“Oh, that’s just Cyril. He hasn’t got a very good memory. Ridiculous, isn’t it? I wish he’d get it right.”
Bill Door found a piece of chalk in the farm’s old smithy, located a piece of board among the debris, and wrote very carefully for some time. Then he wedged the board in front of the henhouse and pointed Cyril toward it.
THIS YOU WILL READ, he said.
Cyril peered myopically at the “Cock-A-Doodle-Doo” in heavy gothic script. Somewhere in his tiny mad chicken mind a very distinct and chilly understanding formed that he’d better learn to read very, very quickly.
Bill Door sat back among the hay and thought about the day. It seemed to have been quite a full one. He’d cut hay and fed animals and mended a window. He’d found some old overalls hanging in the barn. They seemed far more appropriate for a Bill Door than a robe woven of absolute darkness, so he’d put them on. And Miss Flitworth had given him a broad-brimmed straw hat.
And he’d ventured the half-mile walk into the town. It wasn’t even a one horse town. If anyone had a horse, they’d have eaten it. The residents appeared to make a living by stealing one another’s washing.
There was a town square, which was ridiculous. It was really only an enlarged crossroads, with a clock tower. And there was a tavern. He’d gone inside.
After the initial pause while everyone’s mind had refocused to allow him room, they’d been cautiously hospitable; news travels even faster on a vine with few grapes.
“You’d be the new man up at Miss Flitworth’s,” said the barman. “A Mr. Door, I did hear.”
CALL ME BILL.
“Ah? Used to be a tidy old farm, once upon a time. We never thought the old girl’d stay on.”
“Ah,” agreed a couple of old men by the fireplace.
AH.
“New to these parts, then?” said the barman.
The sudden silence of the other men in the bar was like a black hole.
NOT PRECISELY.
“Been here before, have you?”
JUST PASSING THROUGH.
“They say old Miss Flitworth’s a loony,” said one of the figures on the benches around the smoke-blackened walls.
“But sharp as a knife, mind,” said another hunched drinker.
“Oh, yes. She’s sharp all right. But still a loony.”
“And they say she’s got boxes full of treasure in that old parlor of hers.”
“She’m tight with money, I know that.”
“That proves it. Rich folk are always tight with money.”
“All right. Sharp and rich. But still a loony.”
“You can’t be loony and rich. You’ve got to be eccentric if you’re rich.”
The silence returned and hovered. Bill Door sought desperately for something to say. He had never been very good at small talk. He’d never had much occasion to use it.
What did people say at times like this? Ah. Yes.
I WILL BUY EVERYONE A DRINK, he announced.
Later on they taught him a game that consisted of a table with holes and nets around the edge, and balls carved expertly out of wood, and apparently balls had to bounce off one another and into the holes. It was called Pond. He played it well. In fact, he played it perfectly. At the start, he didn’t know how not to. But after he heard them gasp a few times he corrected himself and started making mistakes with painstaking precision; by the time they taught him darts he was getting really good at them. The more mistakes he made, the more people liked him. So he propelled the little feathery darts with cold skill, never letting one drop within a foot of the targets they urged on him. He even sent one ricocheting off a nail head and a lamp so that it landed in someone’s beer, which made one of the older men laugh so much he had to be taken outside into the fresh air.