Blue World

by Robert R. McCammon

  I got promoted. Left the garbage cans and got a mop and broom. I had the machine shop, and Lordy there was a lot to sweep up in there! I never could figure out what the machine shop was for. Just men workin on little engines and cogs and gears with plenty of time on their hands. Guess some of them did electrical work round the Brickyard, stuff like that. But one day the rain was pourin down the barred winders and I was sweepin and all of a suddens Pell Donner he say, “Wand! Come on, boy! Whitey’s in the shop!”

  I followed him, and there he was: the black African with white cornrow hair. Except he looked even skinnier in his prison duds. Looked like his face had grown more wrinkles, and his shirt and trousers hung on him, but I bet there wasnt no size smaller in the laundry. He was standin there with bout ten or eleven men round him, and he had his hands cupped together but I could see Yellachile in the cage of his fingers, every so often flappin his wings and tryin to peek out.

  You never seen men with faces like children before if you werent there. And quiet—Lord yes. Even Roughhouse Clayton was quiet, and you couldnt shut him up if you knocked the mouth off his face. Whitey was talkin, and as he talked he kept liftin his hands and blowin little puffs of air in at Yellachile. But somethin was wrong with Whitey’s lungs. They gurgled like backed-up drains, and he was havin trouble breathin. I figured cancer, or somethin else wicked.

  “Yellachile done some flyin last night,” Whitey said, raspy-soft, and his eyes shone behind those glasses like ghost lamps. “Yessir, done some fast and far flyin. Didnt ya?” He looked in at Yellachile, and the little bird cocked its head at him. “Where’d he go, I wonder?”

  “Florida. Where it don’t rain every night for two months,” Billy Davis say.

  “Flew to a big city,” Junior Murdock say, his voice like a muted New Orleans trumpet. “Where the lights stay on all night long and them ladies parade the streets.”

  “The country.” That was a new man I didnt know. “Over a farm where you can smell the green.”

  I said it. Dont know why. “Flew to Masonville.”

  He looked up from Yellachile. The canary’s wings fluttered, and Whitey drew the bird against his sunken chest. “Masonville?” he ask. “Who say that?”

  Junior Murdock motioned to me with a big black thumb. Somebody else moved aside, and another somebody else, and then I was lookin straight at Whitey and him at me. He nodded, smiled a little bit. “I know you,” he say. “You aint a Wanda no more, are you?”

  “They call me Wand now.”

  “I see why. Dont you eat?” he asked.

  “Im still growin,” I say, and he laugh a coughy laugh and said, “Well, aint we all!”

  Then he gets up close in my face, those eyes bright and burnin, and I want to step back from them flames but I dont and all the machines are so quiet I can hear my heart beat. And he says, “Yessir, I do believe Yellachile flew to Masonville last night. Flew right over the heart of town. Lemme check.” He lifted the bird to his mouth and gave a few gasping whistles, and then he put the bird to his ear and Yellachile’s head cocked but I couldnt hear no song. “Yessir,” he say, cupping the canary close again. “Yellachile sure did go to Masonville, and let me tell you what he say: Masonville’s a town with two streets, one goin in and one goin out. Masonville’s got a park in it, aint a big park, but there are lanterns in it that shed a golden light. Got park benches, and Yellachile he saw lovers on them benches in the golden light. Handsome men and women, they were, talkin of love. And round that park is the town, and in the dark all their lights were on too, so theres never a real dark, and people come and go as they please. The stars shone over Masonville last night, and the moon came up. Such a moon as can only be seen in Masonville. Aint no other place in the world to see it, cause it just bout fills up the sky its so big. Its a warm moon, and Yellachile looked at it from the branch of a pine tree there in that park. Yellachile brought the smell of pine needles on a warm night back with him. There it is.” He inhaled. Everybody else did too. “Fresh pine needles,” he say. “Bright moon. Handsome men and women in the golden light, under a sky full of stars. That’s what Yellachile saw in Masonville. You see it too?”

  He was asking me. I said, “Yes sir,” and it was the truth.

  Whitey smiled. “That makes Yellachile real happy.” He stroked the canary with one finger, and the bird lay there content. “Tonight he might fly to Florida. Or over the country, where the land smells green. Never can tell where he’ll fly.” And then Whitey moved on, and it wasn’t until a minute or so had passed that I started smellin machine oil and seein the stone walls again. Overhead was not stars and moon but a tangle of pipes. But just for a few minutes I had been back in Masonville, a long long way from here.

  The hallboys came over and broke us up, and we got back to work. Real funny how a simple thing can stay with you. I kept seein Masonville, only after a while I kind of figured out it wasnt the Masonville I knew. No, the real Masonville had a factory in it that went day and night, and the smoke out of its chimneys didnt let you see the stars.

  But Whitey had taken me out of the Brickyard for just a few minutes. I was there with Yellachile in the quiet park. No such park in Masonville. Did it matter? I was there. The Masonville in my head was better than the real one. From that moment on I knew the power of voodoo, and why Whitey was so special. He could melt the Brickyard’s walls.

  I couldnt figure the canary, though. How could a bird live for forty years?

  Whitey came through the machine shop a lot of times. Always stopped. The hallboys let him talk, cause they seemed to enjoy it too. One night Yellachile went to Florida, and flew over Miami Beach. That was five hundred miles south, but Yellachile was a spirit and could go anywhere. I closed my eyes and saw all those big hotels and that ocean, and I aint never seen an ocean before cept on TV. Yellachile flew low over the waves, and I could smell the salt air. And one night Yellachile flew to the north and skimmed a field of snow where the tracks of deer led in all directions and the moon shone clear and so cold it made your teeth rattle. Over farms and orchards, deserts, big cities, rivers where barges hooted and tugged, woods lit by no gleam but starlight, islands where the water sounded like music and the air smelled like coconut and cinnamon. All those places and more. One night Yellachile flew through a window into a strip-tease club in New Orleans. Into a boxin arena, where two men battled to the roar of the crowd and the smell of cheap cigars and sweat hung at the roof. To a baseball game on a July night, and Lord I could taste the salted peanut that Yellachile stole from a white man’s hand.

  I needed to know where Yellachile went every night. I started living to know.

  In my cell, after the whistle blew and the lights went out, I lay on my bunk and watched it happen: Yellachile let free from the cage of Whitey’s fingers, flyin free and happy in a circle around his cornrowed hair, then flyin out through the bars in a flash of yella. Leavin the world of gray stone and barbed wire, out into the world of light and freedom. Over the Brickyard’s turrets, over the fences, over the walls, faster and faster the wings beatin, climbin up to meet the night wind and then a long, slow drift over hazy land that had no beginnin and no end. I did not know the world, but Yellachile did, and Yellachile showed me places I always dreamed were there, far beyond Masonville.

  If thats not magic, I dont know what is.

  Whitey came one steamin hot day and we all knew things werent right. Knew it first thing. Whitey was havin trouble breathin, and he was coughin bout to burst his lungs. Even Yellachile looked sick, lyin there in his hands not jumpin around like usual. But Whitey came cause he knew how much we wanted to hear, and Id found out he had a route round the prison and the hallboys and even the Cap’n let him alone. The machine-shop work stopped, and we gathers to hear, and he says Yellachile flew a long way last night. Long way, and thats why Yellachile was a little bit tired today. Flew to the Land of the Midnight Sun, he says. Got night and sun at the same time, and its at the top of the world. Yellachile had played in the cool breezes
, danced over the ice, and felt the world turnin underneath him. Big old world, it was. So much and so many, worlds inside worlds. Cant you feel that cool wind on your face? Draw a breath. Your lungs are cold, got needles inside em. Aint no heat up there, no drippin wet swelter, no sir. Just cool and quiet, and under the ice life movin in blue water…

  He fell.

  His hands opened. Yellachile fell out, wings flutterin. Hit the floor. Whitey went down too, and I saw the knee that crushed Yellachile.

  Better believe we were all right there with him. The hallboys came runnin up too, and somebody tried to turn Whitey over. He was coughing fierce, and stranglin. Through the strangle he say, “Yellachile, Yellachile,” like he was callin for a lost baby.

  His knee moved. I was closest to him. Yellachile gave an awful smashed twitch. I put my hand around the canary real soft and picked him up. Yellachile twitched, lolled, lay still.

  I knew.

  Whitey’s eyes were on me. He coughed blood out of his mouth, and he say, “My Yellachile!” in such a thunder that I had to press the mangled thing into his hand. Then the hallboys took him away, and I went off behind a greasy machine that spat out cogs and sat there for a long time not sayin nothin, just thinkin.

  I cried that night. I aint shamed to admit it. Damn you if you think Im not a man.

  I never said nothin. Never. And wasnt a week later that a hallboy came to my cell. Said he was takin me to see Whitey, and that the Cap’n had given the okay.

  Whitey’s cell had a green curtain cross the bars. I went in, and the hallboy left us alone, just me, the voodoo man and Yellachile.

  “Sit down, Wand,” Whitey say. Lord, that was a tired voice. Almost used up. The light was dim in here. Somehow I always thought his cell would be full of light, but it wasnt no more than anybody elses. He was sittin at a little desk, and he looked pitiful frail. In front of him was a handkerchief with bloodspots all over it. I sat down on the bunk.

  “Say hello, Yellachile.” Whitey opened his clasped hands, and the canary flew in a happy circle over his head. It went around three times before Whitey caught it, like he mustve done a thousand times before.

  “Yellachiles all fixed now,” he say. “Good as new.”

  “I see that,” I told him.

  In his hands, the birds wings kept beatin. Its head twitched from side to side. After a little while, he let it wind down. The wings stopped, and the little thing lay without movin.

  “I used to work in a jewllry store in Miami,” he says. “Long time back. I fixed wristwatches. Aint such a different thing.” He laid the yella body on the desktop. My fingers still felt the seam along the underside of the body, and the little gears and cogs inside, the metal rods of the skeleton and wings. In your hands it didn’t feel like a bird at all, and up close Id seen how the feathers were fallin out and the yella fabric was wearin away. It had been patched before, many times.

  “Still do watch work,” he went on. “The hallboys think I can fix anythin. Sometimes I do, sometimes I pull out a gear here, a wheel there, and I say sorry this watch has ticked its last second. Lots of parts inside Yellachile. Needs oil from the machine shop. Sometimes I rub oil on my fingers, just passin through, and that’s enough to do the job. I can pick up little spare parts there too.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a small metal box. When he lifted the lid, I saw it held tiny gears and wheels—watchwork parts—and tools like dentists use. Also needles and yella fabric. “The Cap’n knows. Hes all right, just talks tough.”

  I says, “Was there ever a real Yellachile?”

  “Always was real!” He almost shouted it. “Still is!” The coughin came up, and he had to wait awhile and spit up a little drool of blood before he could talk again. “Yellachile flew into my cell my first month here. Wasnt much older than you. I trained that bird to fly up and down the cellblock and come back to me.” A feeble smile tugged at his mouth. “That’s how the voodoo talk started. I let it go on, cause I wasnt no fighter and I come mighty close to gettin my head split open number of times. Them bad boys heard I was a voodoo man and had myself a spirit bird, you damn be sure they left me be.” He took Yellachile back with shakin fingers, and at a distance in the dim light it was a sleeping canary again. “Bird died. I kept it secret for a while. If Yellachile was dead, how could I be a voodoo man? Friend of mine on the cellblock, boy name of Tommy Haywood, had a daddy who ran a taxidermy shop in Nashville. See, it was mostly Tommy’s idea cause he liked bein friends with a voodoo man. Get yourself lot of cigarettes and extra food that way. So Tommy packed Yellachile in a little box and mailed him up to Nashville, and in the meantimes I tell people Yellachile gone flyin on a long trip. I be goin up to the liberry and readin. Ever heard of the National Geographic?”

  I says I believed I had.

  “Got em there by the carton load. Course, lot of men here cant read. Most dont want to. So you tell em stories—beautiful stories, about places theyre never gone see or places theyve been to and wont never see again. Freedom places, far from these walls. You take em out of here for five minutes and you get to be a voodoo man. See?”

  I did, but I was heartsick. Lord, what a tumble my soul had taken!

  “Yellachile comes back bout a month later. Looked fine but still wasnt done. So I went to work as a watchfixer cause I knew the gears would have to be mighty small. Lots of times I bout gave it up. Fixin the wings to beat was hardest, and that took me a year or more. Workin all night by a candle, night after night. Messed up somethin, you start all over again. What else you got to do in the Brickyard, huh?”

  I said I didnt know.

  Whitey ran a finger over one of the tiny glass eyes. “Figured it was beyond me. Figured only God can make a bird, and I ought to just go ahead and tell em the truth. I was near bout to…but all of a suddens the word comes that somebody down in Block E saw Yellachille flyin over the fence pretty as you please. Somebody else says he seen Yellachile too, sittin on top of the wall like he owned heaven and earth. Fella says he dreamed about Yellachile the night before, saw that bird flyin over his hometown and over the house where his wife and baby were. Yellachile’s comin’ back, they start sayin. Comin’ back from the hand of God.”

  He lifted his palsied hand and stared at it. Then he reached with that same hand into the metal box and brought out a little silver key. He put that key into a place underneath Yellachile’s tailfeathers and gave it a few turns.

  There was a tiny clicking, chimy sound. The canary’s body twitched, the wings started flappin. Whitey tossed the canary up into the air with a quick snap of his wrist, and the way he did it made it look as if Yellachile had taken off under his own power. The movement of the wings took it a couple of clumsy circles, not like a bird at all if you knew it wasnt and you hadnt seen birds for a while, and just as the body started to fall Whitey reached up and caught it. Whitey held it in the cage of his hands, and the little head seemed to be peckin at the fingers.

  “He only sings to me now,” Whitey says, and he gave a soft whistle and held Yellachile up to his ear. He listened, smiled, and nodded. “Want to hear where Yellachile went?”

  I didnt answer.

  He says, “Yellachile flew a long way from here, to a land where there aint no cages: Aint no walls neither. Aint nothin to stop you from goin when you want to go and restin when you want to rest. Says its a mighty big land, and says theres room for everybody. Got peach trees there. Ever smelled peaches in an April breeze? Got rivers there, and all of em flow to the sea, and if you want you can have starlight at high noon and sunshine at midnight. Says theyve been askin about me there, askin why Im so late a-comin. Yellachile told em Id be along pretty soon, but first Ive got me a job to do.”

  “Job?” I asked. “What kinda job?”

  “Buildin a new cage for Yellachile,” Whitey says. “This aint it.” He held up his hands, with Yellachile moving within. “This was always Yellachile’s cage,” he says, and he tapped his cornrowed skull. “Always was. Such a cage as that cant never be loc
ked.”

  I listened. I thought I knew what he was gettin at, but I wasnt sure.

  “I need you, Wand,” Whitey says, and his eyes were fierce and strong again, though there were flecks of blood on his lips. “You know I do.”

  “I cant do nothin,” I told him.

  “Cant do nothin if you say you cant. Your a young boy, and I think youve got some sense.” He gave a sly smile. “Maybe not much sense, but its in there. You let me teach you what I know, and you can be Yellachile’s cage. I can show you how to fix the gears and keep em oiled. I can show you how to hold Yellachile so wont nobody know he aint real. I can teach you things about the world, boy. Show you them books, and if you cant read em you can look at the pictures til they come alive in your head. I can teach you to listen and hear a mans life story in a sentence. You can keep Yellachile alive…and if you do, hes gone take you places you always dreamed were true.”

  “No,” I said. “I couldnt do none of that.”

  “Why not?” he asked me, and he let it hang.

  It was up to me. Now I wont lie and tell you I said yes. I didnt. I got up and left, cause what he was talkin was way beyond me. I wasnt no voodoo man. Didnt particularly care to be, neither. But at night I had trouble sleepin. When I did, I dreamed about Yellachile flyin in the dark, lookin for a place to come down. Just flyin and flyin and no rest in sight, and gettin so tired and weak that the wind shoved it any old direction. Soon Yellachile would be so far from the Brickyard that he couldnt come back, not ever. Then those stone walls and those barbed-wire fences would be our world, and that would be the end of it.

  I missed Yellachile so bad. I yearned, and I needed.

  Whitey worked on the Brickyard’s clocks. Thats why they kept such good time. He told the Cap’n he needed a helper. Lots of clocks in the Brickyard, lots of chances to watch time crawlin past.

  It wasnt no easy thing. Whitey tried to give me a lifetime of learnin in eight months. Some of it sank in, some of it I had to do my own way.