Free A Many Coated Man by Owen Marshall Page B

pillow. By the drapes Slaven rubs his stomach up and down, not round and round. He grimaces slightly for his own benefit and looks through the narrow gap in the drapes to pass time.
    There are people on the front drive of his house.
    Seven of them, no, eight. All quite young; both sexes. The moonlight is not particularly bright, but he can see that they are throwing something from baskets at the house. Well, scattering rather than throwing, broadcasting with an action of the wrist rather than the whole arm and whatever it is they cast it makes no sound against the walls, nothing that would wake Kellie, or him. All of them wear pants and most the canvas jackets fashionable amongst the unfashionable, which show the dirt of constant use. They are dancing, rather perpetrating some parody, some travesty, of a pastoral dance, with the baskets hung on their arched arms and their bodies clumsily bending and swaying.
    Slaven has an unpleasant sense of their conceit and affectation, but they themselves take it all with arty solemnity despite the almost total lack of grace and skill. And every few minutes they put down their baskets in an unsynchronised way, hang themselves like scarecrows, then shake and quiver to mimic electrocution.
    Even though he can’t be seen, Slaven takes a step back. He has the right to be here, yet the last thing he wants is to reveal himself, to challenge the dancers. He is afraid of them, but not in the immediate and physical sense. Far worse than that. They are the manifestations of his worst fears concerning his work, proof that from the rational, humanitarian ideas he upholds, mutants can be spawned. Slaven watches the figures in the ludicrous repetition of their makeshift dance, yet what faces he can see have expressions of fixed intensity.
    Slaven knows that the Executive and staff try to keep such things from coming to his notice, yet he’s aware of a whole range of half-baked responses to his speeches andhis campaign. Half-baked! A grim reminder of the fryers who continue to electrocute themselves in his name and to make headlines at last with their death. There are people who have fits at his meetings, women who wish to bear his child, or claim they have already done so, fundamentalists who insist that the coalition prefigures the Apocalypse, people who demand large sums of money and blessings, others who are intent on giving both. Sarah has a group of volunteers who go through his mail bag and weed out the most disturbing letters, but Slaven finds others thrust into his pockets when travelling, or under the door of a hotel room.
    At times the dancers go forward and bend in the garden close to the bedroom window — whether to pick, or place, it is difficult for Slaven to tell. He begins to feel cold, but won’t lie down while the ritual goes on. One man is very fat and his serious face shakes as he parades in the dance.
    Why don’t they just all bugger off. Whatever they see in Slaven’s beliefs he will never acknowledge. In fact he resents their appropriation of his name and movement even more than their appropriation of his drive and lawn before the sun has risen. In his heart he knows that the real source of his anger is a fear that his work could be corrupted, that what was so clear to him could still nourish opinions quite contrary to his intentions. The snake they say, hears nothing that the charmer plays.
    Finally the dancers leave, after whispered argument, trailing down the long drive with their baskets. The fat man has an arm around one of the women who doesn’t return his embrace. A more nondescript man waits long enough to secure a minimum of privacy and then pisses by the crabapple tree, his shoulders hunched protectively. When he has pranced after the others the drive is empty and Slaven at the gap of the curtains is hard put to keep the episode in mind as any more than a sour dream. Before going back to bed though, he moves through the house and checks on each of the other three