The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp

  He waited before answering. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to tell.

  “Bedivere,” he said finally.

  “Hey, wasn’t he the one who found the Holy Grail?”

  “No, Galahad found the Grail.”

  “Oh. I’ve been watching this movie, Excalibur. You ever seen it?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I’ve seen it about fifty times. But a couple of parts have been confusing me. Like at the end Percival takes the Sword and throws it into this big lake and the Lady grabs it.”

  “Arthur did not give the Sword to Percival. The Sword was given to Bedivere.”

  “Well, in the movie it’s Percival.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at me. I cleared my throat.

  “So . . . the Sword belongs to you?” I asked.

  “The Sword belongs to no man.” He sighed. “Upon the fields of Salisbury Plain, Arthur fell, mortally wounded, in the last battle against the armies of Mordred. Before he drew his last breath, Arthur entrusted the Sword to my forebear, Bedivere, who was meant to return it to the waters from which it came, lest the very calamity which has now happened should befall it.”

  “Well, in the movie it was Percival and he did throw it into the lake. So if that’s true, how did Samson end up with it?”

  He said, “It is a movie, Kropp.”

  “Did Arthur really die?”

  “All men die.”

  “Mr. Samson said you guys were keeping the Sword until its master comes to claim it. Who’s the master if Arthur’s dead?”

  “The master is the one who claims it,” Bennacio said.

  “And who would that be?” I asked.

  “The master of the Sword,” he said.

  “Do you know who that is?” I asked.

  “I do not need to know.”

  “How come?”

  “The Sword knows,” he said. “The Sword chose Arthur.”

  “How does a sword choose somebody?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “How do you know the Sword didn’t choose Mogart?” I asked.

  He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, I guess to let me know he was still angry at me or he didn’t feel like talking or his side still hurt.

  I pulled off the interstate around noon to get some gas and something to eat. All I’d had that day was half a bagel, and Bennacio hadn’t even touched his breakfast.

  I paid for my gas and bought two corn dogs, a bag of chips, and a couple of fountain drinks. Back in the car, I handed one of the corn dogs to Bennacio.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “A corn dog.”

  “A corn dog?”

  “It’s a wiener wrapped in corn bread.”

  “Why is it skewered?”

  “It’s a kind of handle.”

  He looked at the corn dog suspiciously. I pulled to the far side of the building and parked near the air hose.

  “What are you doing, Kropp?”

  “I need to check your side. Pull up your shirt, Bennacio.”

  “My side is fine. We need to keep driving.”

  I just looked at him. He sighed, laid the corn dog still in its yellow wrapping on his lap, and lifted up his shirt. I pulled the dressing aside and saw the wound had already closed. I’m no doctor, but it looked almost healed.

  “Let’s go, Kropp,” Bennacio said crisply, pulling down his shirt.

  I got back on the interstate. Bennacio didn’t eat his corn dog; it lay on his lap for another twenty miles as he stared out his window.

  “Your corn dog’s getting cold,” I told him. He ignored me. I reached over, took it off his lap, pulled off the wrapping, and ate it. It occurred to me I hadn’t seen Bennacio eat since the restaurant the night before.

  “Maybe I should have asked before I bought you the corn dog,” I said. “But I figured, who doesn’t like corn dogs?”

  “I am not hungry.”

  “You gotta eat, Bennacio. Tell me what you want and I’ll stop again.”

  “No, no. Keep driving.”

  “Where am I going, exactly?”

  “Canada.”

  I looked over at him. “Canada?”

  He sighed. “To Halifax, in Nova Scotia. I have friends there.”

  “Jeez, Bennacio, I had no idea I was driving you all the way to Canada! Wouldn’t it have been easier just to fly to Spain?”

  “The airports will be watched.”

  “Won’t they be in Halifax too? I mean, wouldn’t they think of that?”

  I wondered where exactly Halifax was in Nova Scotia. I wondered where Nova Scotia was. I didn’t ask him, though. He had a way of talking to me that sounded like he didn’t want to talk to me, like he was just being polite.

  “Who are these friends in Halifax? The what-do-ya-call-’ems, OIPEP guys?”

  “OIPEP is not my friend,” he said.

  “Then what is it? What does OIPEP stand for, anyway?” He didn’t say anything, so my mind tried to fill in the blanks: Organization of Interested Parties in Evolutionary Psychiatry. But that didn’t make any sense.

  “The knights were not the only ones who knew of the Sword’s existence,” Bennacio said. “We were its protectors, Kropp, but the Sword itself has many friends.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s good. It’s good to have friends. I left my best friend behind in Salina, where I grew up. His name is Nick. So what happens once we get to Halifax? Are you crossing the Atlantic by boat?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “What?” I asked. “Too slow? You guys probably have supersonic jets or something at your disposal.”

  After driving in silence a while—that seemed to be the method Bennacio preferred—we hit some rain. Bennacio sipped his fountain drink, holding the tip of the straw against his lower lip with his upper, the straw pressing against his chin, not sucking but delicately drawing up the soda into his mouth. There was the gentle hissing of the rain and Bennacio slurping his drink, and those were the only two sounds for miles. It started to get to me.

  “I was wondering,” I said, “who Mr. Samson was descended from.”

  Bennacio sighed. “Lancelot,” he said wearily.

  I decided not to worry if I was bugging him. I was getting tired of his Old World superior act and the way he talked to me like I was a little kid or somebody with a mental condition. And I was getting sleepy. And though it was a truly awesome car, I wasn’t used to driving long distances. I wasn’t used to driving, period.

  “That’s the guy who stole Guinevere from King Arthur,” I said, like Bennacio might not know that little detail. “I guess none of this would have happened if he had controlled himself. Are you married, Bennacio?”

  “No. Many of us marry in secret or not at all, thus our numbers have dwindled over the years.”

  “How come?”

  “Remember, Kropp, we are sworn to protect the Sword. To love another, to be bound by blood to another, that is to invite blackmail—or worse, betrayal. You mention Lancelot. Samson himself never wed because he could not bear the thought of endangering another human being.”

  “There was something else I was wondering,” I said. “How did Mogart know about the Sword in the first place?”

  “All Knights of the Sacred Order know.”

  I looked over at him. He was staring at the rain smacking against the glass and his face was expressionless.

  “Mogart was a knight?”

  “Once.”

  “What happened?”

  “Samson expelled him.” He sighed. “Mogart did not take banishment well, as one might imagine.”

  “Then why did Mr. Samson expel him?”

  Bennacio hesitated before answering. “That was between Samson and Mogart.” He glanced over at me and then looked away. “It was only a matter of time until a man like Mogart appeared among us. We were fortunate over the centuries, but the ancient bloodlines became diluted over time. Our blood intermingled with that of lesser men, our valor has been tarnished by the desires
of this world. The voices of the angels have faded and into the void the voice of corruption rushes.”

  “What angels?”

  “There were some in my Order, Kropp, who believed the Sword is actually the blade of the Archangel Michael, given to Arthur to unite mankind.”

  I remembered Mr. Samson telling me that the Sword was not made by human hands.

  “That didn’t turn out too good, did it?” I asked.

  “It is certainly not the first time we have disappointed heaven,” Bennacio answered.

  17

  I stopped just outside of a little town in the Shenandoah Valley called Edinburg to pee and to find Bennacio something other than a corn dog to eat. The rain had slackened to a gray mist and the temperature had dropped at least ten degrees. I had left Knoxville with just the clothes on my back, no jacket, no umbrella, and both would probably come in handy, especially in Nova Scotia, which I pictured as rainy and windswept and desolate.

  I wondered if the Tuttles were looking for me back in Knoxville or if they even cared to look for me. I thought about missing school and about Amy Pouchard, and all of that—the Tuttles and Amy and school—felt to me like it had happened to somebody else, like the memories weren’t my memories but the hijacked memories of another kid. It was as if I left more than the little I had back in Knoxville. Somehow, I had left the me that made me me.

  We ducked into a McDonald’s and Bennacio ordered a Big Mac and a Coke. He asked for some plasticware, and I wondered how he planned to eat a Big Mac with a plastic fork. I ordered a large Coke to keep me awake on the road and a fish sandwich. I waited in the car with the food while Bennacio used the pay phone outside the restaurant. He talked for about five minutes. His gait was thrown off by his wound and he moved slowly, as if each step cost him something.

  He sat down, closed the door, and said, “Lock the doors, Kropp.”

  I was about to ask him why, when the back doors opened and two big men slid into the backseat.

  “Too late,” Bennacio said.

  Something sharp pressed into the side of my neck. A voice behind me whispered, “Drive.”

  I backed out of the space using the rearview, where I could see the side of someone’s square-shaped head and the large hand pressing the black dagger against my neck. The skin over every inch of my body was tingling. The other guy was sitting back in his seat, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Turn right.”

  I pulled out of the parking lot and turned right, away from the on-ramp.

  “Where am I going?” I asked.

  “Where do you think?” the guy behind me cracked. I guessed he was saying I was going to my grave or to hell, probably to hell for all the people dead because of me.

  Bennacio said, “Think carefully about what you are doing. I do not wish to kill you.”

  “Shut up,” the man sitting behind him said.

  “There is still time,” Bennacio said. “If you repent now, heaven may still receive you.”

  The guy holding the dagger to my throat laughed.

  “Whatever Mogart has offered you—is it worth the price of your immortal soul?” Bennacio asked calmly. He might have been talking about the weather.

  The guy behind me said something to his buddy. It sounded like French. His buddy grunted and said, “Repos!”

  “Think of your wives, your children,” Bennacio said. “Would you have them widowed, fatherless? If you do not value your own lives, can you not consider theirs?”

  “Speak again and the fat kid dies,” the guy behind me said. I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw his hand was shaking slightly. Bennacio was getting to him. I thought about what Mogart told me, about the will of most men being weak. I also was thinking that just because a guy has an oversized head and a big body, you shouldn’t call him fat.

  We drove a few miles until we passed a sign that said “George Washington National Forest.” I was directed onto this access road marked “Rangers Only” that narrowed to a skinny one-lane, winding deep into the woods.

  “Here,” the guy with the dagger to my throat said. “Stop here.”

  “I will kill you both,” Bennacio said, still in that weird, calm voice. “First you with the knife. I will turn your own hand upon your throat and use it to sever your head from your body.” He nodded to the guy behind him. “Then you I shall gut as a hog in a slaughterhouse, and I shall spread your steaming entrails on the ground for the carrion to feast upon.”

  This guy said something to the guy behind me. I don’t know what he said, but it sounded pretty urgent. “Fou!” the guy with the dagger hissed back.

  “You guys oughtta listen to Bennacio,” I said. “He’s a knight and those guys never lie.”

  “Get out,” the guy with the dagger said.

  “Ave Maria, gratia plena . . .” Bennacio began to pray. The guy behind him got out of the car, opened Bennacio’s door, and yanked him out.

  “Get out,” the man behind me said. I got out. They dragged us into the trees. Dominus tecum. Bendicta tu in milieribus. . . . The ground was carpeted with pine needles and dead leaves, and there was a mist in the air and no sound, not even a bird singing. I looked over to Bennacio, now on his knees, with his arms hanging loosely at his sides. Et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. His eyes were half closed. The man standing before the kneeling Bennacio was heavy and broad-shouldered, with short-cropped black hair and a jutting brow. My guy was slighter and shorter, though I probably had at least ten pounds on him. He had shaggy blond hair and an ugly scar running from beneath his right eye, down his cheek, to his jawline.

  I got a good look at the dagger too. It was about two feet long, black, double-bladed, with the image of a dragon’s head carved into its hilt. It looked like a miniature version of the swords Bennacio and the other knights used in Samson Towers. All these guys must go the same outfitters.

  Santa Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae.

  “I want to pray too,” I said. I don’t know why I said that, but Bennacio was praying and he seemed like the kind of guy who always did just the right thing in a crisis. I went to my knees, bowed my head, and started the Hail Mary, only in English, but when I got to the “pray for us sinners” part I stopped because I heard a scream and a loud snap like the sound of a branch breaking. That’s it, I thought. Bennacio’s bought it.

  Then I looked to my right and saw Bennacio coming in a blur for the guy in front of me. The man raised his dagger.

  He was moving in slow motion, though. Bennacio wasn’t.

  Bennacio grabbed his wrist and I heard another snapping sound, not quite as loud as the first, and with his other hand Bennacio grabbed the guy by his shaggy hair while he forced the dagger back toward his throat. I didn’t want to see what was going to happen next, so I stood up and kind of stumbled through the trees and undergrowth, passing the bigger man, who lay twisting on the ground. I heard a soft thud behind me and I knew without looking that Bennacio had kept the first part of the promise he made in the car. Then I heard the pleading tone in the bigger man’s voice as Bennacio walked back to him, and I knew he was going to keep the second part too.

  I went behind a tree and threw up. I was still bent over when I heard Bennacio call softly behind me.

  “Kropp! Alfred! Come!”

  Don’t look; don’t look, just keep your head up and your eyes on Bennacio, I told myself as I walked back to the car. He was already sitting in the passenger seat. He had taken the Big Mac apart and was eating the patty, holding it in the palm of his large hand, using a napkin as a plate, cutting the meat with the side of his plastic fork. Don’t look, don’t look, I told myself, but I had to look because I didn’t want to trip on any body parts on the way to the car. So I looked and saw Bennacio had kept both his promises.

  18

  I drove toward the interstate. Bennacio told me to turn into the McDonald’s parking lot. At first I thought he wanted to wash up, but I couldn??
?t see any blood on his clothes, not a speck anywhere. He had me cruise around the building once, then pull onto the road again and turn left into the parking lot of the gas station on the interstate side of the McDonald’s.

  “There it is. Stop, Kropp.”

  I pulled beside a car parked behind the station. Bennacio dabbed both corners of his mouth with a napkin and got out while I sat there and watched him through his open door. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and pressed the remote button, unlocking the other car. I got out then and joined him.

  “Hey,” I said. “This is a Ferrari Enzo.”

  Bennacio didn’t answer. He was searching the car. He checked the center console, over the visors, under the seats and floor mats. He opened the glove box and pulled out a sleek black cell phone.

  I said, “You know, it’s funny. Somebody once promised I would have one of these cars.” All of a sudden I felt like crying.

  “Park the car, Kropp,” he said, with a little jerk of his head toward the Mercedes. “Over there.” He pointed to the far corner of the lot. I parked, walked back to the Ferrari, and when I got there, Bennacio was going through the trunk. He threw the keys to the Ferrari at me.

  “What, we’re taking this?” I asked.

  “Hurry, Kropp,” he said. “They know where we are now and where we’re going. There will be more.”

  I slid into the driver’s seat of the Ferrari and said to Bennacio, “You knights sure like to travel in style.”

  Bennacio said, “Drive, Kropp.”

  I got back on the highway and the Ferrari sped up to seventy-five like it was cruising a neighborhood street. Bennacio told me to go faster. At ninety he told me to go faster again. At 110 I told him I wasn’t going any faster because if I drove any faster, my stomach would come out of my mouth. He didn’t say anything after that.

  I wished I could put the top down. I had always wanted a convertible and to take it onto the open road like in a commercial and go a hundred miles an hour with the top down.

  After an hour, the black cell phone rang. Bennacio flipped it open, listened for a second, then said, “It is too late. They are dead.” He snapped it closed and tossed it out the window.