by Ron Savarese
What the hell! What are two little boys doing outside in this weather, at this hour? Good Lord, who are their parents? Inebriated as I was, I realized someone had to do something. I tried to move closer, each foot now feeling like a cinder block as I pulled it through the deep and icy-crusted, heavy snow. With each step, my feet sank further.
The wind blew snow globs against my cheeks, and into my eyes. Just barely, I saw one of the boys holding something. A branch? No, wait! I thought. It looked like a rifle. A toy? A carved wooden rifle? Who had those anymore? I hadn’t seen one of those since Albert and Paul and I used to play “Cowboys and Indians” when we were little, then, later, after the World War II movies came out, “army”—good guys against the bad guys—my oldest brother Jake taught me that. I always wanted to be one of the good guys.
Just like the three of us used to do, one of the boys pretended to shoot the other, who spun around, and fell down dramatically. He lay in the snow and laughed. Then he flapped his hands and feet to make a snow angel. But that was just how Albert used to…
Hey wait a minute. The boy stood and turned toward me. He motioned for me to come closer. I took a step. He laughed. Did he just call out my name?
“Albert is that you?” I yelled. The boys laughed, then turned away and ran. I hesitated for a moment, unsure of what I was seeing, unsure of what I was feeling. Then I tried to run after them. My legs dragged through the snow. The wind blew. The images faded in and out. I was disoriented: tequila running around inside my brain.
“Hey wait,” I yelled. “Who are you? Come back! Where do you live? Come back—you shouldn’t be out here alone!” No matter what, I was still a father. I spent the earlier part of the evening, before I got too numb to think about anything, worrying about my own kids driving through this storm. But these kids…something old stirred in me. Something from the time I was a teenager and I always, always, worried about Albert.
I stumbled and my hat fell off. I tried to pick it up, but my gloves were stiff and nearly frozen. “Goddamnit,” I yelled. I pulled them off and threw them into the snow. But my hands were too cold to grasp anything, and the clothing had frozen to the surface almost instantly. I couldn’t pick up anything.
The two boys ran and laughed and called out to me to come and play with them. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get close. I was confused and exhausted and tired, and I wanted to go home and sleep. But I couldn’t leave them out there. I yelled out again, “Wait! Where are you going? Slow down. Let me catch up!”
I tried to quicken my pace but my legs wouldn’t move any faster. The boys appeared and faded, appeared again and disappeared. What the hell am I doing out here? I’m drunk, it’s three in the morning and I’m out in the middle of a field. Maybe the whole thing is just some weird tequila-induced hallucination.
Then something cracked. I looked down.
It was the sound of cracking ice and—maybe—wood? And then the ground gave way. I fell through a sheet of ice and hardened snow. I rolled through cold black nothingness. I tried to grab something, anything. I tumbled. I slid. I rolled and cracked one leg, and then the other on something solid. I hit my head on cold, hard ice.
I gasped for air. Then slowly my awareness faded.
I was out of it for a few minutes. Or had it been hours? I didn’t know. When I came to, it was dark. Black. I was sober and cold and wet. Holy shit! What just happened? I must have fallen through the ice into a cave, or some sort of recess in the ground. Burning and stinging pain coursed through my legs. They’re broken, I told myself.
“Anybody out there?” I yelled.
Of course there was no one out there. I was a drunken idiot chasing ghosts from the past. I was buried in the snow. I struggled to pull myself out, tried to dig my way upward with my hands. But there was no leverage. Nothing really to hold onto. Slowly I understood: I was trapped. I was in the middle of a field, in some sort of a hole, and no one knew where I was. My thoughts bounced against each other in panic: What am I going to do? How am I going to get out of here? Oh my god, am I’m going to die? My cell phone? Was it in my pocket? Ah shit, I left the thing in the goddamn car.
But the panic began to seep away. A slow, lazy drowsiness flowed over me. This is what happens when you freeze to death, I thought. You just fall asleep and never wake up. But I wasn’t ready to sleep. I wasn’t ready to let go. Not yet.
I forced myself to stay awake. What was it I used to do when I was driving late at night, and wanted to keep going despite the incipient sleepiness? I’d find an “oldies” radio station. Turn the music up full-blast, and sing along— yelling out those words.
I slapped myself on the cheeks. No music here though, tough luck, but I hit myself with hard, stinging slaps that brought the blood back to both my face and hands. I took a deep breath. Some songs—could I keep myself awake by singing? Oh shit. Don’t sing. Pray. Sing out that prayer: Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou…
Come on now. Stay awake. You can do it. Don’t fall asleep. It’s going to be okay. Someone will find you.
… amongst woman and blessed is the fruit of…
Okay, that’s good. Stay with it. Yell it out. Scream it out. Stay awake.
No. Don’t fall asleep. Fight it. Fight it. But it’s so damn cold.
Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary…
Oh Jesus, help me.
What happened? How long have I been in here? I can’t see, it’s so dark. And what about the kids? Did they make it in? What time is it? It’s gotta be after three. Wait, it’s getting warm. Oh yeah, there’s a light up ahead. Gotta get to it. Is that a tunnel? Oh yeah, a tunnel and a light. Gotta get closer to the light. Is that a fire? Yes, yes, it’s a fire! Warm and bright. No, don’t go there. Stay awake. Stay in the dark. Don’t go to the light. Stay in the dark. Stay awake. But it’s so damn cold. What’s that sound?
THE LIGHT PLACE
Soft, soft, music. I hear the most wonderful music ever. The voice of an angel. If angels really do exist. Slowly the cave fills with a soft glow, like the morning of a new day. This has to be a dream, I think. I close my eyes. Open them. Blink a few times and there he is: a little boy sitting against the cave’s wall.
How did he get in here?
He hugs his knees against his chest. A mop of wavy golden hair falls to just below his eyebrows. Bright, emerald green eyes shine from underneath layers of hair. An orange scarf draped around his neck covers his chest, and pools in soft folds at his feet. His small mouth shapes the sounds and notes of music.
“Who are you?” I ask.
The boy stops singing.
“It’s my turn to hide now,” he says, in a voice so pure and soft I’m not entirely sure he has actually spoken.
“What did you say?”
Is this the child I was following, I wonder? He’s about the same size, and he looks close to the same age. Six, maybe seven?
I look at the smooth and silky walls glistening in the light.
“What did you say to me?” I ask again.
He doesn’t respond. He rubs the back of his head, and stares at me. “It’s my turn to hide,” he says. He glances toward an opening in the cave that I hadn’t noticed before, a small opening on the side where the light comes in.
“Is that how you got in here?” I ask.
He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t look at me. It’s as if we’re having separate conversations. “Start counting!” he says.
This kid’s beginning to irritate me. He’s beginning to irritate me a lot. I don’t have time for this. “I’m not playing a game,” I bark. “I’ve broken both my legs. I need help. I need to get out of here before I freeze to death.”
“Why don’t you just get up and walk out?” he asks.
This kid is no help, I think. With the backs of my arms and my hips, I push against the ice around me, and manage to leverage myself against the side of the cave.
“Look, kid. You’ve got to pay attention to what
I’m saying to you. Listen to me, and stop messing around with the back of your head,” I tell him.
And with that, he stops. He reaches into the snow and shapes a handful of snow into a geometric design with lacy spires and extensions, glittery like a Christmas ornament snowflake. He tosses it gently back and forth between his two small hands.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He shoves the molded snow into the chest pocket of his jacket and looks at me.
I try again. “Apparently you don’t understand what’s happened,” I say. “I’m trapped here. I can’t move my legs. No one can hear me. No one will be able to find me.”
“That’s silly, I found you,” he says. “You weren’t that hard to find. You have to be better at hiding if you want to win this game. Do you want to play or not?”
I whip my head back and forth to wake myself up. I can’t believe I’m having a conversation with a child in the light of day, when just a few moments ago it was dark and I was freezing and in pain.
“It’s my turn to hide now. Start counting,” he says. “And when you get to ten, you try to find me. If you find me, you’ll get something really good.” The little boy taps the pocket where he put the snowflake. “That’s how we play the game.”
This damn kid thinks we’re playing hide and seek, I realize. Did he fall into the cave with me and suffer a concussion?
“Your leg is okay,” the boy says. “Just try it. You’ll see.”
I touch my leg, gently, gently. Then I bend it slightly. It doesn’t hurt anymore.
He smiles. Then he crawls out through the opening.
“Start counting,” he says.
ALBERT
Albert sat alone and watched a bird land on the railing of the front porch. Albert didn’t move. He just watched. Then he lifted his arm, up toward the bird. The bird twitched, moved its head, side to side. Albert held his arm steady and closed his eyes. Albert was eleven. I was eight.
I wondered what he was thinking. Did he know I was watching from inside the house? Maybe he sensed me there. He told me he could do that sometimes. Maybe he sensed me the way he sensed some people’s thoughts. He said sometimes he knew what people were going to say before they said it. I told him I thought he was lucky. I told him I thought he could do a lot of stuff with that. I told him I thought he could use that ability to his advantage. Mom said I was always looking for the advantage. She said Albert doesn’t understand what it means to have an advantage.
He wasn’t like me. I found that out for sure that day his mother brought him over to our house. Albert stayed outside and sat on the porch. He was waiting for me to come out and play. His mother sat with my mother and cried. She told my mother all about Albert’s problem. I listened for a while.
Afterwards, they told me they were counting on me to look out for him. They said he had some kind of condition. I knew something was wrong because he had been twitching and moving his arms and hands around in a weird way more than usual lately. He twitched just like the head of that bird I was watching on the porch railing. He’d done it as long as I could remember. But it seemed to be worse lately, and Albert’s mom said it probably wasn’t going to get better.
Albert doesn’t learn the way most kids learn, his mother said. He’s a little slow. I knew he was smart though, just not in the usual way. He was going to start going to a new school for special kids in a few weeks. Some kind of happy school. Now they know he’s never going to be a regular grown up. I wondered what they meant by that. His mother had a funny name for his condition that I can’t remember. It didn’t matter. Albert was my cousin and he was one of my best friends. And that wasn’t going to change because of some condition.
Albert looked like a normal kid. His face was round and happy. He smiled a lot. He was bigger than me and Paul. Mom said he was husky. He was the oldest of the three of us: two years older than Paul, three years older than me. Albert was strong. He had big strong muscles on his arms and legs, and a big barrel chest. He was clumsy and awkward though. Sometimes he had a hard time defending himself. Sometimes the neighborhood kids picked on him. But Paul and I were usually there to stick up for him.
Albert liked to play baseball. He couldn’t catch like Paul and me. But he could hit the ball a mile. So we usually let him hit clean-up when we played ball in the field down the street.
The bird fluttered its wings and flew up, off the railing. Then, wow!—it landed right on Albert’s arm. Albert held still. He whispered something to the bird. Were they talking to each other? I wondered. Albert jerked his arm ever so slightly. The bird jumped off. Albert watched the bird fly away.
THE LIGHT PLACE
Start counting? Did the little boy hear anything I said? I’m hurt and I have to get out of here. I weigh the mounting odds against me and decide I have to do something. So in spite of the absurdity of my situation, I follow the little boy’s instructions and begin counting.
One…Two…Three…By the time I reach ten I’m able to move both my legs without any pain. I roll over onto my hands and knees and crawl out through the opening which, strangely enough, is now large enough for me.
And then I’m warm. I stand and look for the little boy. No sign of him anywhere. Mountains and valleys stretch into the distance forever. The mountains are covered in white. It’s snowing, but the snow is neither cold nor wet. I try to catch the snowflakes. Dozens land on my hand. They don’t melt. They disappear.
To my side, a sun sinks below the horizon, sending streams of orange and lavender across the sky. On the other side, a disc rises in a shimmer of spreading yellow that overlaps in layers across the lavender glow.
Almost without thinking, I take a step forward, on legs I thought were broken. Not far from where I’m standing, a cottage of field stone in shades of brown nestles in the snow, surrounded by pines and willows, their snow-laden branches drooping like thick strands of white, coarse hair.
The cottage has two chimneys. Pale smoke wafts into the orange and lavender sky. Past the front door, a shallow stream flows over rounded pebbles and rocks.
I stuff my hands into the pockets of my parka even though they aren’t really cold.
Yellow light pours from small windows. A wreath made of something like the dark green leaves of magnolia hangs on a lamppost on the other side of the brook, and another just like it is mounted on the cottage door, encircling a brass door knocker. The door is shaded by an awning.
This isn’t my hometown. This isn’t any place I’ve ever seen.
I cross the stream on a stone bridge. At the cottage, I step onto the door stoop, but before I can knock, the door opens. A woman stands in the doorway.
She’s wearing a rose-colored dress, a beige linen apron, and a robin’s-egg blue scarf draped around her shoulders. Her auburn hair falls to just above her shoulders and she stands straight and erect. She has a white powdery substance on one cheek. Her eyes are green. When she smiles her red lips part in what seems to be an expression of joy.
“Finally!” she says. “I thought you’d never get here!” She wipes her hands on the apron.
“Do I know you?” I ask. I shift my weight and move my legs back and forth. Just to feel them. To make sure they don’t hurt. To make sure they aren’t broken.
“I don’t know. Do you?” She tilts her head, coquettishly.
“I’m sure I remember you from when I was a boy, or from somewhere else. You look familiar, younger maybe and…please, who are you?
“Ah.” She interrupts. “Be patient.”
I look into the cottage, and try to calm myself.
Whoever this woman is seems to be lurking just at the edge of my consciousness. But just like that damn kid, the little boy in the cave, I can tell she isn’t going to make it easy for me. Okay, I’ve had it with these people and their games and coyness.
I clench my fists and stand straight and look into her eyes real hard. “Where am I?” I demand.
Her smile grows broader. Teasing, not mocking.
Why is this woman playing a game with me? Does she think this is fun? This is serious. I don’t know where the hell I am or how I got here. I want to know what’s going on. I’m pissed off.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“You don’t know?” The woman smiles.
“Oh come on now—no, I don’t know. I walked in a snowstorm in a field. I saw two boys playing. I chased after them. I fell through the snow. I was trapped in some kind of crevice or snow cave. It was dark and cold and I thought I was going to die. Then I heard a little boy singing. He told me he was playing a game. Right now I just want to get out of here. My family is waiting for me at Paul’s house. Look, could you just help me out here?”
Surely I must be dreaming. I tap my fist on the brown stones a few times. Solid.
“He has something for you.”
I roll my eyes and sigh. “So is this some kind of game?” I hear a sound and turn toward it. I could swear I saw that little boy run by. I look back at the sky and the shimmering colors and the landscape and it’s all so beautiful and peaceful, and my irritation drains from me because I simply can’t hold it with all this beauty around me. Okay, I think, I know it’s a cliché, but have I died and gone to heaven?
Did I just hear someone say something? I turn back to the woman.
“It’s so beautiful,” I whisper. “The light here is…”
“Yes. The light is.” she says.
She steps outside to stand on the stoop next to me. She wraps the scarf gently around her neck.
“I must be dreaming. But if this is a dream, you sure seem real.” I whisper.
The woman looks at me and I could swear she says something but her mouth doesn’t move. Did she actually say the words—” the light place?”—or did I imagine it? Or was it me who came up with those words later? Nothing makes sense. But standing here on the doorstep with this woman I almost remember, it’s as if certain things enter my mind on their own—spoken or unspoken—and somehow I’m being told that I’m returning to a place I once inhabited a long time ago.
I look beyond the woman, into the room, and see a stone fireplace that crackles and flares; red and orange flames make shadows on the walls. And I smell the most wonderful aroma.
