But when he discovers a copy of The Whippoorwill stapled to a litter bin on the Winooski trails, his hard-thought lines besmirched by a blue jay, he forgoes his self-protecting diffidence, peddling expeditiously for Thelma’s farm.
“This is unconscionable!” he raves, the fire in his voice a new excitement for Thelma. “I give you a piece of my heart, and the next thing I know you have it published in the local paper. And as if that weren’t enough, I find this!” he shouts, waving the bird-dunged copy in her face. “If an adoring heart is to be ignored, discarded, and trashed like a piece of rubbish, I would think it deserves an interment more sacred than a common litter bin!”
“Only a piece, See-MOAN?” she coos, his rage igniting her passion, “only a piece of your heart? And just when I was ready to pledge you the whole of mine? Who would have cause to post your poetry on the trails?” Thelma coaxing him through her door. “Could it be someone who adores you? someone who, like the children of fairy tale, leaves you a trail of crumbs to follow?”
“Then…then-“
“I did it, See-MOAN…my way of dropping a hint. And it worked, too,” Thelma leading him triumphantly to “his chair”, the newly varnished rocker pulled scratching-close to her own. “You’re here, safe and snug in your rocker. And I want to hear your inspired recitation. I want to swoon to your words, your voice,” she whispers, leaning over him; the scent of perfume playing the trail of crumbs, “…your voice, like a lute-throated dove, casting The Whippoorwill’s spell.”
Drinking deeply of her shimmering eyes, desire comes flooding as moonlight, waking his troubadour tongue. Taking command of the moment, he waves her to her knees - to a compulsory silence awaiting some Olympian feat - and lifting high her bird-dirtied copy, he lets it fall feather-light to the floor, relying on memory to surpass what desire imagines.
“I-I’m renaming it,” he stutters, wincing at the implication, “… For the Birds.”
“For the Birds,” she muses softly, “For the Birds, for the turds, what’s the difference…just recite it to me, darling.”
And so he does; though the lines seem rudely altered. What had once been innocuous humor is now a piercing sword, cutting asunder his last restraint:
The whippoorwill not consort,
His pride too big for the swallow;
Let crow eat all his Wordsworth,
With rhyme his reason will follow.
The whippoorwill not consent
To risk robin’ his own nest egg
For hollers in night owl hoots,
No matter how peli-can beg.
The whippoorwill not allow
A bird of his feather to flock;
For time flies hard at his wing
To a rhythm that wood-ticks-tock.
The whippoorwill not accept
A package the wagtail has sent;
Assuming the UPS are downs
In any stork-naked event.
The whippoorwill cry at night,
Not a grain of truth in his heart;
Thinking it’s all for the birds,
Be it bushel, woodpeck’er quart.
The whippoorwill never be
A raven forlorn in the night,
Till mockingbird mimics poor
Whippoorwill’s plight – then he might!
His sacrifice made, Simon’s rocker becomes a sarcophagus, his skeletal frame rattling back against the dowels. “You know, of course, to whom I refer in the poem?” he sighs.
“Nooo,” she breathes, pretending diffidence to bolster his courage, “…but I’m dying to learn.”
“Am I that dense?” he probes, seeking some measure of favor, “do I rhyme so foggily your own reflection is missed? It’s you, Thelma,” he gushes, “you are my mockingbird, my plaintive call to awake and sing…to march to a rousing beat-“
”Then-then you don’t mind if I march?” Thelma too roused to refrain.
“Not if I’m marching with you,” he counters.
“But you…you…oh well,” she falters, deferring to the problems of another day the inconsistency of a man marching against his nature, “we shall see about that. But right now we have other pleasures to explore…other delights for your imaginative mind.”
“Yes,” he sighs - Thelma finding his lap, “yes…yes.” Such high-flown verse giving wings to his thoughts; Thelma’s bed a flying carpet, taking him places iambic pentameter has yet to describe – the sensuous trip leaving them too transported, too enraptured for the Earth-bound woe of a funeral.
But a funeral there must be, Artie lying in his adopted state as Reverend Rolundo redeems himself with eloquence; his lyrical approbation for a good man’s life in graceful contrast to the kinky kudos of Melvin’s eulogy - mourners whispering asides about the reverend’s bravery for even daring the tribute. And indeed, he strives to atone; his portrayal of Artie as a kind-hearted man, a good Samaritan, a sower of seeds among the minds of his customers, going far to accomplish this end.
With The Church of the Good Shepherd safely dispossessed of Artie’s corpse, the mourners trek, like murmuring cabals, to the grave overlooking the river. Atop cemetery hill, prayers rise like burning incense as frost-chilled breaths curl eerily into the void.
“It went as it should,” observes the paunch-bellied tavern owner to some of his regulars, “Artie would have been proud of the reverend today,” those in earshot nodding somberly.
“What makes you think Artie would be any different than when he was alive?” Thelma quickening her steps to encroach on his listeners.
“Have some respect, will ya?” begs the shivering tavern keeper, “there’s no need to be inviting the kind of trouble we had here before. And what’s eating at ya anyhow?” he asks. “Rumor has it you’ve gone and changed on us, Thelma; you’ve gone soft on the issues. But now I’m not so sure I agree.”
“Hear, hear,” an old man mumbles, signaling agreement with a bleary-eyed squint.
Possessed by some puissance before unknown, Thelma bristles at the hint of protest, her voice shrill and abrasive:
“If ever there lived an honest man, it was Arthur,” Thelma suddenly vehement. “And since honesty is akin to truth, Artie wouldn’t want us touting friendships that never were. Not to imply he had enemies, mind you; but there were a few in our village with whom Artie didn’t fraternize – the reverend among them.”
Her stunned auditors are further surprised by how quickly Simon Farley positions himself at her side – or rather, steps decidedly into her path – his kindly intent obvious to all. “Enough!” he declares, grasping her gesticulating hands. “There are other forums from which we can speak, other venues more appropriate than a man’s last moments above the sod.”
But where affection has ruled, reason now clearly fails, Thelma shoving him rudely out of her way. “You said you wanted to march with me, didn’t you?” she shrills truculently, stomping forward, “then march, damn it! We’ve got a message to deliver here; a veritable sermon on the mount.”
“Oh my God!” Mrs. Rolundo gasps, stepping sprightly to her husband’s side, “it’s the curse of the dead! Come on!” she implores, tugging his arm, “I won’t have you being blamed for this one!”
But if the reverend’s presence invoked this torch of discontent, his departure inflames it, Thelma’s scorching incantations licking as fire from Artie’s tomb:
Never such shameful, foul examples do we find,
But that still worse, untold, remain behind-
she screeches, high-stepping to a halt before the gaping grave and its dangling denizen, “or so said Juvenal, that great Roman satirist who even now is laughing at our hypocrisy.”
“Well! Aren’t you the scholar?” a huffing Simon declares, catching up as she delivers her quote. “I had no idea!” Refusing him the courtesy of acknowledgment, she continues her raving:
“And if example indeed the reverend be, then believe you me, you don’t want to know the untold. W
hat Rolundo failed to tell you today, I shall; for our friend here deserves to be heard.” Scurrying to the far side of the freshly dug grave, the gray steel of Artie’s casket is her dolorous lectern. “Unlike the most of us here,” she continues, perilously near the waiting hole, “this man made a conscious choice to enjoy life in our village, abandoning his former home - his heritage, even - on the strength of his uncommon faith, his belief that Plainfield was the kind of place where one might find life’s missing pieces. And ever smiling through those big brown eyes was a heart as big as Texas. As neighborly, too, if you gave him a chance – which the reverend never did. That’s right,” she fumes, pointing accusingly down the hill at the ever diminishing Rolundos, “you heard me right.”
Artie’s mourners bending like trees under her gale force broadside – Simon stumbling backward for fear her blazing eyes might reveal some fault of his own.
“I could tell you a thing or two on Rolundo,” Thelma’s hand outstretching in Simon’s direction, “his thing…those two…but I won’t. I won’t because Artie wouldn’t. But-but…excuse me?” Thelma faltering, peering into the autumn sky as though the scrambled clouds are communiques, exclaiming, “Oh, really!…And how are things on that side, Artie?” her listeners retreating into a defensive line, Thelma unaware of their movement, ”but-but you can still see us here?…and you’re telling me…you’re saying you don’t want to hurt anybody? Not even that hypocrite Rolundo? Sorry, I shouldn’t have put words in your…what?…you want to help us discover what peace is our present portion?”
The cowering crowd drawing closer again, Thelma’s countenance losing its frightening scowl, her tempestuous tone abating.
“And especially our dear, delicate artist?” she goes on, “our treasure of rhyme? our own See-MOAN Far-LAY?…author of that mystical mystery, The Whippoorwill?”
The huddling mourners yielding up such a startled response that even Simon is carried away, their chatter his first public credit. “And being in the position to see beyond our horizon, you take the occasion of your burial to unearth a prophecy? Is that what you’re saying?”
Hushed, the mourners retreat anew, her revelation stoking fear - Simon like a slide under a microscope, his peers nudging him this way and that, between their curiosity and Artie’s grave.
“It will?” Thelma’s soliloquy continues, “his first book of collected poems will bring him fame? But what is it?…the title, I mean?…Ah! how apropos!” she cries, letting go a frightening cackle. “Cycles…I like that…sounds like something he’d try to pedal,” she calls back to the scudding clouds. “And what?…what did you say? that you’ll be back to enjoy it?…that you’ll treasure the gift of books this time?…value the art of reading? And when are you coming?” she asks, turning round and round as though seeking a sign in the sky, “Really!…that soon!” she shrieks. Pirouetting, her stumbling turns are accompanied by eerie peels of laughter. “Now? you’re returning now?…this instant?”
The last of the mourners beating a hasty retreat down the tomb-strewn hill, leaving Simon to prove his strength, his manhood, his protecting love. For when Thelma suddenly drops from sight, he scurries round the suspended casket to pull her out of the grave.
When the mind doubts, a trifle pulls it to and fro. (Terence)
XV
Artie’s funeral makes me realize how much I relished my own service, despite Aunt Martha’s meddling - probably because Melody was there. But today is more dramatic, Aunt Martha pulling the wool over the eyes of the flock. How she can tell such whoppers through the voice of Thelma I’ll never know, the part about Artie disliking the reverend a lie I’m certain will trap her. But it doesn’t, the fool on the hill assailing her shivering auditors with such fury and fear she drives them away before truth can redeem the day.
“How can you do this to Artie?” I chide, as we watch Simon pull a dazed and trembling Thelma from under Artie’s coffin. “I distinctly remember you claiming criticism as a family right. But even had I granted you that right, it didn’t apply here. And what’s more, you’ve managed to leave a man levitating over his own grave!” I add captiously. “Your example of ‘leaving it up in the air’ is extreme.”
“So what shall we do about it?” A.M. asks distractedly, her focus on Simon attempting to escort his weak-kneed lady down the hill.
“Bury him, if we can,” I reply, Simon’s bandy-legged stride, zigzagging down the precipitous hill, reminding me of Chaplin’s Little Tramp.
“Oh, we can all right…but-”
“But what?” I prod, returning to the problem at hand.
“I was just thinking of Artie,” she explains, “his first chance to rest in peace. We’d be interfering; we’d have the whole county astir over his grave. They’d be digging, figuratively and literally, trying to determine how his final let-down came to be.”
“You mean-“
“I mean because they didn’t finish the job; didn’t bury him properly. But not to worry, Artie’s about to make land.”
“Yes,” I mutter, espying two men with shovels approaching from the village below, “I see them trudging up the hill.”
“Not what I meant,” she corrects, turning to observe the grave tenders. “Artie’s coming back to life on Earth.”
“So soon!” I rejoin, remembering, suddenly, that Thelma had babbled a like remark. “Then what you were frightening the villagers with is true?”
“Yep,” she says curtly, “and coming right back to Plainfield, too…happening as we speak.”
“Barring the miracle of this corpse getting up and walking,” I counter, sarcasm edging my words, “I presume you mean the birth of a child.”
“Yep,” she repeats, enticing further inquiry.
But I don’t ask, pretending, instead, to recall those I know to be pregnant. “Let’s see,” I muse casually, spoiling her pleasure, “there’s Melody…but she’s spoken for. And then there’s the Comptons, the young couple Caesar told us about; but they’re spoken for, too, I believe. Surely there are others,” I go on, ignoring her restive twitch. “But, of course! the wife of the postmaster-“
“How about Charlene,” she interrupts, impatience still her ruling planet, “your other woman, Melvin. How could you forget her?”
“I can’t - not while you’re here to remind me,” I growl, feigning irritation, “but surely you’re not going to tell me Artie has chosen her.”
“Artie hasn’t chosen anything,” she snaps. “He didn’t choose to come over when he did; and once here, he didn’t opt to go back, either.”
“But I thought we had choices,” I argue, “opportunities, decisions. A choice is still a choice whether we act or do nothing…whether we have our hand on the wheel, or let it spin where it may.”
“Right, but one can’t exercise a choice, positively or negatively, until one is aware a choice exists. When we are ready…when we are ready. Until then, our fate is predestined.”
“Predestined by whom?” I query, “and isn’t that what most people believe? that fate plays the guide in their lives?”
“As to who grants what conditions our destiny, I leave for you to address,” A.M. hopping up on Artie’s casket. “But as to who petitions for them in the first place, we do that for ourselves.”
“But you just said Artie hadn’t a choice,” I remind her, “so how does that agree with petitioning?”
“Guardian angels. Guardian angels act on our behalf.”
“You mean like-“
“Legal guardians?” she finishes for me. “Yes, like legal guardians.”
“Well!” I snort, pulling her off Artie’s coffin before the chill of her presence can ward off the approaching workers, “you can’t do better than an angel on your shoulder.”
“And just where do you think that expression came from?” she asks, accepting my lead down the hill, “some dance-hall ditty?”
“Never gave it a thought,” I reply, avoiding an argument, “but if Artie tr
uly had no thought or say in his ruling events, then he can count himself fortunate; for, as Sophocles once said, ‘In heeding nothing lies the sweetest life.’”
“You and your Greeks,” she spouts, making a sudden turn for Montpelier, “as for me, I prefer the wisdom of my Roman peers. In fact, it was Lucretius who wrote, ‘All things are bound by their own chains of fate.’”
“So now we have a choice of conditions?” I pose, turning to follow her towards the capital, “the freedom of ignorance, or the chains of fate? If it were me, I would choose ignorance: for, of the two, ignorance can be ameliorated.”
“Too bad your other woman didn’t have that choice,” she quips, leading me into a trap, “but she’s broken the chains of fate just the same.”
“How so?” I ask, allowing myself to be caught.
“By mending her bitter heart with the love she has for her baby,” A.M. pulling us up short at the Montpelier hospital. “Artie has just been reborn as a red-faced, screaming little George.”
“Good for Artie!” I exclaim, “…and bad for George.”
“Oh?” Aunt Martha taking us in to hover in the powder-scented nursery, “and what would you have her name the child, Melvin? Surely not Melvin!”
“Of course not. But George isn’t…well-“
“Isn’t going to marry her?” A.M. flitting among the squalling newborns as though looking for something that might pacify our crying Georgie boy.
“I don’t know what I mean,” I admit, taking a closer look at the little Artie-turned-Georgie; wondering (even as I search his wrinkled face for Morrison features) what my old friend Arthur would think of the switch; of his return as Melvin junior alias George junior, all the while being really himself, the whole confounding tripartite arrangement surreal. “And besides, how can we be sure this is Artie?” I ask skeptically.
Twice Melvin Page 11
