A Flight of Storks and Angels

by Robert Devereaux

  There was some movement behind him, Grampa talking to June, and then June came forward. “He’s ready to go,” she whispered and Ward nodded. Calvin DeSario had just ridden up on his bike, straddling it on one of the blacktop paths into the square as his guardian rebloomed about him like a whirlwind of carbonation. Ward waved and Calvin, cautious but quickly less so, waved back. “We’ll be on our way now I guess. It’s about time—”

  “Don’t leave, please!”

  “No!”

  “Stay with us!”

  The spontaneous protest, not universal but rising from the core of listeners crowded close to the gazebo, caught him by surprise. He gawped at them, his arms at his sides like twitching wings. Timothy offered nothing useful in the way of advice.

  Then Grampa stepped in. “That’s it for now—”

  Again arose wails of dismay.

  Ward said, “Well maybe some of you could—”

  “No, Ward, I don’t think so—” Esme tried to break in, but Grampa waved her into silence, bringing his voice down to within Ward’s range only. “Tell them we’ll return once more tomorrow, but don’t go inviting them home, we’ll never see the end of them.”

  “Just for a little while.”

  “No.”

  “We’ll keep them to the backyard.”

  “Ward, trust me, they’ll survive without us.”

  “You wouldn’t have to be involved.”

  Jeannie said something to June, who stepped forward: “Ward’s right, it’ll just be me and him. You can stay in your treehouse if you like.”

  Esme dropped Let it happen on Grampa’s head, almost a breeze through his white hair.

  “Oh shut up,” he replied. “I’m going to regret this, but go ahead, make their day—and ruin mine!”

  “Thanks, Mister Jameson,” said June, and Ward echoed her thanks.

  “Call me Grampa,” he grumbled.

  Ward announced they’d come back the next day for one last gazebo gathering, but that those who really felt it necessary could follow them home and spend the next many hours with him and June in the backyard, soft drinks and cookies on the house. Most of the crowd broke away then, their guardians dispersing as they did; but nearly twenty chose to follow behind, including the mayor’s husband and Ms. Rutherford with Carver Haskell staggering ecstatically beside her—and Calvin DeSario at the rear, part pumping, part walking his bike up the sometimes steep incline that was Bedford Avenue. June, arm in arm with Ward, gave him quick kisses and pointed out once a faint smile tightening the corners of Grampa’s downturned lips where he trudged, back turned and Esme’d, before them.

  *****

  It was much nicer, June thought, to address those who had followed them in Ward’s backyard rather than from the gazebo downtown. No traffic noise, cozier somehow, closer to human scale. And Ward’s hut behind them made a natural backstop for their voices. Joy had brought out old quilts and drop cloths, but most people seemed content to sit on the lawn, even those you’d never imagine doing so. Their companions, struggling for strength despite Mr. Jameson’s absenting himself above, inspired her with their fragile beauty. Calvin DeSario had propped his bike against the oak tree and, after going inside to call home and let his parents know where he was, he’d joined Len Frome near the corner of the hut where Ward leaned listening to her. He and Len had grown since the days of the Shy Friends Club, and grown apart, but it was good now to see them together again and to watch the rebirth of the invisible companions they’d talked so excitedly about years before.

  She spoke of those days, and details came back as she spoke. How first it had been just her and Ward, the magic of the hut drawing them into each other’s confidence. How Angela Carr had overheard them on the playground and shyly wangled her way in, then blabbed like a fool to Len Frome. But they guessed then that something inside Angela—pretty likely her guardian—had chosen wisely because Len too was not afraid of trusting his imagination to put him in touch with deeper truths, and, for all his quiet shyness, had in fact one of the more flamboyant companions. Len smiled as she spoke, his guardian timid patches of color filming the air, then flickering out. “Soon after,” she said, “Angela moved away and Len and I did what I guess most of you did, even those of you with no memory of ever having known your guardians—which was to grow away from them, to surrender ourselves to what teachers and TV told us so convincingly was real. My mom was going through boxes in our garage a few months ago, and she opened one and lifted out an old green and blue dress I’d worn when I was in first grade. Seeing the rabbit-ear ties hanging down kind of pathetic and sad at its sides was enough to flood me with memories of those times: my first primer where the teacher’s huge stand-up copy had one different illustration, the time I wore that dress to read about the happy man and his dump-truck to the kindergarten kids, a special smile I caught Mrs. Lehrer giving me one day that made me feel huge and powerful for weeks after. I’d forgotten so much and all it took was one look at a dress that had been hidden for years. Jeannie here was like that dress. She’d been put away one day and the lid closed over her, not protesting, just accepting her fate. That was a loss—one I guess we all go through—but I never knew how great a loss it was until Jeannie appeared to me a few days ago.”

  June’s throat constricted and she glanced once at her companion, close as a hug yet not crowding her, her smile so beautiful, her eyes so warm with love. She spoke then of visiting Ward’s grampa in the treehouse, the burgeoning of their guardians, the first trip downtown, the scene at her house that morning where her parents’ resistance gave way so beautifully before their angels, what speaking at the gazebo had been like, and how happy she was to witness the variety and growing strength of this crowd’s guardians on such a wonder-filled afternoon.

  Then she listened as Ward spoke. Some townsfolk had straggled in around the corners of Ward’s house, and a few more did so now. Ward’s grandmother was, as usual, seated at her window, but it was impossible to tell whether their words carried that far, and whether they fell on deaf ears once they reached her. About this time, June felt—like a hot tear from a startled eye—the faintest trickle of warm liquid seeping from her body. Just a trace, she knew from past experience. But it was enough to prompt her, Jeannie nodding, to signal Ward that she’d be back as soon as she could and to fringe around the crowd toward the house and in through the sliding glass doors to the kitchen. She’d known her period was imminent, but her usual fatigue and pimple attack had not happened; no warning, though thank God she always carried a few pads in her hip pack.

  Joy was watching from the kitchen window. There was a glisten in the air about her head, but little more, and she fingered the pouch about her neck.

  “Why don’t you join us?” June asked.

  “Duty calls.” A head movement toward the hallway and Ward’s gramma. “Besides I can hear everything from here. You spoke beautifully.”

  June thanked her, catching a little of what Ward was saying as she passed through the kitchen. Apparently her leaving had washed out or vanished several companions, and most of the crowd could no longer see Timothy, but he kept to his narrative, urging faith upon those listening to him and assuring them that he could see their companions even though they couldn’t. She cursed nature’s timing, vowing as she entered the bathroom at the back of the house to be as speedy as she could. The toilet lid levered up so that it struck the tank, a short porcelain bunt, sticking there as though magnetized. Swiftly she unzipped her shorts and twin-thumbed them and her panties down past her knees. As she sat, she noticed with relief merely the barest blurred line of scarlet and rust on the light canary of her cotton briefs. Not enough to show through.

  Your mother’s in awe of you.

  Yeah, June thought, she envies how easy it is for me, no cramps or bloat or queasiness, only a hint of soreness, light seepage, no problems with lower back pain or having to get up every hour like her. Jeannie smiled and nodded. It didn’t change the bother of having to rummage about in h
er hip pack, peel back the wrappings, and adhere the pad to her underwear, but Jeannie’s calming presence relieved the last residue of anxiety she’d once felt about wadding toilet paper and holding it to her vulva and watching it redden, knowing with her mind that there was only so much and that it would, over a long four days, eventually stop, but still having that lingering irrational fear that no it would never stop and that she would weaken and die. None of that did she feel now, not with Jeannie here.

  Through the window, open a crack, she could hear the faint sounds of Ward addressing the townsfolk. But then, as she pulled up her panties, feeling the soft bulkiness of the pad between her legs, and the toilet flush hissed up and away, a different voice broke in, angry, not loud so much as vicious. She yanked up her shorts, fastening the catch and zipping them as she went to the window.

  It was Mike DeSario, Patti close behind. He strode up to Ward, gripping his arm and tugging him off-balance toward him. As a few men in the crowd rose to stop him, June saw his left arm shoot across Ward’s chest, yanking him back against him, Mike’s hand seizing Ward’s shoulder as if it were a softball. A knife, before she could see where it came from, shot into his right hand and shelved itself under Ward’s chin.

  June froze for an instant then . . .

  . . . go!

  . . . tore out of the bathroom, didn’t flush, absurd flash of embarrassment, but all she could see as viciousness lit into the windows of the family room and kitchen was Ward’s smooth skin turtlenecked in freshets of red, and she knew she urgently needed to be there right away, no idea what could possibly be done to stop it, but sobbing past Joy on the concrete patio, her mind aswirl, and rushing down the green slope straight through the crowd, thinking she would not stop running until Big Mike DeSario’s switchblade drew away from Ward and drove up into her, an insane sacrifice, but she was ready to make it.

  *****

  DeSario had no idea, when his mom hung up the phone and announced what his stupid fuck of a brother had said, exactly what he was going to do to Ward Keeshan. He only knew it would hurt like a motherfucker, do lasting damage, and keep that pansy freak away from his family for good. He fully expected too, given the fucked-up nature of the world, that he’d probably do some jail time downtown; no biggie, that pig Porter barked at you some, a pudsucking deputy or two laid some limp-wristed fist into your face, left you bleeding and dredging for breath on the stenchy floor, went off shaking the sting out of their hands, but by morning it all blew over and you just had to damp down how you felt about them until they jabbered their preacher bullshit at you and let you go. Fucking shitworms weren’t going to grok what he was about to do to Keeshan, but then they hadn’t seen the state his mother and Cal had returned in from the post office the day before; besides which they had no concept—nobody did these days—of family, how deep the wounds went when your brother was fucked over, made to look as foolish as you knew the sucker was—but there were matters a family dealt with on its own turf, and there was public humiliation, and Ward Keeshan had crossed that line once too often.

  He’d grabbed Patti, slung her behind him on his bike, and roared out of the driveway, hatred burning in his head like fumes in his Harley’s engine. His father had slapped some sense into Mom the night before, had to be done; he’d gripped the hard cable of the mattress edge as he listened in the dark, wishing Patti were there to hug him tight and fuck the brain-grief out of him, hating his dad even as he understood he had to do it, recalling Calvin’s sullen face keeping quiet as the fight flared up between their mom and dad minutes after they’d set foot in the house.

  A few narrow scrapes through town and up Bedford, he had such difficulty keeping his mind on his driving, Patti clinging close and knowing better than to say anything but for the terror in her hands. Horn honks and a few hothead obscenities, but he just fingered the fuckheads and gunned his bike, and they were forgotten meat; no way they’d come close to displacing Keeshan in his fury. They zoomed past the turnoff, but DeSario shouldered the bike and booted it about in a tight arc on the empty highway, then parked the sucker just past the Grant house and dismounted, pocketing the keys and leading the way down the access road, no idea how far along the house was but figuring he’d recognize it when it came up, fucking treehouse in the backyard, crowds of cars from the duped townfolk just as dweebed out as his brother was, how tough could it be to spot? Patti trailed behind, begging him to wait up. It occurred to him then, as densely-packed trees clocked by in sync with his boots on the blacktop, that he hadn’t alerted his buddies, Russo and the rest, to meet him here; yeah but good old prankish mayhem on a Saturday night was one thing, and having your friends witness the public humiliation of your brother was quite another. Patti didn’t count. Bitch was practically fucking family as it was. But he’d be reamed to hell and back before he’d let Joey Russo or Greg Gormezano or that fuck Richie Feit, itching to oust him, or any of the rest see his brother zoned out before some wacko writer out of his tree and squeaky-clean June Lockridge from across the street and Ward “I-talk-with-the-angels” Keeshan.

  “Please, Mikey, slow down.” Girl squeal, maddening.

  “Shut your mouth.” He didn’t look back, nor did he break stride. The house came around the bend, not as many cars as he’d expected, but he could see the treehouse roof sailing by behind the house as he crossed in front of it. He diagonaled the driveway—nobody noticed them from the windows, garage door down and mud-smudged on one side—and headed around the house through the boot-muffling grass.

  Keeshan was standing before his fey little clubhouse, going on like a high-piping preacher boy, lawned crowd of zombies drinking in the swill and there was Calvin’s bike propped against the tree. And then he saw Calvin, sitting beside Len Frome, his lips parted so you could see teeth. It set him off, idiot mouth, seal those fucking lips, you show the world a flat lipline or they’re gonna shove some mother-tit in there and make you suck, little brother. He swept the crowd but they were nothing, empty sacks of shit who weren’t about to get in his way. Then Keeshan saw him coming and shut his yap.

  “Yeah, you better can that shit,” he said, pleased at how stunned the sucker looked. “And I’m here to make sure you can it for good. You’re not gonna pull no hypnosis on me or Patti here, no way.” A couple of jerkoffs he didn’t recognize rose to their feet, tough bastards looking like trouble, no glassy eyes, no puff-pastry acquiescence about them. He grabbed Keeshan to him, brought out and switched open his blade, found a stretch of neck. “Stay where you are. This is between me and preacher boy here.” He began to back up. “Him and me, we’re going into the woods for a nice long talk, and if anybody tries to stop us, Keeshan’s gonna bleed and bleed bad.” That stopped them, the wiry fucker with the overdeveloped pecs and the Navy-necked guy with the squinty eyes and the hands clenching and flexing by his sides.

  Then he hesitated, his eye catching the girl hurtling down the lawn, her face a mask of panic. He tightened his grip on Keeshan. To his right, the stretch of protesting hemp and the twist of the ladder lifted his glance upward, crazy old fart unshouldering out of a hole carved in the platform, catching rungs with quick stabs of stark white tennis shoes. DeSario’s blood boiled. He made ready to yell a halt to these two, but they were pushing him way the fuck too far and he knew he would have to take a deep slice out of Keeshan, knew that they wouldn’t heed him, felt rage in his arm, the tightening of the muscles, they didn’t think he meant business, he’d show them he meant business, all the jizz-wipes who’d ever wronged him, and there’d been a passel of them, he’d show every fucking one of them what it meant to cross Mike DeSario.

  “Mike, don’t!” Patti shouted, but no it wasn’t Patti, it was Calvin. And the girl was barreling down the lawn, slicing through the buttered crowd; and the white-haired old fool was trembling the shit out of the rope ladder on his quick descent. But something happened inside DeSario as he watched her face, her frantic face—the tension went out of his arm, the knife fell from his fingers and shuked i
nto the ground, somehow her face coming closer held the concentrate of his life, the grief, the hollowed-out hole in his belly, and she seemed to float toward him now, her face opening up, transforming, a kindness relaxing over it and drifting outward, healing him, reaching back through his past and closing rude wounds inflicted before memory had formed to recall them. She split; they all did, those on the lawn; Keeshan too where DeSario’s arm embraced him, a paintbox of colors issuing from his chest and forming in the air, a face that smiled; and the old man paused now on the rope-ladder, one arm slung over the rungs to hold him there, a gargantuan female figure shimmering out of his back like a hooped bubble breaking free and floating in wavery ellipsoidal struggle through the air. And inside, DeSario felt as if all the sludge dropped to the ground, ballast fast fallen, making him light and giggly like a helium high. He shifted Ward about, tried to glare into his eyes, but instead he melted there, and he blubbered, but that was one hundred percent all right. And his new lightness bloomed between, beside, and about them, a steel god, stoic and calm, a warrior for whom the shedding of tears was more manly than the shedding of blood, and . . .

  . . . hello, Michael

  . . . he said, and hearing him scoured out the bad brains in Mike’s skull and replenished it with new. “He spoke to me.”

  “Yes, I heard him,” said Ward, scooping in an armful of June, who gasped with relief at his shoulder.

  His brother joined them. “Are you okay, Mike?”

  It was Calvin, and yet he’d never seen this Calvin before. Beautiful brother, lines of torment dug there by his own rough mouth, skin-learned; and beside him, a fizz of goddess, like a water balloon shorn of its covering at the moment of bursting, but streaming out in steady shape. “My God, Calvin, please forgive me,” he said, hugging his brother tight, squeezing soft oofs out of him.

  “It’s all right, Mike. We never knew.”

  “Never had a frigging clue, did we?”