Drink For The Thirst To Come Part 10

Raymie and I looked at each other. His mouth was open.

I guess she looked at me because I was squinting. "I mean, you're what's left of your dad and me and Pop-pop and Nanna, all our people. You're it, what's here." She stopped talking and went back to framing.

"Family," she said smiling, touching my neck.

Okay. Why I almost dropped dead that night. It goes back to the picture that lay beneath the almost white paint and a bit to the mostly dead family that was gathering in the hallway. Beyond the hunt and trees, there was a castle. Could it be seen? No. I put it there with my head, built it through days of sitting, reading to myself or remembering Pop-pop's stories, bringing forth all the stuff that scared me in them. I put the castle on the far side of the woods. It was a huge stone thing on a hill on its own sunny plain, a little Sleeping Beauty, some of Prince Valiant, a bit of Rapunzel and some of the White Castle, downtown. The place was white, anyway. White in the sun, at night it was black and pierced a thousand places by candle-lit windows and torch-bright arrow slits. The place wasn't well thought out. I'd pictured a lot of towers, portcullises and drawbridges, a moat. Inside were feasting halls with house-high fireplaces, torches, banners everywhere. The halls had pine boughs spread across the floor. Pop-pop said they did that, that it made things smell good, like our living room at Christmas and after. Below were dungeons and pa.s.sageways, one secret place to another. There were high rooms of stone and tapestries. And here and there were rooms for just me and the friends I'd have.

And another place, a small place. No windows. Whenever I saw it in my head the room was yellow with candlelight, filled with the scent of hot wax mingled with spices-Pop-pop's tales always had people who risked the world for spices and riches. The room smelled old. Old like the mummy-room at the museum. Yet this was a room of small things, fragile this-and-thats. There were shelves and cupboards, chests and boxes, small vaults and built-in safes sealed with cunning locks and demonically clever traps-more Pop-pop words-that were filled with cogs, gears, springs, spools of wire, with limbs and digits, hearts and eyes for mechanical people and clockwork beasts, of gadget bits, parts of toys and tick-tock whimsies to amaze and delight. There was a table of instruments, tools that warped s.p.a.ce with vorpaled edges and measured the impossible with verniers of light. Things waited here and there, for repairs for building, just for so, for nice.

This place was the heart of it all, what I always thought of as a "dainty place." A Nanna-name. Nanna never saw the room, of course. It was only in my head and she was gone long before it existed even there. In life, whenever Nanna saw a precious thing, a lady-watch, a tiny cup, a spun-gla.s.s animal, or wooden b.a.l.l.s within rings inside boxes, she would cup it in her hands, hold it to her eye and breathe, "Oh, isn't this just what whimsy is? Isn't that a dainty place?"

I was young. That look, the move, her eye, those words are almost all I remember.

Raymond, of course, had never known, never heard, and I'd never spoken it, not to him nor anyone. Yet, that night, he was there, awake and back from some place, that dainty place at the heart of my castle of terrors.

He asked me about Nanna soon after. Half a dozen pictures of her were on the wall, photos that spanned her life from when she married Pop-pop, a bright hazy beauty next to him, a straight-haired, horse-faced, hard-collared boy, younger than Mom was now, all the way to her last days, skin dried to crinkles and not a lick of spit in her.

"Who's she?" Raymie said, pointing at the bride.

"Nanna," I said. "Grandmother. Mom's mom."

"And that? Who's that?"

"Nanna, too. She's old there."

"No!" he yelled, looking from one to the other. Then he laughed. "No."

The pictures opened doors. We'd meet in the hallway. He'd point, "Who's that?"

"Dad," I'd say or whomever.

"Tell me about your dad!"

"Your dad, too..." I'd say.

"No," he said, and looked again. "No. That's your dad. Where's my dad?"

"Same one."

Then he cried.

Or I'd be in my room working tricks from Malini, making b.a.l.l.s disappear, reappear, and the kid would drag me to the wall. "Where are we there?" or "Who's that?"

I'd answer if I could. If I didn't know, or tried to put him aside, Raymie wouldn't stop. "Well is that our mountain?" "Well is it our another Granddad?" "Well is it Pop-pop's brother?" "Well is that their house?" "I guess that's your dad, too?"

Sometimes I'd ask Mom. Sometimes she knew, other times she'd shake her head. "Pop-pop knew what that was, but..."

On one picture a woman posed by a steam tractor with spiral sprung iron wheels twice the woman's height. A dirty man perched on the machine's high saddle. "No. Pop-pop told me who and what, but darned if I remember." She had another squint, ticked her tongue and gave up.

Raymond always seemed sure, always gave me a look as though I held back some truth I didn't want to share. Ignorance was never enough so I took a hint from the Big Book of Malini and made things up.

That great iron and steam thing once had been a fearsome beast. Alive and raging, it was captured in the forest. "Yeah, the forest on the wall. Before." When captured, it had been changed into a machine. "Yep, that one." A mighty witch, our great, great-grandmom from the old country, cast the spell. "Her in the picture. There!" I pointed. "She used the machine with her Imp, Igor-him, up in the saddle, cripes!-they killed n.a.z.is in the war with it. The mountains? No, they're not our mountains, those're mountains beyond our mountain, they're mountains in a place you've never seen. You might. One day."

It was like that.

Raymie nodded his head, touched the picture, looked at me, smiled. That would be that. Much easier than a thousand questions after an "I don't know."

In my one of my tales an old guy, a stiff black suit standing to his shins in mud in the middle of a field, was an escaped priest from far away and over the seas. He'd fallen in love with a peasant girl who came to hear him, the young priest, serve ma.s.s. He left the monastery, where he'd been under a vow of loveless silence, to woo her. The monks chased them across the land. Along the way they'd become robbers just to earn their living.

It went on.

Finally, their backs to a cliff, out of bullets, the two decided to leap into the sea rather than surrender to the ravaging hordes of monks and nuns. In their final moment they were rescued by a crew of Barbary Pirates who climbed up the cliffs, set to and slew all the holy people, then offered the robber priest and his peasant love a place on their jolly ship. They accepted immediately and sailed upon the seven seas-the Atlantic, Pacific, Mediterranean, Superior, Arctic, Mississippi, and t.i.ticaca-where they laid waste to many towns and collected precious jewels, mountains of gold, countless bolts of fine silks, and spices galore from all around the world.

When the pirate priest and his corsair wife grew tired of blood and treasure, they retired to a farm near Philly. They built a castle-gone now-and raised a bunch of kids. The only photograph ever taken of them-"this one"-was snapped by one of the children-a school-chum of Pop-pop's who gave it him just before he marched off to war, making Pop-pop swear never to tell the whole true story, ever.

"He died in the war, of course," I told Raymie.

"How do you know it, then?" the kid asked.

"Pop-pop talked in his sleep," I said. "Didn't you know that?"

There were dozens of other tales and the next noise in the hallway came in late summer.

I woke. There was a cricket's insistent buzz at the heart of the house's silence. I had heard crickets in the yard, in the park. This was inside. Summer had lingered into deep September. Still, wet heat wrapped the nights. With windows open, this thing had come and settled into the walls I guessed. It played an insistent, metallic chitter.

I lay not sleeping. What if the bug chewed the wires, made a short? What if the constant sawing of cricket legs heated them to kindling and he burst to life inside the walls, set the house and us on fire?

Stupid? Yes. Possible? Well...

Into the hallway with me. And the chirrup, chirrup, stopped. Still, a bug could chew and chew so silently... I waited. Listened. Nothing, nothing. Nothing. To bed and moments later the chirrup-chirrup began again. And I was back. That pattern continued. Finally, I surrendered, slept. We lived.

I said nothing the next day. Raymie did.

"Woods're back," he said, his fork burrowing into his mashed potatoes. "Ch, ch, ch, ch, ch," he said, a tolerable impression.

"What?" Mother said.

"The forest is coming back. I heard." He did his noise again.

"There's a cricket in the baseboard," I said. "Must have come in a window. Something. It might eat the wires. Probably not, though, huh?"

"Well, some people think they're lucky," Mother said. "So, third grade? You like it better?"

I didn't. That's all she said about it. That's all I said about chewed wires. The kid smiled.

That night they were back: the heat, the ch-ch-ch and sudden silence. I became familiar with it, insect conflagration. Night-by-night the fear of flames became ordinary.

Top to bottom, it was a long stairway, fifteen steps, three more to the living room floor. That summer I had grown long enough in my legs and arms to feel that I'd be able to make the jump, eleven feet and three inches, top step to bottom landing. I'd tested my reach, leaned out from the top, walked my hand down the banister on the right, inched-down against the wall on the left. Long arms. I reached nearly halfway down by the time third grade started. Sat.u.r.day morning, I leaned farther than ever, body horizontal. I said a prayer to Dad and committed. I swung out on a whim, kicked my legs ahead to proceed the fall, enough, I hoped, to miss the last steps and land flat on the landing. I landed flat on the landing. Almost went head-first into the wall, but didn't. I was alive and whole and it never hurt a bit and the world was wonderful.

"Do it again!" The kid had been watching from the hallway. "Then me..." He came down a couple steps, grabbed the rail with both hands, looked at the s.p.a.ce ahead. He was thinking.

I yelped, ran, grabbed the kid, and dragged him to the landing. "You're too little. You'd bust your noodle." I tapped his head. "I've been waiting since I was your age to do that." I mussed his hair.

He gave me the look, the I-can-do-anything-I-want look, the you-can't-tell-ME look, and shoved his hair back.

"Breakfast," Mom called from the kitchen.

Raymond relaxed in my arms.

"Okay?" I eased off. "Okay, you won't?"

"Before it's lunch, guys, come on." Mom came in from the kitchen. "What?" she said, looking at the two of us facing off.

Raymond smiled. His cut-gla.s.s laugh squeezed out and he ran to the kitchen. That was that.

A week later I awoke. Another storm was coming. The cricket-cicada, whatever-had had a family. It was now locusts and other things, things I don't know what. Mom had to be awake, she had to be, but when I went into the hall, no, she wasn't, or if so, she'd ignored the night, gone back to sleep. They were behind the walls, both sides. Above the ch-ch-ch and lingering metallic buzz was a meaty, furry chatter that bounded back from the side pa.s.sage to the attic. When the full downpour settled across the house, the buzz almost disappeared into the storm. Driven rain scoured the walls and windows. In the lightning, the old people on the walls licked in and out of being, flickered between storm-brightness and the yellow limbo of the table lamp. Four times, I went to the hall to look, to listen. Raymie was there on the fifth, asleep, as before. He walked with blind confidence. His fingertips slid the walls like electric brushes gathering a charge. His hands tipped the pictures. The faces, places, stories tick-tocked back as he pa.s.sed. His eyes were open but he slept. Awake, he never had the face he had now. Now he was not here, he was there, inside, beyond night and storm, beyond the hunt, he was through the forest and into the castle, in the castle's still wax light, in the dainty place Nanna had breathed on and Pop-pop and I built with stories.

Raymond's eyes were on me. As the lightning chattered up and down the hallway, I saw... How to say? I saw figures, dark, familiar shades, figures of men, horses, dogs, deer. They rose from beneath the old lace surface to the flickering hall. Forest murmurs drove them upward. And with them arose the sure but distant voices of men and horses, dogs and sobbing women.

At the heart of it, Raymond, Raymond in the dainty place, so far away. I knew he was there.

And finally, when I could call, call him awake, call for help, for Mother, it was morning and I was in bed and the sky was blue and washed and my call was a whisper.

At supper Raymond sang.

We sat at the table, Mom's meatloaf and the last of the season's corn on the cob in front of us, a single bulb overhead. Nothing much was said about the night, the storm before, just that it had been one doozy of a downpour, huh, guys?

Yes. I'd heard Mom. Earlier, on the phone: Well, we were just kids, you know? Kids'll be kids. No, he's never been afraid of lightning! Why now? Well, kids will be kids! It's something new, always.

This to Aunt Erby, whose only kids had been dogs or gla.s.s figures on mirror shelves. I was the "he" Mother meant had never been afraid of lightning. And I wasn't. I didn't think so.

Raymond had forgotten walking the hall, his hands sliding, tipping the pictures. He didn't remember the dark shadows of horses, men and dogs and the near-dead deer surfacing. "Vast dark echoes rising from a deep mountain tarn," Pop-pop's Poe might have called it.

Raymie smiled and rolled his corn in b.u.t.ter and sang the same songless tune. He used both hands. He ate, singing.

"Raymond..."

His eyes swung, lazy, to Mom...

"Singing at table, Raymond?"

He smiled and chewed. Raymie had just begun eating cob corn by himself, b.u.t.tering, gnawing the ears. The kid s...o...b..red, smeared b.u.t.ter across his cheeks, up his nose. It dripped up his arms to his elbows. I hated watching. Corn is one of those things...

"Mom..." I tried.

"He's learning," she said.

"He's disgusting..."

She smiled. "He's a little boy."

"Cripes. Can't you eat evenly? That's disgusting, strands and pieces, your mouth everywhere, over the whole ear! Look." I took an ear from my plate. "Fifteen rows. Eat them three rows at a time, one end to the other, or four at a time three times and have one left of three rows."

Mom was laughing. So was Raymond.

"You don't eat 'em side to side and all around at the same time..."

They were rolling on the floor.

"Well, Jesus d.a.m.n Christ!" I yelled. "Little b.a.s.t.a.r.d's a pig!"

That was that for me that night.

That night Raymond broke the hallway light. Knocked it off the table then tripped over his feet and started screaming. I have no idea what he was doing at 3 in the morning. I didn't care. Mom handled it.

Two days later the vet was back. He limped up and down, staring at the hallway ceiling. Mom stood aside. "Oh, heck, yeah. We could," he said. "Maybe." He was talking to himself. "Yeah, a small one. Right there." He pointed. Mom nodded. "The joist should be there, I guess, coming off that side hall." He tapped the ceiling three, four places with a broom handle. "Yeah. There't is. Then I run your wire down, cut a channel, tie it into the same circuit as that there lamp..."

He drifted away, mumbling, tapping, listening. Finally, "Sure. Nice little chandelier just there. A little s.p.a.ckle. Switches down there and over there." He pointed. "No problem. You know what?"

"What?"

He looked right at her. "This is gonna be a whatchacallit."

Mom smiled. "No? What do you call it?"

"You know..."

Her smile became a laugh.

"A showplace. My calling card, you know? This hall. I ought to take pitchers, bring customers to see youse. Heck, I ought to just move in!" He laughed in the middle, his words still running.

The kid laughed with him and the vet ruffled his hair with his single hand.

Mom went red through her chuckles and put her arm around Raymie.

That night, the photographs came off the wall and went into boxes in the living room.

Next day the vet was back. He came back every day for a week. The chandelier was not so simple. Scaffolding moved in, permanently it seemed. Dust and buzz, rolls of wire were everywhere. I was in school most of the time but Raymie, Mom, and the vet were there. He was there when I left in the morning; he was there when I returned in the afternoon. Every day the hall looked the same: no further along. No, I lie! Every day it was a little worse, maybe. Every time I heard the vet working, he grunted, cursed, dropped things and dragged them, the walls shook, he pounded and said words! Words I couldn't.

He ate with us sometimes, then went back to work. Doing whatever. That, or he sat with Mom and Raymie, listening to the radio and laughing along. Sometimes Mom played music and danced. He'd sit and smile.

"Dance," the kid said, pushing the vet. "Dance like this!" And Raymie showed him.

"Naw," the vet said. "I don't."

"Leave it be, Raymond," Mom said.

"No, no. You can dance. I can. You can. See." Raymond hopped from foot to foot, arms out like he was holding Mom.