Cindy

I got a role in the performance company at the Texas Renaissance festival.

I was give then character of the Earl of Surrey — a renowned poet who had introduced iambic pentameter to the English culture.

After some thought, I knew I would be unable to wrote 14 line sonnets on a regular basis, so I invented my own form of poetry.

I called it “Sonn” — 3 lines — the first two that rhyme. And the third did not. I even wrote a “sonn” to explain.

“A sonnet of sorts

A sonnet but short

And aptly named a sonn”

For my character, I used those for everything from love poems to insult

A favorite bit I had was to use them with boy/girl couples. I would ask the boy “have you written your daily poem for your lady, sir?”

He would say “no” and I would tell him that he should tell her that poem right here.

I would ask him to “look at her, and choose a body part — but do not pick her nose”.

And then, I would have him repeat after me, a “sonn” about that body part.

“Thy nose is cute

It doth suit

The middle of thy face”.

I worked with some eccentric characters my first year at faire

Brad’s character was fictional, and he decided he would play a poet

He had one poem — it was very beautiful.

Turns out he had used it in an attempt to get dates from the women in the performance company

He told my friend Marti that he had written it especially for her.

“Oh Marti, thy name is the name that the moon calls to the wind to tell of your beauty”

Over the season, I heard the same story from three other of his potential conquests

We decided we could use poetry as a bit on stage

Brad and I, in character, would walk up to a female patron and ask if she was willing to judge our poetry

When she said yes, I would go first, reciting one of my newly minted “sonns”

And then it was Brad’s turn.

Since I heard that poem ten times a day, you’d think I would remember it, but I have wiped most of it from my memory.

And, of course, Brad would ALWAYS “win”.

My character would walk away in a fake huff until I was out of sight

We would meet up 100 yards along, and play the game again

Over the season, I would try different versions of my “sonns”

One day, I asked Brad to go first. The lady loved his poem, of course.

I had to step up if I was going to win this one.

I asked the subject to hold up her arms with her elbows bent.

Then I told her this poem

“Thy elbow ’tis bent

A gift heaven sent

For rushing in for a hug!”

And I rushed in for a hug!

I won!

Brad was pissed. We never played the poem game again.

One of Brad’s eccentricities was his mannequin.

Most of the performance company camped onsite over the weekends.

I was required to be in Brad’s tent circle because I was in his performance company group

Apparently, he used to work in some warehouse that collected retail store castoffs

With one of those, he managed to acquire a female mannequin.

Her name, he told us, was Cindy.

She was posted outside his tent, inside our tent circle.

Cindy was naked, and standing with her right arm high in the air

Of course, this was a temptation for several performance company members to hang things

Things like tree branches, trash bags, cast-off costumes.

Brad quite loved the attention

On the last night of our rehearsal season, the entertainment director held a soiree.

Free booze, lots of celebration, it was great fun

During the evening, 8 of us slipped away to the camp.

We picked up Cindy, leaving just her support pole and carried her to the battle mound

The battle mound was a special place at faire.

This year, the Society for Creative Anachronism was using the battle mound for their “reenactments”.

We called them the “duct tape brigade”, because their “weapons” for reenactments were mostly foam and duct tape.

The year previous, they had installed a hangman’s scaffold so they could “hang” one of the characters who had been deemed a traitor.

We hung Cindy from the scaffold, taking care to wrap the ropes around her to avoid any damage.

On Cindy’s pole, we left a note that said..

“Brad, I am sick of you leaving me here all day,

I am running off to get plastered.

I am going to join the SCA and repair my life with duct tape.”

And we returned to the celebrations.

Later that evening, when the festivities were over, we returned to camp.

At some point, Brad rolled in — literally drunk out of his skull — screaming at us “she’s not there!”

We feigned ignorance, and asked a bunch of leading questions to avoid owning up.

Eventually, we discovered that he had found Cindy missing, read the note, and been to the battle mound to find her.

He kept saying “she’s not there” and asking “where is she?”

When we confessed to the “crime”, we swore up and down she was hanging on the battle mound scaffold.

We decided to investigate, and set off to the battle mound.

Brad was mumbling all the way, swearing at us every step.

And then, we arrived at the battle mound.

Cindy was gone.

We were in deep shit.

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There are two endings to this story.

The first ending happened the following year. I was talking to the maintenance crew and asked if they had seen a mannequin on the battle mound the year before.

Their immediate denials and dismissals said it all.

Turns out, that during the weeks of faire when they were cleaning up around the performance company campgrounds, they were annoyed that there was a naked mannequin.

That celebration evening, they had driven past the battle mound on their tractor with a trailer, and seized their opportunity.

They took the mannequin down, carted her off to the dumpster, and thus the saga of Cindy was over.

The second is that I wanted to be a mystery writer, so I wrote this story as the first chapter of a novel — with one twist.

When we arrived at the battle mound, instead of a mannequin, there was a naked woman hanging in the place of the mannequin.

After calling the police, we discovered the dead woman’s her name was Cindy.

Of the two, I prefer my ending.