CHAPTER 28
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The most merciless thing in the world is love. When love flees, all that remains is memory to pensate. Our friends were either going oheir ghosts the best our poor minds could jure to fill loves absence. I am hauo this day by all those who are missing. Losing Kivi, Blomma, Ragno, and Zanzara proved heartbreaking for Speck, too. She went about her tasks grim aermined, as if by staying busy she could keep phantoms at bay.After the disaster in the mine, we deposed Béka with his sent, and the diminished elected Smaolach our new leader. We lived above ground for the first time in years, bound to one small clearing in the forest by Chavisorys immobility. The impulse to go bae ate at us all. Five years had passed since we had left our camp, ahought it might be safe to return. The last time anyone had seen our former home, the grounds had been denuded, but surely new growth had begun—where black ash had been, saplings should be ing up amid the wildflowers and fresh grass. Just as nature reclaims its ruins, the people, too, would have fotten about that boy lost in the river and the two faeries found in the market. Theyd want life to remain as they thought it had been.
With it safe to travel again, Luchóg, Smaolach, and I set out, leaving the other three behind at our makeshift camp to watch over Chavisory. Although the wind blew cold that day, our spirits quied at the prospect of seeing our old haunts again. We raced like deer along the trails, laughing as one passed the other. The old camp shimmered in inations as a promise ht redemption.
Climbing the western ridge, I heard distant laughter. We slowed our puce, and as we reached the lip, the sounds below piqued our curiosity. The valley came into view through the broken veil of tree limbs and branches Rows of houses and open lawns snaked and curled along ribbons of roadways. On the exact spot where our camp had been, five new houses faced an open circle. Another six sat oher side of a wide road cut through the trees. Brang off from that trail, more streets and houses flowed down the sloping hill to the main road into town.
"Be it ever so humble," Luchóg said.
I looked far ahead and saw bustling activity. From the back of a station wagon, a woman unloaded packages tied up with bows. Two boys tossed a football. A yellow car, shaped like a bug, chugged up a winding road. We could hear a radio talking about the Army-Navy game, and a man muttering curses as he nailed a string of lights beh the eaves of his roof. Mesmerized by all I saw, I failed to notice as day gave way to night. Lights went on in the homes, as if on sudden signal.
"Shall we see who lives on the ring?" Luchóg asked.
We crept down to the circle of asphalt. Two of the homes appeared empty. The other three showed signs of life: cars in the driveways, lamplit figures crossing behind the windows as if rushing off on vital tasks. Glang in each window, we saw the same story unfolding. A woman in a kit stirred something in a pot. Another lifted a huge bird from the oven, while></a> in an adjoining room a man stared at minuscule figures playing games in a glowing box, his face flushed iement er. His -door neighbor slept in an easy chair, oblivious to the noise and flickering images.
"He looks familiar," I whispered.
Covered to his toes in blue terrycloth, a young child sat in a small cage in the er of the room. He played distractedly with brightly colored plastic toys. For a moment, I thought the sleeping man resembled my father, but I could not uand how he could have another son. A woman walked from one room into the other, and her long blonde hair trailed behind like a tail. She sched up her mouth into a bow before bending down and whispering something to the man, a name perhaps, and he looked startled and slightly embarrassed to be caught sleeping. When his eyes popped open, he looked even more like my father, but she was definitely not my mother. She flashed a crooked smile and lifted her baby over the bars, and the child cooed and laughed and threw his arms around his mothers neck. I had heard that sound before. The man switched off the sole, but before joining the others, he came to the window, cleared a circle with his two hands against the damp panes, and peered out into the darkness. I do not think he saw us, but I surely had seen him before.
We circled bato the woods and waited until the moon was high in the night sky and most of the lights popped off goodnight. The houses in the ring were dark and quiet.
"I dont like this," I said, my breath visible in the violet light.
"You worry your own life away like a kitten worries a string," Smaolach said.
He barked, and we followed him down to the cul-de-sac. Smaolach chose a house with no car in the driveway, where we were not likely to enter any humans. Careful not to wake anyone, we slipped inside easily through the unlocked front door. A row of shoes stood off to the side of the foyer, and Luchóg immediately tried on pairs until he found a fit. Their boy would be dismayed in the m. The kit lay in sight of the foyer, through a smallish dining room. Each of us loaded a rucksack with ed fruits aables, flour, salt, and sugar. Luchóg jammed fistfuls of tea bags into his trouser pockets and on the way out copped a package of cigarettes and a box of matches from the sideboard. In and out in minutes, disturbing no one.
The sed house—where the baby in blue lived—proved stubborn. All of the doors and downstairs windows were locked, so we had to shimmy uhe crawlspad into a closetlike room that sheltered a maze of plumbing. By following the pipes, we eventually made our way into the interior of the house, ending up in the cellar. To make ourselves quieter, we look off our shoes and tied them around our necks before sneaking up the steps and slowly opening the door to the kit. The room smelled of remembered bread.
While Smaolad Luchóg raided the pantry, I tiptoed through the rooms to locate the front door and an easy exit. On the walls of the living room hung a gallery of photographic portraits that read mainly as uing shadows, but as I passed by one, illuminated by a white shaft of moonlight, I froze. Two figures, a young mother and her infant child, lifted to her shoulder to face the camera. The baby looked like every other baby, round and smooth as a button. The mother did not stare directly into the lens but watched her son from the ers of her eyes. Her hairstyle and clothing suggested another era, and she, with her beguiling smile and hopeful gaze, appeared hardly more than a child with a child. She lifted her , as if preparing to burst out laughing with joy at the babe in arms. The photograph triggered a rush of chemicals to my brain. Dizzy and disoriented, I knew, but could not place, their faces. There were other photographs—a long white dress standio a shadow, a man in a peaked cap—but I kept ing back to the mother and child, put my fingers on the glass, traced the tours of those figures. I wao remember. Foolishly, I went to the wall and turned on the lamp.
Someone gasped i just as the pictures on the wall jumped into clarity. Two older people with severe eyeglasses. A fat baby. But I could see clearly the photograph that had so entranced me, and beside it another which disturbed me more. There was a boy, eyes skyward, looking up in expectation of something unseen. He could not have been more than seven at the time the picture was taken, and had the snapshot not been in black) and white, I would have sooner reized his face. For it was mine, and me, in a jacket and cap, eyes awaiting—what? a s<cite></cite>nowfall, a tossed football, a V of geese, hands from above? What a strahing to happen to a little boy, to end up on the wall of this unfamiliar house. The man and woman in the wedding picture offered no clues. It was my father with a different bride.
"Aniday, what are you doing?" Luchóg hissed. "Hush those lights."
A mattress creaked overhead as someo out of bed. I snapped off the lights and scrammed. The floorboards moaned. A womans voice muttered in a high, impatient tone.
"All right," the man replied. "Ill go check, but I didnt hear a thing." He headed for the upper stairway, took the steps slowly one by one. We tried the bac<u>..</u>k door out of the kit but could not figure out the lock.
"The damhing wont budge," Smaolach said.
The approag figure reached the bottom landing, switched on the light. He went into the living room, which I had departed seds earlier. Luchóg fussed with a rotating bar and unlocked the deadbolt with a soft click. We froze at the sound.
"Hey, whos there?" the man said from the other room. He padded our way in his bare feet.
"Fuck all," said Smaolach, aurhe knob and pushed. The door opened six inches but hung fast by a small metal above our heads. "Lets go," he said, and we ged to squeeze through the gap one by one, scattering sugar and flour behind us. I am sure he saw the last of us, for the man called out "Hey" again, but we were gone, rag across the frosty lawn. The floodlight popped on like a flashbulb, but assed its circle of illumination. From the top of the ridge, we watched all his rooms light up in sequeill the windows glowed like rows of jack-o-lanterns. A dog began to yowl madly in the middle of the village, aook that as a sign to retreat home. The ground chilled our bare feet, but, exhilarated as imps, we escaped our treasures, laughing uhe cold stars.
At the top of the ridgeline, Luchóg stopped to smoke one of his purloined cigarettes, and I looked bae last time at the ordered village where our home used to be. This is the place where it had all happened—a reach for wild honey high in a tree, a stretch of roadway where the car struck a deer, a clearing where I first opened my eyes and saw eleven dark children. But someone had erased all that, like a word or a line, and in that space wrote another sentehe neighborhood of houses appeared to have existed in this space fes. It made one doubt ones own story.
"That man back there," I said, "the sleeping one. He reminded me of someone."
"They all look alike to me," Luchóg said. "Someone I know. Or knew."
"Could it be your long-lost brother?"
"I havent one."
"Perhaps a man who wrote a book you read in the library?"
"I do not know what they look like."
"Perhaps the man who wrote that book you carry from place to place?"
"No, not Mes. I do not know Mes."
"A man from a magazine? A photograph in the neer?"
"Someone I knew."
"Could it be the fireman? The man you saw at the creek?" He puffed on his cigarette and blew smoke like an old steam engine.
"I thought it might be my father, but that t be right. There was that strange woman and her child in the blue suit."
"What year is it, little treasure?" Luchóg asked.
It could have been 1972, although in truth, I was no longer sure.
"By now, you must be a young mahe end of thirty years. And how old was the man in the picture window?"
"Id guess about the same."
"And how old would his father be?"
"Twice that," I said, and smiled like an idiot.
"Your father would be an old man by now, almost as old as I am."
I sat down on the cold ground. So much time had passed since I had last seen my parents; their real age was a revealed mystery.
Luchóg sat down beside me. "After awhile, everyone fets. I ot paint you a picture of my dear youth. The old memories are not real—just figures in a fairytale. My mammy could walk right up to me this very minute and say, Sonny-boy, and I would have to say, Sorry, I dont know you, lady. My father may as well be a myth. So, you see, in a way, you have no father or mother, or if you did, you wouldnt know them any longer, nor they you, mores the pity."
"But the fellow falling asleep in the armchair? If I try hard, I recall my fathers face."
"Might as well be anyone. Or no o all."
"And the baby?"
"Theyre all oo me. A bother with h but all the time hungry. t walk, t talk, t share a smoke. You have them. Some say a gelings best bet is a baby—theres less to learn—but thats moving backward across time. You should be going forward. And heaven help us if we ever had a baby to look after for a whole tury."
"I do not want to steal any child. I just wonder whose baby that is. What happened<bdi></bdi> to my father? Where is my mother?"
To make it through the cold season, we en blas and a half-dozen childrens coats from the Salvation Army store, ae small meals, subsisting mainly oeas brewed from bark and twigs. In the dull light of January and February, we often did not stir at all, but sat alone or in clumps of two or three, drippi or stone cold, waiting for the sun and the resumption of our lives. Chavisrew stronger by and by, and when the wild onions and first daffodils appeared, she could take a few steps with brag assistance. Each day, Speck pushed her one painful pace forward. When she was well enough for us to move, we fled that miserable dungheap of memories. Despite the risks, we found a more suitable hidden home near water, a mile or so north of the new houses. On windy nights, the noises from the families carried as far as our ne, and while not as secluded, it afforded us adequate prote. As we dug in that first day, restlessness swept over me. Smaolach sat down beside me and draped an arm ay shoulders. The sun was falling from the sky.
"Ní mar a síltear a bítear," he said.
"Smaolach, if I live to be a thousand years, Ill never uand your old language. Speak English to me."
"Are you thinking of our friends, late and lameheyre better off where they are and not suffering this eternal waiting. Or is there something else on your mind, little treasure?"
"Have you ever been in love, Smaolach?"
"Ond only ohank goodness. We were close, like every mother and son."
"Luchóg said my mother and father are gone."
"I dont remember much of her. The smell of wool, maybe, and a harsh soap. Mint on the breath. A huge bosom upon which I laid my ... No, thats nht. She was a rake of a woman, all skin and bones. I dont recall."
"Every place we leave, part of me disappears."
"Now ... my father, there was a strapping fellow with a big black moustache curled up at the ends, or maybe it was my grandfather, e to think of it. Was a long time ago, and Im not really sure where it was or when."
The darkness was plete.
"Thats the way of life. All things go out and give way to one aisnt wise to be too attached to any world or its people."
Mystified by Smaolachs philosophy, I tottered off to my new bed, turned over the facts, and looked at what crawled beh. I tried to picture my mother and father, and could not recall their faces or their voices. Remembered life seemed as false to me as my hese shadows are visible: the sleeping man, the beautiful woman, and the g, laughing child. But just as much of real life, not merely read about in books, remains unknown to me. A mother s a lullaby to a sleepy child. A man shuffles a deck of cards and deals a hand of solitaire. A pair of lovers unbutton one another and tumble into bed. Unreal as a dream.
I did not fess to Smaolach the reason for my agitation. Speck had all but abandoned our friendship, withdrawing into some hard and lonesome core. Even after we made the move, she devoted herself to making our ne feel like home, and she spent the sunlit hours teag Chavisory to walk again. Exhausted by her efforts, Speck fell into a deep sleep early eaight. She stayed in her burrow on cold a March days, trag out an intricate design on a rolled part, and when I asked her about her drawing, she stayed quiet and aloof. Early ms, Id see her at the western edge of camp, clad in her warmest coat, sturdy shoes on her feet, p the horizon. I remember approag her from behind and plag my hand on her shoulder. For the first time ever, she fli my touch, and wheuro face me, she trembled as if shaking off the urge to cry.
"Whats the matter, Speck? Are you okay?"
"Ive been w too hard. Theres one last snow on the way." She smiled and took my hand. "Well steal off at the first flurries."
When the snow finally came days later, I had fallen asleep under a pile of blas. She woke me, white flakes gathering in her dark hair. "Its time," she whispered as quietly as the delicate susurrus through the pines. Sped I meandered along familiar trails, taking care to be hidden, and waited at the edge of the forest he library for dusk to arrive. The snowfall obscured the sun’s dest, and the headlights of the few cars on the road tricked us into going too soon. We squeezed into our spaly to hear footfall overhead as the librarians began to close for the night. To stay warm and quiet, we huddled beh a bla, and she quickly fell asleep against me. The rhythm of her beati and respiration, and the heat from her skin, quickly lulled me to sleep, too, and we woke together in pitch black. She lit the lamps, and we went to our books.
Speck had been reading Flannery Oor, and I was wading in deep Water with Wallace Stevens. But I could not trate on his abstras, and instead stared at her between the lines. I had to tell her, but the words were ie, inplete, and perhaps inprehensible—a nothing else would do. She was my <bdi>藏书网</bdi>closest friend in the world, yet a greater desire for more had apanied me around for years. I could not rationalize or explain it away for another moment. Speck was engrossed in The Violent Bear It Away. A bent arm propped up her head, and she was lying across the floor, her hair obsg her face.
"Speck, I have something to tell you."
"Just a moment. One more sentence."
"Speck, if you could put down that book for a sed."
"Almost there." She stuck her finger between the pages and closed the novel.
She looked at me, and in one sey mood swung from elation to fear. "I have been thinking for a long, long time, Speck, about you. I want to tell you how I feel."
Her smile collapsed. Her eyes searched my relentless gaze. "Aniday, " she insisted.
"I have to tell you how—"
"Dont."
"Tell you, Speck, how much I—"
"Please, dont, Henry."
I stopped, opened my mouth to form the words, and stopped again. "What did you say?"
"I dont know that I hear that right now."
"What did you call me?"
She covered her mouth, as if to recapture the escaped name.
"You called me Henry." The whole story unraveled in an instant. "Thats me, Im Henry. Thats what you said, isnt it?"
"Im so sorry, Aniday."
"Henry. Not Aniday. Henry Day."
"Henry Day. You werent supposed to know."
The shock of the name made me fet what I had plao tell her. Myriad thoughts aions peted in my mind. Images, solutions to assorted puzzles and riddles, and unanswered questions. She put down her book, crossed the room, and wound me in her embrace. For the loime, she held on to me, rog and soothing my fevered imagination with the lightest touch, caressing away the chaos.
And theold me my story. The story told in these pages was all she could remember. She told me what she knew, and my recolles of dreams, visions, and enters filled in the rest. She told me why they kept it all secret for so long. How it is better not to know who you really are. Tet the past. Erase the name. All this revealed in a patient and heavenly voice, until everything that could be answered was answered, no desire left unsatisfied. The dles burned out, we had talked so long, and into darkhe versation lasted, and the last thing I remember is falling asleep in her arms.
I had a dream that we ran away that night, found a place to grow up together, became the woman and the man we were supposed to be. In the dream, she kissed my mouth, and her bare skin slid beh my fiips. A blackbird sang. But in the m, she was not where I expected her to be. In our long friendship, she had never written a single word to me, but by my side, where she should have been, lay a note in her handwriting. Every letter is etched in mind, and though I will not give it all away, at the end she wrote, "Goodbye, Henry Day."
It was time for her to go. Speck is gone.
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