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“What now, Timothy?”
“What?”
She said, “In another hour the House will be empty. You will be here alone and getting ready to make a long journey. I want to go with you on your travels. Maybe we won’t be able to speak much along the way, but before we go, in the midst of all this, I want to ask you, do you still want to be like us?”
Timothy thought for a long moment and then said, “Well—”
“Speak up. I know your thoughts, but you must speak them.”
“No, I don’t want to be like you,” said Timothy.
“Is this the beginning of wisdom?” Grandmère said.
“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking. I’ve been watching all of you and I decided that maybe I want to have a life just like people have always had. I want to know that I was born and I guess that I have to accept the fact that I must die. But watching you, seeing all of you, I see that all these long years haven’t made any difference.”
“What do you mean?” said Great Grandmère.
A great
wind rushed by, sparks flew, singeing her dried wrappings.
“Well, are you all happy? I wonder about that. I feel very sad. Some nights I wake up and cry because I realize that you have all this time, all these years, but there doesn’t seem to be much that’s very happy that came of it all.”
“Ah, yes, Time is a burden. We know too much, we remember too much. We have indeed lived too long. The best thing to do, Timothy, in your new wisdom is to live your life to the fullest, enjoy every moment, and lay yourself down, many years from now, happily realizing that you’ve filled every moment, every hour, every year of your life and that you are much loved by the Family. Now, let us get ready to leave.
“And now,” wheezed old Nef, “you be my savior, child. Lift and carry.”
“Can’t!” cried Timothy.
“I am dandelion seed and thistledown. Your breath will drift, your heartbeat, sustain me. Now!”
And it was so. With one exhalation, a touch of his hands, the wrapped gift from long before Saviors and the parted Red Sea arose on the air. And seeing he could carry this parcel of dream and bones, Timothy wept and ran.
In the upheaval of wings and scarves of spirit illumination the swift passage of lightless clouds over the valleys in tumult caused such an upthrust suction that all of the chimneys, ninety-nine or one hundred, exhaled, shrieked, and let gasp a great outburst of soot and wind from the Hebrides, and air from the far Tortugas, and cyclone layabouts from nowhere Kansas. This erupted volcano of tropic and then arctic air struck and cracked the clouds to pummel them into a shower and then a downpour and then a Johnstown flood of drenching rain that quenched the fire and blackened the House in half ruin.
And while the House was being battered and drowned the downpour so smothered the rage in the mob that it pulled back in sudden clots, slogged about, trailing water, and dispersed on home, leaving the storm to rinse the facade of the empty shell, while there remained one great hearth and chimney which sounded its throat up to where a miraculous residue hung almost upon looms of nothing, sustained by no more than a few timbers and a sleeping breath.
There lay Cecy, quietly smiling at tumults, signaling the thousand Family members to fly here, amble there, let wind lift you, let earth gravitate you down, be leaf, be web, be hoofless print, be lipless smile, be mouthless fang, be boneless pelt, be shroud of mist at dawn, be souls invisible from chimney throats, all list and listen, go, you east, you west, nest trees, bed meadow grass, hitch ride of larks, dog-track with dogs, make cats to care, find bucket wells to lurk, dent farmland beds and pillows with no shape of heads, wake dawns with hummingbirds, hive snug with sunset bees, list, list, all!
And the last of the rain gave the charred shell of House a final rinse and ceased and there were only dying smokes and half a House with half a heart and half a lung and Cecy there, a compass to their dreams, forever signaling their rampant destinations.
There went all and everyone in a flow of dreams to faraway hamlets and forests and farms, and Mother and Father with them in a blizzard of whispers and prayers, calling farewell, promising returns in some future year, so to seek and hold once again their abandoned son. Goodbye, goodbye, oh yea, goodbye, their fading voices cried. Then all was silence save for Cecy beckoning more melancholy farewells.
And all this, Timothy perceived and tearfully knew.
From a mile beyond the House, which now glowed with sparks and plumes to darken the sky, to storm-cloud the moon, Timothy stopped under a tree where many of his cousins and perhaps Cecy caught their breath, even as a rickety jalopy braked and a farmer peered out at the distant blaze and the nearby child.
“What’s that?” He pointed his nose at the burning House.
“Wish I knew,” said Timothy.
“What you carrying, boy?”
The man scowled at the long bundle under Timothy’s arm.
“Collect ’em,” said Timothy. “Old newspapers. Comic strips. Old magazines. Headlines, heck, some before the Rough Riders. Some before Bull Run. Trash and junk.” The bundle under his arm rustled in the night wind. “Great junk, swell trash.”
“Just like me, once.” The farmer laughed quietly. “No more. Need a ride?”
