Chicago, 1951: Archaeopteryx and Branta
By the time Eustace finally made it indoors, everybody had gathered to watch the spectacle. Of course they had. While there was no lack of understanding among the Friends, there was no surfeit of dignity, either. Sometimes Eustace the Un-Dragoned got quite dragonish about it, and given today's circumstances, he rather rudely thought, a dragon was just what his ardent and screeching pursuers needed.
Chicago was a lovely city, a big, beautiful city - Peter, who'd suddenly gone soft in the head over American poets, had been quoting something lately which they all liked:
I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities
And that was all right, Peter being High King and all, thus allowed to indulge whatever odd fancies he liked. His own family might give him trouble about this new penchant for poetry, but Eustace did not, because your High King is your High King no matter what and if he suddenly decides he likes poetry, there's probably something worthwhile in it and all you have to do is tease the worthwhile bits out.
Which was not unlike archaeology, teasing out the useful bits from the surrounding muck, so lately Eustace had felt a certain sense of comradeship with The High--Peter while they pored over shoulder-high stacks of books in the well-equipped University of Chicago library.
Looking back, Eustace wasn't sure how they'd all wound up there: oftentimes, where one Friend of Narnia went, the others followed, willingly and eagerly, finding that their own skills would be needed. That's not how this had shaken out.
Lucy had been the trailblazer this time, wanting to meet a chap named Alinsky whose books had spawned ideas she'd put to great effect doing her "filthy rabble-rousing" (said with a shining pride, and everybody knew it was filthy the way Rats and Crows are, which is not at all) in Liverpool. How she'd wangled an introduction to the man was something that nobody fully knew, but Polly had friends almost everywhere, and those friends had friends too, and -- well. Where there's a Narnian, there's a way, as Jill was fond of saying.
Speaking of Jill, she'd been the next up, because her crazed decision to practice medicine in Cuba somehow involved going to the States first - there were Polly's fingers in this as well, simply because Polly knew the Americans the same way Edmund knew the Germans, and if any Friend was in the States, there was a good chance Polly was involved.
Edmund had come next, wanting a breather after his whatever-it-was in the Balkans. When they tried, he became monosyllabic, so everybody stopped asking.
Susan and her colleague had showed up -- rather, Susan had; the colleague was up to no good, musically, and had dragged Susan along. This had something to do with their time in Washington, and while neither explained it, they were happy enough, going to blues clubs at all hours, coming back drunk or high or both, and then a week later they swept out as soon as they'd swept in.
Peter showed up a few weeks later with no explanation about where he'd been, but he sported a magnificent (ha!) sunburn across his face and shoulders, and he'd packed on nearly enough muscle to remind Lucy of the Golden Age, where King Peter could swing an axe or a scythe to harvest, or a sword to fight, or a Satyr's child to entertain, all with equal skill and willing.
Eustace, however, had a purpose: the Chicago Museum had got hold of some fascinating dinosaur fossils, and there was talk of whispers of an idea of a theory among the undergrads, about how dinosaurs had maybe had wings. Lucy had put him onto this and issued the invitation, and Eustace came willingly, the way he always did when massive skull-crushing reptiles were involved. (Mary had accompanied him as far as Norfolk, where they'd split paths: she and Asim headed down to muddy murky Florida, muttering about an expedition to the Everglades at some point soon.)
So: Eustace had found himself quite at home among the Yanks, which was unexpected, but pleasant nonetheless, and doubly so was that Peter, with a newfound literary interest, accompanied Eustace to and from the library each day, binging on Whitman and Sandburg while Eustace tried to tease out the connections between lizards and birds and crocodilians and saurians.
Polly, being Polly, had wangled them some housing on campus, to keep Eustace closer to his research and Edmund further from the bars -- Lucy would come and go as she pleased, to the stockyards and the rabble in need of rousing, and Peter seemed inclined to be indolent for a while. At least, until his sunburns healed. It was a lovely old two-story building, a sort of cold-water walkup for students that had been repurposed into House Narnia for the time being. It hadn't been decided yet whether the place was going to be called Chicago Paravel or Cair University, though the latter seemed to be in the lead.
That was where Eustace ran at full speed, his rucksack bouncing uncomfortably on his back, kicking up the turf in the quad and leaving a trail of torn footprints to show his path. His pursuers didn't need the trail, as obvious as it was, because the devils could fly and keeping up with their prey was all too easy.
By the time Eustace achieved the safety of the house, every resident within had come down to watch the spectacle. Eustace, disgruntled, threw down his rucksack (full of books; he'd likely have made it if he hadn't wanted so damn many) and stormed off to the kitchen where Jill had already got out the iodine and rags.
"I thought they were daft," said Eustace, seeing to the cuts on his hands, "those undergrads. Dinosaurs with wings, really, that's a ridiculous notion."
"Mm-hmm," said Jill, as she always had done, in Narnia or here, letting Eustace's chunter run in one ear and out the other while she patched up his hurts.
There was no way to stop the laughter, so Eustace just let it wash over him and tried to remember that while a Dragon might have been just the thing for his evil pursuers, it was not something that the Friends deserved to have taken out on them. He got himself a beer (American beer was starting to become palatable: a sign he'd been here too long) and groaningly had a seat. There were feathers and mud on his trouser cuffs. He stared at them sadly.
"You know, I think there might be something to that theory," Eustace said, once his audience had laughed itself out. "I've never seen anything more like a dinosaur than the Canada Goose."
"What about American alligators?" Peter shouted from the next room.
"What about them?" Eustace shouted back.
"Have you seen one?" Peter bellowed.
"Will either one of you walk five feet so that you don't have to shout?" Lucy asked: she didn't expect a response so it was good that none came to her.
"Specimens," Eustace shouted. "Polly brought some back in 1909. Not living. Why?"
"I've just got a wire from Mary," Peter said, tromping into the room. "She wants an expedition to the Everglades next year. You in? Asim needs to know how many to plan for."
"Oh yes," said Eustace. He thought a moment, then plucked a large broken feather from the laces of his shoe. "They haven't got Canada geese there, have they?"
Anything but geese.
NOTE: The most I know of Chicago is that I ran through the international airport at top speed trying to make a connecting flight. I've likely got tons of stuff wrong about timelines and dinosaurs and hips and everything else. But I had this idea: Eustace being attacked by geese and comparing them to dinosaurs, and I couldn't not write it.
Chicago was a lovely city, a big, beautiful city - Peter, who'd suddenly gone soft in the head over American poets, had been quoting something lately which they all liked:
I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities
And that was all right, Peter being High King and all, thus allowed to indulge whatever odd fancies he liked. His own family might give him trouble about this new penchant for poetry, but Eustace did not, because your High King is your High King no matter what and if he suddenly decides he likes poetry, there's probably something worthwhile in it and all you have to do is tease the worthwhile bits out.
Which was not unlike archaeology, teasing out the useful bits from the surrounding muck, so lately Eustace had felt a certain sense of comradeship with The High--Peter while they pored over shoulder-high stacks of books in the well-equipped University of Chicago library.
Looking back, Eustace wasn't sure how they'd all wound up there: oftentimes, where one Friend of Narnia went, the others followed, willingly and eagerly, finding that their own skills would be needed. That's not how this had shaken out.
Lucy had been the trailblazer this time, wanting to meet a chap named Alinsky whose books had spawned ideas she'd put to great effect doing her "filthy rabble-rousing" (said with a shining pride, and everybody knew it was filthy the way Rats and Crows are, which is not at all) in Liverpool. How she'd wangled an introduction to the man was something that nobody fully knew, but Polly had friends almost everywhere, and those friends had friends too, and -- well. Where there's a Narnian, there's a way, as Jill was fond of saying.
Speaking of Jill, she'd been the next up, because her crazed decision to practice medicine in Cuba somehow involved going to the States first - there were Polly's fingers in this as well, simply because Polly knew the Americans the same way Edmund knew the Germans, and if any Friend was in the States, there was a good chance Polly was involved.
Edmund had come next, wanting a breather after his whatever-it-was in the Balkans. When they tried, he became monosyllabic, so everybody stopped asking.
Susan and her colleague had showed up -- rather, Susan had; the colleague was up to no good, musically, and had dragged Susan along. This had something to do with their time in Washington, and while neither explained it, they were happy enough, going to blues clubs at all hours, coming back drunk or high or both, and then a week later they swept out as soon as they'd swept in.
Peter showed up a few weeks later with no explanation about where he'd been, but he sported a magnificent (ha!) sunburn across his face and shoulders, and he'd packed on nearly enough muscle to remind Lucy of the Golden Age, where King Peter could swing an axe or a scythe to harvest, or a sword to fight, or a Satyr's child to entertain, all with equal skill and willing.
Eustace, however, had a purpose: the Chicago Museum had got hold of some fascinating dinosaur fossils, and there was talk of whispers of an idea of a theory among the undergrads, about how dinosaurs had maybe had wings. Lucy had put him onto this and issued the invitation, and Eustace came willingly, the way he always did when massive skull-crushing reptiles were involved. (Mary had accompanied him as far as Norfolk, where they'd split paths: she and Asim headed down to muddy murky Florida, muttering about an expedition to the Everglades at some point soon.)
So: Eustace had found himself quite at home among the Yanks, which was unexpected, but pleasant nonetheless, and doubly so was that Peter, with a newfound literary interest, accompanied Eustace to and from the library each day, binging on Whitman and Sandburg while Eustace tried to tease out the connections between lizards and birds and crocodilians and saurians.
Polly, being Polly, had wangled them some housing on campus, to keep Eustace closer to his research and Edmund further from the bars -- Lucy would come and go as she pleased, to the stockyards and the rabble in need of rousing, and Peter seemed inclined to be indolent for a while. At least, until his sunburns healed. It was a lovely old two-story building, a sort of cold-water walkup for students that had been repurposed into House Narnia for the time being. It hadn't been decided yet whether the place was going to be called Chicago Paravel or Cair University, though the latter seemed to be in the lead.
That was where Eustace ran at full speed, his rucksack bouncing uncomfortably on his back, kicking up the turf in the quad and leaving a trail of torn footprints to show his path. His pursuers didn't need the trail, as obvious as it was, because the devils could fly and keeping up with their prey was all too easy.
By the time Eustace achieved the safety of the house, every resident within had come down to watch the spectacle. Eustace, disgruntled, threw down his rucksack (full of books; he'd likely have made it if he hadn't wanted so damn many) and stormed off to the kitchen where Jill had already got out the iodine and rags.
"I thought they were daft," said Eustace, seeing to the cuts on his hands, "those undergrads. Dinosaurs with wings, really, that's a ridiculous notion."
"Mm-hmm," said Jill, as she always had done, in Narnia or here, letting Eustace's chunter run in one ear and out the other while she patched up his hurts.
There was no way to stop the laughter, so Eustace just let it wash over him and tried to remember that while a Dragon might have been just the thing for his evil pursuers, it was not something that the Friends deserved to have taken out on them. He got himself a beer (American beer was starting to become palatable: a sign he'd been here too long) and groaningly had a seat. There were feathers and mud on his trouser cuffs. He stared at them sadly.
"You know, I think there might be something to that theory," Eustace said, once his audience had laughed itself out. "I've never seen anything more like a dinosaur than the Canada Goose."
"What about American alligators?" Peter shouted from the next room.
"What about them?" Eustace shouted back.
"Have you seen one?" Peter bellowed.
"Will either one of you walk five feet so that you don't have to shout?" Lucy asked: she didn't expect a response so it was good that none came to her.
"Specimens," Eustace shouted. "Polly brought some back in 1909. Not living. Why?"
"I've just got a wire from Mary," Peter said, tromping into the room. "She wants an expedition to the Everglades next year. You in? Asim needs to know how many to plan for."
"Oh yes," said Eustace. He thought a moment, then plucked a large broken feather from the laces of his shoe. "They haven't got Canada geese there, have they?"
Anything but geese.
NOTE: The most I know of Chicago is that I ran through the international airport at top speed trying to make a connecting flight. I've likely got tons of stuff wrong about timelines and dinosaurs and hips and everything else. But I had this idea: Eustace being attacked by geese and comparing them to dinosaurs, and I couldn't not write it.