On the Wing (20 page)

“You poor man,” she said. She brought his hands to her lips and kissed them.

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” I muttered.

“I didn't give up,” he said. He stood a little taller. “I told myself that the boy who had flown into town hadn't quit, and I wasn't going to quit either. So, as some fools do, I persisted in my folly. I worked my way through college, and I went into the family business, becoming my father's partner in our little pharmacy in town. I had no wife, no children, and no real future, but I always had the same dream. I bought more plans, more materials and tools. And again I failed.”

“Darn that dream,” said Albertine.

“Dreaming can be a positive thing,” I asserted. Albertine gave me another look. “Not while driving, of course,” I added.

“I bought kits,” said the jester, shaking his head in disbelief at the extent of his folly and making those damned bells jingle again, “kits that were supposed to be so easy, so complete, so carefully designed that they were—foolproof!” He began to laugh. It was a sharp, giggling laugh, like a naughty child's. “Foolproof! They were foolproof!” He did a little dance in place, playing the fool for us now, doing his job, entertaining us. “And every time I tried to build a plane from a foolproof kit I proved that there could be no kit so simple that it was proof against the efforts of
this
fool!” He took a few steps, side to side, like a hopping crab. “Whatever it took, however hard he had to work,
this
fool could find a way to fail!”

Albertine was dabbing at her eyes. The jester went on dancing as he spoke, taking little hopping steps that jingled his bells.

“I hit bottom,” he said. “I got the idea that if I took the latest kit plane apart completely and put it back together again, I could make the damned thing fly. I won't tell you how many times I did that. If I told you, you'd think I was insane. Let's just say that I tried and tried and tried. And failed and failed and failed. But that's not all. I let the business go. So I failed at that, too. I lost the pharmacy. I lost the family home. I turned to drink. I wandered around town all day, aimlessly, drunk, and slept in the park at night. I was as low as I could go.”

The jester stopped dancing and hid his face with his hands.

From behind his hands he said, “I'm sorry to burden you with my troubles. I shouldn't be making you listen to my tale of woe—after all, it's not your fault.”

“Well,” I said with a sigh, “in a way it is, because you see, I was—”

Albertine shot me a look. I shrugged and shut up.

The jester grinned at us suddenly. “But here comes the good part,” he said. “Here comes the story of my success!”

“Great!” I said. “Let's hear it.”

“Every now and then, when the weather was bad, the local cops would throw me into jail for the night, clean me up, give me a hot meal, and try to ‘get me on my feet.' I'd gone to school with some of those cops. We'd grown up and grown old in this town. Some of them were nearing retirement. They knew about my obsession—my dream of flight—and I couldn't help feeling that they were laughing at me. All it took was a word, a look, a certain tone of voice. One day, I knew it beyond any doubt. It was a miserable day, cold and wet, and I was willing to endure the shame of their charity and their ridicule for the warmth of a cell, so I let them take me in without protest. After dinner, the chief of police himself paid me a visit. ‘They're building a big new resort hotel in town,' he said, casually. ‘Out by the highway. One of those Knight's Lodgings places. You might be able to get a job there. It looks like you're just what they're looking for.' He handed me the local paper, folded to an ad, and he left me alone with it. I could hear him snickering as he walked away. I picked up the paper and read the ad, and I knew he was right. I was just what they were looking for.”

He began that dance again.

“And that's how I became a professional fool!” he shrieked.

Albertine and I looked at each other.

“If it's any consolation,” I said, reaching out to him in a comrade's way, “I too have been a fool at times, and I—”

A look of terror came over his face.

“But,” I said hurriedly, forcefully, “I assure you that I have no designs on your position. None whatsoever. I'm not a professional fool. Honest. Just an amateur. I shall neither usurp you nor make the attempt. When I play the fool, it is in private, in milady's chambers, exclusively for her entertainment.”

“Let's go to bed,” said Albertine.

*   *   *

YOU MIGHT THINK that I lay in bed, restless, wracked with guilt. No, I didn't. I owe it to Albertine that I fell asleep quickly and slept through the night. Before we turned in, she threw her arms around me, hugged me, kissed me, hugged me again, and said, “It really wasn't your fault. If it hadn't been flying, it would have been some other dream, inspired by some other traveler. It wasn't your fault.”

*   *   *

IN THE MORNING, at breakfast, where a different jester was cutting capers, pulling eggs from the ears of male guests and pinching their ladies' bottoms, I thanked her for the consolation she had given me, and I asked her, “Did you sleep well?”

She burst into tears.

“My darling,” I said, rising from the table and rushing to her side, holding her. “What's the matter? Is it the jester? His story? His dream?”

“No, no,” she said. “It isn't that. It's just that—last night—after you fell asleep I found that I couldn't sleep—because of the jester, I guess—so I turned the TV on.”

“I never heard it—”

“I muted it—and turned the captions on.”

“You are the sweetest.”

“That's me,” she said, smiling through her tears, “but—like a fool—I watched the news.”

“Oh.”

“What a species,” she said, shaking her head, huddling in my arms. “It was as if I had been condemned to watch the whole bloody history of human viciousness.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth, right?”

“That's the news in a nutshell.”

“And this morning you're feeling the tug of gravity.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Let me lift you,” I said. “Today I promise you humility, liberality, friendship, kindness, temperance, and diligence.”

“And chastity?” she asked, wrinkling her nose in that adorable way she does when she's invited to eat fish.

“How about tempered lust?”

“Fine with me—but can you really deliver?”

“I can. Come on. Let's get into that Electro-Flyer and flee, and while we're en route I'll read you the chapter I call ‘Poppy's Pockets.'”

Chapter 17

Poppy's Pockets

The storyteller: he is the man who could let the wick of his life be consumed completely by the gentle flame of his story.

Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller,” in
Illuminations

THE GOLDEN LIGHT dominates my memory, light that saturated the sky and the air around
Spirit
and me. That golden light was everywhere, as if it came from all directions, casting no shadows. It was as bright as, but different from, the beach light I was accustomed to at home. That beach light also came from above and below, but it was whiter from below because it was reflected from the water and the sand. This light was yellow, reflected from the golden plants that grew alongside the road. Even now it coats my memory like a sticky liquid, like honey. It's pleasant, warm, and coddling, if a little cloying.

I thought that these golden plants might be wheat, and so I was filled with a poignant nostalgia, because, years earlier, my grandfather had thought of growing wheat in the back yard of my family's suburban tract house, back in Babbington, and though he had never succeeded, I had gotten it into my head that I knew what a field of wheat looked like.

“This is the famous waving wheat,” I informed
Spirit.

“Really?” she said. “It looks like waving weeds to me.”

“It's wheat,” I said assuredly.

I came to a crossroads settlement, just a mile or so of shops and houses stretching along each of the arms of the intersection. How should I choose from among the houses the one to approach, the one where I would ask to be taken in, fed, and sheltered for the night? Should I choose the largest? The smallest? The best maintained? The most neglected? I would choose the most welcoming. Of course. One of them stood just a bit apart from the others, with those yellow plants in abundance around it, and there was something about the light of the late afternoon sun on the rail fences and the dust in the yard, the long driveway to the house, that made me think that I would be welcome there. I wasn't particularly tired, but I wanted a warm welcome. I wanted to be taken in.

“That's the place for us,” I whispered to
Spirit,
hushed by the golden radiance of it all.

I turned into the driveway, and something changed. I detected a stillness now that made me feel like an intruder. I felt that I was violating the privacy of the people who lived there, that I was trespassing, not only on their property, but in their lives, and I changed my mind about the welcome I would be given.

“Maybe not,” I said.

“I see what you mean,” said
Spirit.
“We don't belong here. They won't want us here.”

I had begun the awkward process of turning
Spirit
around when I heard the wheezing hinges of a screen door and turned again toward the house. There, in the doorway, was a grandmotherly figure. She was wearing an ample dress, and she had an ample bosom. Everything about her spoke of amplitude and comfort—not opulence, but a reliable sufficiency. She shaded her eyes with her hand and gave me a long look. Then she went back into the house.

“She's probably got a pie cooling in the kitchen,” I muttered hungrily.

“Cherry,” said
Spirit.
“Tart and sweet. With a crust as golden as the evening air.”

The woman returned, holding a plump pie in both hands. She was followed by a man dressed in a black suit.

I set
Spirit
on her stand, wiped my hands on my pants legs, combed my hair with my fingers, wiped my hands again, and began walking toward the house. As I approached it, other people began emerging from it, each of them making the screen door wheeze and bang. They ranged in age downward from the old woman, and all of them were dressed in black. One by one they lined up along the porch as if they expected me to take their picture, a portrait of the family on their porch. One of them, a boy about my age, came down from the porch and walked out to meet me.

“Are you the photographer?” he asked in a subdued voice.

“No,” I said, “but it's funny that you should ask.”

“Funny? Why?”

“The way everybody came out of the house and lined up along the porch made me think that somebody was going to take their picture—”

“My grandfather died,” he said.

“I thought that they were expecting me to—what?”

“My grandfather died.”

“Oh—your grandfather—oh—I'm sorry.”

“It wasn't your fault.”

“I—no—it wasn't my fault—I meant I was sorry for you—for your loss—but—I should go.”

“No, no. Don't go. Having you here will turn us aside from our misery and mourning. You will take us out of ourselves.”

“I should go.”

“You should stay.”

“No—I really should go.”

“My grandfather would have wanted you to stay, to meet everybody, have dinner, and even stay the night if you need shelter. He was a generous man. Hospitality was important to him.”

“Well, okay.”

“Come on,” he said, turning toward the house, leading the way, “we're just about to have the period of remembrance. It's an old family tradition.”

“That sounds like something private,” I said.

“No, it's good to have a stranger at the remembrance because it gives everyone an excuse to speak at greater length about the deceased than they otherwise would.”

“You mean because the stranger doesn't know anything about—the deceased?”

“Exactly. You'll be doing us a big favor.”

I followed him to the porch. There was a round of introductions and a little awkward small talk. Someone asked me about
Spirit.
Someone else asked me about my travels. And someone asked me where I was from.

“Babbington,” I said. “It's in New York, on Long—”

“I remember!” thundered a voice from the other end of the porch.

“Really?” I said, surprised. “You've been there? That's—”

“I remember!” said everyone else, in voices not quite so thunderous.

“All of you? Wow. I—”

“They're remembering Grandfather,” the boy whispered. “The reminiscence has started.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought—”

He put his finger to his lips, and I shut up.

“I remember the way my brother Richard taught me to fish when we were boys,” said an elderly man at the far end of the porch, sitting near the thunderer who had announced the beginning of the period of reminiscence. “I wasn't very good at it.” A good-natured, familial chuckling animated the comfortable crowd. “Richard taught me that fishing is an occupation for the patient. ‘The rewards may not come soon, and they may not come often,' he said, ‘but if you've got bait on your hook, and your hook is in the water, and the line is in your hand, you'll catch your fish sometime or other.'”

Everyone smiled a bittersweet smile. Everyone murmured approval. I joined them. I may have been a young fool in many ways, but I had a sympathetic soul.

“I remember—um—the candies,” said a little girl in a black velvet dress. I remember thinking that the dress must be new, bought for this occasion. Judging from the way she rubbed the nap of the velvet, the girl was nervous, and she was worried that she might have said the wrong thing. Everyone chuckled. One or two sniffled.