Issue #95

The Hooded Executioner

by B. C. G. Jones

On that warm stretch of sandy earth between the grass and the lake, I sat in my portable beach chair. An itch came over me to get up and do something. I got up and waded into the water, looking down. A school of minnows swam with grace and speed. It was my first day at the lakeside resort.

Another face behind me, reflected in the water. He bent his neck to see what I saw, the fish and the clams. He wore an executioner's hood, a black cowl that showed almost nothing of his face, with just those two holes cut out for his eyes. I stepped to the side and turned.

"Is there a way I can help you, friend?"

"Are you bored?" His voice was smaller than I would have expected.

"Am I... and what business is that of yours?"

"Just a matter of curiosity. You see, I travel quite a bit. And whenever I come to a place like this, I always encounter numerous people who don't know what they do with themselves. I suppose I'm just trying to sort out who here could be described that way."

He carried a heavy load of melodrama. In this context he was an absurdity. A man topping his windbreaker and shorts with an ominous Medieval hood. Yet he showed no self-consciousness or discomfort. The small voice in which he spoke forced the listener to pay close attention.

"I'm relaxed, that's all."

"Capital, my good man. Nothing wrong with relaxation. Nothing at all. Ah, but those other unfortunates. They get to a certain level of achievement, and then a level of comfort, and they don't know what they are for. That's why the affairs, that's why the embezzling."

I didn't know how to respond, except by staring.

"But you are different and that is good. I am happy for you. Only keep me in mind. You may feel differently. We could meet again."

With these words he withdrew, backing away and turning around as he walked on the sand. The last I saw of him, he vanished into a copse of black birches. Or at least that was the last I saw of him right then.

***

A concrete path circled the lake. It showed signs of age, a few weeds poking through, but this path would do the job. I took a brisk walk and came to a herd of green picnic tables. A woman sat at one of these tables alone, not picnicking. Her hands lay flat on the tabletop, one covering most of the other. She had tied a thin scarf around her head to keep her ash blonde hair out of her eyes.

"Beautiful day," I said, and I told her my name as well. "You haven't seen any executioners around here, have you?"

She bit her lip for a moment. "Well my name is Lily. I'm afraid I don't know everybody's occupations yet."

I found myself unsure of what to do. Go further to explore the local terrain? Go back to my hotel room and unpack my paints and brushes?

"Oh." Lily raised her hands to her cheeks. "Do you mean the man with the hood?"

I motioned at the picnic table. "May I?"

"You do, don't you?" she said as I sat. "You mean the man in the black hood. You know, I've never seen him without it. Or if I have I've never been able to tell it was the same man."

She opened a silver cigarette case and took two out, handing me the extra.

"He must be doing something right, then. Assuming that the hood represents the impression he wants to make on people."

She gazed up at the blue sky, dreamily, looking lovely. I reflected that I truly did respect the man with the executioner's hood. At the same time, I wasn't sure that I would be eager to meet him again.

***

I set up my easel in front of the large window in my room. Dusk had brought with it a glorious amber light from the west, and I felt it my duty to capture it. Once the easel stood ready I set about making up my palette. And yet a problem arose. I couldn't read the tubes, the names of the colors on said tubes. It became clear that I needed to stop procrastinating and get glasses.

From what I understood an optometrist kept an office on the resort's grounds.

***

The optometrist's worked out of a small brick bungalow not far from the water. One could see the changing cabanas from its front stoop. I walked into a canary yellow waiting room with nobody in it. That is, it had no patients. A woman in nurse's whites sat behind a rectangular desk, her dark hair pulled up tight under her folded cap. Her smile could turn water to ice in seconds.

"Do you have an appointment, sir?"

"Me? No. But my eyes haven't been as strong lately as they used to be and I was hoping…"

"I'm afraid that we're not taking any new patients right now. If you'll come back in a month perhaps we can accommodate you."

"A month? But my vacation will be over by then."

"There's nothing we can do about that."

At this point we were interrupted by a shout from behind the door.

"Who is that, Nurse Troy?"

"Oh just a young man. It appears he needs glasses."

"Glasses? For God's sake, send him in!"

She shrugged, rose, and opened the door to the doctor's office, motioning me in with her free hand. The man's face looked just the tiniest bit cloudy, reminding me that I needed his services. I could see that he had a streak of grey in his chestnut hair, and a low grain of visible stubble on his face that suited a man with much darker hair.

He got up and patted the black three-legged stool that stood a few feet in front of the eyechart.

"Please, have a seat. And you'll have to forgive my nurse. She was here under the previous optometrist, and I think she just wants to keep me from getting overwhelmed. Tell me what you see, please."

Between the two of us we found that I could perfectly make out the top five lines. After that things became touch-and-go.

"How long have you been here, then?" I asked him.

"In truth, only a few weeks. I've been an eye doctor for years, of course. But being the eye doctor here, that's new. My wife loves it here, so I intend to stay as well."

The tests concluded and he took a quick but thorough look at the results he had written down.

"Well, sir, the results are fairly standard. You've developed a slight case of myopia, complicated by astigmatism."

"I know what myopia is, but the complication…Is it serious?"

He shook his head. "No, as I said, it's standard as we get older. Some older than others. You'll need corrective lenses, of course."

He opened a cabinet and took out a handheld case.

"These are what you might call cheaters. They're very close to your prescription. You'll need custom-made lenses if you intend to drive at night. And I'm writing you a prescription for such lenses. These should do you fine for everyday use until your prescription glasses arrive."

I thanked him and put them on.

"Ah, much better," I said. "Much clearer, that's for certain. I hadn't noticed before that you had a photo of the Grand Canyon behind your desk."

There was another photograph that I only now noticed for the first time. This one depicted him and a somewhat younger woman whom context told me was his wife. This was none other than Lily, whom I had previously met out by the lake. All it meant, of course, was that sometimes the world is a very small place.

"Thank you again. I'm a painter, so you don't realize what a great help you've been."

"Just doing my job, but I'm glad."

As I had my hand on the doorknob, about to go out through the waiting room into the larger world, I stopped and turned.

"You haven't, by any chance, seen a man wearing a hood, have you?"

"A hood? As on a raincoat?"

"No, the kind of hood that a Medieval executioner might wear."

"Aha. Ah, no. I haven't actually seen any such thing, although I have heard about this man. Maybe he only comes out while I'm in this office. I'm not sure of what to believe."

"Oh, you can believe it."

***

Ominous clouds gathered during the day. I found myself out walking while thunder barked and rain began to fall in vast curtains. One doesn't wish to get a new pair of spectacles wet, even a temporary pair. I put the glasses back in their case and the case in its pocket.

In the event, I was soaked by the time I reached the hotel lobby. Lily, the optometrist's wife, sat at a small mahogany desk. With one hand she wrote a letter with a black fountain pen. With the other she tipped cigarette ash into a Murano ashtray.

"Poor dear. It's better when the water stays in the lake, so that we can go to it rather than vice versa. But I do have a question."

I cleared my throat. "Yes?"

"I'll be having supper in the dining room in approximately twenty minutes. Care to join me?"

"Lovely invitation. Thank you. I must go change. Would be gauche to drip on the floor during dinner."

***

As soon as I opened the door to my room, the lights lit up. I hadn't touched the switch. There he was. The man with the hood, now dressed in a suit. He stood by the light switch, not hiding or looking guilty.

"The key they gave me," he said. "It wouldn't let me into any other room. But it got me into this one. Funny, that."

For a long time I said nothing, and really I expected myself to stand there looking away until he went out the door or otherwise vanished. But finally I spoke.

"I'm still not bored. Not the way you think I am."

His eyes crinkled in the hood's cut-out holes. "So you say."

He raised his hands to his neck and began to lift the hood from his face. I squeezed my eyes shut like a small child. When I opened them again he was still masked.

"Do you know, they don't always even see this. But they always feel it, what it means. When the time comes, that is."

From a pocket of his suit jacket he took a bolt of black cloth and extended it to me. After a second's hesitation, I took it.

***

The elevator, when I took it, was otherwise empty. I exited on the ground floor, a hallway, a turn, and another hallway from the dining room. As I walked, the others gave me a wide berth. A few nervous smiles cast my way, but they didn't want to know.

At her table, Lily took nervous sips of wine from a goblet. Her husband, the optometrist, scanned the menu. At the sound of my footfalls he looked up and smiled, and yet still looked uncomfortable. In the final analysis, I thought they were both nice people, in their way.

But nice people aren't always lucky. We would see how their luck held up.