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part 2 of the story
Wink or Animal Costumery

Patrick Sweeney

    Wedding day, pre-dawn. Phone did a strangled purring noise I’d not heard before. Land line. Wow, I didn’t even know where that was. I reached it after the fifth ring. Sounded like Maxwell Smart had had the snot kicked out of him, ”Your presence, aw shit, can you make it down to the pavilion ASAP. Not a dress rehearsal. Something’s gone very wrong.”
    Gaetana was stirring. The prospect of ever losing her just floored me. I pinned a note concluding “Call me!” to my pillow with the phone headset and raced to the pavilion, anxious about whether my skipping a perfunctory rinse would somehow worsen their fortunes.
    As I approached the pavilion, thumping and cries near the entrance proved to be a panicky bird caught in the Venetian blinds. No fully safe solution and no time, I let the blinds fall slack and did not hang around for results. A small knot of folks was conferring on the spot where vows were presumably to be exchanged in a few hours. Greg stepped forward along with Brigitte’s sister, Claire, “We’ve lost Brigitte. She was gone when I woke up. Our door was bolted from the inside and the only way out was those damned windows.”
    “But no.”
    “No body. One window left open. Claire had the adjoining room and she heard nothing. Hoping you and Gaetana can help us talk to police.” (This evidently didn’t fall within the facilitator’s bailiwick.).
    Gaetana met us on the street outside their building. She stood by a huge plastic dumpster directly below that fifth-floor open window. We were easy to read. She thumped the dumpster for a bass drum effect, “It’s freshly emptied. The garbage trucks start their rounds with the morning bells.”
    Upstairs, chimes swayed quietly in the latticed casement window splayed wide open five stories above the street. Had she survived a fall and landed outside the dumpster, the spring thaw-swollen Arno was now lapping at the two-way single lane street, able to whisk her away with little effort. There would have to be some physical evidence of such a fall.
    As Gaetana called the polizia, we inexpertly rooted about their apartment for clues, trying not to disturb any evidence. The open window accessed a too narrow ledge and none of the others seemed to offer much purchase, “Brigitte was petrified of heights,” Claire volunteered. I noted that two windows overlooked a courtyard shared with Claire’s flat but Brigitte’s kitchen window was shuttered and a good eight feet from Claire’s. No note, no missing clothes offhand and no signs of distress or disruption.
    The polizia made a big, noisy production of showing up at the crime scene and staking it out. Wedding guests were soon swarming outside their cordon. The cops became dismissive real fast when the wedding day factor arose. The lieutenant in charge got a rise out of his crew by flashing the cuckold’s horns at belt level whenever it seemed safe.
    Gaetana had to badger them to follow up with the waste disposal service. They jumped all over her translations to Greg, preferring to elevate the sultry babe to liaison status and leave the spurned fiancée out of it. As they took leave of her, she displayed a leisurely cuckold’s horn gesture, homed in on the assembled and – squinting for aim - rested its scope on the lieutenant’s back, delighting his troops.
    Unk had suddenly materialized by Greg’s side and both were yanked into the hallway by the cop left to secure the spot. I stepped out with them. The first part I could make out was, “The spread’s still down there. We all gotta eat. We can just chill, have some fun and wait for her to come back with her tail between her legs.”
    Greg glared at him then softened, “So many have come a long way for this. No point letting the feast end up in a dump......” Few others knew the lead the polizia were pursuing.
    I conferred with Gaetana and Claire at the far end of the hall. We all agreed that it was best to stay together with the assemblage, but Claire was too shaken up for something that promised to take on the guise of an Irish wake with the speculation growing increasingly sordid as the festivities wore on. Could we stay in telephone contact and, um, recommend a good take-out place. Pizza would be fine.
    Back to the pavilion. The bird was gone with just a couple of feathers left behind. Some others in Brigitte’s inner circle – not all – had chosen Claire’s route and were presumably hanging with her. Seemed that more than a few others were just put off by the circumstances of the feast. It had been a modest wedding party to start with and the assemblage was now pretty thin.
    Most of us on site had either been rousted from bed or had bailed on elaborate grooming rituals upon learning of Brigitte’s disappearance. For the usual festive trajectory of being feted until fetid, this group had a head start. The crowd was downbeat but consuming apace and almost visibly loosening up.
    Unk had already tried to launch a singalong or two. Just to cheer Greg up, mind you. He would have a more receptive crowd soon enough. We warily kept to the fringe of the gathering. I was busy surveying the food service implements for something that could double as brass knuckles in a pinch.
    The wedding planner weaved through the crowd with a curious hands-wringing canter, trying to salvage what wasn’t already way out of his control and stage-whispering blather I wouldn’t deign to translate about how he didn’t get his diploma (yeah, take that to the bank) to preside over catastrophes like this.
    The spread was generally stellar. We glommed onto a tray of those grilled desert fruit treats that had brought us together. They’d spent too long under the broiler liquefying the fruit, blistering the cheese and nearly charring the meat but they were spectacular and still warm. I resolved that if we got a chance at a do-over, at least some would get drizzled with sambuca before they were torched.
    The cornball eyetalian band hired to camp up the affair was getting paid so they were gonna play, goddamnit. The clarinet and bass were already assaying some ticklish little runs. We – even I – had looked forward to our first big night of dancing together, but we now shook our heads and mouthed “rain check” in unison. The moths would soon be around Gaetana. We polished off one more hefty round and took our leave of Greg, explaining that we’d promised to check in on Claire. A shout comes from the peanut gallery, “You gonna let that babe slip away?”
    Greg leaned in, “This will be tough to face without Brigitte. No reason you should be subjected to anything more than tomorrow’s anecdotes. I’ll probably manage to slip away myself soon.”
    “Call us if you’re up for someplace quiet. We won’t sleep if we don’t hear from you.”
    “Expect it.”
    We covered some ground before we called Claire. We debriefed her on the wedding travesty and asked whether we should come up.
    “I’ll come down. Could stand some air.”
    Hardly necessary at that point but I whispered to Gaetana, “Just saying now so you don’t think it’s hindsight. I have a theory.”
    “So do I. Pretty sure you’re right.”
    Presently, Claire and Marcy (!) were upon us. Shades of Marcy running interference at the lake. Gaetana’s knowing glance just melted me. “Any news?” I asked
    Claire allowed that the lieutenant had called but he was just checking in, hoping to catch Gaetana. She’d had visitors and had tossed a few back but, “How bombed can you get on Prosecco?” She and Marcy and others would be staying in Florence, or at least Tuscany, “for a while to see this through. Mind a bit more of us?”
    “Hardly. Our fates are intertwined. Full disclosure, in case there’s a problem, we’re also there for Greg. I don’t think he was what drove her away.”
    “I don’t think so either. Smaller doses for now, though, and.”
    “Nix on the uncle!” Marcy blurted.
    “Oh, we hear you on that.”
    “Seriously, I may have to stick a knife in him” Claire shot Marcy a glare before she appended, “We don’t need annoying right now.”
    I wanted to press just a bit more, “The crisis summit at the lake. Still premature to talk about it?”
    “A little bit, yeah.”
    “Cool. I just want to tell you that I’m pretty good at these things and I’m confident Brigitte is safe and secure.”
    “We appreciate that.”
    My IM blared. “Greg was extricating himself, leaving the wedding planner responsible for the chaos. We’ll be hooking up across the river. Till we meet again. Pure thoughts”
    We squeezed the bejesus out of each other and parted.
    Greg needed a wall to punch, “I was feeling murderous out there. Too many of them ready to throw Brigitte over.”
    “I should mention. We were just with Claire and Marcy. They are plenty freaked but not rooting around for a scapegoat. And they know Brigitte’s love for you is not misplaced. They’ll be staying around for a fair while.”
    “That’s so important. Thank you. One decent bit of closure out of all this. Tony had to bail on the wedding date but he will be getting to Florence. His father’s final aphorism, before tilting back and purring like a drowsy kitten, had been “Pop the trunk.” Its contents were several paper grocery bags loosely packed with small bills and as close as he’d get to a last will and testament looped from bag to bag like a jigsaw puzzle. It ultimately conveyed that he wanted a proper burial though he’d pass on the funeral.”
    Tony didn’t feel he owed him anything but no better way to tie a pretty bow on the relationship. The foul sentiment intended for the headstone was reduced to an acronym and would never be expressed again. The injunction to stomp the ass of the next priest you see was also ignored. The tent was his shroud. Surprsingly, there was a market for what was left of the rambler and Tony was left with enough cash to re-sod the lawn and buy one of those tents that’s unsprung when tossed like a Frisbee, just about assembling itself. Not what you’d call a windfall, but enough to remove traces.”
    “What passes for a happy ending these days! Are there any responsible adults left at the pavilion?”
    “I could try. You think wedding planner’s getting mugged?”
    “I hate to bring it up – I’ve really tried to suppress it - but beautiful, radiant blonde blonde blonde American girl disappears in Florence on her wedding day and a pack of mutts –I’m sure they’re lovely people – are getting blasted at the reception site and holding forth about bitches and sluts with whoever could pass as a fellow guest. The press will be on this immediately and they may already be there. Best to quash the lurid factor.”
    Greg reached Matt, a co-worker who’d urged him to stage a stealthy Irish goodbye earlier and was still on the scene. Remaining on the line, and with much gusto, Matt announced lights out in five minutes. The one reveler committed enough to start a fight over this – 12 guesses - was sent sprawling when the wedding planner knelt to kiss Matt’s hand. We got Greg close enough to his building to spot a lone news van sporting its own nightlight for an indefinite stakeout. He knew a back entrance.
    I told Gaetana my theory, “So, turns out Brigitte just crouched in the recesses of that walk-in closet while Greg – already high-strung from her strange behavior – ran around freaking for a bit then bolted, making her exit super simple. And Claire was ready for her.”
    “And why all this if Greg’s still a good guy?”
    “That’s the tough part, though I suppose the press has the resources to find out.”
    Next morning, google news was crowing as it had fine prospects for a salacious feast. Brigitte belonged to the world now. Her stories blossomed into greater detail as the page refreshed every few minutes. Warning texts went out to Greg and Claire then we put the coffee on.
    We could’ve written the first few iterations ourselves then it got strange. Brigitte Montcrief, center of a sex abuse scandal as a child, had refused to cooperate with the police then and was now MIA on her wedding day......Suspicion had fallen on a camp counselor Mitchell Fallon who had called the police when he found her unconscious, but the case against him couldn’t stand without her cooperation......Fallon did a lot of showboating with the press at the time about how only she could clear his good name....Fallon is the groom’s maternal uncle and was in Florence to attend the wedding. Was this just a sick coincidence? I had no idea, but little doubt.
    Claire was ready to fill in some blanks. We claimed a bench by the coursing Arno. Unk had kept Brigitte locked in a hot toolshed for 70 hours, yanking her out only when ready to trailblaze a tender new orifice. Whether or not he’d planned to kill her, dehydration nearly sufficed. He did everything short of maim the 10-year old then chloroformed her after promising, “I’ll be watching you forever”. He ‘found’ her in a cave and was celebrated as a hero through a sleepy press cycle while she slowly regained her voice and her strength but opted for silence and anonymity.
    A seizure with fingers down her throat for good measure had kept Mitch’s press photo op ambush of the two together arm-in-arm from happening. Police and press turned against Mitch after this and he lost further points for haranguing the traumatized victim – still unidentified to the public - to thank him publicly.
    A call came in from Greg. Of course, we’re free. Claire, downcast, shook her head. Too early for her to join. We scored a shady spot in the Boboli Gardens. Greg arrived with an update courtesy of Matt. Unk had cornered a comely senorita as the party dispersed and had savaged Brigitte as a useless bitch who should never find love again, getting elaborately redundant in his drunkenness and very slowly registering the implications when his interlocutie both had a microphone clipped to her ample cleavage and knew his full name.
    He grabbed the mic then fled – on camera, within range of a zoom camera for good measure – sprawling extravagantly over three chairs and a table with a brace of lit centerpieces on it all the while hyperventilating into the mouthpiece like a pro who’d rehearsed a comic performance. He hailed a cab and had the driver wait for him while he cleared out his apartment. The discarded mouthpiece was now caught in his cufflink and catching a torrent of deranged muttering. Then he got out to the airport to book the first flight back to North America with Yahoo hits already trailing after him like a comet’s tail.
    As if led by Mitch, much of Greg’s contingent was rapidly dispersing. Greg had been raised to regard his Uncle Mitch as a charming rogue, a little too anachronistic to do any harm, and he’d had no inkling of Mitch being capable of anything beyond the Damon Runyon spectrum of lovable scalwags. Constellations of sickening connections now lit up the midday sky.
    Greg had first met Brigitte in the chapel of a prospective college where Unk had arranged to collect him and had proven a no-show. Mitch had always had a way of planning things then flaking out and Brigitte had commanded his full attention. He’d joked about a causal link within the first ten minutes. Something to the effect, ‘My uncle flaked on me. I’ll have to send him a thank you note.” Hours later, she drove him home.
    Thinking back, Mitch had just missed her numerous times at family events and he may well have drawn Greg into her orbit earlier, steering him into a theatrical production, an intramural volleyball league and a conservation program where he would later learn that an alert saps-a-risin dude would, with any luck, have forsooth espied her earlier.. Mitch could have been stalking her for years. Just to play matchmaker?
    Was there much strategy to this or was the cat just improvising its play with a stunned mouse it had craftily caught and thinking about as many moves ahead as you’d expect of a kitty kat brain? Brigitte had been spontaneous and reasonably fearless in her years with Greg. A touch of claustrophobia – holy shit, little wonder – and a sensitive creep-o-meter but nothing remotely like walking wounded. A savvier partner might have vetted her with a personal data broker for past ...irregularities.
    Greg was stoically torn up about being an instrument of her torment. Did I mention that there was grappa to be had? He maintained a hard, shiny gloss, the kind that could impair lateral mobility in no time. Gaetana had a great idea; warm-up exercises. Flexing all those long muscles propped against lamp posts and park benches. We may have looked like fools, but this took a whack at freeing those laugh/cry/swoon musculo-skeletal memories that are sometimes loosed by a good massage decades after their creation. Moreover, if ol Mitch were somehow in the bushes nearby drinking in our grief, this would make him gag.
    We would not succumb to paranoia, but full alert was warranted. Mitch had ostensibly gotten onto his flight. He seemingly couldn’t finance that elaborate a ruse. Over the years, he had made some oblique references to black ops in semi-private exchanges with other highly mobile male relatives who “had served” but that line of bullshit was a family tradition. His finances were modest and often constraining, unless that was all further cover for a shadow life.
    Flying to Florence was a splurge for which Greg’s frugal dad had pronounced his brother-in-law an asshole. His dad called Mitch “asshole” pretty consistently for decades for a variety of reasons. Deep down, it was probably part of Mitch’s appeal for a rambunctious nephew. In retrospect, it was very likely a stand-in for all those detailed accusations that couldn’t be proven beyond reasonable doubt. Geez, there’s family and there’s Uncle Mitch.
    So, Mitch was outed as at very least stalking Brigitte long-term and very likely much worse. Greg had a taint on him that we were in no position to assess and Brigitte was about as safe as an underground railroad of bridesmaids could keep her. Joker’s Wild. I had indeed scored a Medieval-looking napkin ring at the non-reception that would double neatly as spiked brass knuckles.
    We ensured that Claire was in the loop on all that – she had already seen and widely shared the youtube classic – and we urged her to contact us right after the police if there was any trouble. No need to spell out the open secret that Brigitte was under her care and the assumption that Mitch would figure this out too.
    The wedding dates and figs had been grilled on steel skewers with nifty sword handles, like churrasco blades. We circled back to the reception site for them, finding the disarray from last night fully intact. The skewers had to be stripped of their fly-bait morsels. The small clusters of press and police paid us no mind. I suppose we passed for the help.
    Gaetana and I were not party to the next stage, which was fine with us. Several days had passed and Greg hadn’t physically broken free of the orbit of Brigitte’s friends who’d very evidently undertaken some nebulous rescue mission and now genially shunned him. Still neighbors, they almost constantly crossed paths and did some painstakingly parsed commiserating, but the closest thing to an opening was a promise to let him know if they heard anything further and the practiced, “We’ll have to get together real soon. Don’t let a day pass.”
    Greg was grieving for his intended, but he’d also been whacked pretty hard and didn’t have her support system, with few parties fully trusting him. After a light dinner alone followed by a not altogether immodest portion of grappa, Greg was on a favorite bike path on the outskirts of town that he always walked at night scaling smoothly rolling hills to get past the star-blurring ambient light. A murky cocktail of self-pity and self-hatred propelled him.
    At length, a face emerged from the darkness just a few feet in front of him, exponentially more startling because it was Brigitte. She was not a ghost because instead of a shroud she sported a white guinea T with a healthy bobble and those toreador jeans with the madras fringe and those white espadrilles that brought her up to the bridge of his nose. Anyway. She was staying in a nearby town – don’t ask - and vastly more than rattled that his Uncle Mitch – yes, her rapist - had kept close track of her for over a decade. Her friends hadn’t wanted her to come out to see Greg there but she hadn’t stopped being in love with him and knew he was faultless in all of this.
    He had her eternal love – yeah, just trips off the tongue - and gratitude, but he also had the taint of that now evidently years-long sadistic episode. Along with the cascading memories of Providence, phish food, kayaking, Wave Hill, Tanglewood, Desert Hot Springs and the Loire Valley, there was, sadly, Florence and who knows how closely Mitch was keeping tabs on them, panting in the bushes during those other interludes?
    Greg would stay radioactive while her rapist walked this earth, “I’m doing this to save my life. It wrecks me that it involves cutting you off. Please, if we pass each other on the street someday, don’t stop. Don’t even wink. I’ll be corresponding with Claire and Gaetana and Marcy under another name. Forgive them for keeping my location from you. This will at least be a way for us to broadly keep tabs on each other.”
    “There must be a way around this. He’s not a clever man, He just lost the narrative here.”
    “He kept watch on me for years and I hadn’t a clue.”
    A clamor of church bells rattled his shirt pocket. Never too preoccupied to leave one’s cell phone behind. Greg fished the lil clanger out, “My dad. Please don’t go yet.” She folded her arms and planted her feet.
    “What’s the good news?”
    “This time it is good. Been keeping up with the asshole?” Phone’s now on speaker, “So, he’s pulled this stunt because he couldn’t resist a chance to be hateful, because horrifying a sweet girl is the perfect hobby for an asshole. Then it started to unravel faster than it could in any cartoon. He knew better than to stay there but also that it’s not just the Italian press sharks that had found a new chum. Sumbitch Mitch hailed a cab and had the rapidly-depleting presence of mind to swing by the VRBO for his lavishly incriminating stuff but half-assed that then he hightailed it to the airport and stared at the departure board like a freaking idjit forever. How do I know all that? He was still carrying that microphone and he had become the Where’s Waldo of Youtube!”
    So he books American Airlines for Houston. Whatever logic was at play there, on both counts. Center seat in the back row with some kind of hub to halve the already scant leg room and there was no air circulating while the plane just squatted on the tarmac. This next youtube episode started with a whole cross-section of passengers jostling around and looking surly. It closed in on Unk taking rapid, shallow breaths with his eyes darting. He was trying to tilt his chair back, fiddling with the air knobs, standing a bit longer before the stewardess scolds him again. Kind of all at once.”
    No one was excited to be there but there were young lovers palming each other’s hands and parents tickling toddlers to start their transitions to higher cabin pressure during ascent. Ol Mitch just had a cold sweat to comfort him. It seemed to take great effort to keep from free-form thrashing about. He had tried to bring his head between his knees and control his breathing rate. That wasn’t happening. The chest heaving and panicky yips were drawing wider attention in while the stews in the foreground debated whether to check in on him.”
    They finally turned the air on and he was gulping at it when two of them stopped by.
    “Are you alright, sir?”
    “Keeping it together as best I can, ma’am. Not used to this airline. Get me the fixings for two vodka tonics and I should be able to relax.”
    They agreed to hold onto his credit card and run a tab. His drinking eventually slowed and he settled down, but he clearly knew he was under observation and that hardly helped with weighing his options. Pitched forward, but not far enough to conceal his face, the bastard was drooling. Drooling, like everything else now, on camera. The poor suckers on either side of him spent most all of the trip in the galley, opening sightlines for all those with the phone cameras.

    Touching down in Houston, he’s gotten this whistly breath thing going on like a sucking chest wound. Bit of convulsive action was underway too, like the dry heaves but less elegant. The plane let passengers off on the tarmac like smaller planes do for celebrities and dignitaries. There was a roar as people started getting off. No boy bands on board. Mitch was the star. He had to be coaxed out of his seat and off the plane.
    Cell phones and digital cameras swarmed below like a lagoon full of bioluminescent plankton. Vieques was a nice trip, eh? Take your girl someday. Such a shit-into-gold one there. The US army forced to clear out the unexploded ordinance from decades of artillery practice then they learn that they can float in the bay with some friendly phosphorescent critters that weren’t radioactive.”
    Anyway, the people crowding the tarmac weren’t so much there to judge, more for the guaranteed laff riot. A loose, ambivalent phalanx of police delivered him to the fray. He was getting stiff-armed some and had occasion to flail at one point but it was fundamentally a seedy-looking creep clearing a festive mass of apple-cheeked tech savvies. If Frank Capara were directing Peter Lorre in “M” today, you’d be just about there.”
    He was expedited through customs where those alert to him among the travelers with clearance to be there were more than enough to cause pandemonium. Once he got through to baggage claim, they were out in full force again. He fell to his knees and delivered an elaborate, gruesome confession directly to the dinoflagellates of what he did to Brigitte – whom, suddenly the gentleman, he had declined to name – and to several other young women.
    None of his prey were killed, but he had frequently mobilized to ensure that the sacrament of marriage would never sully his life’s work. The post-assault stalking had evolved from a hot little after-shock of a hobby to becoming a mission. The best part is that after all this high-profile weeping and wailing, he got out the word that he’s started a book of his personal reflections on life and anticipated the prison stay as a chance to clear his head and focus on this opus.”
    I know I spun this out a bit but you probably don’t want to spend the day on youtube and it might take some effort to avoid it. Total fiendish asshole! No parole. Trial waived. All that’s left is awaiting sentencing. And if it ever comes to clemency hearings, we’re on it. Your mother sends her love to both of you. She’s resting right now, more relieved than anything. How’s the little girl holding up?”
    Brigitte winked. “Absolute pillar.”
    “The asshole is excommunicated. We’re hers if she’ll have us.”
    There was a period of track repair before we could get back on track. Restoring equilibrium got a boost from the principles being based in this Renaissance theme park, mercifully in the off-season.
    There was a spike in queries about how “my Botticelli” was coming along as if more hinged on it now. A very simple conclusion had stalked me for a long while. The slur “damp squib” really did not capture the prospect that there was more continuity and pragmatism to his story than the trauma and meltdown that are expected to mark every trajectory as surely as birth and death.
    Botticelli had outlived Savanarola by 12 years and his name is notably absent from a petition in the monk’s defense signed by his markedly more partisan brother who was actually one of the piagnoni. Among the cardinal truths that wilted under scrutiny were the accounts of Botticelli personally consigning certain pagan-themed paintings of his to the bonfires and reports that his workshop’s production had decreased significantly in his final decade. The monk’s iconography frequently showed up in his paintings but there was a robust market for it and Botticelli had always had a mystical bent. Many of the trail-blazing impressionist painters ensured a steady income stream by dressing their subjects in the latest fashions but that hasn’t tarnished their reputations. The skies teaming with dancing angels in his Mystical Nativity https://totallyhistory.com/the-mystical-nativity/ are as ravishing as anything else in his canon and historians have noted that he favored costly pigments to produce eye candy that would enrage Savanarola whatever its themes.
    The lot of us had been blacklisted from the pavilion. The wedding reception ended up in the courtyard where we’d made the dates. This time it was pot luck with no band or cake and very haphazard seating. Dress down affair; we were just happy to be clean for this one. Claire officiated.
    Tony made it this time, very copacetic and voluble and he would be able to stay around for a fair while. He volunteered nothing about the circumstances that had delayed him and we didn’t ask. Brigitte and Greg’s parents and siblings were also in attendance. A stateside visit had been postponed for a while to let the press cool off (and the honeymoon was shifted from the French West Indies to the Aegean), so a subsidized deal was finagled with a couple of cruise ships.
    A fair dose of photography and filming took place, all gathered into a secure pool on a drop box. It didn’t take much reinforcement to keep everything off YouTube. Some wag – possibly me, we didn’t abjure wine for this and the provenance of many bon mots was shaky – had just a bit presciently suggested that YouTube was already adding our DNA to its search algorithm.
    I did do the grilled date toast. That was mine. And I – somehow - smoothly segued to the glass-hoisting conclusion by raising two flaming skewers of sambuca-soaked date concoctions aloft. Fourteen months hence, Gaeta and I would conclude our own Firenze wedding ceremony by passing under a row of those lit skewers in an arch of sabers formation.

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