Bishop Berkeley's Tree

By Patrick E. Kennon

Bishop Berkeleys Tree, the famous tree that fell in the forrest without making a sound, is a collection of 26 related stories. These tales of deception and self-deception, of children and criminals, of jokers and fanatics, of bigots and diplomats, of victims and villains, all explore some aspect of the relationship between truth and perception. Given the unstable nature of this relationship, all of these stories, even the most grim, should be read as comedies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 23, 2007
• ISBN: 9781462843008

Patrick E. Kennon

Patrick E. Kennon is retired after serving 25 years in the Central Intelligence Agency. Before joining the CIA, Mr. Kennon worked as an interpreter during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, as an oilman in Argentina, and as a sailor in the Caribbean. Mr. Kennon is the author of two nonfiction works, Twilight of Democracy and Tribe and Empire. Although Mr. Kennon published short fiction in Esquire magazine in the 1950s, this is his first book-length work in the genre. Mr. Kennon lives in Falls Church, Virginia.

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BISHOP BERKELEY’S TREE

Patrick E. Kennon

Copyright © 2007 by Patrick E. Kennon.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

WARNING

DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT

POLLY FRENCH

VIRGIN BIRTH

PRO BONO

I GOT SOMETHING YOU WANT

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

THE WEDDING

CAPOEIRA or IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO or JORGE FILHO’S VERY WORST DAY

THE PICTURE

TURTLES

MISS CLAGHORN

YOU BE MY JUDGE

NEWS FROM THE FRONT

HOMELESS

SICKOS

EROS AND THANATOS

THE PURLOINED CRIME

DRIFTING

A STICK OF GUM

HE, ME, AND JUDAS

PRESS CONFERENCE

THE STORY OF MATEO

A LOCKED-ROOM MYSTERY

TANDA

DUST COVERS

THE HOLLOW BOOK

WARNING

These stories explore the wavering border between fiction and fact, between personal illusions and the madness of crowds, between the lies we tell ourselves and the lies the world tells us.

That being said, these stories are fiction. The characters are fictitious, their actions are fictitious, and the motivations for their actions are fictitious. Although the idea for each story sprang from an actual event, the stories are not intended as comments upon those events. This is not the way it really happened. This is not even the way it really might have happened. I am not Oliver Stone, nor was meant to be.

Of Childishness and Children

DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT

Let’s say it happened a long time ago, when the billionaire’s son was almost fifteen. This is the way it might have happened.

The billionaire’s son had few friends, so he went to the movies and read. He did not read good books, literature. He read sea stories, adventures, pioneer tales, boys’ how-to-do-it books, collections of mythology, and soft-core romances written for a certain type of female reader. One of his favorite books was Swallows and Amazons. which he first read when he was ten. Another was Wild Geese Calling. Still another was Lydia Bailey,

He also built ship models, very accurate ship models. He would spend many months to get every detail exactly right.

That fall, when he went back to school, he made some friends. It was at a friend’s house that he jumped into an empty pool, thinking that it had water. No one has ever explained why he had been invited to a swimming party, when the pool had no water.

He would have died, had he not been the billionaire’s son. I don’t care if the little shit’s a vegetable! the billionaire had bellowed. Just keep him alive!

The boy could not move, he could not talk, nor hear, nor see. But he was not quite in a true coma. He could breathe and he had brain waves.

The billionaire did of course want his son to be more than a vegetable, once he knew that he would live. His face was red with tears and anger, when he bellowed, You fuckers do something for him! Call in anybody you want! Fuck the cost! Just bring him back, even a little. Christ! Can’t you even do that? He glared around the room full of white coats. You fail me and I’m going to shut this place down and see that none of you piss-ants ever practice again!

The doctors nodded gravely.

That is the way it might have happened.

*

The boy woke in the darkness, in the silence, knowing what had happened. His memory was perfect. There had been no water in the pool. He could remember the jolt of his head against the concrete. He could remember it, but he could not feel it. There was nothing he could feel now, in the expanse of silence, in the sweep of darkness.

He wondered how long it would take him to go insane. He wondered if they would be able to tell that he had gone insane. He decided that it was important that he not go insane. He was alone; it was all up to him.

His enemy was time. He knew that his enemy was time. Whatever he did, he must think only of the moment and never of the years ahead. He tried counting. He counted up to a thousand and then back down again. He recited the alphabet. He recited it backwards. He tried to remember the Greek alphabet. It began with alpha and ended in omega. Slowly he filled in the other letters. He thought he had them all.

How much time had passed? An hour? Two hours? A day? Five minutes?

He tried to remember songs. He didn’t know many. A few things he’d heard on the radio or that his father had sung from behind the closed door of the bathroom. Music, Music, Music, Faraway Places, Rose, Rose, I Love You, and not much else. He could remember something about start me with ten stouthearted men and something about they had a big theater, they called the burleeque, but he couldn’t fish up the rest of the words. He could remember some nursery rhymes.

How much time had passed now?

He wondered how he was being feed and how they were taking care of his piss and his poop. He didn’t feel hungry. Would he ever feel hungry? Would he know when he’d been fed?

Suddenly, he remembered some of the words to Tennessee Waltz. He thought about that for a while, but he couldn’t get the rest of the words.

Was it Sunday now? The accident had happened on Saturday, five days before his fifteenth birthday. Were people in church? Were people praying for him? He laughed. It boomed out. He put his hand over his mouth to stifle the laugh. At yet, he knew that he had not laughed, it had not boomed out, he had not moved his hand.

But he had!

He tried to remember movies and books. Each detail of the plot. But each story eventually came to an end. He tried to make up his own stories, to screen new movies never before seen. But each story eventually came to an end.

That night, he slept badly. He tossed and turned. He had bad dreams.

How did he know that it had been night? How could he have tossed and turned? What could it possibly mean, in his situation, to have had a bad dream?

The next morning, he tried to build a ship model, a Baltimore Clipper, in his mind, but he was nervous, he couldn’t make his fingers work right. His knife slipped. How much time had passed now? Maybe he would go insane. Maybe he would go insane after all. He pushed away his worktable. It fell over, tools everywhere. Shit! he said. The word echoed through the expanse of silence, but it could not escape. It was the first bad word he had ever said, but no one could hear it. He didn’t feel guilty.

He slept all that day and all the next night. It was a deep sleep, without dreams, without movement.

The next morning, he woke refreshed. He got dressed and cooked himself a big breakfast. It was the first time he’d ever tried to cook, and he made a mess of it. The bacon was almost raw, and the scrambled eggs were full of bits of shell. He’d get better. He had plenty of time to learn, and his larder was unlimited. He sat down and ate.

When he had finished eating, he picked up the big, double-bladed ax and stepped outside. It was a beautiful morning, still cool but bright with sun. He was looking for the perfect tree, white oak by preference, from which to make the keel of his ship. He wanted oak for the keel and the ribs. He wasn’t sure yet about the planking, but that could wait. It would be at least a year before he needed to think about planking.

He remembered to slow down, to walk, not fly, through the forest, to finish one step before he took the next, to grip the earth with his feet. Whenever he found himself flying, he would sit down, back against a tree, and count slowly to ten. He watched the animals. They were very bold, because—obviously—there were no other humans in the forest.

He found the perfect white oak shortly before noon. He went back to the house and boiled some hot dogs for lunch. Even he could boil a hot dog! During the winter, there would be time to experiment with fancier cooking. Now he had work to do. It was almost dark before he had finished felling the tree. He had cold hot dogs for supper and slept deeply.

*

The billionaire, in London, bellowed at the collection of prissy-looking little doctors, I don’t care if it takes years. Hell, I don’t care if it takes decades! Just do something for my son!

The doctors nodded gravely.

*

Day followed day, during that long summer. He rose early, ate a big breakfast, packed a lunch, and set out for the forest. Every day he would select and cut the trees. Once a week, he would hitch up his horse and drag the logs back to the barn. After the first week his muscles no longer ached. By July, he had become a strong and skillful logger.

It occurred to him that he had been very lucky with the weather that summer. One fine day after another. The very next day, of course, it rained.

During the fall, he rigged a jury sawmill in the barn and began to turn his logs into usable lumber. During the winter, after the first snow, he worked up a half-model, took off the lines, and did his lofting on the living room floor. She would be a double-ended ketch, 36 feet on deck, heavy, beamy, rather like a pinky, except for the rig.

One night, asleep, he dreamed about Jane Russell in The Outlaw.

After the snows melted, he returned to the forest, glad to be out of the house, glad to be back at work. Now, he had a dog, Jack, and a cat, Tall Tail, as well as the horse. Jack accompanied him to the forest. Tall Tail slept in the barn. Occasionally, when he put down his ax and straightened up to wipe his brow, he saw smoke on the horizon. People were moving into his valley.

Well, what did he expect? It was a crowded country.

In late spring, he laid a smooth concrete floor and built a shed in which to build the boat. In July, when he laid the keel, some of the farmers came around to help him. He wished he had thought to provide them with food and liquor. He supposed they would want liquor. He felt unneighborly. But the farmers did not seem to take it amiss. He talked to Tom Edwards, the blacksmith, about getting boiler punchings to add weight to his cement ballast.

Once he went into town and got drunk. He’d never do that again! He was sick for a week.

As the year progressed, he erected the frames. He counted every bolt and every spike he struck into place, remembering how he had once counted to a thousand and back again. It was the same, and yet it was different. Then he had been dealing only with numbers, abstractions, with no basis in reality. Now he was dealing with the sinews of his ship, with reality itself. There could exist one bolt or one spike or one blow with a mallet, but there could never exist a simple one. He had been a fool back then, clinging to the old world, afraid to enter the new.

He looked in the mirror and flexed his muscles, laughing. This was the life! He could hardly remember the billionaire’s timid son.

One night, fast asleep after a hard day in the shed, he dreamed about an Indian princess, a voluptuous ranee who wore a long skirt but nothing except jewelry above the waist. She seemed to like him. She seemed to like him very much. He did not want to wake up. The next morning, the weather was unseasonably cold. He mooned around the shed, hitting his thumb with a mallet, getting nothing done.

But that very afternoon, he met Savitri Pierce. He first noticed her, far down the road, while he sat in the door of the shed, sucking his bruised thumb. At first, it had been only a slight pea-jacketed figure climbing the hill. Where could it be going? Then he began to suspect that the figure was that of a girl, in spite of the masculinity of its walk. It was a singularly unfeminine walk, a long confident stride, each foot gripping the earth as it came down. It was the walk of a person used to going barefoot or wearing soft-soled shoes, the walk of a sailor or ballet dancer.

The girl, now it was easy to see that she was a girl, approached and, taking her time, looked him over. Hi, she said.

She was slight and her smallness was accentuated by the masculinity of her movements. Her hair and eyes were jet black, perhaps betraying a trace of American Indian blood. Their blackness stood out in contrast to the rest of her face, still white from the cold. She was older than he was, perhaps nineteen to his seventeen.

Hi, he answered.

You the kid who’s building a boat?

He nodded.

My name’s Savitri Pierce, Bill Pierce’s niece, she said, naming one of the farmers in the valley. I’m a sailor. Thought I’d take a look at your boat.

He waved her inside and closed the door against the cold. She slipped out of her pea-jacket and hung it on a peg near the stove. She was dressed in a black turtleneck sweater, slightly too big, and a pair of faded jeans, considerably too small, their tightness revealing legs strong, firm, and graceful. She carried a sheath knife and marlinspike in the center of her back, sailor fashion.

Savitri. That’s a strange name, he said.

It’s Indian. I mean, Indian from India, Hindu. She looked at him, cocking her head and smiling half-mockingly. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

I suppose I must have, he admitted.

"I was born in Bombay. My father was master of a training ship, the barkentine Bishop of Cloyne. So he wanted to give me an Indian name. The original Savitri was a Hindu wife who loved her husband so much that she went to hell and defied death and the devil to save him. But you knew that."

He ignored her mockery. It would be a good name for my boat.

‘You’re welcome to it, she said airily. Unless, of course, you want to name her the Nancy Blackett or the Missy Lee." She rolled and lit a cigarette. She blew a perfect smoke ring.

He did not mind her mockery. Indeed, it was a connection between them. It added to her charm. She examined the skeleton of the boat, asking intelligent questions. She was clearly impressed by the quality of his carpentry. She was less impressed when he showed her the sail plan. Not enough area. You’ll never get her to move.

I’m interested in safety. I’m planning some ambitious voyages.

Savitri was openly scornful. Fuck safety! Look. Step a good-sized topmast. Then you can carry a topsail and a jib topsail. Strike the damn thing if you decide to go around Cape Horn.

I don’t know, he said. I don’t like to give up the safety. I don’t know much about topmasts.

Once again, she smiled mockingly. "If I know about topmasts, it stands to reason that you know about topmasts!"

After Savitri was gone, he went back to the sail plan. He added another 100 square feet to the main, but he did not draw in a topmast. He was going to stand firm on that.

He was pretty sure that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

The next day Savitri returned and set to work by his side, rolling and smoking endless cigarettes. Unlike the boy, she worked quickly and carelessly. She often had to correct her mistakes, redo her work, but by the end of the day she would have gotten as much done as he had. She did not like it when he corrected her. She was older. She made it a point of never taking his suggestions, at least not right away.

Finally, he exploded, Whose boat is this anyway?

She smiled her mocking smile. Oh, she’s yours. Everything in this valley is yours, sole owner and proprietor, the billionaire’s son.

That shut him up.

Once, resting after a hard and tricky piece of work, he said, Give me a cig.

You’re too young, she said.

Once, brushing against her in the shed, he let his hand linger on her bottom. She looked over her shoulder, smiling her mockery.