C H A P T E R 6
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Iing down these recolles of my early years so far removed from their unfolding, I am fooled, as all are, by time itself. My parents, long gone from my world, live again. The redcoated woma only once, abides more persistently in mind than what I did yesterday or whether I had thistles and honey or elder-berries for breakfast. My sisters, now grown into their middle years, are ever infants to me, two matg cherubs, ris of curls, chubby and helpless as cubs. Memory, which so founds our waking life with anticipation a, may well be our orue earthly solatioime slips out of joint.My first nighttime foray into the woods left me exhausted. I burrowed beh a heap of coats and blas and furs, and by midday, a fever burned. Zanzara brought me a cup of hot tea and a bowl of nasty broth, or-derio "drink, drink, sip it." But I could not stomach a single swallow. No matter how many layers they heaped upon me, I could not get warm. By nightfall, I shook untrollably with chills. My teeth rattled and my bones ached.
Sleep brought strange, horrible nightmares where everything seemed to happen at once. My family invaded my dreams. Hands joihey stand in a half circle around a hole in the ground, silent as stones. My father grabs me around the ankle and pulls me from the hollow tree where I lie hidden as me on the ground. Then he reaches in again and yanks each twin by the ankles and holds them aloft, the girls giggling in fear and pleasure. And my mother admonishes him: "Dont be so hard on the boy. Where have you been, where have you been?"
Then I am on the road, in the arclight streaming from an old Ford, the deer supine on the pavement, its breathing shallow, and I synize my res-piration with its rhythms and the redcoated woman with the pale green eyes says: "Who are you?" And she bends to my face, taking my in her hands, to kiss me on the lips, and I am a boy again. Me. But I ot remember my name.
Aniday. A wild child like myself, a girl named Speck, leans over to kiss my forehead, and her lips y hot skin. Behihe oak leaves turn into a thousand crows that take off in unison, flying away in a great twisting, singing tornado of wings. Sileurns after the drumming flock escapes to the horizon and m breaks through. I give chase to the birds, running so fast and so hard that my skin splits a seam on both sides and my heart drums against my ribs until halted by the deathly appearance of a roiling black river. trating with my entire mind, I see to the other side, and there on the bank, holding hands around a hole in the ground, are my father and mother, the woman in the red coat, my two sisters, and the boy who is not me. They stand like stones, like trees, staring into the clearing. If I summon ce to jump into the water, I may reach them. Blackwater once carried me away, so I stand on the bank, calling out in a voice that ot be heard, with words no one uand.
I dont know how long I was delirious with fever. ht, a day or two, a week, a year? Or longer? When I awakened under a damp steely sky, I felt snug and safe, although my arms ahrobbed with stiffness and my insides felt scraped raw and hollow. Attending me, Ragno and Zanzara played cards, using my belly as a table. Their game defied logic, for they had not mao swipe a full deck. Mixing remnants from many different packs, they ended up with nearly a hundred cards. Each of them held a fistful, and the remainder sat in a jumble on my stomach.
"Do you have any que?&quno asked.
Zanzara scratched his head.
Holding up five fingers, Ragno shouted at him, "que, que."
"Go fish."
And fish he would, turning over card after card until he found a match, which he would then hold up triumphantly before g his turn to Zan-zara.
"You are a cheater, Ragno."
"And you are a bloodsucker."
I coughed, making my sciousness known.
"Hey look, kid, hes awake."
Zanzara put his clammy hand against my forehead. "Let me get you something to eat. A cup of tea, maybe?"
"You been asleeping a long time, kid. Thats what you get foing out with those boys. Those Irish boys, theyre no good."
I looked around the camp for my friends, but as usual at midday, every-one else was gone.
"What day is it?" I asked.
Zanzara flicked out his toasting the air. "Id say Tuesday."
"No, I mean what day of the month."
"Kid, Im not even sure what month it is."
Ragno interrupted. "Must be getting toward spring. The days are grow-ing longer, inch by inch."
"Did I miss Christmas?" I felt homesick for the first time in ages.
The boys shrugged their shoulders.
"Did I miss Santa Claus?"
"Who he?"
"How do I get out of here?"
Ragno poio a path obscured by two evergreens.
"How do I go home?"
Their eyes glazed over, and, holding hands, they turned around and skipped away. I felt like g, but the tears would not e. A fierce gale blew in from the west, pushing dark clouds across the sky. Huddled under my blas, I observed the ging day, aloh my troubles, until the others came skittering home on the wind. They took no more notie than any other lump on the ground one passes every day. Igel started a small fire by striking a flint until a spark caught the kindling. Two of the girls, Kivi and Blomma, uncovered the nearly depleted pantry and dug out our meager fare, ..ly skinning a partially frozen squirrel with a few deft strokes of a very sharp knife. Speck crumbled dried herbs into our old teapot and filled it with water drawn from a cistern. Chavisory toasted pis on a flat griddle. The boys who were not engaged in cooking took off their wet shoes and boots, exging them for yesterdays gear, now dry and hard. All of this domestic routine proceeded without fuss and with st versation; they had made a sce of preparing for the night. As the squirrel cooked on a spit, Smaolach came over to chee, and was surprised to discover me awake and alert.
"Aniday, youve e back from the dead."
He reached for my hand, pullio my feet. We embraced, but he squeezed me so hard that my sides ached. Arm around my shoulder, he led me to the fire, where some of the faeries greeted me with expressions of wonder and relief. Béka gave me an apathetieer, and Igel shrugged at my hello and tinued waiting to be served, arms crossed at his chest. We set to the squir-rel and nuts, the meal barely curbing the growling appetite of all assembled. After the first stringy bites, I pushed away my tin plate. The firelight made everyones face glow, and the grease on their lips made their smiles shine.
After supper, Luchóg motioned for me to e closer, and he whispered in my ear that he had stashed away a surprise for me. We walked away from camp, the last rays of pink sunlight illuminating the way. Clamped be-tween twe stones were four small envelopes.
"Take them," he gruhe top stone heavy in his ar<u></u>ms, and I whisked out the letters before he dropped the cap with a thud. Reag inside his shirt to his private pouch, Luchóg extracted but the nub of a sharp pencil, which he presented with being modesty. "Merry Christmas, little treasure. Something to get you started."
"So it is Christmas today?"
Luchóg looked around to see if anyone was listening. "You did not miss it."
"Merry Christmas," I said. And I tore open my gifts, ruining the pre-cious envelopes. Over the years, I have lost two of the four letters, but they were not so valuable in and of themselves. One was a me stub with pay-ment enclosed, and at his ey, Luchóg received the check to use as rolling paper for his cigarettes. The other lost piece of correspondence was a rabid letter to the editor of the loeer, denoung Harry Truman. Cov-ered both front and back with crabbed handwriting that scuttled from margin tin, that paper proved useless. The other two had much more white space, and with ohe<big></big> lines were so far apart, I was able to write between them.
Feb. 2, 1950
Dearest,
The ht ment so mue that I t uand why you have not phoned or written sihat night. I am fused. You told me that you loved me and I love you too, but still you have not answered my last three letters and nobody ahe telepho your home or even your work. I am not in the habit of doing what we did in the car, but because you told me that you loved me and you were in such pain and agony as you kept saying. I wao let you know that I am not that kind of girl.
I am that kind of girl who loves you and that kind of girl who also expects a Gentleman to behave like a Gentleman.
Please write bae or better yet call me on the phone. I am not angry so much as just fused, but I will be mad if I do not here from you.
I love you, do you know that?
Love,
Martha
At the time, I sidered this letter to be the truest expression of real love that I had ever known. It was difficult to read, for Martha wrote in cur-sive, but thankfully in big letters that resembled printing. The sed letter baffled me more than the first, but it, too, used only three-quarters of the front side of the page.
2/3/50
Dear Mother and Father,
Words ot begin to express the sorrow and sympathy I send to you at the loss of dear Nana. She was a good woman, and a kind one, and she is now in a better place. I am sorry that I ot e home, but Ive not enough money for the trip. So, all my heartfelt grief must be shared by this most insuffit letter.
Winter draws to a cold and unhappy close. Life is not fair, since you have lost Nana, and I, near everything.
Your Son
When they learned of the two messages, the girls in camp insisted they be shared aloud. T<s>?</s>hey were curious not only about their substa about my professed literacy, for almost no one in camp bothered to read or write any longer. Some had not learned, and others had chosen tet. We sat in a ring around the fire, and I read them as best I could, not fully prehending all of the words or uanding their meanings. "What do you think of Dearest?" Speck asked the group after I had finished.
"He is a cad; he is a rotter," Onions said.
Kivi pushed back her blonde curls and sighed, her face bright in the firelight. "I do not uand why Dearest will not write baartha, but that is nothing pared to the problems of Your Son."
"Yes," Chavisory jumped in, "perhaps Your Son and Martha should get married, and then they will both live happily ever after."
"Well, I hope Mother and Father find Nana," added Blomma.
Into the night the bewildering versation flowed. They fabricated poetical fis about the other world. The mysteries of their sympathies, s, and sorrows perplexed me, yet the girls had a wellspring of empathy for matters outside our knowing. I was anxious, however, to have them go away, so that I might practice my writing. But the girls lingered until the fire collapsed into embers; then they led uhe covers together, where they tiheir discussion, p the fate of the writers, their sub-jects, and their intended readers. I would have to wait to use the pages. The night became bitterly cold, and soon all twel<cite></cite>ve of us were huddled together in a tangle of limbs. When the last of us wiggled uhe mat, I suddenly remembered the day. "Merry Christmas!" I said, but my greetings brought only derision: "Shuddup!" and "Go to sleep." During the long hours before dawn, a foot hit me on the , an elbow knacked me in the groin, and a knee banged against my sore ribs. In a dark er of the pack, a girl groaned when Béka climbed upon her. Enduring their fitfulness, I waited for m, the letters pinned against my chest.
The rising sun reflected against a bla of high cirrus clouds, c them in a spectrum that began in brightness on the eastern edge and fanned out in soft pastels. Branches of the trees broke the sky intments, like a kaleidoscope. When the red sun rose, the pattern shifted hues until it all dis-sipated into blue and white. Up and out of bed, I savored the light growing strong enough for drawing and writing. I took out my papers and pencil, put a cold flat stone in my lap, and folded the me statement into quarters. I drew a cross along the folds and made panels for four drawings. The pencil was at once odd and familiar in my grasp. In the first panel, I created from memory my mother and father, my two baby sisters, and myself, full-body portraits lined up in a straight row. When I sidered my work, they looked crude and uneven, and I was disappointed in myself. In the panel, I drew the road through the forest with the deer, the woman, the car, Smaolad Luchóg in the same perspective. Light, for example, was indicated by twht lines emanating from a circle on the car aending outward to opposite ers of the frame. The deer looked more like a dog, and I dearly wished for an eraser on the yellow pencil. Ihird panel: a flattened Christmas tree, lavishly decorated, a pile of gifts spread out on the floor. In the final panel, I dreicture of a boy drowning. Bound in spirals, he sinks be-low the wavy line.
When I showed my paper to Smaolach later that afternooook me by the hand and made me run with him to hide behind a wild riot of holly. He looked around in all dires to make sure we were alohen he care-fully folded the paper into quarters and ha bae.
"You must be more careful with what you draw in them pictures."
"Whats the matter?"
"If Igel finds out, then youll know whats the matter. You have to real-ize, Aniday, that he doesnt accept any tact with the other side, and that woman ..."
"The one in the red coat?"
"Hes a-scared of being found out." Smaolach grabbed the paper and tucked it into my coat pocket. "Some things are better kept to yourself," he said, then wi me and walked away, whistling.
Writing proved more painful than drawing. Certaiers—B, G, R, W—caused my hand to cramp. In those early writings, sometimes my K bent backward, S went astray, an F actally became an E, and other errors that are amusing to me now as I look bay early years, but at the time, my handwriting caused me much shame and embarrassment. Worse than the alphabet, however, were the words themselves. I could not spell for beans and lacked all punctuation. My vocabulary annoyed me, not to mention style, di, senteructure, variety, adjectives and adverbs, and other such mat-ters. The physical act of writing took forever. Sentences had to be assembled nail by nail, and onplete, they stood er than a crude approxima-tion of what I felt or wao say, a woebegone fence across a white field. Yet I persisted through that m, writing down all I could remember in whatever words I had at my and. By midday, both blank sides of the paper taihe story of my abdu and the adventures as well as the vaguest memories of life before this place. I had already fotten more than I remembered—my own name and the names of my sisters, my dear bed, my sy books, any notion of what I wao be when I grew up. All that would be given bae in due course, but without Luchógs letters, I would have been lost forever. When I had squeezed the final word in the last available space, I went to look for him. Out of paper, my mission was to find more.
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