At Stump Town, a guitar-banjo-bongo trio is warming up for a celebration. Reverend Al pours Arthur a hot toddy from his Thermos, and they click cups. “I have to admit the pagan ceremony brought faster results than mine. Little twinge of doubt there.” He has just returned from the Holy Tree, whose tenants are celebrating too. “They’re having a gay old time scripting a set-piece for this evening, though God knows what. They want you there. I’ll pick you up.”
Though still smarting from Lotis’s defection, Arthur is buoyed by the hope of reuniting tonight with Margaret. Tomorrow, he will make a vigorous pitch for Lotis-Santorini may not slap her in irons now that the eagles are nesting. He can hardly allow cutting to begin now anyway.
Reverend Al pulls into the driveway, beaming. “I’m thinking of incorporating a few Vedic ceremonies into my next service. One must borrow the best from other creeds.”
“What brings this heresy on?”
“We have eggs, Arthur, two of them. Enjoy this.”
A glossy photo: two frowning eagles perched by the nest, surveying their realm, the Kingdom of Gwendolyn Valley. Partly obscured by the lip of the nest are two grey oval shapes.
“Leif Thorson came out of retirement, fused vertebrae and all, put on his spurs, went up the rigging of the tallest fir on the bluffs, and rappelled to a tree overhanging the Gap. Two healthy-looking eggs, Arthur. Thirty-five days of incubation, eighty days before the juveniles leave the nest. Have we bought the summer?”
“I’m not sure.” Who knows what could happen with Santorini the Unpredictable. Never mind, if today’s rustic ceremony plays out as he expects, Margaret will be home tonight. He has baked a lemon pie. A little scorched on top, but a respectable effort.
Musicians are playing again at Stump Town, the band swollen to six, augmented by fiddle, flute, and ukulele. Young people are dancing. Corporal Al is standing by his bicycle, panting in sweat-soaked regimentals but grinning with the accomplishment of his steep haul to the Gap.
“This is getting too noisy,” he says. “I’m shutting it down before Vern comes by with his trombone. Can’t use the hall, it’s got a spring flower fundraiser, so I’ll ask the Rosekeepers if they mind moving the party to their picnic grounds. It’ll probably go all night, in case you boys feel overcome by the need to dance.”
Nearing the Holy Tree, Arthur hears two female voices, joined in a chant. In their aerie, Margaret and Lotis have their arms around each other, and are reciting a banal oft-quoted poem: “Woodman, spare that tree.” They’re hamming it up, a vaudeville routine.
Cud Brown leans scornfully against the trunk, arms folded, refusing to add to some lesser poet’s celebrity. The performance draws a sardonic cheer from a couple of reporters.
The rope ladder flutters down. Arthur wonders if he’s expected to climb it, to participate in this revue, join them in a soft-shoe, or perhaps the grand quartet from Rigoletto. But clearly his role will be to receive Margaret in his arms as she descends from her throne. He should have brought flowers. He must think of bon mots for the intruding microphones.
Arthur settles under the ladder, holding it steady. She’ll not forget the safety line, he hopes. Slappy knows what’s up, he’s wagging his tail fiercely. It’s a beautiful scene, lit by a spike of sunlight through the trail. What descends, directly above, is a floppy pair of large boots below knobby knees and hairy thighs. Arthur steps back to widen the angle, confirms that the scruffy shape coming down is Cud Brown, with his old army rucksack. His sour face hints that this is not his finest hour.
Margaret launches one of her paper gliders. It takes a wide circle toward Cud, then catches a breeze and dips several feet down, and is finally hooked in the claws of a dead branch within Cud’s reach.
He has the gall to open and read it. He shouts to its author: “Oh, real sensitive. I got feelings.” Cud resumes his descent and drops the now formless airplane. Arthur sticks it in a pocket. And now he’s assailed by a miasmic stench. It’s a whiff of Cud, now only a body length above him. The loosely booted feet, when level to Arthur’s nose, have a peculiarly rich tang.
“Whew,” says a young man helping hold the ladder. A flashbulb blinds Cud as he releases his rucksack. This fifty-pound object lands on Arthur’s chest as he cranes to look up, and sends him hard on his rear, missing Slappy by a hair. An excruciating pain in the tailbone tells Arthur he won’t be sitting for a while.
Arthur didn’t want to look foolish by bringing a pillow, so this morning he stands at the back of a half-lit courtroom, watching a video on an eighty-inch screen, footage spliced together from newscasts. Denied his hope of breezing to victory, Paul Prudhomme is trying to persuade Santorini he’s being mocked.
Selwyn seems in deep concentration, creating images from sound. Then a smile as Lotis says on screen, “Beam me up.”
“You might recall Ms. Rudnicki from this courtroom, milord,” says Prudhomme, “but without the green hair. Flouting, in front of the press, your order prohibiting anyone else going up that tree.”
Santorini lets loose a chuckle, but smothers it. Arthur cannot fathom the mood of this mercurial judge-he’s watching intently, particularly the beaming-up, a camera focused on Lotis’s buttocks. Her ascent, her backward glance, her fist of triumph, made it onto U.S. newscasts: the ex-Hollywood starlet who risks arrest for defending an American emblem.
Prudhomme does not inflict on them the bathos of Woodman, spare that tree, but does linger on Margaret waving at Arthur, launching her bad-news glider. It had a demoralizing effect on Arthur: a glum evening, sharing his lemon pie with Kim Lee.
Margaret’s note was annoyingly upbeat. She’s on the homestretch, nine days to go. (We’re winning, Arthur! We have eggs!) Having survived a week and a half with Cud Brown (A mop, a scrubber, and two pails of water-would you mind, Arthur?), she’ll come down proudly when her term is up. As to the malodorous poet, she wrote: What an animal-I was always picking up his greasy socks. Thank God for Lotis. While Cyrano stalled at the starting gate, the Green Avenger raced to triumph, rescuing the fair damsel from the poet-in-exile’s gamy consanguinity.
The courtroom gasps as the rucksack fells Arthur, his mouth open in clownish astonishment, Slappy darting away. This has Santorini in another struggle against laughter, his face going red.
“Meanwhile,” says Prudhomme, “the defendant Blake remains up that tree in defiance of your Lordship’s strictures.” Prudhomme is carrying on stoutly, though rattled by Santorini’s sniggers.
“Weren’t you in the Appeal Court when they quashed my order? Never mind, play that last part again.”
Fast rewind, Arthur rising, looking goofy, Slappy scampering backwards. Again, the rucksack drops and Arthur sits down hard.
“Ho! That dog got out of there just in time.”
The usually sanguine Prudhomme is exasperated. “Milord, this travesty has been going on for two weeks now. Surely the plaintiff is entitled to some relief.”
“Whole different state of affairs. A pair of eagles, that’s what we have, and two in the shell. You claimed that nest was abandoned, and now you’ve got yourself in a pickle.”
“Milord,” says Prudhomme, “may I have a few moments?”
“I’ll wait.” Santorini can’t help grinning as he looks at the standee in the back. “Would you be more comfortable if you sat, Mr. Beauchamp?” The room erupts in laughter.
The plaintiff’s team caucuses: Prudhomme, two helpmates, and Todd Clearihue, whose smile is fixed and looks surreal. Selwyn’s antennae may be picking up stray words-he fiddles in his briefcase, pulls out a file.