<\/p>\n
The one rule G\u00e9org and I had when it came to slaying dragons was this: Never let them see the dragon. And it was all well and good until we started throwing the money we\u2019d made at our collective drinking problem and yammering about how we had been milking Saint Beatus near the Nidwalden Forest for the better part of five years. Word got around that the dragons weren\u2019t real and G\u00e9org and I ended up at home with the kids while our wives shuffled off to work every morning, hands red-chapped and bleeding, to help keep the moneyed Count Heldenbuch in clean laundry.<\/p>\n
G\u00e9org was a new father and I\u2019d barely seen my daughter, Constance, in two years. We\u2019d been so busy hauling swords and crossbows and other fake dragon weaponry all around the valley that neither of us had been home much except for the odd romp with the wives.<\/p>\n
A few days after I\u2019d been back, my daughter looked at me from across our one-room shack and asked if I\u2019d ever met her daddy the Dragonslayer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m your daddy,\u201d I told her.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy daddy\u2019s stronger,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd a knight.\u201d She was playing on the floor with a sack of grain. My wife had dribbled berry juice on the front to make eyes and a mouth. Constance looked up again and asked, \u201cWhere\u2019s my mommy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt work,\u201d I told her. \u201cI\u2019m here now. Quiet, Daddy\u2019s thinking.\u201d I went back to whatever important thing I thought I was doing, and she threw me a look that suggested my out-of-work ass was hopefully just a temporary inconvenience in her world.<\/p>\n
We were living nine furlongs from Feldkirch, which was twenty furlongs from nowhere and it was hard to keep from wanting to rip every goddamn thing apart being cooped up like that. The rain never stopped, and the cold wind would barrel through the valley and find you no matter how thick the wool on your tunic. My wife would come home after a long day of laundering and Constance would go from the utmost nuisance to daughter-of-the-year in two seconds. \u201cWhat did you and Daddy do all day?\u201d Gerta would ask, and Constance would shrug her little shoulders and roll up on her mother, arms outstretched, offering up the hug of all hugs. It was hard for me to watch. There I was, at home with the kid all day, and you didn\u2019t see me on the receiving end of something like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cTry taking an interest in her,\u201d Gerta told me one night after we\u2019d put Constance to bed and taken up some renewed passion in front of the cookery.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s so interesting about a child?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow about the fact that she\u2019s yours,\u201d Gerta said coldly. She pulled herself off of me, re-buttoned her frock, and told me what I could expect as far as lovemaking if I didn\u2019t get myself together and at least try.<\/p>\n
So, for a minute, I stopped daydreaming about the fake dragons, and G\u00e9org, and all the money and trouble we used to make for ourselves, and focused on Constance. When I\u2019d see her talking to her sack doll I\u2019d ask her what she was saying. If she was off in the corner playing Bury The Stone, I\u2019d pull up next to her and see if I could join in. If she needed help doing her business I\u2019d take her outside and help her dig the hole and stand there shielding her from the wind as she squatted over it. It took about a week, and then one day while we were outside watching the storm clouds gather, she reached up and took hold of my hand.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
G\u00e9org lived a plot of land away. We were neighbors if you consider a half-hour walk neighborly. Since I\u2019d been back I hadn\u2019t worked myself up to visiting him, but eventually I took Constance across the muddy field that separated our hut from G\u00e9org\u2019s to check on how he was faring in the fatherhood department. At his front door Constance asked if her doll could do the knocking.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course,\u201d I said, and lifted her up so she could reach high on the door. Earlier that week I\u2019d given her doll a pair of arms by tying a rope around the middle of the sack and letting the ends hang loose. She grabbed one of the arms and knocked a ropy knock. \u201cGreat job,\u201d I told her, and placed her down. She took my hand again and we stood there as the fog and rain rolled up from the valley and set upon G\u00e9org\u2019s hut like it could tear the roof off the place.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one\u2019s home,\u201d Constance said.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when I heard the baby scream.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When I pushed open the door, G\u00e9org\u2019s hands were around little Jonah\u2019s throat. There was water all over the floor and he was thrusting the baby\u2019s head into a soot-stained cauldron of dirty water.<\/p>\n
\u201cStop!\u201d I yelled, and pushed Constance aside. The drink fell off G\u00e9org so strongly I could smell it clear across the room. I jumped in, kicked him, and tired to pry his fingers from the baby\u2019s neck. I took a fistful of his hair, yanking it so hard that he dropped the child and collapsed, sweaty and drunk and sobbing on the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t do this,\u201d he kept saying. \u201cI can\u2019t do this!\u201d<\/p>\n
Jonah was motionless on the ground, his eyes open, staring into space like he was watching the last bit of his short life slip away and didn\u2019t want to miss a second of it. I picked up his body and held it out in front of me. They say time stops in the moments we wait for our children to breathe, and I can tell you it\u2019s the Gods\u2019 honest truth. I remember thinking so much in that moment. Like, what would we do if the kid kicked it? Or how long can a child go without breathing? Mostly what I was thinking was, We could really use a little more kid experience in this hut<\/i>, because Jonah\u2019s skin was a sickly shade of purple and we were about to lose him.<\/p>\n
Then it was like some unseen force reached down and gave the boy a slap across the ass. He coughed and screamed as his tiny lungs struggled to expel the water that had been forced inside. He cried with an intensity I\u2019d never heard from a baby before. The child was back from wherever he\u2019d been, and either he did not want to return, or he was outraged at the brutality of this world and what he\u2019d just come to understand of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook!\u201d I said to G\u00e9org, still lumped on the floor. \u201cHe\u2019s alive!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I hear,\u201d G\u00e9org said from behind strands of wet hair. It was the crying, he told me, that drove him to it. \u201cLike a damn banshee,\u201d he said. \u201cIf drinking can\u2019t drown out the sound, then what choice do I have?\u201d<\/p>\n
Later that evening when I told my wife what had happened, she marched across the field in only a smock and broke the news to Hildegunn, G\u00e9org\u2019s wife. Even over the wind that night you could hear her shouting clear across the valley. Winkelried the Elder often said his goats stopped giving milk when Hildegunn tore into it but this time he worried he might have to put a few of them down. My wife asked if I\u2019d ever seen G\u00e9org try anything like that before, and I lied and said I hadn\u2019t. But I knew better. I\u2019d seen him threaten a local mouthpiece with a lot worse when the dragon scam was falling apart, and there was the time during the Lenzburg job when a hunter caught us in the forest pumping the bellows for sound effects. What G\u00e9org did to that man I can\u2019t bear to think about. He had a dark resolve, G\u00e9org, a grim sense of purpose that made anything possible. The head of a goat, the head of a hunter\u2014these things were equal to him. He had asked more of me but the best I could do was hold the guy down.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After Jonah and the cauldron, G\u00e9org kept himself scarce and drunk in the village for a long while. Then word got out that Hildegunn required his fix-it skills to thatch some roof that had given way to the weather, and suddenly he was home again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat idiot\u2019s back?\u201d Gerta said. She was at the hearth stirring a pot of goulash.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not so bad,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d forgive him for kicking in your face,\u201d she said without turning around.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s my partner.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m<\/i> your partner,\u201d she said…<\/p>\n
G\u00e9org and I were a team if ever there was one. It was common knowledge among every clan in the valley that when it came to a certain brand of surliness, we were not to be messed with. We were destruction in the wake of confidence. Strength where it mattered and deception when it counted. \u201cWe\u2019re men being men,\u201d G\u00e9org used to say, and that was usually good enough for me.<\/p>\n
After Hildegunn took G\u00e9org back, things were actually pretty good for a while. On days when it wasn\u2019t pouring rain G\u00e9org and I would take the kids into the middle of the field and set up a mock dragonslaying. We\u2019d bring out the old swords and I\u2019d do the whole bit where I pretended to hear a dragon approach and G\u00e9org would come in with the bellows. Constance was nearly four and she loved it. \u201cHow do you make the growling sound, Daddy?\u201d she\u2019d ask, and I\u2019d show her the gadget G\u00e9org had built from two pieces of bark and a catgut string that vibrated just right. Jonah was still too young to understand. He was barely crawling, but the swordplay seemed to calm him.<\/p>\n
Those were the days of the barley blight and rotten beetroot, so G\u00e9org and I weren\u2019t the only ones lacking in gainful employment. Pretty soon, other out-of-work dads from the village brought their kids around and G\u00e9org and I would drag out the catapult, battle axe, and other heavy artillery and put on a real show.<\/p>\n
G\u00e9org would run around and cue me when I was to trigger a piece of equipment. The dads would cheer when something big like the catapult went off, and a thick, vigored energy would wrap itself around all of us. Lots of snorting and clapping and spitting on everything, and it felt good to be back doing our thing, even without the thrill of the con and the promise of money.<\/p>\n
Afterwards, we\u2019d break open a cask of ale and watch all of our kids play in the mud. We\u2019d talk about our wives, and the kids\u2019 teething, we\u2019d argue about the best way to cobble solid footwear, and trade recipes for stews that required the least of our attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a load of shit,\u201d G\u00e9org said one afternoon. He stood apart from the group of us, gnawing on a twig and rolling it around in his mouth. \u201cListen to yourselves. You\u2019re men for fuck\u2019s sake.\u201d He threw his mug on the ground and wiped the snot from his face. \u201cYou\u2019re an embarrassment, all of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He spit and walked back across the field, dragging Jonah behind him like some kind of dead animal. The rest of us watched in silence, wondering what it was exactly that G\u00e9org had just pointed out about our sorry lives. Constance came up to me and started going on about her doll\u2019s arms. They needed mending, but I wasn\u2019t in the mood. So I pushed her. She fell back into the mud and the men started laughing and pointing at her. I laughed too and a few of us bumped chests like I\u2019d just taken out something evil. Constance stood up and ran back to the house in tears. \u201cGuess I better go take care of that,\u201d I told them.<\/p>\n
\u201cDaddy\u2019s sorry,\u201d I said to Constance, after she\u2019d calmed down and it was just the two of us at the hearth. Gerta wasn\u2019t home yet and I was trying to convince her that what happened would never happen again. She softened and looked up, eyes twinkling from the light of the fire.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you going away again?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would you ask that?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d Her finger made little circles in the dirt floor. \u201cMaybe because it\u2019s funnier?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou mean, more fun,\u201d I said, and scooped her up in my arms. We danced around the room as I sang her one of the funny rhymes she\u2019d taught me. Cock a doodle doo! My dame has lost her shoe, my master\u2019s lost his fiddlestick and knows not what to do!<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Then G\u00e9org was gone. No goodbye, no nice-swindling-the-countryside-with-you-for-the-past-five-years.<\/p>\n \u201cNot even a note,\u201d I told Gerta, once it was obvious he wasn\u2019t coming back. She rolled her eyes and said the valley was better off without him. \u201cBest place for a man like that is a dungeon,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery kid needs a father,\u201d I told her.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd where have you heard that one before?\u201d<\/p>\n She was talking about the salad days when I\u2019d only be home for a minute or two between jobs. G\u00e9org and I were bringing in serious riches back then. I\u2019d stop home to drop off what money I hadn\u2019t blown on ale and prostitutes, pick up a spare mace or scabbard, then be back on the road again for months. The way I looked at it, I was giving Constance a fighting chance in the world. Besides, G\u00e9org was on the cutting edge back then as far as fake dragonry went…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n “The one rule G\u00e9org and I had when it came to slaying dragons was this: Never let them see the dragon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-chris-tarry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17607,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545\/revisions\/17607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}GET THE REST\u00a0IN
\nTHE NEW\u00a0BULL #2<\/a>!<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"