|
|
||||
A New Jeopardy Part Twelve
|
||||
|
Jack's cutlass rasped metallically in the frosted air as he unsheathed it. Looking at Bud, he said, "So it begins." But...then...the epi ended. Was the Captain ...wrong? ***************** Nero, catching the glint of the morning sun on the Captain's blade, lifted his head, staring at the little groupling that had just rounded the far side of the boxcar. Joimus suggested that the three women talk loudly and swish their skirts. "If we keep his eye fixed on us, keep him blind to all else that moves, then the three of you can slip around through the woods nearer to the cage." Jack
studied the scene before him. Indeed, the eye of the tiger did seem
intently focused on the women. Perhaps it was the pounding rhythm of
the tune that Berti kept humming, calling to mind the grungier
boxing rings of Philadelphia, that so attracted the tiger's eye, or
maybe he was just sizing up which meat would be more tender. The three women began to swish their skirts rapidly whilst quoting dialog from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the sight and sound of which did, indeed, have the desired result of making both tigers completely forget about the 3 characters circling far to the right. In fact, so mesmerizing was the scenario of it all, that Nero and Brutus stepped off the General's rust-colored cape and began to move slowly across the snow towards the women. This, alas, was NOT what Joimus had had in mind and so the ladies began to back up whilst keeping their fronts turned toward the striped felines. Joimus looked quickly at Berti. "You know all about cats," she said urgently. "What NOW?" As vast as
her expertise admittedly was, Berti had yet in her life to be
stalked by tigers in the snow. She backed right into the side of the
boxcar. Quickly she felt for the edge of its sliding door. Yes! It
moved! "Help me," she said, and the 3 women managed to
push the door all the way open and clamber inside. The boxcar rested upright in the deep snow, its cargo of canvas tenting splopped wildly about. "Is there another door on the far side?" Berti asked. Bunny climbed over the tenting to check. "Yes," she called back, "and it's halfway open." Berti smiled. "If we can somehow lure the tigers into the boxcar, we can escape out the far door." She studied Joimus. "They seem particularly attracted by your swishing gossamer. You can be the bait." Joimus folded her arms across her chest and narrowed her eyes at the Louisianan. "Surely you jest," she said. "Oh, I think she means it!" Bunny chimed in, glad that someone else was also being called Shirley now. Berti shrugged. "Do you want to save Maximus or not?" She had Joimus there and she knew it. Joimus sighed, turning to look out at the tigers again. "Bunny and I will go out the far door," Berti explained, "and when the tigers jump into the boxcar to eat you, you hop over the tents and out that door. Bunny will be there to help you slide it closed and I'll crawl under the boxcar and be ready to shut this door when they're inside." Joimus closed her eyes. She gulped loudly. She knew a thing was about to happen that had not happened since the elderdays. Berti rested her palm on Bunny's shoulder. "Let this be the hour when we slide boxcar doors together." It was all just so...Ringish. Joimus hoped against hope that Berti would refrain from adding, "Go now and die in what way seems best to you." She really, really didn't need that said right at the moment. Especially not now that Berti and Bunny were making their way over the splopped tents and she was alone by the wide open boxcar door, watching the tigers who were watching her. She gave a half-hearted swish to her gossamer gown and it seemed to her they moved a bit faster. Jack, Bud,
and Sid had stopped about halfway around toward the cage. "The
tigers are moving toward the womenfolk," Bud said, his face all
gone into a terrible scowl. He just hated it when tigers ate his
womenfolk. It had ever been one of his pet peeves. Sid saw Joimus standing alone just inside the open door of the boxcar. This he found most amusing. For his old enemy to end up a tasty tiger tidbit would be an entertaining sight. Bunny, of course, would be angry with him for his enjoyment of it, but he had confidence in his ways of restoring her good humor. Jack, being
Jack, and all used to plunging cutlass-first into the thick of any
fray, took off across the snowfield in a mad dash of flailing
epaulets. Bud sprinted after him. Sid, though, walked over to
Maximus, standing there silently, looking down at the General,
thinking thoughts that he would never share with anyone. He took the
toe of his shoe and ran it slightly back and forth along the side of
Maximus' cuirass, then turned to watch the action by the boxcar play
out. The tigers
were almost there and Joimus had backed up several steps, her eyes
wide, her breathing shallow and quick. Nero gathered himself to
spring through the opening. Just then Jack, roaring loudly, smacked
the tiger on the rump with the flat of his cutlass. Nero whirled,
facing the Captain. Brutus, too, stopped and stared at him. Nero's
face was a mask of rage and he already had his front paws off the
ground, ready to leap, when suddenly his expression changed and he
hesitated. His eyes took in the gleaming brass buttons, the shining
epaulets, the long jacket, the shirt ruffles, the pony tail, the
assured stance. He knew it wasn't his own trainer, but this HAD to
be at least the lion tamer he'd often seen from a distance. He was
so confused by the wreck and the rolling down the slope and this
strange, cold stuff under his paws. He longed for something
familiar...and there it stood in front of him. He forgot about the
tasty morsel in the boxcar, sat on his haunches, and waved his paws
in the air. Berti, under the front edge of the car, laughed. Jack was not prepared for this behavior from the beast, and had no idea, of course, WHY the tiger was acting in such a manner. He called to Joimus, "Out the far door...quickly now!" She didn't have to be told twice. She scrambled over the tent canvas and, together, she and Bunny slid that door closed and joined Berti. Bud came up beside Jack and, being a century and a half more modern, had a better idea of what was happening. Whispering in Jack's ear, he suggested that the Captain use his cutlass to masterfully command the tigers into the boxcar. With a particularly neat swoosh of his blade, Jack ordered, "UP! Up now!" and both tigers turned and leapt through the open door, which he and Bud then quickly closed. "You can...," he started to say to the women, but Joimus was off like a shot, running across the snow toward Maximus. Sid, seeing her coming, had the grace to move away. Breathless, she flung herself on her knees in the snow near Maximus' head. Snow matted his hair and uttering little wordless sounds, she used her fingertips to brush it off. She pressed her cheek to his, appalled at how cold it felt. Getting to her feet, she moved to his other side, pulling his cape up and over him, then settled back to her knees on that side. Taking his right hand, she pressed his knuckles to her throat. He moaned slightly and his lids began to flicker open. Blinking several times, he looked up at her. After a long moment of silence, the corners of his mouth curved slightly and he whispered, "I know your face." His eyes roamed her features. "Joimus," he said. He groaned again. "My eyes darken." "NO!" she cried, "No...I'm going to save you!" He looked at her steadily then. "You already have," he murmured. His eyes half closed. "I see white shores...and, beyond, a far green country." Sid, still close enough to hear, commented drily to Bunny, who had joined him. "Doesn't he usually see poplar trees and Tuscan villas?" Joimus was crying, her tears freezing on her cheeks. Maximus continued, barely audibly, "Thus have I walked and thus now will I sleep." His eyes were closing more. "NO!" Joimus cried loudly. "Oaths you have taken to me! Now fulfill them all to love and lady!!" Sid looked at Bunny. "He's taken...oaths?"
"Shush!" she snapped. "It's KingSpeak and, besides, you don't know everything." Refraining from correcting her error in that matter, he turned his attention back to the couple in the snow. Brushing more snow away from his
side, she unsheathed his gladius and folded his cold hand around its
hilt. "Your fingers would remember your old strength better if
they grasped your sword." Berti climbed into the open end of the passsenger car."Annsmac! Annsmac!" she shouted. "Bring Terry! We have need of him!" The K&R agent still lay rather limply in her arms. Her deblunter had been wrested from her grip by the force of the wreck and heaven only knew where it had landed inside the tumbled car. "I can't," she called back. "He's only partially deblunted. He's very weak still." "He MUST come!" Berti said. "Why?" annsmac groaned, "Why must he come?" "It's Maximus, Berti explained. "The...the tiger cage. It's on his legs." "Tiger cage?" annsmac said, puzzled. "Were there tigers in the baggage car?" "No...on the circus train," Berti said. "He'll die if we don't get him out quickly." Terry,
quite pale from his recent ordeal under the train, began to stand.
He staggered and annsmac sprang to his side, clutching his arm
protectively. "How can he move a tiger cage? He can barely
stand!"
Terry looked down at her, his face drawn but determined. "I have to help. You know I do." He was right. She knew it. And, so, with annsmac on one side and Berti on the other, the trio made their way out of the passenger car. When Bunny saw them coming, she yelled, "HURRY! He's seeing white shores!" "Oh, NO!" cried Berti. "Don't let him get on any boats!"
"I doubt he's going anywhere," Sid commented, "what with that huge cage on his legs." "Not THAT kind of boat!" said Bunny, getting truly peeved with him. Terry walked as fast as he could. Several times he would have fallen had it not been for the supportive women. Sid narrowed his eyes. "HE'S going to save the General?" he said, shaking his head. Maximus' eyes were opened now in mere slits. He began softly humming Roman sailing songs. Joimus was frantic. She leaned over him, placing her hands on his shoulders. "Maximus...STOP!" she cried in that way that so seldom ever worked for long on the General. When she lifted her hand from atop his on the hilt, his fingers uncurled and the sword fell into the snow. Sid reached
into his pocket, pulling out two silver dollars. "Coins for the
boatman?" he proffered. "Wrong movie!" snapped Bunny, although she knew Troy had been seen again just last night. Breathing heavily, Terry stopped, surveying the cage. Inwardly he groaned, though he showed no sign of it on his face. He walked completely around the cage, stopping when he discovered a section of it near a mid-sized boulder. "Here," he said. "This is the spot." Annsmac gently, worriedly, helped him position his equipment. She could see he intended to use it as a lever to lift one side of the heavy cage. Jack and Bud got ready to slide Maximus out from under it. "Move him as quickly as you can," Terry said. "I won't be able to hold it up long." Terry's neck muscles corded, his lips pressed tightly together, and with all his remaining strength he began to lift the cage. Annsmac could barely watch. "Now!" commanded Jack and he and Bud pulled on Maximus. The General let out one sharp cry then went limp. "We've got him!" shouted Bud...and Terry crumpled into a silent heap. Instantly annsmac was at his side, lifting his head into her lap, brushing the snow off his brow, his cheeks. "Oh, my darling," she cried, raining kisses on his lips, "you are so brave." He opened his eyes and asked weakly, "Is Maximus OK?" "I don't know...I don't know," annsmac moaned, looking over her shoulder toward where the General lay. "At least he's out from under the cage." Bud,
looking at Maximus' dented greaves, said quietly to Jack. "I'll
go get Stephen. Franki and Marti, too," he added. Just then Lachlan came running out of the nearby woods. "A town!" he cried. "There's a little town just down the hill!" "Good!" Bud replied. "Did you see any place where we can take our wounded?" "Yes," Lachlan answered. "Right on the edge of it is an old-fashioned motel with small, individual cottages." He had no idea why Bud frowned so at his words. "Did you catch the name of the place?" the cop asked, his nostrils flaring a bit. "Yeah,"
Lachlan said, "it was the Victory Motel." Bud heaved a ragged breath, his hand going inadvertently to his cheek. "Don't go there," he said, his voice a bit harsh. "Find someplace else. ANY place else!" As Bud
sprinted off to find medical help, Jack and Lachlan managed to slide
a flat piece of wreckage under Maximus. "Please help
them," Bunny asked Sid, who looked carefully at his nails and
complained, "But I just had a manicure." When she would
have grabbed one side of the wreckage herself, he sighed and said,
"All right. Don't get your cottontail in a twist." They came to the motel, a rather dismal old place with hundreds of small holes pocking its pale walls, and continued on into the tiny town. "Where shall we take him?" asked Lachlan, looking at the small selection of choices. "There!" said Jack, inclining his head toward a brightly-lit cafe. All of them wet from clinging snow, all of them tired and emotionally frayed, all of them staggered through the doors, laying the wreckage piece with the General on it atop a small counter on the right-hand side of the narrow room. A man wearing a greasy apron looked up from the bacon he was frying.
"Welcome to the Night Owl Coffee Shop, " he said, his cigarette ash falling into the pan.
Next
|
||||
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|||
| |
|
|||
| |
|
|||
