Firebirds Soaring

by Sharyn November

  My neighborhood has trees and front yards and drive-ways and grass. Here all I can see is dirty bricks and stone buildings, black wires crisscrossing everywhere. We come to the corner of the block. Above a wooden rack of magazines and paperback books is a faded green awning that says SID’S NEWS.

  “This is Sid’s,” Jamie says. “It’s my favoritest place.”

  Sid’s isn’t exactly a store, more like a cave scooped out of the corner, with shelves on both sides. On the left are a hundred different magazines, all bright colors and pictures. My parents only get LIFE and TV Guide. On the right are rows and rows of cigarettes in white and green and red packs, and boxes of cigars with foreign ladies on their lids. The slick paper and tobacco smell spicy, dry, and a little sour. I almost sneeze.

  In front of us, a woman in an orange cardigan, her glasses halfway down her nose, sits on a stool behind a counter full of more candy and gum than I’ve ever seen in one place in my whole life. Hersheys and Sky Bars, Jujubes and Paydays, twenty flavors of LifeSavers in a rolled-log metal display—and dozens I’ve never seen before. I think about pirate gold and jewels, and Ali Baba, every treasure story I’ve ever heard. This is better.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “See,” says Jamie.

  The woman behind the counter looks up. “Hey, kid. It’s been a while.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Sid. How’s business?”

  “Can’t complain,” she says. “Whad’ll it be today?”

  “The usual.” Jamie drops her two nickels onto the rubber OLD GOLDs mat that is the only clear space on the counter.

  “Raxar it is. Can’t say that I blame you. Two?”

  “Three. This is my friend Becka. She’s never had one.”

  Mrs. Sid raises an eyebrow.

  “It’s her first time here,” says Jamie.

  “Ah.”

  I shake my head. “No thanks, I want a Three Musket—”

  “You can get those anywhere,” says Mrs. Sid. “Try this.” She reaches over the counter and picks up a candy bar with a pale, steel-blue wrapper, thicker than a Hersheys, not as thick as a Three Musketeers. On the front, in shining silver letters, it says RAXAR. The X is two crossed lightning bolts. “Trust me. You’ve never had anything like it.”

  I take the bar and hold out the nickel in my hand.

  Mrs. Sid shakes her head. “Keep it, kid. The first one is free.” She rings open the cash register and rattles Jamie’s nickels into the wooden drawer.

  Back on the sunny sidewalk, the silver X winks bright and dull, bright and dull as I walk. Farlingten Confectionary Company, it says on the side. I start to pull open the paper wrapper.

  “Not now,” Jamie says. “Hollis doesn’t have his yet.”

  I stop. I’m her guest, so I have to be polite.

  When we get back to the door below HOTEL MIZPAH, Jamie puts her hands behind her back. Hollis is waiting by the elevator.

  “What did you bring me?” he asks.

  “Raxar!” Jamie says, and holds her hands out in front of her, a blue-gray bar flat on each palm.

  “Hoorah,” says Hollis. “It’s the same forwards and backwards.” His voice sounds like he’s very disappointed, but he’s smiling and his droopy eyes are bright. “Now on to the penthouse.”

  Hollis hangs an OUT OF SERVICE sign on a nail by the elevator door and holds the brass cage open for us. He presses the very top button, and the elevator clanks and whirrs for more than a minute. I don’t know what to expect when the doors open, but it’s just a hallway, with the same dingy linoleum and stairs as the lobby.

  We climb eight stairs. At the top is a metal door that Hollis opens with a key. “Watch your feet,” he says.

  I step over the raised sill out onto a roof of gravel-embedded tar. A stone wall about a foot wide runs along all four sides. My sneakers make crunching sounds as I walk over to the nearest corner. Standing on tiptoe, I can rest my arms on the gritty top and look out almost forever. It is the highest up I have ever been, and I feel like I’m flying, standing still.

  From here, the world is made of boxes—straight-sided rectangles of brown and gray. Walls and streets, windows and doorways, rows of brick and stone ledges on buildings that look so small I could hold one in my hand. Below me are other rooftops with chimneys and water tanks and laundry flapping, and the flat black top of the buzzing MIZPAH sign.

  I don’t know how long I stand there, taking in all the lines and angles. When I look up, Jamie is waving at me from the opposite wall.

  “It’s almost time for the train!” she calls.

  I crunch over to where she and Hollis stand. There are more boxes on this side, but also trees in the far distance, and the curve of a river. The light is golden, late-afternoon, as if the city has been dipped in butter.

  Jamie points her Raxar bar at me. “When you hear the train, open yours and take a bite.”

  “Okay.” I take it out of my pocket and, like the others, cock my head and listen.

  After a minute, I hear the faint rumble of heavy wheels on invisible tracks, and the long, low notes of the train’s whistle.

  “Now,” says Jamie.

  I slide my finger under the glued flap. The steel-blue wrapper is heavy paper, lined with a thin foil, and crinkles as I unfold it. The bar inside is the same color as the afternoon light. I bite into one corner of it, and my mouth is flooded with magic. It tastes like toasted butter, malted milk, brown sugar, and flavors I have no name for. The bar is solid at the first touch of my teeth, then crumbles and melts onto my tongue.

  I look at the glittering lightning X, then at Jamie.

  “Well? ” she says. There are golden crumbs at the corner of her mouth, and her bar is already half gone.

  “It’s, it’s—it’s great,” is all I can manage.

  “I told you,” says Jamie. She takes a huge bite of hers, most of what remains.

  The train whistle sounds again, a little closer now, louder.

  “What does the train say to you?” Hollis asks me.

  “Let’s have an adventure,” I answer after a moment. I nibble at my Raxar bar. Tiny bites, making it last.

  “Ah,” he says. It is a long ah.

  “What? ”

  “That means the people inside are going to the right place. They’ll have a fine, merry time there.”

  “Where are they going?”

  “It’s different for everyone.”

  I nod. Another minute, and there is only one bite of candy left. I put it in my mouth and hold it in my cheek, like a hamster, letting my new favorite flavor melt away until it is only a memory. Hollis holds out his hand for the empty wrapper.

  “What does it sound like to you?” I ask.

  He tilts his head, considering. “Like a saxophone,” he says. “Mournful. A little tarnished.”

  “So what does that mean?” I lick my lips and find one more golden crumb.

  “It means those people are going into the wrong future,” he says, shaking his head. “They’re all coming to Farlingten, and none of their dreams will ever come true.”

  My arms get all goose bumps. “Does Jamie know that?”

  “No,” he says. “I don’t think she does.” He reaches over and touches the red barrette in her hair, sliding his hand down to stroke her cheek, the way my mother pets the cat. Jamie is looking out at the trees and doesn’t seem to care.

  “I’d like to go home, please,” I say. My voice sounds very small.

  “The light is fading,” says Hollis. “I suppose it’s time.”

  “Can we stay just a few—” Jamie starts.

  “No,” he says. “You’re not safe here at night.” He moves his hand to her shoulder and gives it a little squeeze. “Not yet.”

  He follows us across the gravel and inside, pausing to lock the metal door behind him. The stairwell is dark after the sunlit roof.

  The elevator is waiting for us. Hollis opens the brass gate and pushes a button I hadn’t noticed before, a squiggle between the 6 and the 7.
Then he steps back out into the hall.

  “Good-bye, Miss Jamie,” he says as he closes the gate. “I’ll see you again soon.” He looks at me. “It was nice to meet you, Miss Becka.”

  I nod, but I don’t look up until the metal panel slides shut, and Hollis is gone.

  The elevator clanks and whirrs. I cross my fingers—both hands.

  When the door opens, the voice is crooning the last lines of the song:. . . you can stay put, right where you are,

  Or sing your song up on a star.

  But that’s not possib—

  My legs shaking, I step out of the elevator into the room with the pale pink walls and my game lying on top of the nubbly green bedspread. I am so glad to see Uncle Wiggly. Jamie closes the gate and then the closet door.

  She walks over to the record player, where the yellow disk is now going around and around, hissing like static, and lifts the needle.

  “Isn’t that the best place?” She slips the record into its cardboard sleeve. “We can play your game now, if you—” We hear footsteps in the hall, and Jamie turns to me, her eyes fierce.

  “You can’t tell. Not ever.”

  “But what if—?”

  She grabs my arm, hard. “Promise. Or I can never go back.”

  “Okay.” I pull my arm away. “Okay. I promise.” I sit down next to Uncle Wiggly and look out the window.

  Mrs. Galloway opens the door and comes in, carrying a plate of cookies so warm I can smell them. A cleaner’s bag is folded over one arm. “Who’s ready for chocolate chips?”

  “I am,” says Jamie. She takes two cookies and bites into one.

  “How about you, Becka?” Mrs. Galloway holds the plate out to me.

  I shake my head slowly. “My stomach feels funny.”

  “Oh?” Mrs. Galloway sets the plate down on the bed and puts the back of her hand on my forehead. “You don’t have a fever,” she says. “Do you want some Pepto?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Hmm. Would you like to go home, dear?”

  I nod.

  “Well, I’m not really surprised. Five is a little young for a big adventure like this.” She pats my shoulder. “Let me hang up Jamie’s good dress, and I’ll walk you back.”

  She reaches for the knob of the closet door.

  No! I want to shout. But when she opens it, nothing’s inside except clothes on hangers and three pairs of shoes on the floor.

  “The record’s over,” Jamie says. “And it’s dark now.” Her voice is cool, matter-of-fact.

  “I’ll see you in school,” I say.

  Jamie turns and closes the lid of the record player. “Maybe.”

  Mrs. Galloway walks me home through the last moments of twilight, and my mother fusses over me and puts me to bed. When she folds my pants over the back of my chair, a nickel falls out of the pocket.

  “Where’d this come from?” she asks.

  I don’t know how to answer that. “Um, Mrs. Galloway. In case the ice cream truck came. But it didn’t.” I’ve never lied before. My stomach squirms. Nothing else happens.

  “That was nice of her.” She puts the nickel down on the bedside table and tucks me and my bear under the covers. “Big day, honey. You’ll feel better in the morning.” She kisses my forehead.

  When she’s gone, I pick up the coin. It is smooth and round and nickel-shaped, but the man on it is not Jefferson. On the back, F-A-R-L-I-N-G-T-E-N curves around a picture of an animal that’s not a buffalo. I feel goose bumps again and I want to throw it away. But I don’t. I think of pirate gold and Ali Baba and butter-light on tall, square stone. I can almost taste a Raxar bar. I get up and put the coin in the box on my dresser, under the felt lining.

  Just in case.

  In the darkness, lying in bed, even my own room seems strange now. A car drives by. A slanting square of light plays across my ceiling, corner to corner, glass and chrome reflecting the streetlight outside. My closet door leaps into the light for just a moment. I turn my head the other way. But when I close my eyes, I see the Xs of an impossible elevator and taste transom in the back of my throat.

  Monday starts the last week of kindergarten. Every day Jamie puts her things in our cubby and sits on my right in reading circle. She watches me, but I don’t want to talk to her. At recess I play Red Rover with other kids.

  On Tuesday, we return our library books after snack. I wait until Jamie is over by the biographies, and ask Mrs. Gascoyne if she knows where Farlingten is.

  “Far-ling-ten? No, dear, not right offhand. But if you want, I can look it up.”

  Except she can’t. There’s no Farlingten in the phone book, or on the state map, or even in the big atlas of the whole world. No Farlingten anywhere.

  Thursday night, the air is hot and thick. Thunder rumbles far away, but rain hasn’t come to our house yet. I toss and turn, sweaty under just a sheet. Through my open window, I can hear the murmur of my parents’ voices from the back porch, smell the sweet, acrid waft of smoke from my father’s pipe.

  Then I hear the music. Not from the hi-fi in our living room, but from outside, a few houses down. I jump, like I’ve been pinched, and the smooth crooning glides faintly over the distant thunder.

  You can sing your song on a star . . .

  It seems to go on forever. I look out my window and wonder about Jamie. I shudder when a train whistles somewhere in the distant darkness, all grays and browns. It does not sound like an adventure.

  Jamie is not in school Friday afternoon.

  My mother picks me up at three o’clock, because I have a box with my rest rug and paintings and papers to bring home for the summer. We are at the front door when Miss Flanagan calls from my classroom.

  “Becka! You left this in your cubby.” She hurries down the hall. “I’m glad I caught you,” she says, handing me a stiff cardboard sleeve.

  It’s a record. On the TV-blue cover is a cartoon of a little girl with dark hair. She is sitting with her legs dangling over one arm of a bright yellow star. Across the top, in magic marker, it says BECKA.

  I stare at it. That’s not how I write my Ks.

  “I’ve never seen that one before,” my mother says. I can hear the question in her voice. She buys all my things.

  I can’t explain. I don’t even know how it got into the cubby. “It was sort of a present,” I say after a minute. I’m not sure I want it.

  “Who—? Well, never mind. I hope you thanked them.” My mother slips it under my rest rug, then puts the box into the back of the station wagon. I can feel it through the back of my neck as we drive.

  She pulls into the parking lot of Ackerman’s Drugs, six blocks from our house. “I need to pick up a few things,” she says. “So I thought we might celebrate with a sundae, Miss First Grader.”

  Ackerman’s smells like perfume and ice cream mixed with bitter medicine dust. The candy counter is next to the red-and-chrome soda fountain. While my mother buys aspirin and Prell shampoo, I look at every candy bar in the display. No lightning bolts. “Do you have a Raxar? ” I ask the counterman when he is done making a milkshake.

  “Raxar?” He wrinkles his forehead. “Never heard of it.”

  I’m not really surprised.

  When we pull into the driveway, there are police cars parked two doors down. My mother frowns and carries my box to my room before she walks down to the Galloways’ to see what’s happened.

  I put the record on my dresser, next to the box with the nickel.

  That night my mother checks the lock on the front door twice after dinner. At bedtime, she tucks me in tight and kisses me more than usual.

  “Can I have a record player for my birthday?” I ask.

  She smiles. “I suppose so. You’re a big girl now.”

  So you are, echoes Hollis in his odd, sad voice. So you are.

  “I am,” I say. “First grade.”

  “I know, honey.” My mother sits down on the edge of my covers. “But even big girls can—” Her hand smoothes the unwrink
led sheet, over and over. “When you were out playing, did you ever see your friend Jamie talking to a man you didn’t know?”

  I think, for just a second, then shake my head and keep my promise.

  “Well, you be careful.” She strokes my cheek. “Don’t go anywhere with a stranger, even if he gives you candy, okay? ”

  “I won’t,” I say. I don’t look at the record on my dresser, and wonder if I’m lying.

  ELLEN KLAGES was born in Ohio and now lives in San Francisco.

  Her story “Basement Magic” won the Nebula Award in 2005. Several of her other stories have been on the final ballot for the Nebula and Hugo awards, and have been translated into Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, and Swedish. A collection of her short fiction, Portable Childhoods, was published in 2007.

  Her first novel, The Green Glass Sea, won the Scott O’Dell Award for historical fiction and the New Mexico State Book Award. It was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award, the Quills Award, and the Locus Award. A sequel, White Sands, Red Menace, has recently been published.

  Her Web site is www.ellenklages.com.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This story came out of my oldest, strongest memory.

  I’m in bed, in the yellow bedroom of my parents’ house. (I moved out of that room when my sister Mary was born, when I was three and a half, so I’m younger than that.) It’s dark, and I’m listening to a Disney record narrated by Sterling Holloway, the story of a little taxi, sad and desperate, set in a seedy, Damon Runyon city. A Will Eisner city. The Naked City.

  Vivid, inexplicable images, outside the realm of any possible nursery-school-age experience: a tangle of concrete struts arching over alleys, soot-stained brick, corrugated metal garbage cans, neon over a distant doorway, jazz filtering out. And it is always bound to that yellow bedroom, which is as accurate as carbon dating in my family.

  All my life those images sat in the back of my mind, dimly lit and seductively creepy. Where did they come from? I’d occasionally ask someone my age if they remembered a Disney record called The Depressed Little Taxi. Ha. No. At flea markets, antique sales—and much later, on eBay—anywhere there was an accumulation of late 1950s children’s records, I thought—What if?—and looked. I never found a trace of its existence.