Ensemble

by S. P. Elledge

this could be like death although death must be silent, silent as fear. Your soul should instead go up with a sort of rustling like leaves, into the heart of’ the heart of it all on a wind that comes pauses and goes....

  Maybe you have slept here forever and a fairy tale day. Or haven’t; when you don’t wear a watch there is no use for time. Before or after no longer count because there was before a home and a bed and a school and a church and that’s over for good now you’re dead forevermore like the first day of a summer vacation in a year with no September, and after there will be supper on the table, potato soup and hamburgers, whether you come running or not; it’s all finished now—unless.... unless maybe it’s not true no matter how much you maybe just maybe wanted it to be true. Maybe you’re in a dream in bed dreaming this or maybe you’re in the basement next to the coal bin.... yes, with dirt and black water on the floor reflecting bits of yourself an eye an ear, yes in the cellar among the spiders and cobwebs and rats with red eyes in the flashlight stare: It’s a tornado alert, everyone’s sealed in down here with a board across the door against the power of the storm outside-might as well nail you in. Here is that queer bad smell which is somehow good to breathe in like gasoline or like in the abandoned outhouse after a rain. The family is sitting in transplanted kitchen chairs in a campfire circle around Dad’s transistor radio now crackling now gone dead now bursting to life. What do they play but sleepytime music, Lawrence Welk, and no one to assure you they’re still alive out there, this isn’t the end of the world with the records still playing on automatic. Imagine the twister beyond that door, descending from heaven like the very finger of God to trace a giant’s furrow across the earth as you would in writing your name in the sand at the county lake. Meanwhile Mom is working the rosary hugging the youngest closer closest lighting another cigarette—so very very calm! Lights go out with a bang and everyone is in the deepest darkest cave (remember when they switched off the lights in that crystal cave in the Black Hills and all around nothing but the drip-drip of stalactites patiently extending themselves there in coffin-tight darkness alone with your heartbeat going drip-drip, too), only that glowing cigarette like the catechism spark of God in the void, that smoke curling in the lungs which means not God but Mother for comfort, able to see it all, however, the twister touching down, the sudden swift end to it all with the biggest bang of all or maybe no bang not even a rustle of leaves, snuffing of the spark in the catechism class void at the end and/or beginning of time, sealed off from life down here down in this basement holding us safe as a mother. No one will cry, everyone too is hungry and cold for that now (supper waits on the table upstairs cooling). Mom has sprinkled holy water before her in every room but that will not save a soul now. But Dad! Dad has gone upstairs outdoors to the end of the drive to check the growling black and purple horizon, thoughtfully eating a peach. You know—we know—because we have run up in our terror our joy up out after him.

  So let the storm rage; you are unkillable, immortal but hungry for a peach too and so this could be death but it isn’t is it and the leaves are not stones or earth after all—breaking through (laughing to burst) is easier than throwing back a blanket. Oh—and the world, the light and air of the world! Eyes blink, blinded again. Ah, it’s the world at last, life so bright so big too big to hold in the heart or mind. Life, this is me! Let me swallow it up or let it swallow up me—for the sky is too wide to embrace, the earth this farm this countryside this world I love too broad and far to run the length of—but I must you must we all must run with all our might with dirt and leaves and twigs in our hair and eyes and mouth and mud on our clothes and hands and faces.... around the yard across the pastures through the big red barn the little blue barn the gray and green sheds. Running you are moving through space the world merry-go-round dizzy and blurred, fresh cold air against the forehead—like driving down the interstate in the convertible last summer in the twilight under trillions of stars whizzing by over your head on the way faster than light to the end of the universe, Dad’s hat blowing off into the cornfields and the radio pounding with guitars. Then as now I say to myself life is freedom! I am free! So I am alive!

  Alive! Alive to race to the edge shout to the top fly far and away from here and now.

  Where have you gone Mary and Elizabeth and Daniel and Lee and Ellen in your blue and white school uniforms? Over the hills and far away like in a story? On your balloon-tire bikes and scooters and skateboards? (is that you fading into the dusk at the far end of my desk, twenty years gone by, two of you to your deaths?) or have you returned to the front yard, behind the lilac bushes, under the Chinese elm? I shout Olly olly oxen free. Olly olly—but they don’t answer, only the last of the year’s crickets, a distant red-winged blackbird. The light is burning itself out in the sky; grayness is wafting in over us. One two three who’s afraid? Supper’s cooking. Smell the dull rawness of the potato soup, picture Mom paring the big white Idahos, rinsing them under such cold cold water, always nicking herself, and the blood-red trickle down the white spuds in the water. Something horrifying, worse than the paint on any crucifix; I won’t look. Can’t look. Better not to think not think of that. Forget hunger. Don’t think. Watch the cars coming going down the busy country highway since time began for me. So many times I’ve stood by the front windows looking through the cobwebbed screens trying to count them all, getting up to the hundreds but always losing track. Sisters say white cars are good luck and black cars bad and they come in color clusters and at least one car from every state passes by each day. Once there was a funeral procession honking its horns like it was a party. Once there was a bad wreck and a car that went up in flames. And that red and white convertible must be Dad heading home at last maybe with something in his briefcase for me. In the summer I would run out to greet the cars on their way home from the plants, or the cars backed up on a weekend night, slow as a funeral, on their way not to the cemetery but the drive-in right down the road— as the sun cooled down and the locusts started up in the dark of the trees and the beautiful giant faces glowed on the screen in the distance, their beautiful giant lips saying nothing we could hear or guess.

  The first lamp of the evening has gone on in the house up the way, the first star probably out now too behind those clouds. The road is strange when it’s this empty and quiet and we are all alone together now—brothers and sisters appearing out of the trees the sheds the parked cars the dark rooms of the farmhouse. We look at each other, link arms, me and Mary and Elizabeth and Daniel and Lee and Ellen as crack the whip around and about the house we go singing Wouldn’t it be funny with no skin on? And a little while later softer Oh Shenandoah I love your daughter away away....

  The very happiest you can ever feel is always so very close to being sad knowing this will not cannot last nothing ever does no matter how you wish and try to hold onto it. Except death, the death you met in Grandfather in his coffin forever and a day, never to see or hear him speak again but in dreams. But no more death! We are alive and racing life itself! We’re sweating but getting colder at the same time—hair damp on our foreheads, eyes moist, stinging, our fingers hot and sticky in each other’s palms, our school uniforms no longer so bright so birdlike in the passing light. Our voices rise higher louder now goodbye to the day and louder shouts then screams leaping up from song—like blue jays and blackbirds like crazed country children. One two three.... one two three—who’s afraid? The spooks come out at this hour. The afterglow of a burning car. The unseen hand down your back, the wind. Later after supper we’ll play Frankenstein and search for each other with flashlights in the dark calling to each other unseen Have you seen the ghost of Frankenstein?

  Got to scare away spooks so let’s pretend now—pretend to be—to be.... birds! Now now now. And now—imagine your arms growing longer stronger growing feathers—shriek louder flap your arms laugh with fury dance madly—as we scatter out from our center like frightened starlings toward every corner of the fr
ont yard and backyard and barnyard. Crying loudly to each other across the dark lawn and orchard Where are you going? how far can we go? when should I come back?

  Into the wind the sharp cold wet November wind (with rain just starting to fall with the coming of the true night) we go, our bodies becoming airborne as our wings grow wider, beat faster. And soon we are flying, up toward the chimneys weathervane clouds to the heaven of heavens. I am a hawk; I am circling out where they drift on a still summer daybreak, around the windmills and over the pond. Just gathering speed I can see everything with my hawk eyes, everything down there (why haven’t they followed me? Look at me brothers and sisters come with me escape, one two three...). The world is spread below me like a map: house and yards and farm and pastures and fields and countryside with gray trees and blue-gray hills and streams and ponds then the river then lakes then ocean then the rest of the blue and green planet spinning slowly in blackness beneath me. (At school we study astronauts and how they