Landscape: Memory

by Matthew Stadler

  I called long and low, making the sound of a ship in distress, drifting with no compass. Dogs barked back. The clitter-clatter of their dog nails on concrete rattled up the walk, as loud as if they were prancing next to us.

  "They need to install buoys," Duncan suggested, tugging his muffler down off his mouth.

  The streets were empty as ghosts, nothing moving but us and the dogs. No motors ran, no children screamed or parents scolded, no trolley bells rang.

  "Do you suppose we might get lost?" Duncan asked, bumping into me like a tugboat.

  "If you like," I allowed. "We might get lost."

  "I've never been lost in a graveyard."

  "Have you been in a graveyard?"

  "Yes." And he stopped bumping.

  "I've only been for an uncle I never knew, and once just sneaking around," I said, remembering the odd formalities that attended my uncle's disposal. We all dropped black handkerchiefs into his grave.

  "I went for a friend once. He died in the fire."

  "The big fire?" I had just met Duncan then, on the boat to the lost-children's camp.

  "Uh-huh. We buried him after I'd been in Oakland."

  "After you'd been at the camp?" He hadn't said anything about his friend then.

  "Yeah."

  "Were you sad?"

  "Yeah. We'd been best friends." He'd said something about a best friend before, but never that he'd died.

  "You never told me he died."

  "Nope. I don't think about it much."

  "Why not?" If that had been my friend, I figured, that's all I would think about.

  "It makes me sad, so I don't think about it." He looked at me now, to see if I understood.

  "I guess I understand," I allowed. "But if it were me that's all I'd ever think about. I just can't help thinking about stuff like that."

  We walked along Geary to the southern edge of Lone Mountain, looking through the mist up Greenwood, looking at the pale collapsing obelisk of James King of William. The Laurestina hedge was in need of a trim, all overgrown and tangled, reaching frantically up into the graying dawn like poisonous vapors. Duncan walked so silently. I kept looking to make certain he was there. He bumped up close and held on for a bit as we cut across the corner of Odd Fellows and on into Calvary.

  This graveyard was not well kept. It was overgrown and thick with low twisted oak trees, all wind blown and shaggy, home to warblers and thrush. In its better days, my father told me, Calvary had an elaborate network of gas lines, feeding tiny guide flames, bordering all the paths at intervals of two or three feet. It was called then, he said, the Graveyard of the Eternal Flame, but the quake broke it to bits and now it's just Calvary again.

  There was a row of Dunphys, laid out side by side, dead in a long succession of mothers and sons and babies who didn't have names yet when they died.

  Dead flowers lay dry and crumbling on the flat gravestones. It looked so sad to me. I'd rather leave nothing than have it go so publicly bad. Duncan brushed them off into the overgrown yellowing lawn as we walked by. He was behind me, resting both hands on my shoulders as in Freight Train, only he didn't know about Freight Train.

  I looked ahead, down the gentle slope of the hill. The rough grass covered its long face, disappearing down into the low-lying fog. We could see the black silhouettes of the oak trees gathered in a grove at the bottom. There seemed to be some broken limbs lying in the grass, fallen by their dead weight or blown off by the wind.

  "D'you ever play Freight Train?" I asked Duncan. He was hopping now as we went.

  "Nope," he said, sounding certain.

  "It's just like we are now, except you need six or seven kids, all lined up, hands up on shoulders." Duncan started making train sounds.

  "Does it have to be in a graveyard?" he asked, chugging right into me and taking the engine spot.

  "No, but you've really gotta get a bunch of kids. Otherwise it's just engine and caboose and that's not right. You can't always be engine and caboose, it's just too much." But my caution went unheeded. Duncan tooted and chugged us down the hill without a second thought, and I just followed, attached by the game to his undisciplined engine.

  We loaded armloads of mostly rotting wood and walked back up toward the crest of the hill. The sky had washed out gray in the east where the clouds had lifted up from off the land. At Masonic we tossed the wood over, hoping no one was up and about to be beaned by our treasure. The good wood bounced with a healthy bang, and the rest landed, we could hear, like crumbling sand or damp cardboard. The bad wood we left there, in the bushes.

  Some assorted citizens were out, briskly taking their morning constitutionals, motoring past us on legs like pistons, grunting a hearty hello or making some comment about wood. It was good we lived near else our arms might have dropped off.

  I walked behind Duncan and watched the lines of sweat drip out of his wet dark hair, down his bare neck, and disappear into his shirt. It was a night like so many other nights.

  At home he slept and I stoked the dying embers with our damp wood, reading in the gray light of dawn while the oak smoldered and smoked, finally catching flame after a good half hour of slow kindling. It was an elixir to me, that plucky yellow flame, coming clean in the thick smoke, dancing up into the blackened bricks of the fireplace. I sat up close as could be, watching its wispy base licking the wood, uncertain what its connection must be and unable to locate its activity. When a flame is just catching, one can't really see the wood burn, only the bright, flickering light. I couldn't imagine those logs would eventually be consumed and I strained to watch as long as I could, waiting for the wood to turn to glowing coals, eaten hollow by the flame, waiting for the inevitable collapse of the whole thing, down into embers and ash.

  27 MAY 1915

  I'm not certain why or exactly when, but I went back to that small hollow in the Presidio woods last night. I was dirty and cut from the fog in thick so long it made mud of the woods. I was slipping and sliding and grabbing too late at handholds I couldn't see, it being night still. Birds were crazy in the trees this time. I listened for the laughing and the metal banging like before, convinced it really was the rocks and wind, but it wasn't. Not nearly like with Duncan. The wind blew stronger this time, and yet no sound came up, at least none so human as before. Something real is down there, I know that now.

  First I thought of the man down there, and then the birds. I looked up to see them and the clouds got pushed away as if by a hand sweeping a black slate clean, leaving the pinpoints of white pocked forever into the empty slate. Those glorious stars, drenching the sky like milk, precious and liquid, a present to me. I was sunk down deep into the moss, my mouth open to the black, black sky and those thousands of inexhaustible stars. I couldn't sink down far enough, having nothing but air to press me down. If only I could be plunged into a volcano or swallowed by the ripping fault right then, the earth sucking me into its rich black dirt all wrapped around me and rumbling, shaking loose rocks and scree and trees knocked silly to the ground. I tried willing so many things there and then and none of them worked.

  I looked down into the black water pounding white against the rocks. The wild shapes were rising again. I thought as clear as I could of that body that must have been battered, the rock cutting into its face and crushing the bones, and the fact of that man dead. I couldn't help feeling the hollowness of my own body.

  Something inside me broke loose then. I felt it somewhere below my belly. This feeling broke loose and started a sort of wobbling, a sobbing rising up my throat like sickness. I hadn't known it was there inside me, but there it was now, filling me up entirely, making my body shake and filling my head with spit and snot, bursting in my head like a flower, all watery with tears and snuffling. It was all over me like warmth or a fragrance and I couldn't stop it. It broke out through my eyes and throat in tears and sounds I'd never heard from inside me before, scratchy awful sounds that rattled the bones in my head and stopped only to let me gasp my breath back in again. I
t was a sound beyond words, some terrible, primitive song inside me wailing in a roar through my body. I couldn't keep it in. I rolled up in a ball, letting it all run through me, like somewhere a river ran wrong and I was now its mouth.

  My crying was a convulsion that ended by my body giving up.

  Finally I could only lie still and stare down the long drop to the dead man silent and empty, wasted on the black rocks below.

  * * *

  It all got so soft then, the breeze calm and the sea gone to washing waves across the rocks, not crashing as before. My head had gone soft from all the noise and fury. And now it had all run dry, drawn out from the middle of me.

  A memory came into my head then, like a dream. I'd known parts, but never all of it, and it came in like dreams do, running through my head from beginning to end.

  I am seven. I sit up in my big bed, looking out the open window, a large oval of glass set on two pins so it pivots open. It is dark and very early, no clip-clop or clanky-clank from outside. No milkwagon or iceman or horses yet. I rest my arms on the wooden sill and stick my head out into the nighttime air. It smells exactly as it smells in the hollow, exactly. Mostly salt air and moist, but rich with dirt smell too, and sweet wood smoke.

  The air is cool across my bare skin. I wrap my warm flannel sheet around my little body and walk sneaky slow like an Indian to the bad-boy stairs. My room is at the very tip-top and it's two long flights down, narrow and steep, but quietest on these stairs because they don't cry if you step right on their edges. I go slow, hiding very small in my sheet.

  The parlor sits so quiet, the carpet and chairs and the heavy brocade curtains all sleepy and resting there in the dark. I drop my warm sheet and run frisky to Father's footstool and sit down with a shiver, the plush velvet bristling against my bottom, and me politely chatting with guests, very grown up and interesting, naked as a seal. There's skitter-scatter sounds all from the dark places. So I get my sheet and walk very bravely to the big front door.

  Our frame house is wooden but the front steps are heavy stone. They stay warm even after dark but now they're cold. The top step feels cool and smooth on the bottoms of my bare feet. I'm looking west, over Josky's house and the Joyces' and then the high pale dunes, out into the black night sky, all clean and brisk and washed with all the stars. First are the play dunes and next are the big dunes. After that's the desert and it goes on forever. I can smell the sea. There's sand on our stone steps too and I push my palms against it.

  Next door's Mattie's and then there's the big dog who doesn't like me. He's howling now, like wolves do but less brave, sort of whimpering. It's spooky but he has a fence. I walk across the wagon lane, along the Joyces' path and onto the sand, pushing my feet in deep to where it's still warm. It's lovely all over me. I doggy-walk on hands and knees up to the top and tumble down into the hollow. All the stars stretch out in the deep black lid above me. I scrunch and squirm, working my body back into the dune, staring up into the night.

  There's a rumble like God's train is rolling right down the dunes at me, and it's getting impossibly deeper and deeper so it's not a sound anymore but a motion. Now the ground sets to bucking, bumping me up and down into the dunes like wild waves or a motorcar or Father bouncing knees on my bottom, gallop gallop gallop and him whinnying high and wild. An ugly sound comes over the dunes and into me like heat, a horrible sound, long and scraping like pulling metal spikes from concrete or raking giant nails down chalkboards. I feel it singing in my bones.

  I remember it like this: my body going loose and the backs of my eyes feeling warm and full. Now I call it fear or terror.

  The face of the sand kept dropping. There were crashing sounds from houses, snapping and tearing sounds, and that awful sound of things pulling apart.

  The earthquake set all the church bells ringing. Fire bells rang. Mr. Crowley screamed "Judgment, judgment!" in a horrible cracking howl. I saw him in his undershorts carrying a broken chandelier. Our street was buckled and bent. It hissed and spatn in places where pipes had broken through. I lay at the top of the dune and watched, silent and shivery. I couldn't speak and I couldn't move fast. Everything looked flat and far away like at the cinema.

  Nothing was familiar anymore. All up and down the street the houses were broken, fences fallen. I could see through places where before I couldn't. Yards disappeared under rubble and the street did too, all tangled and blocked. Some places were big holes like one near me with metal pipes poking out into air and a horse's head I could see reaching up out from the rim, wild-eyed, baring its teeth and foaming. It was on its side, fallen against the dirty wall of the hole, not using its legs right.

  I walked away back into the play dunes where everything still looked okay and it was quieter if I got far enough in. I stayed in there for a while. I couldn't think much about things.

  A woman came later, after some time when I sat in the sand. Her nightie smelled of gas and lavender, brushing up across my nose when she picked me up and held me. She said her name was Mrs. Porfoy and she was big and flush-red in the face, like the fat lady in the theater show, but she didn't sing to me. I was still very quiet, just saying little songs I liked some, just to myself really.

  Mrs. Porfoy led me back into the terrible street, walking me up some way to where a man stood stuffing four little bundles. This was Mr. Porfoy.

  Mr. Porfoy gave me his pajama top, which was big as my nightshirt and smelled all of wood smoke and old stockings, and he went bare-chested, all big and pasty white and hairy up his front. He let me ride on his shoulders, my legs wrapped round his neck, bare feet bouncing into his fuzzy chest. Mrs. Porfoy walked beside, carrying two bundles, like Mr. Porfoy did, only smaller.

  * * *

  "Can I see Mother and Father now?" I finally asked. People hauled their burdens through what clearings there were, calm and steady, dressed and undressed.

  "Soon enough, child," Mr. Porfoy said up to me. "Mrs. Porfoy will be leading us back presently, won't you, dear?" He wiped his sweaty cheek against my leg, all bristly-whiskered and scratching.

  "Yes, yes. We're going back, there now. You live near the dunes where you were playing, am I right?" And she nodded her head all closed mouth and certain. "That'll be right to where we're going." The air was dirty and dusty, full of bad smells and noise. Small collapsings and many yells and bells kept on and on, as they did the whole day.

  I watched out over Mr. Porfoy's shiny-skinned head. All of the insides of people's houses had tumbled out, spilling from half-torn floors, couches and beds and chairs hanging or caught halfway down. I looked in at a bright green bird in its big cage and then a dog wagging its tail and barking from a sagging third floor. A family came toward us through the dust, pushing a black grand piano past broken bodies and rubble. The father was roped up front like an oxen, with a handful of children pushing the heavy burden from behind.

  "This isn't my street," I said. "I live on Kirkham Street."

  "This is Kirkham Street, honey," Mrs. Porfoy said. "We're coming up on your place now." But she was wrong. Nothing was there.

  "It's not my street," I said again. "I live in a blue house on Kirkham Street."

  "Maybe the child lives farther on, sweetheart," Mr. Porfoy put in, patting me with his sweaty hand. "Don't be scaring him now. What are you thinking?" We stopped, Mrs. Porfoy all huffy and silent, just looking at us. Mr. Porfoy let me down off his shoulders.

  "Stay right here, child," he said to me. "Right here now so as Mrs. Porfoy and I can take a little look at our map." They walked off into the rubble a few feet away and had a fight. I stayed right there and watched a group of men lean their weight onto a broad wood beam, prying at a fallen wall that lay intact, fallen face flat forward into the street. A couple of kinds of crying came out from under it. A dog and a person and some baby cries all mixed in with the scream of heavy wood moving hard against itself.

  I yelled hooray at them lifting and then at the buzz of an aeroplane high up in the blue sky. An aeroplane! Its en
gine roar so thin and distant, it wobbling its wings in the wild winds so high, high up in the cold cloudless sky. Oh, I marveled at it, flapping hard with my arms and running along the dirty path of people, roaring with all my voice.

  "Hold there, honey,'' Mrs. Porfoy yelled long and strong, louder and clearer than anyone could yell, bringing me quickly back to the ground and turning me round from a good twenty yards away. It looked like a mile to me, far away as the aeroplane. I skipped briskly back, all breathless and happy to hear her yelling voice.

  "Have you found them?" I asked, excited but tired now of playing. Mrs. Porfoy picked me up again and turned back toward the rubble.

  "Mr. Porfoy's got some things to talk about, honey," she said, holding her warm hand to my cheek. "Some things he and you gotta talk about." She put me down in his little office, a neat arrangement of broken beams and barrel staves set around a bit of clear dirt. This was where they had fought. There was black smoke rising up over the hill now, and a steady flow of people north and east.

  "What's your name, child?" Mr. Porfoy asked.

  "Maxwell."

  He nodded a lot, like he understood me.

  "That's good. Maxwell. What are your folks called?"

  "Mummy and Papa."

  He nodded some more.

  "I mean by other folks, what do other folks call your mummy and papa?"

  "Mrs. Kosegarten and Mr. Kosegarten. Or sometimes Corny calls Mummy Mrs. K. and Papa calls her that too."

  He nodded more so I stopped, even though there were more names they called each other and their first names which I hadn't said yet.