The Toynbee Convector (7 page)

Running to the window, she looked out and gave one shriek that shot the cousins home. All four, at the moment of concussion, had been in various parts of the county asylum, opening trapdoors in wild people’s heads and peeking in at maelstroms of confetti and wondering at the colors of madness, and the dark rainbow hues of nightmare.

All the Family stood by the collapsed barn, stunned. Hearing Cecy’s cry, they turned.

“What happened?” cried John from her mouth.

“Yes, what!” said Philip, moving her lips.

“My God,” gasped William, staring from her eyes.

“The barn burned,” said Tom. “We’re
dead
!”

The Family, soot-faced in the smoking yard, turned like a traveling minstrel’s funeral and stared up at Cecy in shock. “Cecy?” asked Mother, wildly. “Is there someone, I mean,
with
you?”

“Yes, me, Tom!” shouted Tom from her lips.

“And me, John.”

“Philip!”

“William!”

The souls counted off from the young woman’s mouth.

The family waited.

Then, as one, the four young men’s voices asked the final, most dreadful question: “Didn’t you save just one body?” The Family sank an inch into the earth, burdened with a reply they could not give.

“But—” Cecy held on to her own elbows, touched her own chin, her mouth, her brow, inside which four live ghosts knocked elbows for room. “But—what’ll I
do
with them?” Her eyes searched over all those faces below in the yard. “My boy cousins can’t stay here. They simply can’t stand around in my
head
!”

What she cried after that, or what the cousins babbled, crammed like pebbles under her tongue, or what the Family said, running like burned chickens in the yard, was lost

Like Judgment Day thunders, the rest of the barn fell.

* * *

With a hollow roar the fire went up the kitchen chimney. An October wind leaned this way and that on the roof, listening to all the Family talk in the dining room below.

“It seems to me,” said Father. “Not seems, but is!” said Cecy, her eyes now blue, now yellow, now hazel, now brown.

“We must farm the young cousins out. Find temporary hospices for them, until such time as we can cull new bodies—”

“The quicker the better,” said a voice from Cecy’s mouth now high, now low, now two gradations between. “Joseph might be loaned out to Bion, Tom given to Leonard, William to Sam, Philip to—” All the uncles, so named, snapped their hackles and stirred their boots. Leonard summed up for all. “Busy. Overworked. Bion with his shop, Sam with his arm.”
“Gah—” Misery sprang from Cecy’s mouth in four-part harmony.

Father sat down in darkness. “Good grief, there must be
some
one of us with plenty of time to waste, a small room to let in the backside of their subconscious or the topside of their trapdoor Id! Volunteers!
Stand
!”

The Family-sucked an icy breath, for suddenly Grand ma was on her feet, but pointing her witch-broom cane. “That man right there’s got all the time in the world. I hereby solicit, name, and nominate
him
!”

As if their heads were on a single string, everyone turned to blink at Grandpa.

Grandpa leaped up as if shot. “No!”

“Hush.” Grandma shut her eyes on the question, folded her arms, purring, over her bosom. “You got all the time in the world.”

“No, by Joshua and Jesus!”

“This,” Grandma pointed around by intuition, eyes closed, “is the Family. No one in the world like us. We’re particular strange-fine. We sleep days, walk nights, fly the winds and airs, wander storms, read minds, hate wine, like blood, do magic, live forever or a thousand years, whichever comes first In sum, we’re the Family. That being true and particular there’s no one to lean on, turn to, when trouble comes—”

“I won’t—”

“Hush.” One eye as large as the Star of India opened, burned, dimmed down, shut. “You spit mornings, whittle afternoons, and catbox the nights. The four nice cousins can’t stay in Cecy’s upper floor. It’s not proper, four wild young men in a slim girl’s head.” Grandma’s mouth sweetened itself. “Besides, there’s a lot you can teach the cousins. You been around long before Napoleon walked in and then ran out of Russia, or Ben Franklin got the pox. Good if the boys were tucked in your ear for a spell. What’s inside, God knows, but it might, I say might, improve their posture. Would you deny them
that
?”

“Jumping Jerusalem!” Grandpa leaped to his feet. “I won’t have them all wrestling two fells out of three between my left ear and my right! Kick the sides out of my head. Knock my eyes like basketballs around inside my skull! My brain’s no boardinghouse. One at a time! Tom can pull my eyelids up in the morning. William can help me shove the food in, noons. John can snooze in my cold pork-marrow half-into dusk. Philip can dance in my dusty attic nights. Time to myself is what I ask. And clean up when they
leave
!”

“Done!” Grandma circled like an orchestra leader, waving at the ghosted air. “One at a time, did you hear, boys?”

“We heard!” cried an anvil chorus from Cecy’s mouth.

“Move ‘em in!” said Grandpa.

“Gangway!” said four voices.

And since no one had bothered to say which cousin went first, there was a surge of phantoms on the air, a huge tide-drift of storm and unseen wind.

Four different expressions lit Grandpa’s face. Four different earthquakes shook his brittle frame. Four different smiles ran scales along his piano teeth. Before Grand pa could protest, at four different gaits and speeds, he was run out of the house, across the lawn, and down the abandoned railroad tracks toward town, yelling against and laughing for the wild hours ahead.

The family stood lined up on the porch, staring after the rushing parade of one.

“Cecy! Do something!”

But Cecy, exhausted, was fast asleep in her chair.

* * *

That
did
it.

At noon the next day the big, dull blue, iron engine panted into the railroad station to find the Family lined up on the platform, Grandpa leaned and supported in their midst. They not so much walked but carried him to the day coach, which smelled of fresh varnish and hot plush. Along the way, Grandpa, eyes shut, spoke in a variety of voices that everyone pretended not to hear.

They propped him like an ancient doll in his seat, fastened his straw hat on his head like putting a new roof on an old building, and talked into his face.

“Grandpa, sit up. Grandpa, mind your hat. Grandpa, along the way don’t drink. Grandpa, you in there? Get out of the way, cousins, let the old man speak.”

“I’m here.” Grandpa’s mouth and eyes gave some birdlike twitches. “And suffering for their sins. Their whiskey makes my misery. Damn!”

“No such thing!”
“Lies!”
“We did nothing!” cried a number of voices from one side, then the other of his mouth. “No!”

“Hush!” Grandma grabbed the old man’s chin and focused his bones with a shake. “West of October is Cranamockett, not a long trip. We got all kinds of folks there, uncles, aunts, cousins, some with and some without children. Your job is to board the cousins out and—”

“Take a load off my mind,” muttered Grandpa, a tear trickling down from one trembling eyelid. “But if you can’t unload the damn fools,” advised Grandma, “bring ‘em back alive!”

“If I live through it.”

“Goodbye!” said four voices from under his tongue.

“Goodbye!” Everyone waved from the platform. “So long, Grandpa, Tom, William, Philip, John!”
“I’m here now, tool” said a young woman’s voice. Grandpa’s mouth had popped wide. “Cecy!” cried everyone. “Farewell!”
“Good night nurse!” said Grandpa. The train chanted away into the hills, west of October.

* * *

The train rounded a long curve. Grandpa leaned and creaked his body.

“Well,” whispered Tom, “here we are.”

“Yes.” A long pause. William went on: “Here we are.”

A long silence. The train whistled.

“I’m tired,” said John.

“
You’re
tired!” Grandpa snorted.

“Bit stuffy in here,” said Philip.

“Got to expect that. Grandpa’s ten thousand years old, aren’t you, Grandpa?”

“Four hundred; shut up” Grandpa gave his own skull a thump with his fingers. A panic of birds knocked about in his head. “Cease!”

“There,” whispered Cecy, quieting the panic. “I’ve slept well and I’ll come for
part
of the trip, Grandpa, to teach you how to hold, stay, and keep the resident crows and vultures in your cage.”

“Crows! Vultures!” the cousins protested. “Silence,” said Cecy, tamping the cousins like tobacco in an ancient uncleaned pipe. Far away, her body lay in her bedroom as always, but her mind wove around them softly; touched, pushed, enchanted, kept. “Enjoy. Look around.”

The cousins looked.

And indeed, wandering in the upper keeps of Grandfather’s head was like surviving in a mellow attic in which memories, transparent wings folded, lay piled all about in ribboned bundles, in files, packets, shrouded figures, strewn shadows. Here and there, a special bright memory, like a single ray of amber light, struck in upon and shaped here a golden hour, there a summer day. There was a smell of worn leather and burnt horsehair and the faintest scent of uric acid from the jaundiced beams that ached about them as they jostled invisible elbows.

“Look,” murmured the cousins. “I’ll be darned.
Sure
!”

For now, quietly indeed, they were peering through the dusty panes of the old man’s eyes, viewing the great hellfire train that bore them and the green-turning-to-brown autumn world swinging by, all of it passing as traffic does before an old house with cobwebbed windows. When they worked Grandpa’s mouth it was like ringing a dulled clapper in a rusty churchbell. The sounds of the world wandered in through his hairy ears like static on a badly tuned radio.

“Still,” Tom admitted, “it’s better than having no body at all.”
“I’m dizzy,” said John. “Not used to bifocals. Can you take your glasses off, Grandpa?”

“Nope.”

The train banged across a bridge in thunders.

“Think I’ll take a look around,” said Tom.

Grandpa felt his limbs stir.

“Stick right where you are, young man!”

Grandpa shut his eyes tight.

“Put up the shades, Grandpa! Let’s see the sights!”

His eyeballs swiveled under the lids.

“Here comes a pretty girl, built one brick atop another! Quick!” Grandpa tightened his lids. “Most beautiful girl in the world!” Grandpa couldn’t help but open one eye. “Ah!” said everyone. “
Right
, Grandpa?”
“Nope!”

The young Woman curved this way and that, leaning as the train pushed or pulled her; as pretty as something you might win at a carnival by knocking the milk bottles down.

“Bosh!” Grandpa slammed his windows shut.

“Open, Sesame!”

Instantly, within, he felt his eyeballs redirected.

“Let go!” shouted Grandpa. “Grandma’ll kill me!”

“She’ll never
know
!”

The young woman turned as if called. She lurched back as if she might fell on
all
of them. “Stop!” cried Grandpa. “Cecy’s with us! She’s innocent and—”

“Innocent!” The great attic rocked with laughter.

“Grandfather,” said Cecy, very softly. “With all the night excursions I have made, all the traveling I have done, I am not—”

“Innocent,” said the four cousins.

“Look here!” protested Grandpa.

“No, you look,” whispered Cecy. “I have sewn my way through bedroom windows on a thousand summer nights. I have lain in cool snowbeds of white pillows and sheets, and I have swum unclothed in rivers on August noons and lain on riverbanks for birds to see—”

“I—” Grandpa screwed his fists into his ears—”will not listen!”

“Yes.” Cecy’s voice wandered in cool meadows remembering. “I have been in a girl’s warm summer face and looked out at a young man, and I have been in that same young man, the same instant, breathing out fiery breaths, gazing at that forever summer girl. I have lived in mating mice or circling lovebirds or bleeding-heart doves. I have hidden in two butterflies fused on a blossom of clover—”

“Damn!” Grandpa winced.

“I’ve been in sleighs on December midnights when snow fell and smoke plumed out the horses’ pink nostrils and there were fur blankets piled high with six young people hidden warm and delving and wishing and finding and—”

“Stop! I’m sunk!” said Grandpa.

“Bravo!” said the cousins. “More!”

“—and I have been inside a grand castle of bone and flesh—the most beautiful woman in the world...!”

Grandpa was amazed and held still.

For now it was as if snow fell upon and quieted him. He felt a stir of flowers about his brow, and a blowing of July morning wind about his ears, and all through his limbs a burgeoning of warmth, a growth of bosom about his ancient flat chest, a fire struck to bloom in the pit of his stomach. Now, as she talked, his lips softened and colored and knew poetry and might have let it pour forth in incredible rains, and his worn and iron-rusty fingers tum bled in his lap and changed to cream and milk and melting apple-snow. He looked down at them, stunned, clenched his fists to stop this womanish thing!

“No! Give me back my hands! Wash my mouth out with soap!”

“Enough talk,” said an inner voice, Philip.

“We’re wasting time,” said Tom.

“Let’s go say hello to that young lady across the aisle,” said John. “All those in favor?”

“Aye!” said the Salt Lake Tabernacle choir from one single throat. Grandpa was yanked to his feet by unseen wires.

“Any dissenters?”

“Me!” thundered Grandpa.

Grandpa squeezed his eyes, squeezed his head, squeezed his ribs. His entire body was that incredibly strange bed that sank to smother its terrified victims. “Gotcha!”

The cousins ricocheted about in the dark.

“Help! Cecy! Light! Give us light! Cecy!”

“I’m here!” said Cecy.

The old man felt himself touched, twitched, tickled, now behind the ears, now the spine. Now his knees knocked, now his ankles cracked. Now his lungs filled with feathers, his nose sneezed soot.