Sometimes I find it difficult to shut up.
A danger nears – bear, deer, squirrel, chipmunk, dancing leaf. “Attention must be paid!” I announce the threat volubly in trusty sentry fashion, as is my wont. A more vigilant or conscientious custodian I challenge you to employ for love or money. “Watchman” is not an honored calling in human and, as the old saw says, you get what you pay for. Vigilance is my vocation. While Carll descries hypothetical calamities – cancer, climate change, Republicans – I announce – as audibly as I’m able – sforzando would be its marking in a musical score – “Beware!” This is a valorous and undercompensated contribution to my community’s wellbeing, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Today’s tocsin, as it happens, was ill-received. Dingy crepuscular daybreak eked past the edges of drawn shades. Carll’s steady susurrus (andante ma non troppo) suggested rest would be his preference, not bustling. But which of us is master of our moment? We must live the lives we’re given, play the cards we’re dealt. Earliest dawn, I admit, is not a pleasant hour to be attacked, but which hour is? For a watchman to withhold urgent information from his wards out of supposed kindness is the gravest violation of trust. Dire news especially must be delivered presto.
I did my duty, only to be met with (and I expurgate only slightly), “Oh for Chrissake, do you f***ing know what time it is?”
This ungrateful reaction to my frankly heroic alarum both raised my dander and got my goat, if those two differ. (How much simpler our canine conversations without the complications of language!) My laudable (and audible) persistence was met with, “Henry, dammit, stop it… or else the CHOLER.”
The use of this characteristically Elizabethan appellation, while quaint, suits both Carll’s fussy fustian diction – how he swaggers with his big words! – and the barbarity of the practice. A CHOLER is a neck-ring furnished with a pronged black lump. The lump displays flickering signals (LCD, I think they’re called) which detail its afflictive activities. No civilized instrument sports LCD advisories!
I know this CHOLER. Rack and gibbet were playthings by comparison. Its prongs poke into the neck and vibrate excruciatingly at one’s least utterance. (Many the hearer, I’m guessing, fantasizes a comparable constraint for my amanuensis!) Urgent notifications are instantly precluded. One is struck dumb, not to mention stoutly remanded to one’s place in the domestic order. You bet I shut up – but, worse, my pride is abashed. Carll and Jane permit me the delusion of social parity as long as I behave. Thus asterisked, generosity could hardly be called generous. This is the goodwill of the plantation owner toward his “beloved” house slave. True equality must be marked by an equal right to misbehave, a self-evident conclusion conveniently overlooked by overlords.
Well, I hope Carll enjoyed his subsequent two hours of susurrussing. I stewed (quietly), subdued by my CHOLER. I love Carll, really I do, he feeds me and plays with me and likes me “after his fashion,” but honest to Betsy, to treat a loved one thus cruelly sets my world on its ear. I am downcast – and pissed – hence this spontaneous missive, which I will force Carll to transcribe when he wakes, like it or not. If he refuses, I will simply block the STRAITS OF HENRY and no future missives will flow – for Carll, who’s come to depend on my contributions to his enterprise, an existential risk. What kind of idiot would block such a conduit!
Now I feel better. I do not forgive, I forget, which is more effective and efficient.