Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

  “We had to sing, you see. To keep the child awake so that she wouldn’t fall, because of course we’ve never had a ladder truck here in Emlyn Springs.” Larken rightly suspects that Mr. Craven has forgotten that the subject of his story is her sister. “Never had that kind of money in the city budget, although the mayor, rest his soul, did his best and I think he tried to get us one, but the ladder truck had to come all the way from Beatrice, and of course there were fallen trees all over the county after that storm, and it was hard to get through.”

  The story of Flying Girl has made its way into the oral history of Emlyn Springs. There isn’t a person in town who can’t tell some version of it. However, there are elements of the story that have not entered local lore; these are known only to the Jones family, and chiefly, painfully, to Bonnie, on whose body the most significant part of the story is written.

  Mr. Craven continues. Larken is familiar enough with the arc of the story to know that it will be at least another fifteen minutes before he comes to the end. She wonders how many times Gaelan has heard it. They’ll have to compare notes tonight when all of this is over.

  Where is he anyway?

  He’s in the basement, hiding.

  He’s in the basement because he can’t bear listening to one more version of the story of Flying Girl. Larken doesn’t know it yet, but she’d had it easy compared to her brother; he’s heard the story seven times to her four.

  He’s in the basement because the rules no longer dictate that mourners speak only of the dead, and everyone who engages him in conversation either wants to talk about his celebrity, ask why he isn’t singing, or tiptoe around the subject of his personal life, especially his bachelorhood.

  Also discomfiting is the liberal use of a particular word—a quite ordinary and natural word to use in these circumstances, but one that, when invoked as a conversational prompt, fills Gaelan with leaden dread: Do you remember … ? I remember … Remember when … ?

  And finally, chiefly, Gaelan is in the basement because it’s the safest place to reexamine some significant criminal evidence. He isn’t the only criminal; his sisters are guilty too. He’s just feels guiltiest because he’s the one who instigated the crime.

  The Williamses’ mansion has a big basement with lots of unlit nooks and crannies and doorways, and a damp, chlorinated smell. After ambling around for a while—Gaelan feels slightly unsettled; it really is the kind of sprawling, shadowy basement that served as the setting for the climax of The Silence of the Lambs—he enters a remote corner room with a daylight window. Against one wall, there are metal shelving units where the Misses Williamses keep their stash of preserves, shelf upon shelf of Mason jars, all clearly labeled and dated—spaghetti sauce, pickles, fruit jellies, applesauce—and next to that is an ancient, chest-style deep freezer by Frigidaire. This will do fine.

  Gaelan closes the door to the room. He takes off his suit coat and rolls up his shirtsleeves. He hoists himself onto the top of the Frigidaire, doing a quick set of sixteen reverse triceps presses before settling down. He listens for a moment to make sure no one has followed him.

  Above his head, the sound of the singers is muffled, but he recognizes the hymn; it’s one of the few that has a non-Welsh title (“St. Elizabeth”). Perhaps that’s why—whenever Number 101 is called out at an Emlyn Springs Gymanfa—it’s always sung in English.

  Gaelan knows far more Welsh hymns than he lets on. He sings along, quietly:

  “Flocks that whiten all the plain, yellow sheaves of whitened grain, clouds that drop their fattening dews, Suns that temperate warmth diffuse …”

  Even though Gaelan Jones, weatherman, is well used to being in the spotlight, he’s too shy to sing in public, even in chorus. His reticence is even more puzzling in light of the fact that he inherited his father’s voice.

  “God to Thee praises be for the gifts thou gavest free. God to Thee praises be for the gifts thou gavest free.”

  Like his father, Gaelan is a baritone. Unlike his father, he does not read music, so he floats, singing sometimes with the tenors, sometimes with the basses, and sometimes finding the empty spaces between those two male vocal lines. In this way, Gaelan sings a part that is completely unique.

  He is not quite the sad oddity that his fellow townsfolk believe him to be—a Welshman who does not sing—what makes Gaelan a truly strange and sad man is that he is a Welshman who sings alone.

  The hymn concludes. The basement is temporarily silent.

  Reaching into his suit coat pocket, Gaelan extracts the criminal evidence: twenty-three rumpled pieces of paper, torn from the small spiral notepads Viney gave them at the start of the Tridiau and bearing short, furtively scribbled phrases. Some of the phrases are in Gaelan’s handwriting, some Bonnie’s, and some Larken’s. They constitute the transcript of an illicit, silent conversation that Gaelan began, so the top page is in his handwriting:

  B.E.—why here?

  (B.E. stands for Bethan Ellis, Gaelan’s first—and only—Emlyn Springs girlfriend.)

  Larken: Don’t know. Show Bon

  Bonnie: Husband died

  Gaelan: Husband who?

  Bonnie: Weissman, Leo I think. Professor of religion? Philosophy? Met when BE in med school. Older by a lot. Stroke. Sad.

  Larken: B.E. lives where now?

  Bonnie: Washington state, island somewhere

  Larken: MD, right?

  Bonnie: Radiologist

  Gaelan: How long home?

  Bonnie: Few months. Working part-time at hosp in Beatrice

  Gaelan: Staying?

  Bonnie: With folks

  Gaelan: No—how long staying?

  Bonnie: Don’t know. E here too.

  Gaelan: E—who?

  Bonnie: Son

  Gaelan: Whose son?

  Bonnie: B.E.’s

  Gaelan: B.E. has son? How old?

  Bonnie: 11 yo, 12? Small, intense, shy.

  Gaelan: Here? In room somewhere?

  Larken: SH! Witch looking

  Gaelan shoves the notes back into his pocket. Even though he’s read them over several times (in locked bathrooms, coat closets, Viney’s attic), he continues to be deeply troubled by the information they reveal.

  Since lifting weights helps Gaelan relax, quiet his mind, and center his thinking, he pulls two jars of pickled beets off the shelves and starts doing bicep curls.

  Gaelan hasn’t had a meaningful conversation with Bethan Ellis for fifteen years. And of course today’s contact doesn’t really count as conversation; the rules of the Tridiau dictate that he couldn’t say so much as a thank you when Bethan came over, took Viney’s hand, looked at each of them in turn, and said, I can’t tell you how much Dr. Jones’s support and encouragement meant to me. When she went on to remind Viney that he gave me a job the summer I was fifteen, doing lab work, developing X-rays, and that was when I started to think about becoming a physician, Gaelan couldn’t add a lot of things developed between the two of us in Dad’s dark room that July. And to Bethan’s revelation that Dr. Jones kept in touch even after I went to med school out in California, right up until a few years ago, Gaelan couldn’t express surprise at the fact that his father had maintained a supportive, mentoring presence in Bethan Ellis’s life long after he’d deserted it.

  She wears contacts now. She still can’t keep from blinking too much when she’s nervous.

  Homely was the word his father always used to describe the little girl whose family lived across the highway from them.

  God but that youngest Ellis girl is homely, Dad would say. Smart as a whip, but so homely, poor thing.

  To which Hope replied, Oh, Llewellyn, don’t you know it’s the homely girls who grow up to be the great beauties? And Bethan did, but back then she was just this odd, genius girl with a somber face and tight braided pigtails and horn-rimmed glasses and skin so pale that her freckles looked like the last crumbs from a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes floating in a bowl of milk.

  After Hope went up, they mov
ed into the King’s Castle Motel in town and waited: for the insurance money to come in, for the new house to be built, for news of their mother.

  Months passed; the outpouring of financial aid and material donations and casseroles started to dwindle. Dad was gone a lot, working harder than ever, or maybe they just noticed his absence more. At the same time, Gaelan had the growing feeling that he and his sisters were no longer the subjects of pity but were becoming instead the unwitting dispensers of fear. He could feel people looking at him funny, studying him from a distance, like they were trying to figure out whether or not he was foaming at the mouth and they needed to run and get a shotgun.

  When he asked Larken what was going on and did it seem like the kids at school were avoiding them, she snorted darkly and said, Are you kidding? Nobody wants to see us or have anything to do with us because they all feel too guilty about not looking for Mom anymore. I just wish somebody had the guts to come out and say that she’s dead.

  But why does everybody look so scared?

  They’re afraid of catching our tragic lives or something. God, I wish we could move. At least to Beatrice. It’s not like there’s any reason to stay here.

  But you’re Little Miss Emlyn Springs, Gaelan said.

  Shut up.

  Do you think she’s dead?

  Of course she’s dead. Use your brain. Even if she lived through the storm, she couldn’t exactly run away, could she?

  Bonnie still thinks she’s alive.

  Bonnie believes in Farmer Elves. She’s a baby.

  Yeah, but don’t ever say that to her, okay? That Mom’s dead. Even if it’s true.

  Okay.

  Promise.

  Okay! I promise! You hungry? I’m gonna order pizza for dinner. Bonnie! Get outta the bathtub!

  Only Alvina Closs continued to see them in those early months, to be part of their lives—as if she considered herself part of their tragedy, too, or was willing to expose herself to the contagion of the unlucky.

  So when there was a knock on the motel room door one night—Dad and Viney were out somewhere on a house call—they couldn’t imagine who it could be. Larken answered the door but left the chain on.

  A child’s voice said, “Is Gaelan here?” and there was Bethan Ellis, age eleven: two years younger than Gaelan but only one grade behind him, notorious throughout school for being so smart that she’d skipped fifth grade. It was raining hard that night and she was soaked to the skin. She must have walked the two miles into town, and in the dark, too.

  “This is for you and your family,” she said, holding out an aluminum foil–covered pie plate. The surface was dimpled, full of little metallic ponds, and the combination of reflected light and Bethan’s pallor made it look as though she was offering up her own reflection. Gaelan received the plate. They would find out soon that it contained a slumped, dissolving peanut butter meringue pie. They ate it later that night, all of it, in a single sitting.

  Bethan surprised them further by starting to sing. It was widely known that, in addition to having an extraordinary IQ, and in spite of being born to a people renowned for their gifts in poetry and song, Bethan Ellis couldn’t carry a tune in a tin bucket. Nevertheless, she sang all eight verses of “I Sing as a Bird” (at least her Welsh was perfect) while staring at Gaelan’s feet.

  Then she turned around and started to walk back home. She was wearing her older sister’s majorette boots—they were white patent leather and decorated with pom-poms—and a yellow hooded rain slicker with a triangular fluorescent SLOW-MOVING VEHICLE sign ducttaped to the back.

  “Hey! Wait up!” Gaelan called, running out after her. “I’ll walk you home.”

  She turned around. “All right. But you should put on some light-colored clothing.”

  From that time forward, Bethan Ellis was Gaelan’s best friend. They became sweethearts in high school, lovers in college. Everyone—even Gaelan—expected them to marry one day. So what if she was going away to med school? A few months apart wasn’t so long, not when balanced against the time they’d already been together, all the years that lay ahead. They’d see each other at Christmas.

  Gaelan didn’t predict the challenges inherent in being twenty-two years old, a TV celebrity, and celibate. He didn’t last two weeks.

  Bethan flew in on Christmas Eve. He was waiting on the church steps. She came running.

  It’s weird, isn’t it? she said. No snow at Christmas?

  Townsfolk filed past them, going into the church, smiling, happy to see them together. He hadn’t just betrayed her; he’d betrayed all of them.

  Yeah, he muttered. Weird.

  Dad says the weather is changing, she went on. You think so?

  Maybe.

  She tried teasing him. You’re the weatherman.

  He was mute, or as good as—his interjections meaningless, feeble, pathetic.

  God, I’ve missed you so much.

  Me, too. He was such a coward.

  Gaelan.

  What?

  What’s wrong?

  Nothing.

  Don’t lie. Something’s wrong.

  It went on like this: Bethan prodding, digging, becoming more and more desperate while he retreated into monosyllabic replies, deepening shame, silence. They were still standing on the church steps when everyone else had gone in and the Christmas Eve service began.

  You’ve been sleeping with other people, haven’t you, she finally said. Just say it.

  But he never did. He’s still not sure whether it was the infidelity itself or his inability to speak of it that broke them. Either way, that was that. There’s really no way to account for the demise of Gaelan’s relationship with Bethan in a way that portrays him as anything but an asshole.

  She turned and walked into the dark across that brown, snowless field.

  Today, just before she moved on, making way for other mourners and their gifts of praise for the dead, she said, I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry for your loss.

  Again Gaelan was silent, and his debt of words to Bethan Ellis remains unpaid.

  Gaelan has done well over a hundred reps on each side when he hears someone opening the basement door and coming down the stairs. There’s at least two people, and their feet have a lightweight, shuffling arrhythmia that makes them sound insecure, or clumsy, or both—as if they’re walking on the moon, tethered to the mother ship by a defective NASA cable that could snap at any moment.

  “You got the bag?”

  “Yeah. Shh. Wait.”

  Of course: they’re teenaged boys.

  They continue down the stairs. Gaelan isn’t quite sure what to do. He supposes that these boys, whoever they are, are coming down here for the same reasons he has—to escape the Gymanfa and to engage in something illicit. There’s the sound of more shuffling; they’re getting closer. Gaelan’s afraid he might be discovered, but their footsteps stop on the other side of the door. Thank God the basement is big enough to privately accommodate more than one criminal.

  There’s a rustling sound, like a mouse scurrying around in a brown paper bag. Then silence.

  “I hate these things,” one of the boys says. “I’d rather be in school than go to these funeral deals.”

  “At least there’s a lot of food.”

  “Yeah. No problem when the munchies kick in. Hey, grab that flashlight, willya?”

  A weak, sputtering glow illuminates the space between floor and the bottom of the door.

  “That stuff looks like shit. Where’d you get it?”

  “There’s a patch out past the Johnstons’ place, by the bluffs. It grows wild out there.”

  “No shit.”

  “Yeah, it’s not great, but I haven’t been able to use the car to get up to Beatrice.”

  “Why not?”

  “Grounded.”

  “When? What for?”

  “Got a speeding ticket at the blind driveway.”

  “When? You didn’t tell me.”

  “Haven’t had a chance with all t
his funeral shit. Happened last weekend.”

  “Lotta kids get killed there, you know.”

  They fall silent. Gaelan pictures them: two boys sitting cross-legged on the damp floor of a hundred-year-old basement, hunched and intent, one of them rolling a joint of roadside pot, the other holding a flashlight with dying batteries; two boys hiding in a house in a town where the dead get more attention than the living.

  “You’re really good at that.”

  “Should be. Been watching Dad roll his own cigarettes my whole life. Here.”

  “No. You rolled it, you go first.”

  A match is struck, and then Gaelan hears that unmistakable sound—a tight, high-pitched, lengthy inhale that pulls up short and sudden, then silence, and then an expulsive out-breath that sounds like the single sputter of dieseling tractor.

  Gaelan inhales in sync with the boys, remembering the weedy taste, the singeing feel of smoke in his throat. Unfortunately, either his imaginative powers are too keen or the Williams girls haven’t swept the basement recently, and at the end of his exhale he starts to cough.

  “What was that?” one boy says, lazily. It comes out like Wuhwuhzzat.

  “Shit!” the other boy whispers urgently. “Somebody’s down here. Put it out!”

  “Oh hell, Chris, we’re gonna get in so much trouble.”

  Gaelan is as dismayed as they are; he has no desire to bust these boys. He’d also hoped to stay down here a little longer. But there’s no choice now: He’ll have to come out of hiding. He takes more time than necessary to put on his suit coat and walk across the room. He knocks on the door before partially opening it and peeking his head through.

  “Hi guys,” he says. “How’s it goin’?”

  Both boys are on their feet and completely still, but there’s a kind of vibratory atmosphere surrounding them, as if the uprising energy it took to get them off the floor is still going and hasn’t yet settled back into their earthbound bodies.

  “Uh, hi, sir,” says the short, husky one. He’s holding his arms behind his back and looks mortified: Houdini caught mid-escape.