by Sally Gardens
Chapter Eleven: Looney
"All right," declared Sam, pushing away his supper plate. "You and me, Mr. Frodo, we're going to the Green Dragon for a half-pint."
It was a few days after Frodo had drifted home, late at night, hair, hood, and cloak soaked through with rain, only to find Sam waiting up for him. At the time Sam had said nothing about his disarray, merely greeted him and handed him a freshly-packed pipe and a match with which to light it. But Frodo had sensed that Sam was waiting for a suitable moment to speak his mind, and it seemed that Sam had now decided that moment had come.
"Thank you, Sam," Frodo cordially declined, rising, "but I really don't much feel like—"
"That's why we're going," countered Sam, taking hold of Frodo's elbow and directing him toward the front hall. "You've been moping about too much lately. It'll do you good to get out—for cheer, not gloom." He handed Frodo his cloak and hood and donned his own. Frodo stood still, holding the garments but making no move to put them on.
"Come on," insisted Sam, crossing his arms. "I'm not taking 'no' for an answer."
A faint light glimmered in Frodo's eyes as he looked up at Sam. "In that case," he conceded, drawing the cloak about his shoulders and pinning it, "there's no use in giving it to you." Sam laughed, and gave him a hearty pat on the back as they set out from Bag End.
The evening was cool and cloudy but dry, a pleasant change from the usual weather at the end of November. Sam kept up a light but continual banter as he and Frodo trotted along the road.
"—and I'm asking, why in the Shire do we need to have five copies of three documents signed by six witnesses in two colors of ink? It boggles the mind, it does, the things folks think of to keep a fellow busy, as if there weren't more than enough work to fill the space of a day, as it is. And I'm a-thinking to look into changing some of these rules, Mr. Frodo. Never knew we had so many rules, even in proper ordinary Shire law—not the good kind of rules, mind you, the kind that see to it nobody's wanting or hurting or done by wrongly. Senseless rules. Extra work-making rules that don't have no rhyme nor reason that a sensible body can see—"
By the time Frodo and Sam had passed through Hobbiton and were approaching Bywater, Frodo was laughing and in good spirits.
"—and here we are, and won't a half-pint be just the thing—"
As Sam started to open the door, a braying, slurred solo soared out of the smoky dark depths of the inn's common room.
Oh, there was a looney fellow
What sailed out on the Sea;
We don't know why, but this we know:
He come back twice-looney!
Raucous laughter burst forth as several voices joined in the chorus:
Oh, he come back twice-looney!
He come back twice-looney!
We don't know why, but this we know:
He come back twice-looney!
Sam let the door drop, cursing Sandyman under his breath with every foul word he knew. He looked over his shoulder, dreading what he might see on Frodo's face, but Frodo was already retreating at a good, brisk clip back toward Hobbiton. Throwing his hands in the air, Sam huffed and hurried to catch up. Years of domestic bliss had added a little more padding to his already robust belly; Sam immediately resolved to take up the habit of a daily constitutional.
Once caught up with Frodo, Sam said nothing, but he reached for Frodo's hand and clasped it soundly as they walked back to Bag End in silence.
All was quiet when Sam and Frodo got home. "Rosie must be in the nursery with the little ones," Sam remarked. With slow, thick movements he fumbled with and finally managed to unclasp the leaf-shaped brooch on his gray cloak. Heavily he slipped cloak and hood onto a peg, dropping the brooch into the hood.
Then he turned to Frodo, who stood stolidly just inside the door, looking for all the world as if he were of a mind to turn around and wander off into the night until who-knew-when. Sam walked over to him and, as he would for one of his children, unfastened Frodo's cloak and slipped it from his shoulders. It was not, as Sam would have expected, the gray cloak of Lórien, but an old, faded green cloak, worn thin in places, clasped with a round knotwork brooch of slightly tarnished brass. He'd wanted since the day of Frodo's arrival to ask what had become of the Elven cloak, but he felt, somehow, that it wouldn't be quite proper to ask. However, he thought, another inquiry should be safe enough to venture.
"Been meaning to ask, if you don't mind. I don't recognize this cloak of yours, yet I somehow think I ought to." He glanced at Frodo, whose eyes were fixed on a point somewhere beyond Sam.
"It was Bilbo's," said Frodo in a voice as dull as his eyes. "His old journey-cloak. He gave it to me."
"Oh." Now Sam felt worse than ever. He turned, busying himself with straightening all of the cloaks and all of the hoods on all of the pegs, making sure that each hood had its proper brooch tucked safely inside. When he looked back, Frodo was still standing silently in the open doorway.
Slowly Sam shuffled back to Frodo and rested a hand on his shoulder. "Frodo. Is there, ah, anything I—"
"Explain to our neighbors that grief and pain are not madness!" snarled Frodo, scowling as he shook off Sam's hand and stalked off down the hall.
Sam watched him go, and soon heard the door of his bedroom slam shut. Shaking his head, Sam quietly closed and locked the front door, then followed down the corridor, drawing himself a half-pint before heading into the study. On the table next to his favorite chair he set down the beer; he then stooped in front of the hearth, where he began to arrange a few logs and kindling for a small fire.
"Sam."
Sam looked up: Hands in his pockets, Frodo stood in the doorway, his head low and his eyes hardly daring to make contact with Sam's. "Sam," he said again, contritely. "Sam, I am sorry."
Wordlessly Sam rose and walked over to Frodo, extending his arms.
"Oh, Sam." Frodo's face quivered. "Sam." He fell against Sam, and Sam's sturdy arms wrapped securely around him, holding him tightly for a long, long while.
Seated on the parlor sofa, Sam looked around the room at the oddments and mathoms crowding all the little shelves. He held Frodo's head gently, cradling it in his lap while Frodo reclined along the length of the sofa. After Frodo had spent his tears, Sam had taken him by the hand and led him to the parlor, where they had settled on the sofa and talked quietly of little things of no import, till Frodo had drifted off into a deep and, from all appearances, peaceful slumber.
Ah, peace. May it be.
Why would they send Frodo back unhealed? Why would they have sent him over Sea at all, if they couldn't heal him? Sam frowned, absently stroking Frodo's gray-threaded brown curls. That question would take some more thinking, it would.
Not that it mattered, in a way. All the healing of the Elves couldn't give Frodo the honor of his own people.
Read to them things from the Red Book, Sam, that they will remember the Great Danger and love their beloved land all the more.
That they will remember.
Remember me, Sam.
Tell them.
Wearily Sam sighed. Seven years was a long time and a lot of thinking. A lot had happened. Seven years of being a Dad and of being his own master had left their mark, right enough. Change where you stand, change the view. And the view had, indeed, changed.
It was no good pretending he was still the simple, trustful young servant who thought his master to be the wisest Hobbit in all the world. Loyal, yes; always loyal. But not without question. No; there were too many questions, now, ever to go back.
We've all changed. All of us.
And there was the rub. It wasn't only Frodo who would never be the same. It was Sam. And Pippin. And Merry. And the Shire itself. Frodo had longed for home, but home, too, had changed—yet in ways he'd most desired, it had not changed at all.
He'd learned a lot in seven years, Sam had, most especially in the last year or so since he'd become Mayor.
When a fellow was Mayor of Michel Delving, Mayor of the Shire, he had to listen: listen everywhere, listen to everyone, listen to everything, hear things he'd rather not ever have known were being said, hear the things he'd spent most of his life not hearing. When a fellow was Mayor, he couldn't hear only the words of the friends of Bag End and shut out the rest by filling his thoughts with devotion to his gardens and to his master. A fellow who was Mayor had to be master enough to bear hearing words he'd rather had never been thought, still less spoken.
Cracked. Looney. More than half a Brandybuck. And much worse, cruel slanders Sam would not repeat, even in the quiet of his own mind. Slanders that had followed the unruly young orphan from Buckland to take root and spread branches in Hobbiton and the country round. Not all had spread them, or even believed them, of course; Frodo had always had his friends. But with the eyes of his new position Sam could see that Frodo had never been granted a sense that he truly, fully belonged to Hobbiton or to the Shire.
If Frodo had come home a hero, if he'd at last won the respect of the Shire, would October and March have been more bearable? Enough, perhaps, to keep him on this side of the Sea?
Or would he have followed Bilbo, all the same?
Neither here nor there. Frodo had gone, and Frodo had come back, home, yet not home, wandering about in gloom at all hours and thereby adding fuel to what had become a wildfire legend of Looney Baggins, half-cracked nephew of Mad Baggins.
And for all that, Frodo still wasn't healed.
Sam let his head fall back against the sofa. It was all too much for his poor wits to wrap around. He glanced down again at Frodo and smiled tenderly, brushing a couple of errant curls away from Frodo's lined face. The sight brought to mind a time in Ithilien, when he had had a vision of Frodo, old and beautiful and full of light, sleeping in peace.
Why, and isn't that so, marveled Sam. I told you rightly that old Sharkey was a stinking liar. I saw for myself that you'd have a long life, indeed. You're not half-through yet; I always knew it was so, in my heart. I knew it.
A little sigh slipped out. Now how to get you to know it, that's the thing. Sam let his thoughts grow still, resting his hand lightly upon Frodo's brow.
"You're so fixed on going after the road you can't go back to, you miss the road that's a-waiting for you here and now."
Where that came from, Sam didn't know; but as he gazed fondly upon his sleeping friend, he knew he had spoken truly, though he didn't wholly understand, himself, all that he had meant by it.
That would take some more thinking, it would.