Terry Persun's Magical Realism Collection

by Persun, Terry

  Although it was weeks before they came out again, I could reach them through common thought. So, I listened to them play inside their house. I followed their emotions while Lewis’ arm healed.

  * * *

  The sound of voices broke through the early evening air like rocks clacking together underwater. No time of year is more perfect than evening at the early part of summer. The squirrels were out, playing among fallen trees and leaves. They chattered, ran and stopped, fluffed their tails and twitched them, then ran off. Jeffrey and Lewis were returning, anxious to go beyond their last adventure. Lewis’ arm was still bound and slung. There would be no climbing this time.

  “I’m waiting for you, this time. See,” Jeffrey said.

  “I know.”

  “I’ll even hold back the briars.”

  “You don’t have to,” Lewis said.

  “I don’t want you gettin’ hurt again.”

  “It wasn’t my fault. You probably moved.”

  “Did not.”

  “You didn’t realize it when you did,” Lewis said as though it were a known fact.

  “I didn’t move.” Jeffrey stopped walking and put his hand out to dramatize. “I was per-fect-ly still.”

  “Then the wind,” Lewis said, giving in.

  Jeffrey began to walk again, holding briar bushes aside for Lewis. “You just slipped, lost your balance. That’s all. So quit gabbin’ about it. It’s over, isn’t it? And I don’t care.”

  “But you seemed mad. Like you blamed me, and it wasn’t my fault.”

  “Right.”

  “It wasn’t!”

  “Drop it, Lewis.” Jeffrey pointed. “There’s the culprit.”

  “Yeah,” Lewis said laughing, “it’s the tree’s fault.”

  “The tree monster shook its branches...”

  “...and the brave adventurer slipped from its limb,” Lewis added.

  “You’re not a brave adventurer,” Jeffrey said.

  “But I want to be.”

  They stood together, looked up at me, and simultaneously reached out and touched my trunk.

  “What kind of tree is it, Lewis?”

  “A white oak. The leaves are split, with rounded ends. Look.” Lewis pointed.

  “That means white oak?”

  “It’s a white oak. I know it.”

  “Look, you can see the sky through its leaves.”

  Lewis looked up where Jeffrey had his eyes fixed. “It could be a lake with leaves in it, or a sky.”

  “You’re so weird sometimes.” Jeffrey turned and sat at the base of my trunk. “It’s just a sky and a tree. I don’t know where you come up with some of this stuff.”

  “It’s just in my brain. I think that sometimes a tree wants to be a lake, just like people want to be what they’re not. Like Dad wants a new job or Mom wants to be like Mrs. Nichols.”

  “And a lake wants to be a mountain.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sit down, Lew.”

  Lewis sat down next to Jeffrey, both of their heads pivoted back so they could see through my leaves to the sky.

  “Did you ever wonder what you’re going to do when you get older?” Jeffrey asked.

  “I’m going to paint.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. That’s what I want.”

  “I thought you wanted to be an adventurer.”

  “That too,” Lewis said.

  “That’s two jobs, you can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because. Pick one.”

  “I’m going to go on long adventures and paint what I see.”

  Jeffrey laughed and pushed Lewis.

  “Watch the arm,” Lewis said, a wide smirk on his face.

  “You bum,” Jeffrey pushed him again, then again. “Where do you get off being a pansy just ‘cause your arm was broken?”

  Lewis got up and ran towards the field. Jeffrey chased him. Past the white birches and maple saplings they ran to the stone fence which bordered the field. After all those years, it still stood straight. The flat stones on top were as level as the day they were placed there. Only a few stones were out of place along the whole south side. Twenty to thirty feet to the left of where Lewis and Jeffrey stood was a wide opening, where the road had actually led into the field, but they weren’t interested in the opening. Side by side, they stood looking over the stone fence, out across the wide, five acre field. Both their mouths were open. “God,” Jeffrey managed to say.

  “It’s beautiful.” Lewis stared. The sun had begun to fall behind the hills to the west. Light made of gold and orange fell across the old field. Besides the weeds that grew there now, the oxalis, dandelion, crow’s foot and even milk weed, there were patches of oat grain which soaked up the light and sparkled and glowed. A calm breeze pushed and pulled at the climbing stems of life and made them sway like a calming symphony. Lewis was awestruck. They had arrived at just the right moment to see the field at its most spectacular, ablaze in light, swaying to invisible music.

  Jeffrey wanted to run through it and slap at the weed blossoms. He wanted to touch the oat grain stalks, but Lewis merely wanted to look at it.

  Jeffrey climbed onto the rock fence, “Come on, let’s go in,” he said, as though it were a river and not a field.

  “It’s too beautiful.” Lewis watched the play of lights and shadows which changed moment by moment as the wind blew and the sun lowered.

  “It’ll make a great ball field,” Jeffrey said while jumping off the fence and into the high weeds.

  “Why cut it to make a ball field?”

  Jeffrey noticed how mesmerized Lewis was so he added, “Not all of it, Lewis, only enough to play in.” Then Jeffrey ran into the light and out of the shadow of the forest.

  Lewis noticed how the light touched Jeffrey, how it mixed his colors with the colors of the field, how it took him in, lighted him up. Lewis climbed over the fence, careful of his arm, and dashed out past where Jeffrey stood.

  “Hey, where you going?”

  “I wanna be in the middle of the field,” Lewis said as he ran. Jeffrey followed, and in the middle of the field they both stood, arms stretched out to their sides, as much as possible for Lewis, the two of them twirling around in the orange light of dusk.

  It became easier for me to know what Lewis felt, to see through his eyes. That day, something connected Lewis to common thought. Something deep inside him shifted slightly, made contact and held. It all happening as the twins twirled. Lewis got lost in the moment, totally submerged in the wonder of the light and wind.

  Jeffrey stopped abruptly and smacked the head of a tall weed. An array of dried particles burst from it, surprising the air with more sparkling lights. He smacked another one and another puff of dried particles entered the orange light. “Watch,” Jeffrey said as he smacked another and another. Lewis stood watching the tiny fireworks as light ricocheted off the scattered particles. Jeffrey walked slowly back towards the stone fence and the darkening woods. Lewis followed, every once in a while holding his hand out to catch the light Jeffrey had slapped out of the weed heads.

  Lewis wanted the light to stay, but the sun dropped and the woods became dark. Fireflies came out near the edge of the woods, blinking their warning of nightfall. Lewis stopped to watch them for a moment or two. He tried to follow the path of one firefly, but lost it in the maze of blinking lights. He turned for a last look at the field before following Jeffrey over the stone fence. The field had lost its color. A dull gray and brown hung amidst the weeds and wild-growing grain. Suddenly, nothing seemed important to Lewis. The sun would always go down, leaving everything dull and back to normal.

  “Hurry up, space boy,” Jeffrey yelled from inside the woods. “You look like you’re about to float away.”

  Lewis turned and stared into the woods, but he couldn’t see Jeffrey. Once he climbed over the fence though, Jeffrey stood right there.

  “Quick, it’s getting dark.”

  “Look at all the firef
lies now,” Lewis said, pointing into the field.

  “Yeah.”

  “They come out of nowhere. Thousands of them.”

  “Let’s go, Lewis, or Mom and Dad won’t let us come out here again.”

  Lewis turned and followed Jeffrey. As they passed, Lewis touched my trunk and I could feel that he understood more than Jeffrey. He was somehow still connected to the field, the fireflies, to me. He could sense common thought, was a part of it, yet he didn’t quite understand what it was. I could see into him, through his eyes, and followed him through the woods seeing what he saw.

  Jeffrey didn’t wait up. He became impatient. “Stop walking so slow. I can’t just stand here.”

  But Lewis took his time. He looked at everything, each tree and each bush. He watched as the darkness swallowed the openings between briar stems, how the haze above the forest darkened. When he broke from the woods, Jeffrey was almost to the house. Lights fell through the front windows onto the porch and grass. Although he heard nothing, Lewis imagined the low conversation of his parents, like he heard at night after he and Jeffrey went to bed. The house was like a fairy tale house at the edge of the woods, happy lights, friendly talk. He wanted it to stay that way, just as he had wanted the field to display its orange and gold sparkles forever. But he had to end his dream and follow Jeffrey inside. He had to get into the picture instead of looking at it from a distance.

  When he walked to the porch and opened the front door, I let go of his thoughts. I felt a quick tug I’d never felt before and know that Lewis felt it too. The door closed and I turned my attention to the coming of night.

  Common thought allowed me to sense, through other plants and animals, for a long distance. Animals, just as humans, most times, were more difficult to reach. Their common thought being slightly askew, yet animals were typically easier than humans to understand and feel. I had never been so close to human thought as with the twins, especially Lewis. There was something special about what was inside him that connected us together through common thought.

  As the night wore on, the moon passed through the sky like a slow beacon, and I pondered what I had learned from humans, from Lewis, who was even more attuned to nature than the farmer had been. I wondered how such things happened. How those closest to the earth could not connect, while someone not born with the earth could connect so easily? Lewis had become an anomaly.

  Through the night I probed for his thoughts, into his house and into his dreams. I wanted the connection to grow stronger without disturbing him. Over and over again I reached, regardless of how difficult. The connection was important. I didn’t want to lose it for fear it would not return.

  CHAPTER 2

  IT WASN’T LONG BEFORE Lewis and Jeffrey made friends, even though school was out, and before you knew it there were twenty or more kids traipsing up the old tractor road towards the field. Mr. Marshal had rented a side cutter and, sweating uncomfortably in the hot sun, cut a large area for the boys to play baseball. Jeffrey had remembered his promise to Lewis and insisted that his father leave part of the field alone. That was no problem. To keep the entire field cut would have been a long, time-consuming, job of which Mr. Marshal was not partial.

  * * *

  Where all the children came from was a wonder. There had never seemed to be that many children around before, yet, there they were with their bats and balls stuffed inside a long canvas bag. Each brought his own glove, sometimes girls showed up too, but they seldom played, except for Lorrie Watkins who was sort of shaped like one of the boys and often played a better game.

  Lewis never played and Jeffrey always played. In fact, Jeffrey took the lead role as captain of one team, while Lewis wandered along the stone fence, the entire periphery of the field, discovering all sorts of bugs and insects, all sorts of plants. He even began to bring a small, spiral-bound sketch pad along, which he perched on his bent knees as he sat, leaning against the fence, drawing whatever he saw: bugs, leaves, trees. There were many drawings of the stone fence, one of the rest of the children playing baseball, although his human figures didn’t come out well.

  The games started early in the morning. Kids would show up a little at a time, on bicycles, on foot, sometimes eight or ten were dropped off, not in front of the Marshal’s house, but right near the woods, at the beginning of the old tractor road, by a tired woman still wearing a house dress or robe.

  As soon as enough kids showed up, the game would begin by choosing sides, the throwing in the air of a bat for the opposing team’s captain to catch, then the hand-over-hand contest ending in pinching the tip of the bat handle to see if it would slip loose and fall, or hang safely between forefinger and thumb.

  On most days a light-gray ground fog, caused by the sun blistering off the previous night’s dew, lay over the flat stone bases which had been stolen from the fence. Canvas sneakers stuck to the ends of thin poles of legs quickly became dew soaked and squeaked against small feet as the children ran.

  There was excitement those days. The high-pitched cries of small boys and girls, the loud crack of the bat hitting the ball, then the excited yelling for children to run, for others to catch, where to throw the ball. The early morning air held the voices for a second in the fog, then let them rush on and mix with dew-damp squeaking feet and the silent summer sun. All day they’d play, yelling in delight, stopping only to eat a quick peanut butter sandwich or to gulp down water from a mason jar or green plastic canteen. The field had changed from the lonely sanctuary left after the farmer’s death, to the perfect baby-sitter, the greatest children’s social auditorium.

  In the evening, as the sun fell slowly and the air cooled, Lewis always tried to find in himself, and in the field, the brilliance and comfort of the first evening he and Jeffrey had seen the field. He tried to sketch the light as it fell over the field, his back to the ball field and everyone playing, but the field was never the same as that first time, nor would it ever be. He wanted to blame his father or Jeffrey for changing it, but at the same time knew it wasn’t their fault. Even if the exact climactic conditions existed, the exact emotions, recent experiences would change the event. Lewis reached for the past, a past not far away, yet one which he couldn’t grasp. He sketched and eventually painted the field over and over, whenever he longed for the sad depth, the complete awe of existence, he felt that first day.

  It was on one of those days when he was totally lost in his search for the past, and in the sadness of his failure to reach that place inside himself, that he remained oblivious to the approach of other children. The game had ended, and Jeffrey, holding his finger over his lips, led the others to where Lewis, lost in himself and in the clutches of common thought, sat drawing quickly over his sketch pad with a number two pencil. He never noticed the sudden silence in the game or the rustling footsteps creeping up behind him until he heard Lorrie Watkins exclaim, “That’s beautiful!” It was his first real praise from someone outside the family.

  Lewis was so far removed from the reality the other children had been in, that he let the completely honest words she said slide down the long hollow corridors of his consciousness and into his being. It was something, a perfect sound maybe, that he would never forget. When he looked up, there were children all around him. “You’re really good, Lew,” Michael said. He was a fast runner and good catcher. “It’s great,” Lewis heard another child say. They all agreed.

  “Told you he was good,” Jeffrey said, proud to be Lewis’ twin.

  Lewis, slowly pulling from common thought, disconnecting like the slowing of water through a spigot while turning the handle, began to smile up at them, then stood and accepted their acknowledgment of his talent with a flushed face and down-turned eyes. Yet, he allowed them to look at what he considered a failed understanding of the uncut portion of the field. On the walk back down the old tractor road that evening, Lewis set the pace as the other children asked about his drawing. For once, the baseball game had been forgotten.

  The next morning, howev
er, when Lewis got up from bed, he couldn’t find the drawing. It had been torn from the sketch pad. Tiny pieces of paper were still left behind, stuck inside the spiral. When he had lifted the pad, a strip of torn paper stuck out the end. He recognized the remains of the torn page, but didn’t remember pulling that page out. And he always cleaned the spiral using his pencil point to pick the excess paper from it.

  He looked around the room he shared with his brother when he realized Jeffrey wasn’t there. The clock. It was late. No one had awakened him. Jeffrey must have slipped out quietly. Lewis thought that Jeffrey may have removed the sketch to show to their mom and dad. Or the other kids may have asked to see it again. But why would he leave without waking Lewis?

  Lewis sat on his bed and stretched. It didn’t make sense. Lewis felt alone. He had always been left alone by the other children, but this was different. At those times the children were at least around, yelling and screaming in the background. He could always go over and talk with them. But now, he was completely alone. Sure, his mom would be downstairs. That wasn’t the same.

  Lewis walked to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

  “Is that you, Lewis?” his mother yelled up.

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “You feeling all right?”

  “Yeah. I was just tired.”

  “The other children went out to play hours ago.”

  “I know.” He shut the door and turned on the faucet. In the mirror, he saw Jeffrey’s gray eyes and sandy hair. He saw Jeffrey’s round-shaped head and full lips. He wished, for the first time in his life, that he could get Jeffrey out of himself. He wanted to know what he’d look like without Jeffrey. He had been reminded of Jeffrey his entire life. Even at school, almost daily, someone would slap him on the back, mistaking him for his brother. He touched his own face, looked into his own eyes, tried to see deeper. Who was he if not just a quiet, reserved Jeffrey? Lewis brushed his teeth and washed his face.

  Back in his room, he dressed quickly, then grabbed the sketch pad and sat on his bed to pull the strips of paper from the spiral. He imagined going to the field and seeing that they’d tacked the drawing onto a tree, sort of a mascot to their game, a sign which belonged only to them. They would have a place for him to sit and draw, he thought, as he placed another piece of the torn paper on the bedspread near his thigh. When he was through cleaning the spiral, he crumpled the paper strips between his hands. On the way out of his bedroom, Lewis dropped the paper into the trash.