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That did it. Casting me a glance of the purest scorn, he charged off half into the pretty teatime dresses and immaculate men, searching around until his eyes lit on a table where a woman of indeterminate age sat, hands folded, face thin and sickly pale, half hidden under a wide-brimmed hat, looking as if she were waiting for someone who never came.
That one, I thought.
Bug glanced from her to me. I nodded. And in a moment he was bowing at her table and a conversation ensued. It seemed she didn't dance, didn't know how to dance, didn't want to dance. Ah, yes, he seemed to be saying. Ah, no, she seemed to reply. Bug turned, holding her hand, and gave me a long stare and a wink. Then, without looking at her, he raised her by her hand and arm and out, with a seamless glide, onto the floor.
What can I say, how can I tell? Bug, long ago, had never bragged, but only told the truth. Once he got hold of a girl, she was weightless. By the time he had whisked and whirled and glided her once around the floor, she almost took off, it seemed he had to hold her down, she was pure gossamer, the closest thing to a hummingbird held in the hand so you cannot feel its weight but only sense its heartbeat sounding to your touch, and there she went out and around and back, with Bug guiding and moving, enticing and retreating, and not fifty anymore, no, but eighteen, his body remembering what his mind thought it had long forgotten, for his body was free of the earth now, too. He carried himself, as he carried her, with that careless insouciance of a lover who knows what will happen in the next hour and the night soon following.
And it happened, just like he said. Within a minute, a minute and a half at most, the dance floor cleared. As Bug and his stranger lady whirled by with a glance, every couple on the floor stood still. The bandleader almost forgot to keep time with his baton, and the members of the orchestra, in a similar trance, leaned forward over their instruments to see Bug and his new love whirl and turn without touching the floor.
When the «Serenade» ended, there was a moment of stillness and then an explosion of applause. Bug pretended it was all for the lady, and helped her curtsy and took her to her table, where she sat, eyes shut, not believing what had happened. By that time Bug was on the floor again, with one of the wives he borrowed from the nearest table. This time, no one even went out on the floor. Bug and the borrowed wife filled it around and around, and this time even Bug's eyes were shut.
I got up and put twenty dollars on the table where he might find it. After all, he had won the bet, hadn't he?
Why had I done it? Well, I couldn't very well have left him out in the middle of the high school auditorium aisle dancing alone, could I?
On my way out I looked back. Bug saw me and waved, his eyes as brimmed full as mine. Someone passing whispered, «Hey, come on, look it this guy!»
God, I thought, he'll be dancing all night.
Me, I could only walk.
And I went out and walked until I was fifty again and the sun was going down and the low June fog was coming in early over old Los Angeles.
That night, just before going to sleep, I wished that in the morning when Bug woke up he would find the floor around his bed covered with trophies.
Or at the very least he would turn and find a quiet and understanding trophy with her head on his pillow, near enough to touch.
Once More, Legato
Exchange
Free Dirt
That one, I thought.
Bug glanced from her to me. I nodded. And in a moment he was bowing at her table and a conversation ensued. It seemed she didn't dance, didn't know how to dance, didn't want to dance. Ah, yes, he seemed to be saying. Ah, no, she seemed to reply. Bug turned, holding her hand, and gave me a long stare and a wink. Then, without looking at her, he raised her by her hand and arm and out, with a seamless glide, onto the floor.
What can I say, how can I tell? Bug, long ago, had never bragged, but only told the truth. Once he got hold of a girl, she was weightless. By the time he had whisked and whirled and glided her once around the floor, she almost took off, it seemed he had to hold her down, she was pure gossamer, the closest thing to a hummingbird held in the hand so you cannot feel its weight but only sense its heartbeat sounding to your touch, and there she went out and around and back, with Bug guiding and moving, enticing and retreating, and not fifty anymore, no, but eighteen, his body remembering what his mind thought it had long forgotten, for his body was free of the earth now, too. He carried himself, as he carried her, with that careless insouciance of a lover who knows what will happen in the next hour and the night soon following.
And it happened, just like he said. Within a minute, a minute and a half at most, the dance floor cleared. As Bug and his stranger lady whirled by with a glance, every couple on the floor stood still. The bandleader almost forgot to keep time with his baton, and the members of the orchestra, in a similar trance, leaned forward over their instruments to see Bug and his new love whirl and turn without touching the floor.
When the «Serenade» ended, there was a moment of stillness and then an explosion of applause. Bug pretended it was all for the lady, and helped her curtsy and took her to her table, where she sat, eyes shut, not believing what had happened. By that time Bug was on the floor again, with one of the wives he borrowed from the nearest table. This time, no one even went out on the floor. Bug and the borrowed wife filled it around and around, and this time even Bug's eyes were shut.
I got up and put twenty dollars on the table where he might find it. After all, he had won the bet, hadn't he?
Why had I done it? Well, I couldn't very well have left him out in the middle of the high school auditorium aisle dancing alone, could I?
On my way out I looked back. Bug saw me and waved, his eyes as brimmed full as mine. Someone passing whispered, «Hey, come on, look it this guy!»
God, I thought, he'll be dancing all night.
Me, I could only walk.
And I went out and walked until I was fifty again and the sun was going down and the low June fog was coming in early over old Los Angeles.
That night, just before going to sleep, I wished that in the morning when Bug woke up he would find the floor around his bed covered with trophies.
Or at the very least he would turn and find a quiet and understanding trophy with her head on his pillow, near enough to touch.
Once More, Legato
1995 year
Fentriss sat up in his chair in the garden in the middle of a fine autumn and listened. The drink in his hand remained unsipped, his friend Black unspoken to, the fine house unnoticed, the very weather itself neglected, for there was a veritable fountain of sound in the air above them.
«My God,» he mid. «Do you 'hear?»
«What, the birds?» asked his friend Black, doing just the opposite, sipping his drink, noticing the weather, admiring the rich house, and neglecting the birds entirely until this moment.
«Great God in heaven, listen to them!» cried Fentriss.
Black listened. «Rather nice.»
«clean out your ears!»
Black made a halfhearted gesture, symbolizing the cleaning out of ears. «Well?»
«Damn it, don't be funny. I mean really listen! They're singing a tune!»
«Birds usually do.»
«No, they don't; birds paste together bits and pieces maybe, five or six notes, eight at the most. Mockingbirds have repertoires that change, but not entire melodies. These birds are different. Now shut up and give over!»
Both men sat, enchanted. Black's expression melted.
«I'll be damned,» he said at last. «They do go on.» He leaned forward and listened intently.
«Yes . . .» murmured Fentriss, eyes shut, nodding to the rhythms that sprang like fresh rain from the tree just above their heads. «. . . ohmigod . . . indeed.»
Black rose as if to move under the tree and peer up. Fentriss protested with a fierce whisper:
«Don't spoil it. Sit. Be very still. Where's my pencil? Ah…»
Half peering around, he found a pencil and notepad, shut his eyes, and began to scribble blindly.
The birds sang.
«You're not actually writing down their song?» said Black.
«What does it look like? Quiet.»
And with eyes now open, now shut, Fentriss drew scales and jammed in the notes.
«I didn't know you read music,» said Black, astonished.
«I played the violin until my father broke it. Please! There. There. Yes!
«Slower,» he whispered. «Wait for me.»
As if hearing, the birds adjusted their lilt, moving toward piano instead of bravado.
A breeze stirred the leaves, like an invisible conductor, and the singing died.
Fentriss, perspiration beading his forehead, stopped scribbling and fell back.
«I'll be damned.» Black gulped his drink. «What was that all about?»
«Writing a song.» Fentriss stared at the scales he had dashed on paper. «Or a tone poem.»
«Let me see that!»
«Wait.» The tree shook itself gently, but produced no further notes. «I want to be sure they're done.»
Silence.
Black seized the pages and let his eyes drift over the scales. «Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,» he said, aghast. «It works.» He glanced up at the thick green of the tree, where no throat warbled, no wing stirred. «What kind of birds are those?»
«The birds of forever, the small beasts of an Immaculate Musical Conception. Something,» said Fentriss, «has made them with child and its name is song-«
«Hogwash!»
«Is it?! Something in the air, in the seeds they ate at dawn, some whim of climate and weather, God! But now they're mine, it's mine. A fine tune.»
«It is'» said Black. «But can't be!»
«Never question the miraculous when it happens. Good grief, maybe those damned wonderful creatures have been throwing up incredible songs for months, years, but no one listened. Today, for the first time, someone did. Me! Now, what to do with the gift?»
«You don't seriously mean-?»
«I've been out of work for a year. I quit my computers, retired early, I'm only forty-nine, and have been threatening to knit macrame' to give friends to spoil their walls, day after day. Which shall it be, friend, macrame' or Mozart?»
«Are you Mozart?»
«Just his bastard son.»
«Nonsense,» cried Black, pointing his face like a blunderbuss at the trees as if he might blast the choir. «That tree, those birds, are a Rorschach test. Your subconscious is picking and choosing notes from pure chaos. There's no discernible tune, no special rhythm. You had me fooled, but I see and hear it now: you've had a repressed desire since childhood to compose. And you've let a clutch of idiot birds grab you by the ears. Put down that pen!»
«Nonsense right back at you.» Fentriss laughed. «You're jealous that after twelve layabout years, thunderstruck with boredom, one of us has found an occupation. I shall follow it. Listen and write, write and listen. Sit down, you're obstructing the acoustics!»
«I'll sit,» Black exclaimed, «but-« He clapped his hands over his ears.
«Fair enough,» said Fentriss. «Escape fantastic reality while I change a few notes and finish out this unexpected birth.»
Glancing up at the tree, he whispered:
«Wait for me.»
The tree rustled its leaves and fell quiet.
«Crazy,» muttered Black.
One, two, three hours later, entering the library quietly and then loudly, Black cried out:
«What are you doing?»
Bent over his desk, his hand moving furiously, Fentriss said:
«Finishing a symphony!»
«The same one you began in the garden?»
«No, the birds began, the birds!»
«The birds, then.» Black edged closer to study the mad inscriptions. «How do you know what to do with that stuff?»
«They did most. I've added variations!»
«An arrogance the ornithologists will resent and attack. Have you composed before?»
«Not»-Fentriss let his fingers roam, loop, and scratch-«until today!»
«You realize, of course, you're plagiarizing those songbirds?»
«Borrowing, Black, borrowing. If a milkmaid, singing at dawn, can have her hum borrowed by Berlioz, well! Or if Dvorak, hearing a Dixie banjo plucker pluck 'Goin' Home,' steals the banjo to eke out his New World, why can't I weave a net to catch a tune? There! Finito. Done! Give us a title, Black!»
«I? Who sings off-key?»
«What about 'The Emperor's Nightingale'?»
«Stravinsky.»
«'The Birds'?»
«Hitchcock.»
«Damn. How's this: 'It's Only John Cage in a Gilded Bird'?»
«Brilliant. But no one knows who John Cage was.»
''Well, then, I've got it!» And he wrote:
«'Forty-seven Magpies Baked in a Pie.'
«Blackbirds, you mean; go back to John Cage.»
«Bosh!» Fentriss stabbed the phone. «Hello, Willie? Could you come over? Yes, a small job. Symphonic arrangement for a friend, or friends. What's your usual Philharmonic fee? Eh? Good enough. Tonight!»
Fentriss disconnected and turned to gaze at the tree with wonder in it.
«What next?» he murmured.
«Forty-seven Magpies,» with title shortened, premiered at the Glendale Chamber Symphony a month later with standing ovations, incredible reviews.
Fentriss, outside his skin with joy, prepared to launch himself atop large, small, symphonic, operatic, whatever fell on his ears. He had listened to the strange choirs each day for weeks, but bad noted nothing, waiting to see if the «Magpie» experiment was to be repeated. When the applause rose in storms and the critics hopped when they weren't skipping, he knew he must strike again before the epilepsy ceased.
There followed: «Wings,» «Flight,» «Night Chorus,» «The Fledgling Madrigals,» and «Dawn Patrol,» each greeted by new thunderstorms of acclamation and critics angry at excellence but forced to praise.
«By now,» said Fentriss, «I should be unbearable to live with, but the birds caution modesty.»
«Also,'' said Black, seated under the tree, waiting for a sprig of benison and the merest touch of symphonic manna, «shut up! If all those sly dimwit composers, who will soon be lurking in the bushes, cop your secret, you're a gone poacher.»
«Poacher! By God, yes!» Fentriss laughed. «Poacher.»
And damn if the first poacher didn't arrive!
Glancing out at tree in the morning, Fentriss witnessed a runty shadow stretching up, handheld tape recorder poised, warbling and whistling softly at the tree. when this failed, the half-seen poacher tried dove-coos and then orioles and roosters, half dancing in a circle.
«Damn it to hell!» Fentriss leaped out with a shotgun cry: «Is that Wolfgang Prouty poaching my garden? Out, Wolfgang! Go!»
Dropping his recorder, Prouty vaulted a bush, impaled himself on thorns, and vanished.
Fentriss, cursing, picked up an abandoned notepad.
«Nightsong,» it read. On the tape recorder he found a lovely Satie-like bird-choir.
After that, more poachers arrived mid-night to depart at dawn. Their spawn, Fentriss realized, would soon throttle his creativity and still his voice. He loitered full-time in the garden now, not knowing what seed to give his beauties, and heavily watered the lawn to fetch up worms. Wearily he stood guard through sleepless nights, nodding off only to find Wolfgang Prouty's evil minions astride the wall, prompting arias, and one night, by God, perched in the tree itself, humming in hopes of sing-alongs.
A shotgun was the final answer. After its first fiery roar, the garden was empty for a week. That is, until— Someone came very late indeed and committed mayhem.
As quietly as possible, he cut the branches and sawed the limbs.
«Oh, envious composers, dreadful murderers!» cried Fentriss.
And the birds were gone.
And the career of Amadeus Two with it.
«Black!» cried Fentriss.
«Yes, dear friend?» said Black, looking at the bleak sky where once green was.
«Is your car outside?»
«When last I looked.»
«Drive!»
But driving in search didn't do it. It wasn't like calling in lost dogs or telephone-poled cats. They must find and cage an entire Mormon tabernacle team of soprano springtime-in-the-Rockies birdseed lovers to prove one in the hand is worth two in the bush.
But still they hastened from block to block, garden to garden, lurking and listening. Now their spirits soared with an echo of «Hallelujah Chorus» oriole warbling, only to sink in a drab sparrow twilight of despair.
Only when they had crossed and recrossed interminable mazes of asphalt and greens did one of them finally (Black) light his pipe and emit a theory.
«Did you ever think to wonder,» he mused behind a smoke-cloud, «what season of the year this is?»
«Season of the year?» said Fentriss, exasperated.
«Well, coincidentally, wasn't the night the tree fell and the wee songsters blew town, was not that the first fall night of autumn?»
Fentriss clenched a fist and struck his brow.
«You mean?»
«Your friends have flown the coop. Their migration must be above San Miguel Allende just now.»
«If they are migratory birds!»
«Do you doubt it?»
Another pained silence, another blow to the head.
''Shit!''
«Precisely,» said Black.
«Friend,» said Fentriss.
«Sir?»
«Drive home.»
It was a long year, it was a short year, it was a year of anticipation, it was the burgeoning of despair, it was the revival of inspiration, but at its heart, Fentriss knew, just another Tale of Two Cities, but he did not know what the other city was!
How stupid of me, he thought, not to have guessed or imagined that my songsters we're wanderers who each autumn fled south and each springtime swarmed north in A Cappella choirs of sound.
«The waiting,» he told Black, «is madness. The phone never stops-«
The phone rang. He picked it up and addressed it like a child. «Yes. Yes. Of course. Soon. When? Very soon.» And put the phone down. «You see? That was Philadelphia. They want another Cantata as good as the first. At dawn today it was Boston. Yesterday the Vienna Philharmonic. Soon, I say. When? God knows. Lunacy! Where are those angels that once sang me to my rest?»
He threw down maps and weather charts of Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, and the Argentines.
«How far south? Do I scour Buenos Aires or Rio, Mazatlan or Cuernavaca? And then? Wander about with a tin ear, standing under trees waiting for bird-drops like a spotted owl? Will the Argentine critics trot by scoffing to see me leaning on trees, eyes shut, waiting for the quasi-melody, the lost chord? I'd let no one know the cause of my journey, my search, otherwise pandemoniums of laughter. But in what city, under what kind of tree would I wander to stand? A tree like mine? Do they seek the same roosts? or will anything do in Ecuador or Peru? God, I could waste months guessing and come back with birdseed in my hair and bird bombs on my lapels. What to do, Black? Speak!»
«Well, for one thing»-Black stuffed and lit his pipe and exhaled his aromatic concepts-' 'you might clear off this stump and plant a new tree.»
They had been circling the stump and kicking it for inspiration. Fentriss froze with one foot raised. «Say that again?!»
«I said-«
«Good grief, you genius! Let me kiss you!»
«Rather not. Hugs, maybe.»
Fentriss hugged him, wildly. «Friend!»
«Always was.»
«Let's get a shovel and spade.»
«You get. I'll watch.»
Fentriss ran back a minute later with a spade and pickax.
«Sure you won't join me?»
Black sucked his pipe, blew smoke. «Later.»
«How much would a full-grown tree cost?»
«Too much.»
«Yes, but if it were here and the birds did return?» Black let out more smoke. «Might be worth it. Opus Number Two: 'In the Beginning' by Charles Fentriss, stuff like that.»
'In the Beginning,' or maybe 'The Return.''»
«One of those.»
«Or-« Fentriss struck the stump with the pickax. « 'Rebirth.' « He struck again. «'Ode to Joy.' » Another strike.
'Spring Harvest.' « Another. «'Let the Heavens Resound.' How's that, Black?»
«I prefer the other,» said Black.
The stump was pulled and the new tree bought.
«Don't show me the bill,» Fentriss told his accountant. «Pay it.»
And the tallest tree they could find, of the same family as the one dead and gone, was planted.
«What if it dies before my choir returns?» said Fentriss. «What if it lives,» said Black, «and your choir goes elsewhere?»
The tree, planted, seemed in no immediate need to die. Neither did it look particularly vital and ready to welcome small singers from some far southern places.
Meanwhile, the sky, like the tree, was empty. «Don't they know I'm waiting?» said Fentriss. «Not unless,» offered Black, «you majored in cross-continental telepathy.»
«I've checked with Audubon. They say that while the swallows do come back to Capistrano on a special day, give or take a white lie, other migrating species are often one or two weeks late.»
«If I were you,» said Black, «I would plunge into an intense love affair to distract you while you wait.»
«I am fresh out of love affairs.»
«Well, then,» said Black, «suffer.»
The hours passed slower than the minutes, the days passed slower than the hours, the weeks passed slower than the days. Black called. «No birds?»
«No birds.»
«Pity. I can't stand watching you lose weight.» And Black disconnected.
On a final night, when Fentriss had almost yanked the phone out of the wall, fearful of another call from the Boston Symphony, he leaned an ax against the trunk of the new tree and addressed it and the empty sky.
«Last chance,» he said. «If the dawn patrol doesn't show by seven a.m., it's quits.»
And he touched ax-blade against the tree-bole, took two shots of vodka so swiftly that the spirits squirted out both eyes, and went to bed.
He awoke twice during the night to hear nothing but a soft breeze outside his window, stirring the leaves, with not a ghost of song.
And awoke at dawn with tear-filled eyes, having dreamed that the birds had returned, but knew, in waking, it was only a dream.
And yet…?
Hark, someone might have said in an old novel. List! as in an old play.
Eyes shut, he fine-tuned his ears .
The tree outside, as he arose, looked fatter, as if it had taken on invisible ballasts in the night. There were stirrings there, not of simple breeze or probing winds, but of something in the very leaves that knitted and purled them in rhythms. He dared not look but lay back down to ache his senses and try to know.
A single chirp hovered in the window.
He waited.
Silence.
Go on, he thought.
Another chirp.
Don't breathe, he thought; don't let them know you're listening.
Hush.
A fourth sound, then a fifth note, then a sixth and seventh. My God, he thought, is this a substitute orchestra, a replacement choir come to scare off my loves?
Another five notes.
Perhaps, he prayed, they're only tuning up!
Another twelve notes, of no special timbre or pace, and as he was about to explode like a lunatic conductor and fire the bunch-It happened. Note after note, line after line, fluid melody following spring freshet melody, the whole choir exhaled to blossom the tree with joyous proclamations of return and welcome in chorus.
And as they sang, Fentriss sneaked his hand to find a pad and pen to hide under the covers so that its scratching might not disturb the choir that soared and dipped to soar again, firing the bright air that flowed from the tree to tune his soul with delight and move his hand to remember.
The phone rang. He picked it up swiftly to hear Black ask
if the waiting was over. Without speaking, he held the receiver in the window.
«I'll be damned,» said Black's voice.
«No, anointed,» whispered the composer, scribbling Cantata No.2. Laughing, he called softly to the sky.
«Please. More slowly. Legato, not agitato.»
And the tree and the creatures within the tree obeyed.
Agitato ceased.
Legato prevailed.
Fentriss sat up in his chair in the garden in the middle of a fine autumn and listened. The drink in his hand remained unsipped, his friend Black unspoken to, the fine house unnoticed, the very weather itself neglected, for there was a veritable fountain of sound in the air above them.
«My God,» he mid. «Do you 'hear?»
«What, the birds?» asked his friend Black, doing just the opposite, sipping his drink, noticing the weather, admiring the rich house, and neglecting the birds entirely until this moment.
«Great God in heaven, listen to them!» cried Fentriss.
Black listened. «Rather nice.»
«clean out your ears!»
Black made a halfhearted gesture, symbolizing the cleaning out of ears. «Well?»
«Damn it, don't be funny. I mean really listen! They're singing a tune!»
«Birds usually do.»
«No, they don't; birds paste together bits and pieces maybe, five or six notes, eight at the most. Mockingbirds have repertoires that change, but not entire melodies. These birds are different. Now shut up and give over!»
Both men sat, enchanted. Black's expression melted.
«I'll be damned,» he said at last. «They do go on.» He leaned forward and listened intently.
«Yes . . .» murmured Fentriss, eyes shut, nodding to the rhythms that sprang like fresh rain from the tree just above their heads. «. . . ohmigod . . . indeed.»
Black rose as if to move under the tree and peer up. Fentriss protested with a fierce whisper:
«Don't spoil it. Sit. Be very still. Where's my pencil? Ah…»
Half peering around, he found a pencil and notepad, shut his eyes, and began to scribble blindly.
The birds sang.
«You're not actually writing down their song?» said Black.
«What does it look like? Quiet.»
And with eyes now open, now shut, Fentriss drew scales and jammed in the notes.
«I didn't know you read music,» said Black, astonished.
«I played the violin until my father broke it. Please! There. There. Yes!
«Slower,» he whispered. «Wait for me.»
As if hearing, the birds adjusted their lilt, moving toward piano instead of bravado.
A breeze stirred the leaves, like an invisible conductor, and the singing died.
Fentriss, perspiration beading his forehead, stopped scribbling and fell back.
«I'll be damned.» Black gulped his drink. «What was that all about?»
«Writing a song.» Fentriss stared at the scales he had dashed on paper. «Or a tone poem.»
«Let me see that!»
«Wait.» The tree shook itself gently, but produced no further notes. «I want to be sure they're done.»
Silence.
Black seized the pages and let his eyes drift over the scales. «Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,» he said, aghast. «It works.» He glanced up at the thick green of the tree, where no throat warbled, no wing stirred. «What kind of birds are those?»
«The birds of forever, the small beasts of an Immaculate Musical Conception. Something,» said Fentriss, «has made them with child and its name is song-«
«Hogwash!»
«Is it?! Something in the air, in the seeds they ate at dawn, some whim of climate and weather, God! But now they're mine, it's mine. A fine tune.»
«It is'» said Black. «But can't be!»
«Never question the miraculous when it happens. Good grief, maybe those damned wonderful creatures have been throwing up incredible songs for months, years, but no one listened. Today, for the first time, someone did. Me! Now, what to do with the gift?»
«You don't seriously mean-?»
«I've been out of work for a year. I quit my computers, retired early, I'm only forty-nine, and have been threatening to knit macrame' to give friends to spoil their walls, day after day. Which shall it be, friend, macrame' or Mozart?»
«Are you Mozart?»
«Just his bastard son.»
«Nonsense,» cried Black, pointing his face like a blunderbuss at the trees as if he might blast the choir. «That tree, those birds, are a Rorschach test. Your subconscious is picking and choosing notes from pure chaos. There's no discernible tune, no special rhythm. You had me fooled, but I see and hear it now: you've had a repressed desire since childhood to compose. And you've let a clutch of idiot birds grab you by the ears. Put down that pen!»
«Nonsense right back at you.» Fentriss laughed. «You're jealous that after twelve layabout years, thunderstruck with boredom, one of us has found an occupation. I shall follow it. Listen and write, write and listen. Sit down, you're obstructing the acoustics!»
«I'll sit,» Black exclaimed, «but-« He clapped his hands over his ears.
«Fair enough,» said Fentriss. «Escape fantastic reality while I change a few notes and finish out this unexpected birth.»
Glancing up at the tree, he whispered:
«Wait for me.»
The tree rustled its leaves and fell quiet.
«Crazy,» muttered Black.
One, two, three hours later, entering the library quietly and then loudly, Black cried out:
«What are you doing?»
Bent over his desk, his hand moving furiously, Fentriss said:
«Finishing a symphony!»
«The same one you began in the garden?»
«No, the birds began, the birds!»
«The birds, then.» Black edged closer to study the mad inscriptions. «How do you know what to do with that stuff?»
«They did most. I've added variations!»
«An arrogance the ornithologists will resent and attack. Have you composed before?»
«Not»-Fentriss let his fingers roam, loop, and scratch-«until today!»
«You realize, of course, you're plagiarizing those songbirds?»
«Borrowing, Black, borrowing. If a milkmaid, singing at dawn, can have her hum borrowed by Berlioz, well! Or if Dvorak, hearing a Dixie banjo plucker pluck 'Goin' Home,' steals the banjo to eke out his New World, why can't I weave a net to catch a tune? There! Finito. Done! Give us a title, Black!»
«I? Who sings off-key?»
«What about 'The Emperor's Nightingale'?»
«Stravinsky.»
«'The Birds'?»
«Hitchcock.»
«Damn. How's this: 'It's Only John Cage in a Gilded Bird'?»
«Brilliant. But no one knows who John Cage was.»
''Well, then, I've got it!» And he wrote:
«'Forty-seven Magpies Baked in a Pie.'
«Blackbirds, you mean; go back to John Cage.»
«Bosh!» Fentriss stabbed the phone. «Hello, Willie? Could you come over? Yes, a small job. Symphonic arrangement for a friend, or friends. What's your usual Philharmonic fee? Eh? Good enough. Tonight!»
Fentriss disconnected and turned to gaze at the tree with wonder in it.
«What next?» he murmured.
«Forty-seven Magpies,» with title shortened, premiered at the Glendale Chamber Symphony a month later with standing ovations, incredible reviews.
Fentriss, outside his skin with joy, prepared to launch himself atop large, small, symphonic, operatic, whatever fell on his ears. He had listened to the strange choirs each day for weeks, but bad noted nothing, waiting to see if the «Magpie» experiment was to be repeated. When the applause rose in storms and the critics hopped when they weren't skipping, he knew he must strike again before the epilepsy ceased.
There followed: «Wings,» «Flight,» «Night Chorus,» «The Fledgling Madrigals,» and «Dawn Patrol,» each greeted by new thunderstorms of acclamation and critics angry at excellence but forced to praise.
«By now,» said Fentriss, «I should be unbearable to live with, but the birds caution modesty.»
«Also,'' said Black, seated under the tree, waiting for a sprig of benison and the merest touch of symphonic manna, «shut up! If all those sly dimwit composers, who will soon be lurking in the bushes, cop your secret, you're a gone poacher.»
«Poacher! By God, yes!» Fentriss laughed. «Poacher.»
And damn if the first poacher didn't arrive!
Glancing out at tree in the morning, Fentriss witnessed a runty shadow stretching up, handheld tape recorder poised, warbling and whistling softly at the tree. when this failed, the half-seen poacher tried dove-coos and then orioles and roosters, half dancing in a circle.
«Damn it to hell!» Fentriss leaped out with a shotgun cry: «Is that Wolfgang Prouty poaching my garden? Out, Wolfgang! Go!»
Dropping his recorder, Prouty vaulted a bush, impaled himself on thorns, and vanished.
Fentriss, cursing, picked up an abandoned notepad.
«Nightsong,» it read. On the tape recorder he found a lovely Satie-like bird-choir.
After that, more poachers arrived mid-night to depart at dawn. Their spawn, Fentriss realized, would soon throttle his creativity and still his voice. He loitered full-time in the garden now, not knowing what seed to give his beauties, and heavily watered the lawn to fetch up worms. Wearily he stood guard through sleepless nights, nodding off only to find Wolfgang Prouty's evil minions astride the wall, prompting arias, and one night, by God, perched in the tree itself, humming in hopes of sing-alongs.
A shotgun was the final answer. After its first fiery roar, the garden was empty for a week. That is, until— Someone came very late indeed and committed mayhem.
As quietly as possible, he cut the branches and sawed the limbs.
«Oh, envious composers, dreadful murderers!» cried Fentriss.
And the birds were gone.
And the career of Amadeus Two with it.
«Black!» cried Fentriss.
«Yes, dear friend?» said Black, looking at the bleak sky where once green was.
«Is your car outside?»
«When last I looked.»
«Drive!»
But driving in search didn't do it. It wasn't like calling in lost dogs or telephone-poled cats. They must find and cage an entire Mormon tabernacle team of soprano springtime-in-the-Rockies birdseed lovers to prove one in the hand is worth two in the bush.
But still they hastened from block to block, garden to garden, lurking and listening. Now their spirits soared with an echo of «Hallelujah Chorus» oriole warbling, only to sink in a drab sparrow twilight of despair.
Only when they had crossed and recrossed interminable mazes of asphalt and greens did one of them finally (Black) light his pipe and emit a theory.
«Did you ever think to wonder,» he mused behind a smoke-cloud, «what season of the year this is?»
«Season of the year?» said Fentriss, exasperated.
«Well, coincidentally, wasn't the night the tree fell and the wee songsters blew town, was not that the first fall night of autumn?»
Fentriss clenched a fist and struck his brow.
«You mean?»
«Your friends have flown the coop. Their migration must be above San Miguel Allende just now.»
«If they are migratory birds!»
«Do you doubt it?»
Another pained silence, another blow to the head.
''Shit!''
«Precisely,» said Black.
«Friend,» said Fentriss.
«Sir?»
«Drive home.»
It was a long year, it was a short year, it was a year of anticipation, it was the burgeoning of despair, it was the revival of inspiration, but at its heart, Fentriss knew, just another Tale of Two Cities, but he did not know what the other city was!
How stupid of me, he thought, not to have guessed or imagined that my songsters we're wanderers who each autumn fled south and each springtime swarmed north in A Cappella choirs of sound.
«The waiting,» he told Black, «is madness. The phone never stops-«
The phone rang. He picked it up and addressed it like a child. «Yes. Yes. Of course. Soon. When? Very soon.» And put the phone down. «You see? That was Philadelphia. They want another Cantata as good as the first. At dawn today it was Boston. Yesterday the Vienna Philharmonic. Soon, I say. When? God knows. Lunacy! Where are those angels that once sang me to my rest?»
He threw down maps and weather charts of Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, and the Argentines.
«How far south? Do I scour Buenos Aires or Rio, Mazatlan or Cuernavaca? And then? Wander about with a tin ear, standing under trees waiting for bird-drops like a spotted owl? Will the Argentine critics trot by scoffing to see me leaning on trees, eyes shut, waiting for the quasi-melody, the lost chord? I'd let no one know the cause of my journey, my search, otherwise pandemoniums of laughter. But in what city, under what kind of tree would I wander to stand? A tree like mine? Do they seek the same roosts? or will anything do in Ecuador or Peru? God, I could waste months guessing and come back with birdseed in my hair and bird bombs on my lapels. What to do, Black? Speak!»
«Well, for one thing»-Black stuffed and lit his pipe and exhaled his aromatic concepts-' 'you might clear off this stump and plant a new tree.»
They had been circling the stump and kicking it for inspiration. Fentriss froze with one foot raised. «Say that again?!»
«I said-«
«Good grief, you genius! Let me kiss you!»
«Rather not. Hugs, maybe.»
Fentriss hugged him, wildly. «Friend!»
«Always was.»
«Let's get a shovel and spade.»
«You get. I'll watch.»
Fentriss ran back a minute later with a spade and pickax.
«Sure you won't join me?»
Black sucked his pipe, blew smoke. «Later.»
«How much would a full-grown tree cost?»
«Too much.»
«Yes, but if it were here and the birds did return?» Black let out more smoke. «Might be worth it. Opus Number Two: 'In the Beginning' by Charles Fentriss, stuff like that.»
'In the Beginning,' or maybe 'The Return.''»
«One of those.»
«Or-« Fentriss struck the stump with the pickax. « 'Rebirth.' « He struck again. «'Ode to Joy.' » Another strike.
'Spring Harvest.' « Another. «'Let the Heavens Resound.' How's that, Black?»
«I prefer the other,» said Black.
The stump was pulled and the new tree bought.
«Don't show me the bill,» Fentriss told his accountant. «Pay it.»
And the tallest tree they could find, of the same family as the one dead and gone, was planted.
«What if it dies before my choir returns?» said Fentriss. «What if it lives,» said Black, «and your choir goes elsewhere?»
The tree, planted, seemed in no immediate need to die. Neither did it look particularly vital and ready to welcome small singers from some far southern places.
Meanwhile, the sky, like the tree, was empty. «Don't they know I'm waiting?» said Fentriss. «Not unless,» offered Black, «you majored in cross-continental telepathy.»
«I've checked with Audubon. They say that while the swallows do come back to Capistrano on a special day, give or take a white lie, other migrating species are often one or two weeks late.»
«If I were you,» said Black, «I would plunge into an intense love affair to distract you while you wait.»
«I am fresh out of love affairs.»
«Well, then,» said Black, «suffer.»
The hours passed slower than the minutes, the days passed slower than the hours, the weeks passed slower than the days. Black called. «No birds?»
«No birds.»
«Pity. I can't stand watching you lose weight.» And Black disconnected.
On a final night, when Fentriss had almost yanked the phone out of the wall, fearful of another call from the Boston Symphony, he leaned an ax against the trunk of the new tree and addressed it and the empty sky.
«Last chance,» he said. «If the dawn patrol doesn't show by seven a.m., it's quits.»
And he touched ax-blade against the tree-bole, took two shots of vodka so swiftly that the spirits squirted out both eyes, and went to bed.
He awoke twice during the night to hear nothing but a soft breeze outside his window, stirring the leaves, with not a ghost of song.
And awoke at dawn with tear-filled eyes, having dreamed that the birds had returned, but knew, in waking, it was only a dream.
And yet…?
Hark, someone might have said in an old novel. List! as in an old play.
Eyes shut, he fine-tuned his ears .
The tree outside, as he arose, looked fatter, as if it had taken on invisible ballasts in the night. There were stirrings there, not of simple breeze or probing winds, but of something in the very leaves that knitted and purled them in rhythms. He dared not look but lay back down to ache his senses and try to know.
A single chirp hovered in the window.
He waited.
Silence.
Go on, he thought.
Another chirp.
Don't breathe, he thought; don't let them know you're listening.
Hush.
A fourth sound, then a fifth note, then a sixth and seventh. My God, he thought, is this a substitute orchestra, a replacement choir come to scare off my loves?
Another five notes.
Perhaps, he prayed, they're only tuning up!
Another twelve notes, of no special timbre or pace, and as he was about to explode like a lunatic conductor and fire the bunch-It happened. Note after note, line after line, fluid melody following spring freshet melody, the whole choir exhaled to blossom the tree with joyous proclamations of return and welcome in chorus.
And as they sang, Fentriss sneaked his hand to find a pad and pen to hide under the covers so that its scratching might not disturb the choir that soared and dipped to soar again, firing the bright air that flowed from the tree to tune his soul with delight and move his hand to remember.
The phone rang. He picked it up swiftly to hear Black ask
if the waiting was over. Without speaking, he held the receiver in the window.
«I'll be damned,» said Black's voice.
«No, anointed,» whispered the composer, scribbling Cantata No.2. Laughing, he called softly to the sky.
«Please. More slowly. Legato, not agitato.»
And the tree and the creatures within the tree obeyed.
Agitato ceased.
Legato prevailed.
Exchange
1996 year
There were too many cards in the file, too many books on the shelves, too many children laughing in the children's room, too many newspapers to fold and stash on the racks …
All in all, too much. Miss Adams pushed her gray hair back over her lined brow, adjusted her gold-rimmed pince-nez, and rang the small silver bell on the library desk, at the same time switching off and on all the lights. The exodus of adults and children was exhausting. Miss Ingraham, the assistant librarian, had gone home early because her father was sick, so it left the burden of stamping, filing, and checking books squarely on Miss Adams' shoulders.
Finally the last book was stamped, the last child fed through the great brass doors, the doors locked, and with immense weariness, Miss Adams moved back up through a silence of forty years of books and being keeper of the books, stood for a long moment by the main desk.
She laid her glasses down on the green blotter, and pressed the bridge of her small-boned nose between thumb and forefinger and held it, eyes shut. What a racket! Children who finger-painted or cartooned frontispieces or rattled their roller skates. High school students arriving with laughters, departing with mindless songs!
Taking up her rubber stamp, she probed the files, weeding out errors, her fingers whispering between Dante and Darwin.
A moment later she heard the rapping on the front-door glass and saw a man's shadow outside, wanting in. She shook her head. The figure pleaded silently, making gestures.
Sighing, Miss Adams opened the door, saw a young man in uniform, and said, «It's late. We're closed.» She glanced at his insignia and added, «Captain.»
«Hold on!» said the captain. «Remember me?»
And repeated it, as she hesitated.
«Remember?»
She studied his face, trying to bring light out of shadow. «Yes, I think I do,» she said at last. «You once borrowed books here.»
«Right.»
«Many years ago,» she added. «Now I almost have you placed.»
As he stood waiting she tried to see him in those other years, but his younger face did not come clear, or a name with it, and his hand reached out now to take hers.
«May I come in?»
«Well.» She hesitated. «Yes.»
She led the way up the steps into the immense twilight of books. The young officer looked around and let his breath out slowly, then reached to take a book and hold it to his nose, inhaling, then almost laughing.
«Don't mind me, Miss Adams. You ever smell new books? Binding, pages, print. Like fresh bread when you're hungry.» He glanced around. «I'm hungry now, but don't even know what for.»
There was a moment of silence, so she asked him how long he might stay.
«Just a few hours. I'm on the train from New York to L.A., so I came up from Chicago to see old places, old friends.» His eyes were troubled and he fretted his cap, turning it in his long, slender fingers.
She said gently, «Is anything wrong? Anything I can help you with?»
He glanced out the window at the dark town, with just a few lights in the windows of the small houses across the way.
«I was surprised,» he said.
«By what?»
«I don't know what I expected. Pretty damn dumb,» he said, looking from her to the windows, «to expect that when I went away, everyone froze in place waiting for me to come home. That when I stepped off the train, all my old pals would unfreeze, run down, meet me at the station. Silly.»
«No,» she said, more easily now. «I think we all imagine that. I visited Paris as a young girl, went back to France when I was forty, and was outraged that no one had waited, buildings had vanished, and all the hotel staff where I had once lived had died, retired, or traveled.»
He nodded at this, but could not seem to go on.
«Did anyone know you were coming?» she asked.
«I wrote a few, but no answers. I figured, hell, they're busy, but they'll be there. They weren't.»
She felt the next words come off her lips and was faintly surprised. «I'm still here,» she said.
«You are,» he said with a quick smile. «And I can't tell you how glad I am.»
He was gazing at her now with such intensity that she had to look away. «You know,» she said, «I must confess you look familiar, but I don't quite fit your face with the boy who came here-«
«Twenty years ago! And as for what he looked like, that other one, me, well-«
He brought out a smallish wallet which held a dozen pictures and handed over a photograph of a boy perhaps twelve years old, with an impish smile and wild blond hair, looking as if he might catapult out of the frame.
«Ah, yes.» Miss Adams adjusted her pince-nez and closed her eyes to remember. «That one. Spaulding. William Henry Spaulding?»
He nodded and peered at the picture in her hands anxiously.
«Was I a lot of trouble?»
«Yes.» She nodded and held the picture closer and glanced up at him. «A fiend.» She handed the picture back. «But I loved you.»
«Did you?» he said and smiled more broadly.
«In spite of you, yes.»
He waited a moment and then said, «Do you still love me?»
She looked to left and right as if the dark stacks held the answer.
«It's a little early to know, isn't it?»
«Forgive.»
«No, no, a good question. Time will tell. Let's not stand like your frozen friends who didn't move. Come along. I've just had some late-night coffee. There may be some left. Give me your cap. Take off that coat. The file index is there. Go look up your old library cards for the hell-heck-of it.»
«Are they still there?» In amaze.
«Librarians save everything. You never know who's coming in on the next train. Go.»
When she came back with the coffee, he stood staring down into the index file like a bird fixing its gaze on a half-empty nest. He handed her one of the old purple-stamped cards.
«Migawd,» he said, «I took out a lot of books.»
«Ten at a time. I said no, but you took them. And,» she added, «read them! Here.» She put his cup on top of the file and waited while he drew out canceled card after card and laughed quietly.
«I can't believe. I must not have lived anywhere else but here. May I take this with me, to sit?» He showed the cards. She nodded. «Can you show me around? I mean, maybe I've forgotten something.»
She shook her head and took his elbow. «I doubt that. Come on. Over here, of course, is the adult section.»
«I begged you to let me cross over when I was thirteen. 'You're not ready,' you said. But-«
«I let you cross over anyway?»
«You did. And much thanks.»
Another thought came to him as he looked down at her.
«You used to be taller than me,» he said.
She looked up at him, amused.
«I've noticed that happens quite often in my life, but I can still do this.»
Before he could move, she grabbed his chin in her thumb and forefinger and held tight. His eyes rolled.
He said:
«I remember. When I was really bad you'd hold on and put your face down close and scowl. The scowl did it. After ten seconds of your holding my chin very tight, I behaved for days.»
She nodded, released his chin. He rubbed it and as they moved on he ducked his head, not looking at her.
«Forgive, I hope you won't be upset, but when I was a boy I used to look up and see you behind your desk, so near but far away, and, how can I say this, I used to think that you were Mrs. God, and that the library was a whole world, and that no matter what part of the world or what people or thing I wanted to see and read, you'd find and give it to me.» He stopped, his face coloring. «You did, too. You had the world ready for me every time I asked. There was always a place I hadn't seen, a country I hadn't visited where you took me. I've never forgotten.»
She looked around, slowly, at the thousands of books. She felt her heart move quietly. «Did you really call me what you just said?»
«Mrs. God? Oh, yes. Often. Always.»
«Come along,» she said at last.
They walked around the rooms together and then downstairs to the newspaper files, and coming back up, he suddenly leaned against the banister, holding tight.
«Miss Adams,» he said.
«What is it, Captain?»
He exhaled. «I'm scared. I don't want to leave. I'm afraid.»
Her hand, all by itself, took his arm and she finally said, there in the shadows, «Sometimes-I'm afraid, too. What frightens you?»
«I don't want to go away without saying good-bye. If I never return, I want to see all my friends, shake hands, slap them on the back, I don't know, make jokes.» He stopped and waited, then went on. «But I walk around town and nobody knows me. Everyone's gone.»
The pendulum on the wall clock slid back and forth, shining, with the merest of sounds.
Hardly knowing where she was going, Miss Adams took his arm and guided him up the last steps, away from the marble vaults below, to a final, brightly decorated room, where he glanced around and shook his head.
«There's no one here, either.»
«Do you believe that?»
«Well, where are they? Do any of my old pals ever come visit, borrow books, bring them back late?»
«Not often,» she said. «But listen. Do you realize Thomas Wolfe was wrong?»
«Wolfe? The great literary beast? Wrong?»
«The title of one of his books.»
«You Can't Go Home Again?» he guessed.
«That's it. He was wrong. This is home. Your friends are still here. This was your summer place.»
«Yes. Myths. Legends. Mummies. Aztec kings. Wicked sisters who spat toads. Where I really lived. But I don't see my people.»
«Well.»
And before he could speak, she switched on a green-shaded lamp that shed a private light on a small table.
«Isn't this nice?» she said. «Most libraries today, too much light. There should be shadows, don't you think? Some mystery, yes? So that late nights the beasts can prowl out of the stacks and crouch by this jungle light to turn the pages with their breath. Am I crazy?»
«Not that I noticed.»
«Good. Sit. Now that I know who you are, it all comes back.»
«It couldn't possibly.»
«No? You'll see.»
She vanished into the stacks and came out with ten books that she placed upright, their pages a trifle spread so they could stand and he could read the titles.
«The summer of 1930, when you were, what? ten, you read all of these in one week.»
«Oz? Dorothy? The Wizard? Oh, yes.»
She placed still others nearby. «Alice in Wonderland. Through the Looking-Glass. A month later you reborrowed both. 'But,' I said, 'you've already read them!' 'But,' you said, 'not enough so I can speak. I want to be able to tell them out loud.'
«My God,» he said quietly, «did I say that?»
«You did. Here's more you read a dozen times. Greek myths, Roman, Egyptian. Norse myths, Chinese. You were ravenous.»
«King Tut arrived from the tomb when I was three. His picture in the Rotogravure started me. What else have you there?»
«Tarzan of the Apes. You borrowed it . .
«Three dozen times! John Carter, Warlord of Mars, four dozen. My God, dear lady, how come you remember all this?»
«You never left. Summertimes you were here when I unlocked the doors. You went home for lunch but sometimes brought sandwiches and sat out by the stone lion at noon. Your father pulled you home by your ear some nights when you stayed late. How could I forget a boy like that?»
«But still-«
«You never played, never ran out in baseball weather, or football, I imagine. Why?»
He glanced toward the front door. «They were waiting for me.»
«They?»
«You know. The ones who never borrowed books, never read. They. Them. Those.»
She looked and remembered. «Ah, yes. The bullies. Why did they chase you?»
«Because they knew I loved books and didn't much care for them.»
«It's a wonder you survived. I used to watch you getting, reading hunchbacked, late afternoons. You looked so lonely.»
«No. I had these. Company.»
«Here's more.»
She put down Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, and Treasure Island.
«Oh,» he said, «and dear and strange Mr. Poe. How I loved his Red Death.»
«You took it so often I told you to keep it on permanent loan unless someone else asked. Someone did, six months later, and when you brought it in I could see it was a terrible blow. A few days later I let you have Poe for another year. I don't recall, did you ever-?»
«It's out in California. Shall I-«
«No, no. Please. Well, here are your books. Let me bring others.»
She came out not carrying many books but one at a time, as if each one were, indeed, special.
She began to make a circle inside the other Stonehenge circle and as she placed the books, in lonely splendor, he said their names and then the names of the authors who had written them and then the names of those who had sat across from him so many years ago and read the books quietly or sometimes whispered the finest parts aloud, so beautifully that no one said Quiet or Silence or even Shh!
She placed the first book and there was a wild field of broom and a wind blowing a young woman across that field as it began to snow and someone, far away, called «Kathy» and as the snows fell he saw a girl he had walked to school in the sixth grade seated across the table, her eyes fixed to the windblown field and the snow and the lost woman in another time of winter.
A second book was set in place and a black and beauteous horse raced across a summer field of green and on that horse was another girl, who hid behind the book and dared to pass him notes when he was twelve.
And then there was the far ghost with a snow-maiden face whose hair was a long golden harp played by the summer airs; she who was always sailing to Byzantium where Emperors were drowsed by golden birds that sang in clockwork cages at sunset and dawn. She who always skirted the outer rim of school and went to swim in the deep lake ten thousand afternoons ago and never came out, so was never found, but suddenly now she made landfall here in the green-shaded light and opened Yeats to at last sail home from Byzantium.
And on her right: John Huff, whose name came clearer than the rest, who claimed to have climbed every tree in town and fallen from none, who had raced through watermelon patches treading melons, never touching earth, to knock down rainfalls of chestnuts with one blow, who yodeled at your sun-up window and wrote the same Mark Twain book report in four different grades before the teachers caught on, at which he said, vanishing, «Just call me Huck.»
And to his right, the pale son of the town hotel owner who looked as if he had gone sleepless forever, who swore every empty house was haunted and took you there to prove it, with a juicy tongue, compressed nose, and throat gargling that sounded the long October demise, the terrible and unutterable fall of the House of Usher.
And next to him was yet another girl.
And next to her …
And just beyond …
Miss Adams placed a final book and he recalled the fair creature, long ago, when such things were left unsaid, glancing up at him one day when he was an unknowing twelve and she was a wise thirteen to quietly say: «I am Beauty. And you, are you the Beast?»
Now, late in time, he wanted to answer that small and wondrous ghost: «No. He hides in the stacks and when the clock strikes three, will prowl forth to drink.»
And it was finished, all the books were placed, the outer ring of his selves and the inner ring of remembered faces, deathless, with summer and autumn names.
He sat for a long moment and then another long moment and then, one by one, reached for and took all of the books that had been his, and still were, and opened them and read and shut them and took another until he reached the end of the outer circle and then went to touch and turn and find the raft on the river, the field of broom where the storms lived, and the pasture with the black and beauteous horse and its lovely rider. Behind him, he heard the lady librarian quietly back away to leave him with words .
A long while later he sat back, rubbed his yes, and looked around at the fortress, the encirclement, the Roman encampment of books, and nodded, his eyes wet.
«Yes.»
He heard her move behind him.
«Yes, what?»
«What you said, Thomas Wolfe, the title of that book of his. Wrong. Everything's here. Nothing's changed.»
«Nothing will as long as I can help it,,, she said.
«Don't ever go away.»
«I won't if you'll come back more often.»
Just then, from below the town, not so very far off, a train whistle blew. She said:
«Is that yours?»
«No, but the one soon after,» he said and got up and moved around the small monuments that stood very tall and one by one, shut the covers, his lips moving to sound the old titles and the old, dear names.
«Do we have to put them back on the shelves?» he said. She looked at him and at the double circle and after a long moment said, «Tomorrow will do. Why?»
«Maybe,» he said, «during the night, because of the color of those lamps, green, the jungle, maybe those creatures you mentioned will come out and turn the pages with their breath. And maybe-«
«What else?»
«Maybe my friends, who've hid in the stacks all these years, will come out, too.',
«They're already here,» she said quietly.
«Yes.» He nodded. «They are.»
And still he could not move.
She backed off across the room without making any sound, and when she reached her desk she called back, the last call of the night.
«Closing time. Closing time, children.»
And turned the lights quickly off and then on and then halfway between; a library twilight.
He moved from the table with the double circle of books and came to her and said, «I Can go now.»
«Yes,» she said. «William Henry Spaulding. You can.» They walked together as she turned out the lights, turned out the lights, one by one. She helped him into his coat and
then, hardly thinking to do so, he took her hand and kissed her fingers.
It was so abrupt, she almost laughed, but then she said, «Remember what Edith Whanon said when Henry James did what you just did?»
«What?»
'The flavor starts at the elbow.'
They broke into laughter together and he turned and went down the marble steps toward the stained-glass entry. At the bottom of the stairs he looked up at her and said:
«Tonight, when you're going to sleep, remember what I called you when I was twelve, and say it out loud.»
«I don't remember,» she said.
«Yes, you do.»
Below the town, a train whistle blew again.
He opened the front door, stepped out, and he was gone. Her hand on the last light switch, looking in at the double circle of books on the far table, she thought: What was it he called me?
«Oh, yes,» she said a moment later.
And switched off the light.
There were too many cards in the file, too many books on the shelves, too many children laughing in the children's room, too many newspapers to fold and stash on the racks …
All in all, too much. Miss Adams pushed her gray hair back over her lined brow, adjusted her gold-rimmed pince-nez, and rang the small silver bell on the library desk, at the same time switching off and on all the lights. The exodus of adults and children was exhausting. Miss Ingraham, the assistant librarian, had gone home early because her father was sick, so it left the burden of stamping, filing, and checking books squarely on Miss Adams' shoulders.
Finally the last book was stamped, the last child fed through the great brass doors, the doors locked, and with immense weariness, Miss Adams moved back up through a silence of forty years of books and being keeper of the books, stood for a long moment by the main desk.
She laid her glasses down on the green blotter, and pressed the bridge of her small-boned nose between thumb and forefinger and held it, eyes shut. What a racket! Children who finger-painted or cartooned frontispieces or rattled their roller skates. High school students arriving with laughters, departing with mindless songs!
Taking up her rubber stamp, she probed the files, weeding out errors, her fingers whispering between Dante and Darwin.
A moment later she heard the rapping on the front-door glass and saw a man's shadow outside, wanting in. She shook her head. The figure pleaded silently, making gestures.
Sighing, Miss Adams opened the door, saw a young man in uniform, and said, «It's late. We're closed.» She glanced at his insignia and added, «Captain.»
«Hold on!» said the captain. «Remember me?»
And repeated it, as she hesitated.
«Remember?»
She studied his face, trying to bring light out of shadow. «Yes, I think I do,» she said at last. «You once borrowed books here.»
«Right.»
«Many years ago,» she added. «Now I almost have you placed.»
As he stood waiting she tried to see him in those other years, but his younger face did not come clear, or a name with it, and his hand reached out now to take hers.
«May I come in?»
«Well.» She hesitated. «Yes.»
She led the way up the steps into the immense twilight of books. The young officer looked around and let his breath out slowly, then reached to take a book and hold it to his nose, inhaling, then almost laughing.
«Don't mind me, Miss Adams. You ever smell new books? Binding, pages, print. Like fresh bread when you're hungry.» He glanced around. «I'm hungry now, but don't even know what for.»
There was a moment of silence, so she asked him how long he might stay.
«Just a few hours. I'm on the train from New York to L.A., so I came up from Chicago to see old places, old friends.» His eyes were troubled and he fretted his cap, turning it in his long, slender fingers.
She said gently, «Is anything wrong? Anything I can help you with?»
He glanced out the window at the dark town, with just a few lights in the windows of the small houses across the way.
«I was surprised,» he said.
«By what?»
«I don't know what I expected. Pretty damn dumb,» he said, looking from her to the windows, «to expect that when I went away, everyone froze in place waiting for me to come home. That when I stepped off the train, all my old pals would unfreeze, run down, meet me at the station. Silly.»
«No,» she said, more easily now. «I think we all imagine that. I visited Paris as a young girl, went back to France when I was forty, and was outraged that no one had waited, buildings had vanished, and all the hotel staff where I had once lived had died, retired, or traveled.»
He nodded at this, but could not seem to go on.
«Did anyone know you were coming?» she asked.
«I wrote a few, but no answers. I figured, hell, they're busy, but they'll be there. They weren't.»
She felt the next words come off her lips and was faintly surprised. «I'm still here,» she said.
«You are,» he said with a quick smile. «And I can't tell you how glad I am.»
He was gazing at her now with such intensity that she had to look away. «You know,» she said, «I must confess you look familiar, but I don't quite fit your face with the boy who came here-«
«Twenty years ago! And as for what he looked like, that other one, me, well-«
He brought out a smallish wallet which held a dozen pictures and handed over a photograph of a boy perhaps twelve years old, with an impish smile and wild blond hair, looking as if he might catapult out of the frame.
«Ah, yes.» Miss Adams adjusted her pince-nez and closed her eyes to remember. «That one. Spaulding. William Henry Spaulding?»
He nodded and peered at the picture in her hands anxiously.
«Was I a lot of trouble?»
«Yes.» She nodded and held the picture closer and glanced up at him. «A fiend.» She handed the picture back. «But I loved you.»
«Did you?» he said and smiled more broadly.
«In spite of you, yes.»
He waited a moment and then said, «Do you still love me?»
She looked to left and right as if the dark stacks held the answer.
«It's a little early to know, isn't it?»
«Forgive.»
«No, no, a good question. Time will tell. Let's not stand like your frozen friends who didn't move. Come along. I've just had some late-night coffee. There may be some left. Give me your cap. Take off that coat. The file index is there. Go look up your old library cards for the hell-heck-of it.»
«Are they still there?» In amaze.
«Librarians save everything. You never know who's coming in on the next train. Go.»
When she came back with the coffee, he stood staring down into the index file like a bird fixing its gaze on a half-empty nest. He handed her one of the old purple-stamped cards.
«Migawd,» he said, «I took out a lot of books.»
«Ten at a time. I said no, but you took them. And,» she added, «read them! Here.» She put his cup on top of the file and waited while he drew out canceled card after card and laughed quietly.
«I can't believe. I must not have lived anywhere else but here. May I take this with me, to sit?» He showed the cards. She nodded. «Can you show me around? I mean, maybe I've forgotten something.»
She shook her head and took his elbow. «I doubt that. Come on. Over here, of course, is the adult section.»
«I begged you to let me cross over when I was thirteen. 'You're not ready,' you said. But-«
«I let you cross over anyway?»
«You did. And much thanks.»
Another thought came to him as he looked down at her.
«You used to be taller than me,» he said.
She looked up at him, amused.
«I've noticed that happens quite often in my life, but I can still do this.»
Before he could move, she grabbed his chin in her thumb and forefinger and held tight. His eyes rolled.
He said:
«I remember. When I was really bad you'd hold on and put your face down close and scowl. The scowl did it. After ten seconds of your holding my chin very tight, I behaved for days.»
She nodded, released his chin. He rubbed it and as they moved on he ducked his head, not looking at her.
«Forgive, I hope you won't be upset, but when I was a boy I used to look up and see you behind your desk, so near but far away, and, how can I say this, I used to think that you were Mrs. God, and that the library was a whole world, and that no matter what part of the world or what people or thing I wanted to see and read, you'd find and give it to me.» He stopped, his face coloring. «You did, too. You had the world ready for me every time I asked. There was always a place I hadn't seen, a country I hadn't visited where you took me. I've never forgotten.»
She looked around, slowly, at the thousands of books. She felt her heart move quietly. «Did you really call me what you just said?»
«Mrs. God? Oh, yes. Often. Always.»
«Come along,» she said at last.
They walked around the rooms together and then downstairs to the newspaper files, and coming back up, he suddenly leaned against the banister, holding tight.
«Miss Adams,» he said.
«What is it, Captain?»
He exhaled. «I'm scared. I don't want to leave. I'm afraid.»
Her hand, all by itself, took his arm and she finally said, there in the shadows, «Sometimes-I'm afraid, too. What frightens you?»
«I don't want to go away without saying good-bye. If I never return, I want to see all my friends, shake hands, slap them on the back, I don't know, make jokes.» He stopped and waited, then went on. «But I walk around town and nobody knows me. Everyone's gone.»
The pendulum on the wall clock slid back and forth, shining, with the merest of sounds.
Hardly knowing where she was going, Miss Adams took his arm and guided him up the last steps, away from the marble vaults below, to a final, brightly decorated room, where he glanced around and shook his head.
«There's no one here, either.»
«Do you believe that?»
«Well, where are they? Do any of my old pals ever come visit, borrow books, bring them back late?»
«Not often,» she said. «But listen. Do you realize Thomas Wolfe was wrong?»
«Wolfe? The great literary beast? Wrong?»
«The title of one of his books.»
«You Can't Go Home Again?» he guessed.
«That's it. He was wrong. This is home. Your friends are still here. This was your summer place.»
«Yes. Myths. Legends. Mummies. Aztec kings. Wicked sisters who spat toads. Where I really lived. But I don't see my people.»
«Well.»
And before he could speak, she switched on a green-shaded lamp that shed a private light on a small table.
«Isn't this nice?» she said. «Most libraries today, too much light. There should be shadows, don't you think? Some mystery, yes? So that late nights the beasts can prowl out of the stacks and crouch by this jungle light to turn the pages with their breath. Am I crazy?»
«Not that I noticed.»
«Good. Sit. Now that I know who you are, it all comes back.»
«It couldn't possibly.»
«No? You'll see.»
She vanished into the stacks and came out with ten books that she placed upright, their pages a trifle spread so they could stand and he could read the titles.
«The summer of 1930, when you were, what? ten, you read all of these in one week.»
«Oz? Dorothy? The Wizard? Oh, yes.»
She placed still others nearby. «Alice in Wonderland. Through the Looking-Glass. A month later you reborrowed both. 'But,' I said, 'you've already read them!' 'But,' you said, 'not enough so I can speak. I want to be able to tell them out loud.'
«My God,» he said quietly, «did I say that?»
«You did. Here's more you read a dozen times. Greek myths, Roman, Egyptian. Norse myths, Chinese. You were ravenous.»
«King Tut arrived from the tomb when I was three. His picture in the Rotogravure started me. What else have you there?»
«Tarzan of the Apes. You borrowed it . .
«Three dozen times! John Carter, Warlord of Mars, four dozen. My God, dear lady, how come you remember all this?»
«You never left. Summertimes you were here when I unlocked the doors. You went home for lunch but sometimes brought sandwiches and sat out by the stone lion at noon. Your father pulled you home by your ear some nights when you stayed late. How could I forget a boy like that?»
«But still-«
«You never played, never ran out in baseball weather, or football, I imagine. Why?»
He glanced toward the front door. «They were waiting for me.»
«They?»
«You know. The ones who never borrowed books, never read. They. Them. Those.»
She looked and remembered. «Ah, yes. The bullies. Why did they chase you?»
«Because they knew I loved books and didn't much care for them.»
«It's a wonder you survived. I used to watch you getting, reading hunchbacked, late afternoons. You looked so lonely.»
«No. I had these. Company.»
«Here's more.»
She put down Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, and Treasure Island.
«Oh,» he said, «and dear and strange Mr. Poe. How I loved his Red Death.»
«You took it so often I told you to keep it on permanent loan unless someone else asked. Someone did, six months later, and when you brought it in I could see it was a terrible blow. A few days later I let you have Poe for another year. I don't recall, did you ever-?»
«It's out in California. Shall I-«
«No, no. Please. Well, here are your books. Let me bring others.»
She came out not carrying many books but one at a time, as if each one were, indeed, special.
She began to make a circle inside the other Stonehenge circle and as she placed the books, in lonely splendor, he said their names and then the names of the authors who had written them and then the names of those who had sat across from him so many years ago and read the books quietly or sometimes whispered the finest parts aloud, so beautifully that no one said Quiet or Silence or even Shh!
She placed the first book and there was a wild field of broom and a wind blowing a young woman across that field as it began to snow and someone, far away, called «Kathy» and as the snows fell he saw a girl he had walked to school in the sixth grade seated across the table, her eyes fixed to the windblown field and the snow and the lost woman in another time of winter.
A second book was set in place and a black and beauteous horse raced across a summer field of green and on that horse was another girl, who hid behind the book and dared to pass him notes when he was twelve.
And then there was the far ghost with a snow-maiden face whose hair was a long golden harp played by the summer airs; she who was always sailing to Byzantium where Emperors were drowsed by golden birds that sang in clockwork cages at sunset and dawn. She who always skirted the outer rim of school and went to swim in the deep lake ten thousand afternoons ago and never came out, so was never found, but suddenly now she made landfall here in the green-shaded light and opened Yeats to at last sail home from Byzantium.
And on her right: John Huff, whose name came clearer than the rest, who claimed to have climbed every tree in town and fallen from none, who had raced through watermelon patches treading melons, never touching earth, to knock down rainfalls of chestnuts with one blow, who yodeled at your sun-up window and wrote the same Mark Twain book report in four different grades before the teachers caught on, at which he said, vanishing, «Just call me Huck.»
And to his right, the pale son of the town hotel owner who looked as if he had gone sleepless forever, who swore every empty house was haunted and took you there to prove it, with a juicy tongue, compressed nose, and throat gargling that sounded the long October demise, the terrible and unutterable fall of the House of Usher.
And next to him was yet another girl.
And next to her …
And just beyond …
Miss Adams placed a final book and he recalled the fair creature, long ago, when such things were left unsaid, glancing up at him one day when he was an unknowing twelve and she was a wise thirteen to quietly say: «I am Beauty. And you, are you the Beast?»
Now, late in time, he wanted to answer that small and wondrous ghost: «No. He hides in the stacks and when the clock strikes three, will prowl forth to drink.»
And it was finished, all the books were placed, the outer ring of his selves and the inner ring of remembered faces, deathless, with summer and autumn names.
He sat for a long moment and then another long moment and then, one by one, reached for and took all of the books that had been his, and still were, and opened them and read and shut them and took another until he reached the end of the outer circle and then went to touch and turn and find the raft on the river, the field of broom where the storms lived, and the pasture with the black and beauteous horse and its lovely rider. Behind him, he heard the lady librarian quietly back away to leave him with words .
A long while later he sat back, rubbed his yes, and looked around at the fortress, the encirclement, the Roman encampment of books, and nodded, his eyes wet.
«Yes.»
He heard her move behind him.
«Yes, what?»
«What you said, Thomas Wolfe, the title of that book of his. Wrong. Everything's here. Nothing's changed.»
«Nothing will as long as I can help it,,, she said.
«Don't ever go away.»
«I won't if you'll come back more often.»
Just then, from below the town, not so very far off, a train whistle blew. She said:
«Is that yours?»
«No, but the one soon after,» he said and got up and moved around the small monuments that stood very tall and one by one, shut the covers, his lips moving to sound the old titles and the old, dear names.
«Do we have to put them back on the shelves?» he said. She looked at him and at the double circle and after a long moment said, «Tomorrow will do. Why?»
«Maybe,» he said, «during the night, because of the color of those lamps, green, the jungle, maybe those creatures you mentioned will come out and turn the pages with their breath. And maybe-«
«What else?»
«Maybe my friends, who've hid in the stacks all these years, will come out, too.',
«They're already here,» she said quietly.
«Yes.» He nodded. «They are.»
And still he could not move.
She backed off across the room without making any sound, and when she reached her desk she called back, the last call of the night.
«Closing time. Closing time, children.»
And turned the lights quickly off and then on and then halfway between; a library twilight.
He moved from the table with the double circle of books and came to her and said, «I Can go now.»
«Yes,» she said. «William Henry Spaulding. You can.» They walked together as she turned out the lights, turned out the lights, one by one. She helped him into his coat and
then, hardly thinking to do so, he took her hand and kissed her fingers.
It was so abrupt, she almost laughed, but then she said, «Remember what Edith Whanon said when Henry James did what you just did?»
«What?»
'The flavor starts at the elbow.'
They broke into laughter together and he turned and went down the marble steps toward the stained-glass entry. At the bottom of the stairs he looked up at her and said:
«Tonight, when you're going to sleep, remember what I called you when I was twelve, and say it out loud.»
«I don't remember,» she said.
«Yes, you do.»
Below the town, a train whistle blew again.
He opened the front door, stepped out, and he was gone. Her hand on the last light switch, looking in at the double circle of books on the far table, she thought: What was it he called me?
«Oh, yes,» she said a moment later.
And switched off the light.
Free Dirt
1996 year
The cemetery was in the center of the city. On four sides it was bounded by gliding streetcars on glistening blue tracks and cars with exhaust fumes and sound. But, once inside the wall, the world was lost. For half a mile in four directions the cemetery raised midnight trees and headstones that grew from the earth, like pale mushrooms, moist and cold. A gravel path led back into darkness and within the gate stood a Gothic Victorian house with six gables and a cupola. The front-porch light showed an old man there alone, not smoking, not reading, not moving, silent. If you took a deep breath he smelled of the sea, of urine, of papyrus, of kindling, of ivory, and of teak. His false teeth moved his mouth automatically when it wanted to talk. His tiny yellow seed eyes twitched and his poke-hole nostrils thinned as a stranger crunched up the gravel path and set foot on the porch step.
«Good evening!» said the stranger, a young man, perhaps twenty.
The old man nodded, but his hands lay quietly on his knees «I saw that sign out front,» the stranger went on. «FREE DIRT, it said.»
The old man almost nodded.
The stranger tried a smile. «Crazy, but that sign caught my eye.
There was a glass fan over the front door. A light shone through this glass fan, colored blue, red, yellow, and touched the old man's face. It seemed not to bother him.
«I wondered, free dirt? Never struck me you'd have much left over. When you dig a hole and put the coffin in and refill the hole, you haven't much dirt left, have you? I should think…»
The old man leaned forward. It was so unexpected that the stranger pulled his foot off the bottom step.
«You want some?» said the old man.
«Why, no, no, I was just curious. Signs like that make you curious.»
«Set down,» said the old man.
«Thanks.» The young man sat uneasily on the steps. «You know how it is, you walk around and never think how it is to own a graveyard.»
«And?» said the old man.
«I mean, like how much time it takes to dig graves.»
The old man leaned back in his chair. «On a cool day:
two hours. Hot day, four. Very hot day, six. Very cold day, not cold so it freezes, but real cold, a man can dig a grave in one hour so he can head in for hot chocolate, brandy in the chocolate. Then again, you get a good man on a hot day, he's no better than a bad man in the cold. Might take eight hours to open up, but here's easy-digging soil here. All loam, no rocks.»
«I'm curious about winter.»
The cemetery was in the center of the city. On four sides it was bounded by gliding streetcars on glistening blue tracks and cars with exhaust fumes and sound. But, once inside the wall, the world was lost. For half a mile in four directions the cemetery raised midnight trees and headstones that grew from the earth, like pale mushrooms, moist and cold. A gravel path led back into darkness and within the gate stood a Gothic Victorian house with six gables and a cupola. The front-porch light showed an old man there alone, not smoking, not reading, not moving, silent. If you took a deep breath he smelled of the sea, of urine, of papyrus, of kindling, of ivory, and of teak. His false teeth moved his mouth automatically when it wanted to talk. His tiny yellow seed eyes twitched and his poke-hole nostrils thinned as a stranger crunched up the gravel path and set foot on the porch step.
«Good evening!» said the stranger, a young man, perhaps twenty.
The old man nodded, but his hands lay quietly on his knees «I saw that sign out front,» the stranger went on. «FREE DIRT, it said.»
The old man almost nodded.
The stranger tried a smile. «Crazy, but that sign caught my eye.
There was a glass fan over the front door. A light shone through this glass fan, colored blue, red, yellow, and touched the old man's face. It seemed not to bother him.
«I wondered, free dirt? Never struck me you'd have much left over. When you dig a hole and put the coffin in and refill the hole, you haven't much dirt left, have you? I should think…»
The old man leaned forward. It was so unexpected that the stranger pulled his foot off the bottom step.
«You want some?» said the old man.
«Why, no, no, I was just curious. Signs like that make you curious.»
«Set down,» said the old man.
«Thanks.» The young man sat uneasily on the steps. «You know how it is, you walk around and never think how it is to own a graveyard.»
«And?» said the old man.
«I mean, like how much time it takes to dig graves.»
The old man leaned back in his chair. «On a cool day:
two hours. Hot day, four. Very hot day, six. Very cold day, not cold so it freezes, but real cold, a man can dig a grave in one hour so he can head in for hot chocolate, brandy in the chocolate. Then again, you get a good man on a hot day, he's no better than a bad man in the cold. Might take eight hours to open up, but here's easy-digging soil here. All loam, no rocks.»
«I'm curious about winter.»