Two Fables

　

　

　

　

1.

The great Magus felt inconvenienced. When his aunt invited him to her Fourth of July brunch, she said that food would be served at noon. But it was almost 1:30 by his wristwatch, and the grill on which the hamburgers and bratwurst were to be cooked had just been lit. The charcoal flared merrily and everyone seemed cheerful except the Magus. He sat alone brooding.

The cause for the delay was an ice cream social at the Congregational Church down the street. The smaller children clamored to attend and, so, the meal was deferred until the kids with their mothers in tow returned from the church. The men and the women with nursing babies sat on the redwood deck at the Magus’ aunts house drinking beer. The Magus didn’t like beer. It gave him gas.

Mothers and children returned from the ice-cream social. It was unnatural, the great Magus thought, for dessert to be served before the meal and, now, the children had slimy faces and were hyper-active because of the sugar in the ice-cream and their voices had become particularly loud and shrill.

Big Ronnie stood by the grill, moving around the meat. Everything about Big Ronnie was large. One of his grandchildren, a seven-year old boy named Tristran Eliot Wilson, stood beside Big Ronnie tugging at his pant’s leg.

"I want a hot dog," the child said.

"I’m making you one, Hermes," Big Ronnie said in his big voice.

"I’m not Hermes," the little boy replied.

One of the mothers lit a cigarette and asked Big Ronnie why he called the child "Hermes."

"I don’t know," Big Ronnie said. "It’s a name I heard somewhere."

"I’m not Hermes," the boy said indignantly. "I’m Tristan Eliot Wilson."

"No, you’re Hermes," Big Ronnie said, meat juices flaring into flame beneath his belly.

"Tristan Eliot Wilson," the boy insisted, pouting.

The great Magus was sitting at a picnic table, nursing a lemonade.

"You should be proud to be Hermes," the great Magus said. "Either you are named after Fred Astaire’s choreographer, Hermes Pan, or —"

"I’m not Hermes," the boy said. "I’m Tristan Eliot Wilson."

The great Magus continued: "– or you are named after Hermes Trismegistus, the thrice-great Hermes, worshiped with Thoth, the scribe, on the banks of the Nile, the guide of souls, and the author of the secret wisdom that precedes Christianity and is a greater, and more truthful revelation."

"What are you saying?" Big Ronnie said. Fat sizzled in the grill and greasy smoke coiled skyward.

"I’m Tristan Eliot Wilson," the child repeated.

"Stop with this bullshit," Big Ronnie said, menacing the great Magus with his silver spatula. "Is this some kind of Islamic fundamentalist bullshit?"

The great Magus looked at Big Ronnie.

"If he wants to be called Tristan, than you ought to call him Tristan," Big Ronnie said.

"But you were teasing him," one of the women said.

Someone brought out the coleslaw and the potato salad. Butterflies flickered over the blossoms in the flower beds. In an alleyway, a string of firecrackers detonated and this made a dog howl.

"I’m just saying, we don’t need this Muslim bullshit," Big Ronnie said.

The great Magus considered whether he should open the lawn under Big Ronnie’s feet and hurl him though the flaming maw of the earth, beyond the ecliptic where maddened and ruinous planets swooned in fire, tormented goblins chanting as they whirled across the zodiac.

The great Magus decided to be magnanimous. A garter snake slithered across the lawn and he stood up to salute the beast. Big Ronnie shoveled cooked meat onto a platter and Tristan Eliot Wilson whimpered again, asking for a hot dog.

　

　

　

2.

It is not an easy thing to camp on Martha’s Vineyard during the high season – campsites are scarce and must be reserved far in advance and, in any event, they are exorbitantly priced. After a couple days, Innes decided that he would have to sleep in his pickup truck. But this is not such an easy thing to accomplish either. The island is small and its roads and byways are heavily patrolled by police and Innes had difficulty finding a place appropriately remote and unvisited for his hermitage at night. A narrow gravel lane led into the State Forest in the center of the island and, after dark, Innes drove down that road to where there was a shack that had once been a meeting house for a congregation of praying Indians now long extinct. An old graveyard was hidden in the underbrush and there was a little driveway that led away from the gravel lane by the cemetery where Innes could spend the night.

Steven Spielberg was away in Morocco or, perhaps, Mallorca – Innes wasn’t sure which – directing a movie and so he had leased his summer home at West Chop to Kim Kardashian. Innes was the curator of an unofficial Kim Kardashian fan-site and he collected memorabilia about the celebrity and thought of himself as her most devoted admirer. He had come to Martha’s Vineyard in the hope of seeing Ms. Kardashian and, perhaps, acquiring her autograph. This was his most deeply held desire.

At home, in Decatur, Innes installed home security systems. On the door of his pick-up truck, there was a large eye without eyelashes and the words: FINEX SECURITY SYSTEMS: The Eye that never Sleeps! His cell-phone number was printed beside the logo. On his front seat, Innes kept a clipboard with contracts and product specifications attached to his daily appointment log. The yellow shell of a hard hat sat on his dashboard. These furnishings, and his neat white uniform, gave his truck a reassuring and professional aspect. He had no difficulty gaining access to the neighborhood of elite seaside mansions at the security gate at West Chop. The drowsy guard nodded at him as if he were an old friend and Innes drove along the tree-lined lane where big estates within walled compounds overlooked the bay. The air was glittering and the dew glistened in the ivy on the stone walls and between tangled masses of wood and shrubbery, Innes saw the gable of a house, a clapboard tower weathered grey by the wind and sea-salt, a wet ravine tilted toward a small scooped-out cove where he glimpsed a brick boathouse and a white-winged sailing ship at moor. The road looped and there were service drives that ended at barracks-like structures, old stables converted into staff dormitories or administrative offices where invariably a man in khakis and a navy-blue jacket emerged, blinking in the sun to ask Innes his business. Each time, Innes admitted that he was lost, provided an address without a name, and, then, waited for the man to point in one direction or another, gesturing toward back down the lane to the trees rising above the vast lawns where fountains spurted and sad-looking white statues stood in the green shadows.

After a few circuits of the road looping around the peninsula, Innes found the Spielberg house and approached the big structure on a narrow service road boring through the trees to make a green tunnel. There was a clearing, a meadow with flower beds and a few smaller trees wind-cropped and bent on the headland, and, beside a salt-water marsh, another long stables building decked-out with satellite dishes. A heliport painted like a yellow target stood next to the stables and the big hulk of the house, a barren range of brick ramparts and round towers, rose overhead, on the high point overlooking the bay. Innes saw a dumpster and a couple of garbage cans beside the stables building and, so, he climbed out of his pick-up, put on his hard hat, and, pretending to make some notes on his clipboard, approached the refuse bins. This was precisely what he was seeking, a treasure trove of personal items discarded in the rubbish. Eggshells and the remains of a shrimp dinner in clots of fettucine decorated a tangle of garden clippings in a compost bin. A half-dozen magazines and two unread editions of the New York Times were in another bin. A third compartment contained a wealth of invoices, unopened letters soliciting proceeds, and pages from what seemed to be a film script. Innes bent over these materials rapidly sorting them, before slipping the sheets into a evidence baggies.

As he worked, Kim Kardashian and Kanye came from stables building and walked briskly toward a garage. Innes didn’t see them. A moment later, a silver Range Rover emerged from the garage, glided down the driveway and, then, turned up the service lane that Innes had used to access the dumpsters. Because he was stooped over the garbage bins, Innes didn’t see any of this.