Scott Spencer - A Ship Made of Paper

Daniel goes back into the house and as soon as he is inside he can tell by the quality ofthe silence that the children are no longer there.He goes to the kitchen and looks into the backyard.An olive-green tent has been pitched between two hemlocks;Nelson is standing next to the flap while Ruby crawls in, and then he crawls in himself.Daniel wonders for a moment whether he ought to go out and show the flag ofadult super-vision, but then he thinks it would be pointless.

He wanders through the house, looking for a spot where he can unobtrusively sit while the time passes.What had seemed at first like a fa-vor he was capable ofdoing for Iris seems now perilous, foolish, and strange.The entire success ofthe gesture hinges on Hampton staying asleep, and though Daniel is still enough ofan optimist to believe that Hampton will not awaken before Iris’s return, now that he is in the house—with its signs ofsuffering everywhere, a cane in the corner, a table filled with amber medicine bottles, brightly colored plastic baskets filled with laundry, piles ofblankets for the frequent house guests, the loving family who come when they can to share the burden ofHampton’s affliction—now that he is breathing the Lysol-tinged heat ofthis airless, sunny room, Daniel realizes not only that he is perched on the precipice ofdisaster but that he has been on this increasingly exhausting edge for months now.

He sits on the sofa facing the empty fireplace.Next to it is a large wicker basket filled with mail.Idly, Daniel looks in and sees that it is all for Hampton.Daniel scoops his hand into the pile, lets them fall;it’s like a write-in campaign, an appeal to the governor for neurological clemency.Free the Hampton One, let him come back to renew his sub-scriptions, make his donations, place his order, balance his checking ac-counts, look after his investments, go to Bermuda.

Scarecrow comes waddling down the stairs, roused from her spot next to Hampton’s bed.She seems to have aged years in the past six months.Her rump is massive now, her gait slow and uncertain, her brown eye is alert, but her blue eye, once keen and electric, is now milky and opaque.She moves toward Daniel, lowers her snout, and pushes the top ofher head against his legs.He strokes her silky ears, and she emits a deep, mellow groan ofpleasure.

“Oh, Scarecrow, Scarecrow, what in the world are we going to do?”

Daniel says, in that plaintive murmur people sink into when they are opening their heart to an animal.The old shepherd raises her snout, looks up and her tongue unfurls from her mouth, lands on Daniel’s chin, and then sweeps up over his lips.“What are we going to do, Scarecrow? What’s going to happen to us? It’s pretty messed up, isn’t it, Scarecrow? How did everything get to be so broken?”

Daniel slumps back in the chair, continues to pet the dog.He closes his eyes and is about to sink into sleep when he is startled and revived by the sound offootsteps directly overhead.Hampton is awake, awake and moving.His first impulse is to hide;he stands up and his legs tremble for want offlight, his good eye looks for the quickest way out ofthe room.

He tries to calm himself by thinking that perhaps it is someone other than Hampton upstairs, or even ifit is Hampton, then he may not be coming down—he is going to get a drink ofwater, or take a leak, or maybe he has heard the children in the backyard and he is going to a win-dow to gaze out at them.But no:this is merely a story Daniel is telling himself, a little explanatory fable that will allow him to believe that the worst is not about to happen.

Now the footsteps are on the stairs, coming down, and Daniel has not run, he has not hidden.He sits down.He will seem less threatening, less intrusive, seated.He crosses his legs, left to right, then right to left, and then leaves them uncrossed, the knees slightly parted, his clammy hands folded between them.He ransacks his mind for something to say, an ex-planation for why he is here, an apology, a bit ofsmall talk, and then he remembers what should have been impossible to forget—Hampton cannot understand a word, not spoken or written, and all Hampton him-selfcan say is that single stunned syllable:da.Da Da Da.

How strange, then, to finally see him, this strong, beautiful man whose throat was pierced by a rocket, this ruined prince who has lost everything.He is dressed in copper-colored pajamas, with white piping around the pockets and down the leg.The top buttons ofhis shirt are open, the scar just below theAdam’s apple looks like a wad ofchewed-up gum, and someone has spread talcum powder on his throat all the way down to the chest.He is freshly shaved but his eyeglasses have been snapped in two and then repaired with tape á la Ferguson Richmond.It seems unthinkable that Hampton would be wearing broken glasses, it is, for the moment, the saddest thing in the world.Sadder than his slack mouth, the corner ofwhich is yanked down and to the side, sadder than his dull, unblinking eyes, sadder than the cologne Mrs.Davis has splashed on him, and sadder, even, than the fact that he is wearing his wristwatch, with its lizard-skin band and nineteen jewels, its expensive Swiss ner-voussystem, its mini-clocks at the bottom giving the time in London and Tokyo.

“Hello, Hampton,”Daniel says.He knows he cannot be understood, yet he can’t simply stand there and say nothing.And even ifthe words are gibberish to Hampton, even ifto his bombed-out brain the sounds Daniel makes are no more decipherable than the chattering ofa monkey, perhaps the context will do, the logic ofthe moment, the gesturing hand, the smiling mouth, the deferential little bow.

“Da,”Hampton whispers.He shuffles forward a step.He hasn’t noticed that Scarecrow is underfoot now and on his second step he catches the dog’s paw beneath his foot.She lets out a high, piercing yelp.Hamp-ton is startled.His eyes widen, his mouth opens—his expressions are guileless and large.His personality, no longer projected through the scrim oflanguage, has now an intolerable purity.He looks down at the dog and smiles.At first it seems to Daniel that there is some cruelty here, but then Hampton pats the dog’s head with a wooden herky-jerky move-ment, and Daniel realizes that the smile was one ofrecognition:Scare-crow’s cry has made more sense to Hampton than Daniel’s hello.

When he has comforted Scarecrow, made his amends, Hampton straightens up again, looks at Daniel, taking him in in a long, silent gaze.

Daniel feels he must somehow communicate, but the only sign language he can think ofis gestures ofsupplication.He folds his hands, low-ers his head, and sorrowfully shakes his head.Yet even this does not seem enough—what could be? He wants Hampton to be restored.Short of that, he wants to be forgiven, he wants Hampton to give that to him, to lift him offthe hook and set him free, to place an exonerating hand on Daniel’s shoulder and admit to the idea—submit to it, ifthat’s what it takes—that what happened in those woods was a fluke and had nothing to do with Daniel and Iris.Daniel will not allow himself to beg for mercy, he will not try to urge Hampton to see that the two ofthem are simply men who have been caught in the Rube Goldberg machinery oflife.

Then, for no particular reason, he has a fleeting thought:Ruby.How long have those two been out there?A halfhour? More?

But the thought evaporates because Hampton is crying.He is drumming his long fingers against his head—shaved by Mrs.Davis, nicked here and there, the cuts left to dry in the air—and he is shaking his head, more vociferously than a simple no, he is shaking it to clear it, to dispel some merciless, obliterating beast that lives within, eating his words.

Tears as thick as glycerine streak down his cheeks, and his mouth is twisted into a scowl ofgrief.Daniel’s heart, in a convulsion ofempathy, leaps, as ifto its own annihilation.