Stanley Elkin - The Magic Kingdom

Mary Cottle is right about the day. At least about the weather. It’s 80 degrees. The humidity can’t be a quarter that. There is the breeze of dreams. Slapping confidence like balm on their skins. The sky’s a perfect blue. The clouds are like topping.

“Ahoy, ahoy,” Colin says conversationally up at them from the Water Sprite.

“What’d you find out?” calls Benny Maxine.

“Mate,” Colin tells Benny softly, glancing toward the chap in the rental booth, “would you be so kind as to avast your voice there? Would you have the good manners to dim the running lights on your mouth?”

“What do you think?” Noah asks. “Do you think we’ll be able to do it?”

“Oh, will we, Colin?” Lydia asks. “Will we?”

“Well,” Colin says, “if you’ll give me a minute to discuss with the admiral there”—he indicates the young man at the boat rental—“I’ll get back to you.” He hops out of the little speedboat and wriggles out of his life jacket.

“Listen,” he tells the guy, “I don’t want the tykes to hear me.”

“Yes, sir?”

“That’s why I’m talking low like this.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You read about these little’uns?” he asks. “The Seven Dwarfs with Snow White over there.”

The fellow — he’s still in his teens, Colin judges, and a looker — glances in the kids’ direction. “Read about them?” he says.

“Don’t stare, man!”

“Was I staring?”

“People do, you know. That or look away. One or the other. Well, we don’t know how to deal with celebrity, do we? We’re not that much at home in fame.”

“Are they on television?”

“They’re on the news.”

“Really? The news?”

“Not so loud.”

“What did they do?”

“They haven’t quite managed to do it yet.”

“When they do,” the boat-rental kid says, “what will it be?”

Colin lowers his voice still further. “Well,” he says, “they’re going to die.”

The young man nods. “Yes,” he says sadly, “we get a lot of that here.”

“Not at this concession! Not in these numbers!”

“No, I guess not here so much.”

“There you go,” Colin says.

“What have they got?”

“The little blue babe?” He moves his eyes in Janet Order’s direction.

“Yes?”

“That’s our Janet. You play a musical instrument?”

“Sax a little.”

“The reeds in her heart are shot. Her valves and stops are queered.”

“And the heavy girl?”

“Forty pounds of tumor.”

“Gee.”

“This”—he indicates Bay Lake, he indicates the sunshine, he indicates the blue sky and the lovely day—“would be unusual? Even for around here, even for Florida, am I right?”

“A little unusual.”

“I’ll be bound, ‘a little.’ Well,” Colin says, “and the lump- faced kid is Benny Maxine. Benny’s dying of his baggy great liver and his sizey spleen. And little Tony Word and wee Noah Cloth of leukemia and osteosarcoma. Those are your nagging cancers of the blood and the big bad bones.”

“Oh, wow.”

“That’s how it is,” Colin says.

“Awful.”

“The other little girl is Rena Morgan. Rena is our cystic fibrosis.”

“And the old-looking guy?”

“Charles Mudd-Gaddis. Charles can’t tell you whether it’s Tuesday morning or 1066. Not enough oxygen to his brain and belly button, to his organs and toenails.”

“Really?”

“The Bible tells you so.” The concessionaire looks at the children and shakes his head. “Don’t stare,” Colin says.

“Sorry.”

“So I promised them this treat,” he says, taking his voice so low the young man has to strain to hear him. “Well, to tell you the truth — they never said this, they’re too polite — I think they’re a little burned out on all the rides and exhibits, on the hi tech and brass bands. I thought a little time on the water, a little fun in the sun, you see what I mean?”

“Sure.”

“Right. We’ll take two of the Sprites. We’ll take the Sunfish and one of those motorized pontoon boats.”

“We don’t rent to anyone under twelve. Even with an accompanying adult they’re not allowed to drive. I’m sorry.”

“Your passport please, Benny,” Colin called. “Rena, yours? Benny’s fifteen. Rena’s a teenager.”

“But these kids are dying,” the boy objected.

“They’ll wear life jackets.”

“Really, mister,” the young man said. “I mean, I don’t see how I can do this. I mean it’s irresponsible. Suppose something should happen? I mean, it could. Something could. They start up with each other, things get out of hand and they capsize. I mean, something awful could happen.”

“You’re right. It would be better if you closed the shop while we’re out. Not lease your other boats. I mean, the heavier the traffic, the more likely something bad could happen.”

“Not lease my boats?”

“Well, that’s part of the treat too, you see. To let the kids have the lake to themselves, to fix it so that for once — look,” he said, “you’re a native, right?”

“A native?”

“A native, a local. You’re from around here.”

“From Orlando.”

“All right. You’re this local native Orlando boy. Tell me, how many days do you remember out of your whole life when the weather’s been like this? Did I say weather? This isn’t weather. This is Nature. How many? A dozen? Less? Could you count them on two hands? On one? I’m twice your age and don’t recall any. All right, I’m not from Orlando or even from Florida, but I’m no stranger to the planet. I go on holiday to the sun coasts. I’ve been to Mediterranea. I’ve come back tan. But this, this is a special dispensation. This is God’s odds.” And now his voice is not lowered. The children can hear him chatting freely about their deaths, about the great disappointment their lives have been to them, about what he calls the day’s miraculous reprieve — time’s and temperature’s deliverance. (Because he’s flirting. He doesn’t have to speak to him like this, doesn’t have to mention their deaths or speak their names, doesn’t have to bring up the day’s rarity or say anything about not renting the other boats. Because — there’s nothing in it for him; he wants nothing from this looker but his attention — he’s flirting, waving his fine and fetching fettle like a braggart’s flag. Because he’s in high humor, has what he hadn’t known he’d come for. Because he is flirting, floating the raised, willful waftage of his spirit. Flirting with the boat-rental boy, with Mary, even with his doomed and helpless charges.)

In minutes they are arranged in the boats. Colin is in a Sunfish with Tony Word, Benny in a Sprite with Lydia, and Mary Cottle and Noah Cloth are in a second Sprite. Rena Morgan is to drive Janet Order and Charles Mudd-Gaddis in the pontoon boat. The young fellow at the boat rental has agreed to close his booth and rent no more boats.

Colin, who looks like a good sailor, is. Somehow he maneuvers the sailboat between the two small speedboats and steers beside Rena’s blocky, raftlike launch. He keeps them all in line with his high spirits, towing them with his extraordinary cheer.

“Men,” he calls to Rena and Lydia, to Charles and to Tony, to Benny and Noah and Mary Cottle and Janet Order, “it’s dear old Dunkerque all over again! Hail Britannia, how about it?” he roars. “Hail Britannia.”

(It’s like having money to spend. Like being a customer. Yes, like having an advantage over the clerk who serves him; and his decisions and his whims, still in reserve, are like having the clerk’s commission in his pocket. Alternately yielding and withholding at will, this is his flirtatiousness, his playboy’s devil-may- care airs on him like perfume.)