerator. since the air in the kitchen was already so cold. The stove itself ran on bottled propane, and there was a month’s supply of thai science fiction miracle.
Imagine that: bottled energy!
MARGARET AND MILDRED, thank goodness, felt neutral about the Warden’s zombies, the same way they felt about me. They didn’t like them, but they didn’t dislike them, either. So everything was falling into place. They would still have a life-support system, even if I went away for several days or got wounded of killed.
I didn’t expect to get wounded or killed, except by accident All the combatants in Scipio would regard me as unthreatening the Whites because of my color-coding and the Blacks because they knew and liked me.
The issues were clear. They were Black and White.
ALL THE YELLOW people had run away.
I HAD HOPED to get away from the house while Margaret and Mildred were fast asleep. But as I passed my boat on my way to the ice, an upstairs window flew open. There my poor old wife was, a scrawny, addled hag. She sensed that something important was happening, I think. Otherwise she wouldn’t have exposed herself to the cold and daylight. Her voice, moreover, which had been rasping and bawdy for years, was liquid and sweet, just as it had been on our, Honeymoon. And she called me by name. That was another thing she hadn’t done for a long, long time. This was disorienting.
“Gene—” she said.
So I stopped. “Yes, Margaret,” I said.
“Where are you going, Gene?” she said.
“I’m going for a walk, Margaret, to get some fresh air,” I said.
“You’re going to see some woman, aren’t you?” she said.
“No, Margaret. Word of Honor I’m not,” I said.
“That’s all right. I understand,” she said.
It was so pathetic! I was so overwhelmed by the pathos, by the beautiful voice I hadn’t heard for so long, by the young Margaret inside the witch! I cried out in all sincerity, “Oh, Margaret, I love you, I love you!”
Those were the last words she would ever hear me say, for I would never come back.
She made no reply. She shut the window and pulled down the opaque black roller blind.
I have not seen her since.
After that side of the lake was recaptured by the 82nd Airborne, she and her mother were put in a steel box on the back of one of the prison vans and delivered to the insane asylum in Batavia. They will be fine as long as they have each other. They might be fine even if they didn’t have each other. Who knows, until somebody or something performs that particular experiment?
I HAVE NOT been on that side of the lake since that morning,