“I remember staring into our trailer, seeing its roof curl back like a sardine tin’s. Never came to me how Barry might be underneath it. I kept checking other parts of sky for him. Since I slept on our top-bunk, I guessed he’d just be riding air right below me and mine! I saw Momma yet bent over her machine and the wedding dress rose white around her like a bell and she looked up, her mouth this round hole. She was seeing me dozens of feet above her, jaybird-naked. Hanging there. She pointed to a chair beside her, like ordering me to come right back down and sit there this very sec, hear?
“The whole time there were like two charge-portals in me, two things running dead-opposite. The ‘Head Camera,’ I thought of one, was taking in everything, real precise. But, lower, my true body was being lashed like some free little whip. It couldn’t save itself. So, like boys will, there was just a joy in being as reckless as this. And the split between these two parts, AC-DC or BC-AD, the two poles, they never ever after came quite back together correct again. Like, afterwards, my hearing got way better and still is mostly. But the taste of things never went back. I used to love sweets the way kids will? but right after the storm I wanted salt. I wanted sauerkraut. Just eight and I was ready for beer, man! Desserts mean nothing to me past how nice they look. Most of what I eat now tastes metal or of strong mineral spices. But that’s become my favorite kind of flavor. Look, maybe it was me growing up in ninety seconds? My sense of smell got good to where I could smell little exceptions inside other smells. Our trailer-park’s pines broke to twigs and sap went turpentine and burned my eyes. But inside of that stink I could smell ladies’ face powder or a bucket of enamel. Part of that black paint slung over my left leg.
“I knew every person living in our Park. I could watch whose place shattered next. It was interesting. Why did some get spared? I was in no hurry up there. Bright clothes were busy in the dust over the Hobgood sisters’ place. People said those young gals had more clothes than God. Now God got them back! The chicken coop behind the Caspers’ went to being torn screen and a million feathers with the few birds left alive flying like eagles at my level. Being yard-hens, they appeared as amazed to fly as I was. They gave me a steady look, like, ‘Help!’ Up there, they didn’t seem as stupid like folks say they are, chickens. What did I know about flying? I had my arms out, period. I mainly used the weight of my head to guide me some. A boy my size, a third his weight’s in his noggin. Blasting sand burned my legs and wrists. One of my legs was black from windblown paint. Crazy stuff was flying, school papers, truck-stop place mats, even green money.
“I did know I was moving in an arc and starting heading down now more towards the Youngs’ farm now.
“Old Man Young still had an outhouse. His wife, she’d gone and bought herself some fine indoor-plumbing, but he liked the old ways and I guess he was sitting astride his one-holer when wind hit. I saw his johnny-house’s roof pull off, then its side boards jerk loose and he was left squatting there, cussing to beat all, pants around his ankles and one hand covering his bald head, the other cupped between his legs. He looked like a toy built to do just that. Even flying, I laughed.
“The air around my bare back and bottom felt ice-cold. We never bothered with swimsuits. Now it seemed some harness had me gathered safe up under either arm. Felt like it pulled me in a swipe over everything being destroyed. I didn’t fight it. You’ve maybe seen pictures of the Arch in St. Louis? Way I figure, I flew about that same shape and distance. Then wind started setting me down more toward ground and me with no shoes. I might’ve slammed onto my head at many miles-an-hour, or got thrown onto all that bent metal, glass.
“These days I go to Church. Served as Superintendent of Sunday School out at Red Rock three years running. But I still cannot say I am all that sure about a supervisory God, son. Friends claim I ought to be grateful for favors paid me early-on. Funny how after hurricanes, people go, ‘God stopped that flood one inch shy of drowning us in our attic, Lord be praised!’ But who set the danged thing into motion? I lost my Dad when I was four, my twin at age eight. Our mobile house got peeled, trashed. (Momma and myself were saved.) But, when it comes to there being anything smart with His Eye on the Sparrow? I’d say He’s One Wall-Eyed Watchman! But you know we’ve got something almost better. We’ve got other forces so amazing, see? Papers later called me ‘Miracle Boy,’ but we don’t need any such magic-show thinking. Don’t need it, considering the pure interlocking engineering set up everywhere. We shouldn’t bother with magazine words like ‘Miracle.’ That’s just us being nervous, just us whistling-in-the-wind. It happened to be me sitting soaking on the sunnier side of a wading pool. I knew—if forces had crumpled me under our trailer then pressed me down in water—I would not be quite so high on these particular forces. But it didn’t. So I am.
“Maybe every boy pictures he’s the Batman or one the other of the Wright brothers. All kids imagine flying. I flew for real. No training necessary. ‘Having flown unassisted,’ that lady reporter wrote me up. I’d had no plans to. Just found I could. Flexed into whatever shape kept me mostly upright moving at about a forty-five-degree angle. Jerking, stopping, snapping, I kept studying how trees broke, cars rocked onto their sides like dogs rolling over on-command.
“It was a ride offered for free. So I took it. I saw Youngs’ farm coming. Noticed their stand of newish pines. If my body pitched into sapling limbs, those’d maybe slow me a bit at a time. So I aimed away from old oaks and more toward scrub, shifting my big head as ballast. I was set—dropping, landing at a sort of a run.
“Once down, I waited. I just knew to. In one place. The whole ground, see, was jagged with all broken things and me barefoot. Barefoot all over! Kept panting, maybe from fear or the adrenaline but not from any effort. Coming down, I did no wing-flapping. (Imagine, later, how I felt watching people hopping off those burning skyscrapers and trying to bat their arms like wings while falling like pianos.) No voice of God. I had no help. Nothing saved me. It’d been just bare me and Physics, and my little pecker all standing upright in the sky.
“Soon Falls’ sirens sounded something terrible and a woman come trotting my way. It was Old Lady Young found me. ‘How did you get way off over here and naked, li’l Larry?’
“‘Wind,’ I said.
“‘Wind who?’ she said.
“‘The wind. Done toted me.’ Later they figured, considering the timing, this must have been right. Nobody ever called me an out-and-out liar. But finally one the Hobgood girls ran up in her nightgown, said she’d thought I was a Christmas statue flying, pink and gold, shooting over everything.
“I stood on solid ground but felt uneasy, being bare-assed, two hands bunched over my you-know-what. The prettiest Hobgood guessed and kindly pulled a beach towel down around me. I stood without shoes and, with all the flying jagged windowpanes, had not even cut my bare feet. So they saw I could not have walked clear uphill to the safety of those pines. A cousin in his Ford drove Momma right up where I stood. When she climbed out, I saw the whole front of her dress was wet like she had been bending over a pond. Then I studied her eyes and she looked ten pounds lighter, her face gone white. ‘Barry,’ I said. She nodded and fell on me and all but mashed me into her.
“The second he died I felt my IQ double; I took in all Barry’s talent. Like later? at college? they urged us freshmen to find a study-partner? but me, I’d enrolled with one. Could never have got a Master’s from State without Brother’s nightly help. And that’s God’s truth.
“Well, I am forty and in right good health pretty much. (I could do more sit-ups, maybe. No, I could not do sit-ups, but should try.) I dearly want to live to be seventy-five or eighty so’s I can see my sons marry and have kids. I will lay odds that at least one their future wives bears twins, too. You would not believe how happy it makes me—imagining which of my boys hollering out yonder will have the luck to father twins. I imagine these babies being sons. But two of the other kind would be fine with me, girls. Their being born healthy is all I ask.
<
br /> “I would rather not die, of course. But you know you will. I could also wish I might fly again. Even once more’d be nice.
“Of course, I feel sad not to’ve had my own twin with me across these years I’ve got to splash around in. Barry was the kind and carefree one. But I think I got his easy nature the second he died. Wham, it passed that quick clear into me. A double-strength came with the luck of my flying most of a mile unhurt.”
I sat pitched forward, actively holding my breath. Winstead stopped and all our beans were shelled. I felt I’d heard some specimen of sermon. There is a school of interviewing that objects to ‘Leading the Witness.’ Still I longed to ask, “Any closing life-lessons, Larry?” Cheap. Such summaries don’t value experience as such. Experience must mean more than whatever fortune-cookie Moral trails it. Experience outranks everything. Certain acts must be respected just for having been endured.
First Larry turned toward the bay-window, half-smiling. He was checking on his sons at the meadow’s fifty-yard line. One shrill voice called, ‘Said, “Hut-two-three” and that means you, Idiot!’
My host kept silent, smiling. He swigged, finishing his ale.
“The rest of it—marriage? work? kids and friends? I’ve been playing overtime innings since I was eight. Already had my death and skipped it like a grade in school. Every minute since has been pure gravy.
“As an engineer I have to rule out any type of afterlife theme-park cloud-deal. We’ve got a joke at work: Some folks see the glass half empty, others half full, but engineers know the glass was made twice too big to start with.
“But wherever we wind up, in whatever amount, I think we’ll exit riding some force to show us out. Death is room-temperature. It has no mass but is a Fact. And nothing’s out to torture us except certain other people. No hidden meanness is waiting to trap us. When I was up in the sky, all’s I can tell you, son—it knew what it was doing.”
Our interview seemed over. Larry made that clear by standing, stretching like someone waking after trans-oceanic air travel. Next he shook my hand so hard it hurt. I felt how strong he was and is. I turned off my over-heated machine. He carried our shelled butter beans toward his wife. I knew Darlene had been listening; I’d sometimes heard her sniffling from a room away.
She made me happy asking me to stay and eat. Darlene Winstead served one exceptional home-cooked country lunch: ham, corn on the cob, buttermilk pie. Rare treat for bachelor-journalists in a Falls-sized town. Larry acted endearing around his boys. They look exactly alike but he interviewed each for me. He kept trying to prove how different were their interests. One preferred baseball to basketball.
Soaked clear through, before eating they wrapped up in big bath towels. On a clothesline outside, black capes hung dripping. All this made me think of those earlier twins, one about to die but both still happy in their blue rubber pool.
Not wanting to overstay, I thanked Darlene. She gestured me into her kitchen. She pointed to the black recorder I now clutched like some prayer book.
“You got new stuff out of him,” she whispered. “Unbelievable. I’d say about a tenth of that he said? New. To me, anyways. That about the bunk-bed, and more.”
I was bound for my truck when the twins asked me to throw them a couple of long ones. I got off three, fairly passable. Larry looked pleased but seemed a bit too surprised. My aim never quite lasts. I sometimes know when to quit.
I guessed that transcribing his testimonial would take me many hours, probably all night. But despite the deadline, while driving back toward Falls, I felt scared to go much faster than thirty. Teenagers soon tried passing me. Fists were shaken, a can of foaming Budweiser slammed into the bed of my pickup. Being youngish myself, I understood kids’ impatience. But I’ve had too many speeding tickets. Always rushing from story to meeting to bar. And now, at twenty-five, for the first time ever, I signed to them: “Please just go around me.” I often feel half-sick with all the galloping-no-place testosterone (weekends especially). Now I was half-proud of my Larry-like readiness to fly-or-not, live-or-die, to just to be passed. What if I failed to stay alive long enough to set down his tale? True, I had Larry’s recorded voice. But my truck might burn with that and me in it.
Easing into Falls as sunlight ended, I seemed to see the town for the first time, not my last. Its green water tower. The band shell on the Commons. Everything that made it look like any other village now marked it as peculiar and mine.
Somehow my own death seemed very near just then. Hot-rodders had finally passed me, on the right. To make my surrender more their victory, boys all shot me the finger. I just laughed. —Looking back, I recognize one of those moments when you feel your life begin again!
I parked behind the paper’s office. This being a Saturday—with my editor at the beach—the workplace was deserted. If you’re alone in a building usually crowded, you can hear sounds that seem a message meant for you alone. I drank buckets of coffee, not-great but at least provided.
I spent nine hours typing, reliving Larry’s flight. Just at sunup I finally landed this piece you’re reading.
I found myself still hunched at my desk when I noticed something strange in the paper’s lobby. I’d already packed for Richmond. I’d bribed my cat into her traveling case and left it near the door. I would take along that old blue blazer—ripe for urban resurrection. Off Craigslist I’d found an adequate little garden-apartment. The Richmond Times-Dispatch is a distinguished daily, a step-up from this rural weekly. But, even before leaving Falls, I felt cramped with homesickness. Was I wrong to quit so small a town in search of a larger success? Wasn’t I leaving the place just as it gave up to me certain privileged secrets? But I could always move back, right? Right? I had sworn to friends that I would grab this final breakfast at Millie’s Diner down the block at seven-sharp. My hope (soon confirmed) was a surprise-going-away-pancake-party. (Love you, Millie and the gang!)
In the Herald Traveler’s linoleumed lobby there’s always been one stainless steel hat rack. Only raw daybreak made me finally see the thing. Its strict design must’ve looked rocket-cool around 1950. We run a free classified “Lost and Found” column and, for years, any recovered item gets left in the lobby. This spares our overworked receptionist from filling her desk with single mittens.
By now that rack tilts under decades of unclaimed finds. It has become a hobo’s tent of plaid raincoats, crocheted hats, dog-collars, kids’ spelling books.
Red dawn made every random thing stacked there look specific then valuable. It somehow came to me: all these human items—never reported missing—had nonetheless been found. They’ve been right here, waiting in plain sight for all these years. But, only this morning, when about to leave, did I get up, walk toward these losses found, stand marveling as before the burning bush.
How many other citizens have flown unaided? I should ask around.
Goodbye, friends.
Goodbye, town.
We grant ourselves so little daily hope.
Meanwhile, barely noticing, we’ve already managed wonders.
A FOOL FOR CHRISTMAS
WELL, WELCOME TO my mall, stranger. And “Merry, merry” back at you. You just come in off the highway? All this ice is scary, idn’t it? They say traffic’s backed up nearbout to Charlotte.
—Saving this stool? Well, aren’t you nice. Me, I’m Vernon Ricketts and I manage our Fin, Fur and Fun franchise. Third-busiest pet store in eastern North Carolina, so they tell me.
Yep, finally closed, Christmas Eve. Not to brag, but my staff and me today? we “moved” more animals than ole Noah ever did. And while each of my pups and kittens goes speeding home toward sleeping kids? Mr. Manager has swung in here for a big old final drink.
Bet you’re glad you’re off that interstate. Lucky you found our county’s one place still open, it being a holiday after one a.m….
Kirsten runs this bar; there she is yonder. Still beautiful, ’m I right? We went through school together, her and me. Survived the same craze
d Pentecostal church. Had our own big Bibles, our little tambourines. Kirsten’s husband left her flat with two young boys.
Ran off with his horseback-riding teacher, a ex-Marine like him. Shocker. Oh, but Kirsten dealt with it, got a lot of spirit. And, for us mall-insiders, tonight only, she always makes personal eggnog. Family recipe, grates her own nutmeg, brings the home-blender, everything.
Yo, Kirst-en! Looking fine in that red ermine-lined mini. How those twins? We’ll need a couple your famous eggnogs, me and my new pal here. (You’ll see, they’re super-tasty. I keep trying to “reduce” … but hey, man, it’s Christmas Eve.)
Tonight is even more than the start of a whole day-off for Vernon here, it’s secretly my anniversary. I can’t help remembering, with us in the middle of a blizzard and all. Yeah, this same second be ’xactly one year ago, in my exceptional pet shop through that very security screen, I did something. Still don’t know how, nor why a certain person trusted me to help with it. Got us both into newspapers, the Charlotte one plus Raleigh’s. But, along with being exceptional store-publicity, turned out to be the best darn thing that ever grabbed me. Finest gift a woman ever give me. And right here at the holidays. Even before it happened, I was a fool for Christmas. Well, imagine me now.
I ask you, is that eggnog or is that not eggnog? Kirsten, keep ’em coming, honey. Merry merry. —First time I seen the girl that changed me so majorly, poor thing was already being hounded. We do got a “No Vagrant” policy at this shopping center. Never was enforced. Not till Vanderlip stepped in as mall manager. He was soon all over our drifters, skateboarders, even the rich old men nodding off while wives tried on every shoe in each store.
Vanderlip is one strange bird. Seems there’s lots of the military-minded taking charge these days. He come up hard, like I did. Attending night-school after having two kids while working three jobs—you got to respect that-type drive in a family man. Big churchgoer, too. Big Baptist. Vanderlip witnesses for Christ, right at the urinal, feeling sure you’ll stand exactly there at least till either you finish or he does. But seems-like the better Vanderlip does in life, the harder he is on those he passed during his scrappy climb clear up to mall manager.
The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus Page 10
