“Chopped all my clothes to pieces,” she said.
Davy never knew why, one night, after grieving over her ordinary disasters, she said, “The worst cold I ever heard of was Cold Friday. A man got froze at the gate of his house with his jug of whiskey at his lips.”
Davy shivered.
“There was a funeral, and the heat departed out of the church, and the preacher and all the families froze solid. And the preacher’s dog froze on the doorstep. They stayed that way all Friday. The root doctor was a little bit of a girl, and she froze right along with the rest of ’em. But the Lord saw fit to thaw her out. And soon everybody callin’ her Cold Friday, on account she’s the only one made it through.”
Except for the regular creak of the rocker, the air held perfectly still, as if it were listening.
“Lord, Lord, she be a powerful woman!” said Ernestina. “Five times she died, five times she come back. She froze and come back, she drowned and come back, her house burnt up and she fell in the fire and come back, she got the sleepy sickness and was buried alive and come back, she choked on a bone and come back.”
“I hear an owl,” whispered Davy.
“Too early for owls,” said Ernestina.
“I hear one.”
“The owl is old-time folks. She won’t hurt you. Oh, she was born the year the stars fell.”
And he did not know if “she” meant the owl or Cold Friday.
It was at night, when the stars looked huge, much closer than they looked at home, that Hal missed Helen and Clare the most. He wanted to show them the stars. They sparkled on the backs of the mountains that ringed the Lodge with the shapes of camels and laden beasts; he found himself lingering outside, though the Lodge had a very pleasant living room where he could sit around the fire with Stuart and Bob and listen to stories about what it was like on the mesa before the government came. Bob had camped around here as a boy. He’d lived in this very building when the lodge was a ranch school for boys; he’d seen the Indian ruins, which were still unexplored. You could find arrowheads and potsherds; they were so easy to find that the boys didn’t set much store by them. There was an Indian burial ground right by the lodge—would Hal like to see it? And Hal realized that he already had seen it and wondered why, on the manicured lawn of the lodge, this tiny square of land was fenced in and the grass allowed to grow rank and wild. No stones, no markers, nothing to tell you anybody was buried there.
Early in the morning he’d spied a horned toad sunning itself on the front steps like a little rococo dragon. And Bob told him the horned toads lived in the canyon. Bears lived there also and lumbered out at night to forage for garbage.
In the afternoon, he rode to Santa Fe with Stuart, who hired the station wagon that made the trip only on request; there was no other transportation if you didn’t have your own car. The Indian boy who drove it never exchanged a word with the passengers, and in his presence the passengers did not talk much to each other. When he took the curves on the narrow mountain road at fifty miles an hour, they suffered in silence. Nobody asked him to slow down.
The driver of the station wagon gave you two hours to do your business, and Hal, who had no business in Santa Fe, strolled under the colonnade of the Governor’s Palace and looked at the jewelry the Indians laid out on black cloths on the pavement. Necklaces, belts, rings, all turquoise and silver and so heavy—wouldn’t it weigh you down?
He chose a small silver bracelet inlaid with turquoise for Helen and a silver ring for Clare which showed the rainbow god in garnet and turquoise and jet. He would send it home for her if he couldn’t get there himself. But he would make every effort to go home, before the work here got under way. What a mysterious stranger I must be, he thought. I can’t tell them where I live or what I do.
On the trip back to the lodge, the driver stopped only at the guardhouse on the road into town and stayed only long enough for the guard to check their passes. The guard glanced down at their photographs, glanced up at their faces, and waved them on.
29
Signs and Wonders
BEN DIDN’T CALL FIRST. He just walked through the door on Saturday afternoon and nearly startled Wanda out of her wits. She’d expected him on Friday and was sure his leave had been canceled. Now when she saw him in the hall—older, thinner, exhausted—she ran up to him and hugged him and burst into tears.
“Did you eat yet? I made some wonderful junket.”
“What time is it?” he asked. He tried to hide his anxiety. Ever since he’d left the Pacific, he had heard, behind all other sounds, the ripple of seconds passing, like the clocks in Lieberman’s jewelry store, which always reminded him of a swiftly flowing stream. Cooper, packing the raft, looking for lost animals, gluing them back into his glass galaxy—Cooper must have heard it passing for months. The sea rising, rushing over the island—why, it was only a matter of time.
“It’s three o’clock. Are you hungry? We can eat early.”
“No, thanks, I ate on the train,” he lied. “Where’s Willie?”
“He went out. He didn’t say where. Tell me about the trip, tell me about everything!” she begged and realized that of course he couldn’t tell her, not right away, that it would have to come out piece by piece, and she added, “Later. We can talk about the trip later. Let me look at you!”
He walked restlessly around the house, touching things, picking them up and putting them down. Ashtrays. The Reader’s Digest. The framed photograph he’d sent her of himself in uniform. Queer to see it again here, like a gift coming back to the giver.
“You were in the Free Press,” she said, “and the News. I saved the papers for you.”
“Thanks, Ma. I’ll read them later. I really am glad you saved them.” He hoped this sounded convincing. But Wanda was not fooled.
“You don’t have to talk to me right now if you’ve got things to do.”
“Oh, Ma.”
“I know you’ll want to phone your friends. They’ve been trying to reach you.”
Ben froze. “What friends?”
“The boys you used to play ball with. They’re all home on furlough too.”
She left him alone in the kitchen, and he knew he should call her back and tell her that none of his friends mattered, it was she that he had missed all along. Instead, he picked up the receiver and dialed Clare’s number. Ten rings. Nobody answered. What right have I to expect her to be there always? he asked himself. He hung up and dialed the Liebermans. On the third ring, Sol picked it up.
“Hello?”
A hubbub of voices rose and fell in the background.
“It’s me—Ben.”
“My God! I can’t believe it!”
“Speak up, I can’t hear you,” shouted Ben.
“My folks are having a party. Let’s go to the park and talk. I’ll take my dad’s car and pick you up in ten minutes. All the guys are home.”
His voice faded away; Ben pressed the receiver to his ear.
“Tom and Louis and Tony came in on Friday,” Sol ran on, “and Henry and Charley and George got in last night. And Stilts phoned this morning.”
“They all got furloughs? Why?”
“Death in the family. I’ll be right over. I’ll bring the contract.”
“What contract?”
“The one you sent. It came in the mail last week. I’ll bring it.”
So it was true. That far-off conversation with Death had set these strange events in motion. Knowledge sank its invisible weight into his heart.
Outside the air was heavy with honeysuckle. Standing on the curb, Ben remembered how he and Willie used to suck honey out of the blossoms on the way home from school. That orange fragrance on their fingers afterward. Gone now, those secret rituals that made a truce between them. The well of contentment he’d carried around for years was poisoned now; Cooper rotted at the bottom, tainting everything.
When Sol drew up and honked, Ben, close to tears, could not utter a word. Sol babbled on to fill the silence.
>
“When they all got furloughs, I thought it was kind of strange. I know the army gives furloughs for a death in the family, but I didn’t think you got one when your parakeet died.”
“Henry got a furlough for that?” exclaimed Ben, astonished.
Sol nodded.
“They all got one for a death in the family. The Baccos’ cat died of old age. George’s turtle got stuck behind the radiator. Stilts’s dog got hit by a car. The only thing anybody could think of that died in Charley’s family was the grass. Well, I thought that was pretty odd. But when they all started telling me the same dream, I got scared. Because I’d had the same one. We all had this dream about a telegram.”
Ben found himself trembling.
“It was a singing telegram,” Sol went on. And to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” he sang, in an uncertain tenor:
“Tom and Charley and Henry and Ben and Clackett and Stilts and Sol and Louis and Tony, together again, shall gather with glove and ball.
“On the twenty-seventh of June at four o’clock they shall see the contract, sink or swim, between Harkissian and me.
“He sang it to each of us five times.”
“Who sang it?” asked Ben.
“He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He wore a very fancy three-piece suit and a winged cap. And he carried a caduceus.”
“A what?”
“A staff twisted with snakes. You know—the symbol of doctors.”
“Let me see the contract,” said Ben.
“It’s rolled up in the back seat. Real parchment, isn’t it? You won’t mind if I stop to pick up a couple more people, will you?”
“Who?” Ben asked.
“Tony. He’s practicing with a friend.”
Bent over the contract, Ben had not noticed the route, and now he lifted his head like a man digging a hole who stands up too fast and for an instant knows nothing but the turning of the earth. Under the gnarled trees, in tall grass, a girl in a white sun dress was sitting in an armchair. She leaned forward and lobbed a ball to Tony, who ran back under the branches, caught it, and lobbed it back. The girl’s hand, in its huge glove, shot out and plucked it from the air, and Ben gave a shout.
“Clare!”
In Paradise, the Lord of the Universe tosses a gold ball which breaks into a green ball which breaks into a black ball, and on the Burma Road, a child carried on his mother’s back quietly gives up the ghost (his mother will not discover this till morning), and Ben pitches a high fastball to Charley, who hits a line drive down center field and lopes to second.
The players have not said much to each other since they stepped into their old places, Tom at first and Henry at second, Sol on third and Louis at shortstop, Tony shading his eyes in right field, George chewing a licorice stick in left field, and Stilts behind the plate, sweating in the awful armor of the catcher.
Charley takes center field, and Louis steps into the batter’s box. He loses his sneaker halfway to first and flies out. What does it matter? They are not playing to win. Today they are playing to be healed, to let the eyes and mouths of the dead fall away from them, to step back into the eternal present of summer the way they lived as kids, playing till darkness came; to find the timeless space that turns ordinary men into heroes, where the only real world is the game itself, as old and reliable as the stars.
At home Ben wanted to get away, to be with Clare, but Wanda had set the kitchen table for three and spent all her blue ration tokens on a pot roast. She’d made brown gravy and biscuits and strawberry junket; how could he rush off? Had she not made all these delicacies for him? Willie, who cared for none of them, was eating stoically, the way he had eaten fried chicken in the Y camp when they were kids, moving systematically through each item in turn and stacking his dishes in a neat pile when he’d finished. Only when he was truing the edges of his dishes did Ben say, “We’ve got a game coming up, Willie. We might need you to sub.”
“I haven’t played baseball since ninth grade,” said Willie.
“Come on, Willie, you’re not that bad. We need you. It’s an exhibition game.”
“Against who?”
“An out-of-town team. The Dead Knights.”
He could not go on, though both his mother and Willie were waiting for details. Death, you stingy bastard, you might have sent the subs a dream, too. Let Sol tell them. It’ll have to be done just right. If they don’t believe us, they’ll blow the whole game.
After dinner Ben went to his room to put on a clean shirt and was aware of Willie hovering around the doorway.
“I don’t know if Mother told you,” he said. “Marsha and I are seeing a lot of each other.”
“That’s all right,” said Ben.
“I didn’t want any surprises or hard feelings.”
“No, that’s all right. I’m happy with Clare.”
“I thought maybe you’d called Marsha about me.”
“Why would I call Marsha? We’re through.”
What was it, then? Willie wondered. She had been so available to him, and now she was so evasive, so secretive. When he called her, her mother answered and said, “I’ll give her the message, she’ll call you back,” which she never did, and when he finally reached her, Marsha herself found excuses for not seeing him, finally blurting out, “I don’t need to give you reasons for the way I live my life.”
He’d asked her right out, “Is it Ben?” There’d been a story about Ben in the newspapers, the hero coming home. But Marsha had said no. How did Ben find that easy happiness? How did he live his life that he could say so quickly, “I’m happy with Clare”? How could he set such store by this crippled girl?
“Are you using the car?” asked Ben.
“Yes,” lied Willie. “I have a date with Marsha.”
“Okay. I’ll take the bike.”
His bicycle felt like a stranger to him; Willie had lowered the seat for his own use. The headlight, too, was out. The air was hot and still, the streets nearly empty. He could be happy here again; Cooper would no longer nudge at the edges of his sleep. Danger was far away.
As he turned down Orchard Drive, the lights in Clare’s house greeted him, and had he not been so eager to see her, he would have lingered under the trees and watched life passing in the windows, like a traveler, alone and in love with the familiar graces of strangers.
He walked his bike to the front door, threw it into the honeysuckle bush (the kickstand was gone), and knocked. After a long time the porch light flooded on, and Helen pushed open the screen door.
“Lord, it’s Ben! And you’re all out of breath!”
“Is Clare—?”
“She’s on the back porch,” said Helen. He heard her running through the house like a crier. “Ben’s here! Ben’s here!”
Clare was sitting with Davy on the glider, and she reached out her arms and Ben knelt and gathered them both into a hug.
“Davy,” called Nell from indoors.
“No!” screamed Davy.
“Bedtime,” said Helen, peeking out at them.
“Let him stay up a few minutes more,” pleaded Clare, who remembered the loneliness of her own banishment as a child when the grown-ups wanted to talk.
“I want Ben to tuck me in,” said Davy, sliding his hand into Ben’s.
“Davy,” said Helen, “Ben came to see Clare.”
“It’s no trouble,” said Ben.
Davy skipped up the stairs ahead of him, past the wedding photos of Vicky and Nell and the smaller, faded photographs of ancestors, of whom no one remembered anything except that they were part of the family.
Overhead a cracked voice sang,
“When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.”
“First we say good-night to Grandpa,” said Davy.
The light on the third-floor landing laid a golden path to Grandpa’s quarters i
n the attic. The floor lamp with the purple shade threw its glow over his bed, his books, and his chair, where he sat leafing through his hymnal. Like a moth he lived in a circle of light. The outer darkness bristled with the broken, the discarded, the out-of-season. Electric fans, cartons of outgrown clothes, boxes of puzzles marked “pieces missing.”
“Good night, Grandpa.”
Grandpa looked up.
“Who’s with you?”
“I’m Ben.”
“Clare’s Ben?” asked Grandpa.
“My Ben,” shouted Davy. “He’s my Ben!”
“On what evidence was Benjamin accused of theft by his brother Joseph?” asked Grandpa.
“Joseph hid a goblet in his sack and sent soldiers to search for it,” said Davy.
“Very good,” said Grandpa. “You may help yourself to a penny from my jar in the morning.”
“Good night, Grandpa,” Davy said again and raced to his mother’s room on the opposite side of the landing and climbed into bed.
“Aren’t you going to put on your pajamas?” asked Ben.
“Uh-uh. I always sleep in my bathing suit.”
Ben tucked the covers around him, averting his eyes from the bra and slip thrown over the back of Nell’s chair. His hand met something hard.
“You don’t want these in bed with you,” he said, pulling a half-filled book of defense stamps from under the covers.
“I do so,” said Davy. “Will you tuck me in tomorrow night too?”
“Sure,” said Ben.
He snapped off the light and hurried downstairs, afraid that Davy might call after him. He did not call. Grandpa stopped singing. Helen and Nell had disappeared. The house felt deserted save for Clare and himself. He sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulder.
“Where is everybody?” he asked.
“In the basement,” said Clare. “They think we want to be alone.”
“We do, but I don’t want to keep your mother and your aunt shut up in the basement.”
“They’ll come up if we close the porch door.”
He rose and shut the door that joined the porch to the dining room.
“Ben, thanks for taking Davy upstairs. He doesn’t remember his father very well, and he’s always looking for a new one.”
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