William Vollmann - The Atlas

I was not cold. My body was as red as a brick. It glowed and tingled and pricked. I found a thicket of Indian pipe in the sand and picked them, made black-jointed flutes with which to serenade the wind, and the wind, still loving me, raised the lake about me, sloshed cold violet-green water about me in glee until it burned pleasantly on the rims of my ears.

Then the wind got tired of me. I don't know why. I had striven to be entertaining and different at all times. My own joy had certainly not diminished. But it didn't matter. This was divorce. My clothes fell down upon me with a thump, and in the dead calm I began to shiver.

I crossed the lake in an old canoe and reached town just as the wind began again. Soccer players in blue jerseys were running amidst the leaves. A woman clutched the strap of her handbag, her face down in the wind. I wanted to ask her to marry me, but I was too cold. I found a street of brick houses and big dogs, where pillared porches and porticoes were overhung by pale orange leaves. Their tall narrow windows were as dull as the sky, reflecting the clouds that skidded before the wind.

I met a redhead in a long velvet jacket. She was holding her little boy's hand as they strode though fallen leaves.

I've been disappointed by the wind, too, she said.

At first I thought she was talking to me. But then I understood that she was only trying to smooth the sadness of her son whom the wind refused to take away.

The boy saw me. — Look, look! he cried to his mother. — His ears are red and happy. That means he's the wind's friend.

I smiled, said nothing, and walked away. Truly it was an ear-aching wind.

On the subway the grinning laborers in their pea-jackets, the bald owlish businessmen in wool coats, the ladies in furs all hunched against the cold. Only one person, a fanatical prophetess who wore sackcloth, was kin to me. But she would not see me or the wind; I left her alone.

Coming up the windy tunnel to Yonge Street, I found the boy, happily escaped, and running towards me amidst leaves and prayers blowing in circles. Men ran with their heads down, holding the brims of their caps. The boy begged me to bring him back over the feathery water of the windy lake to that khaki and ocher island of dying-leaved trees which lay so low in the lake that only windstruck people could find it. When I asked him how he knew about it, he said that his mother had told him. Then I knew that I had misconstrued my misconstruction, that she had been talking to me. I refused him, led him back through rolled-up leaves like trilobites on the sidewalks, and by subway we returned to the apple-colored maple leaves which curled on the trees of his neighborhood, swarming and wriggling down over the house pillars where girls in thick Indian sweaters and beaver ear-muffs ran shivering. The lady in the long velvet jacket was waiting for us. As she leaned forward to kiss me, the warm sighing breezes of her mouth reached my heart, and I melted into a puddle of water.

Past the heat-seared road weeds, past the Tomahawk truck stop, I found the magic barrier crossing which once had filled me with awe and exaltation so many years ago when I left the east forever (so I'd thought) by Greyhound; now it eased me, pleased me, but could not help me anymore. It was the line between east and west. At first it was just a jaggedly wavy gray-gray horizon; then it doubled, dark purple from cloud-shadow; the same dark purple I once saw in Gallup, New Mexico. All had to cross that line, and when they did, it changed them. In the white convertible ahead were two white-helmeted soldiers. The one on the right kept saluting. When we got closer I saw that he was a girl whose long locks snapped and fluttered below the white suncap; she kept stretching her arm out as if to catch more than her share of the harsh hot sunlight. Then we got a little closer, and I saw that she wasn't a girl at all, just a pimpled boy with long greasy hair, smirking and elbowing his brother the driver, smoking cigarettes; it was to flick the ashes that he stretched his arm out. Then we drew level with them, and I saw that he was an epileptic, foaming at the mouth, eyes rolled back; in his hand a tightly rolled strip of white paper that his fingers could neither squeeze nor drop. As we passed them, he winked. Then I realized that he was only on some drug.

We'd crossed the line. We were all in the west now. Looking back at the white convertible, I saw how a leathery expressionlessness like something out of a sleazy cowboy novel had molded itself over the pimpled boy's face; he'd become a Westerner once more, his amoebic freedom gone until the next time he went east. I was reminded of the way that Boot Hill's cracked and white-stained iron-gray boards leaned hard in the hot-packed dirt. W M COFFMAN SHOT 1875. Mrs. Lillie Miller, since petrified, was surrounded by black fence, cracked dirt and junipers. A single black-eyed susan grew by the new houses (one driveway held a canvas-covered boat). They'd crossed the line. A barely legible stone said UNKNOWN COWBOY 1883. The unknown cowboy in the white convertible behind tipped his hat, massaged his pimpled cheeks, and yodeled: Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiouuuu dippy-dippy-dooayheeyooooooooooooooooooo!

Starfrosted balloons at the parade nudged the sidewalk people who'd drawn up bare knees like grasshoppers. The man in the white suit and the red vest raised his swizzle stick. He commanded his platoon of cymbals, trumpets and arms with full authority, except over Frieda. The parade marshalls turned the corner slowly, seated on top of their car in a successful campaign to outdignify the white lace umbrella with red and blue ribbons and the Rolex float; because it was one of those idealized beach days when the fences smelled like lemon wax; it was the emancipated day when the majority in their united wisdom emerged from double-garaged houses hidden behind roses to exercise their rights and interests — nay, vested rights, imperious mandates! — exercised them to the full amount of their recognizance, subject to the well-poised consent of the legislature. That was why the pink car with pigears rolled slowly, conveying the senator and his lovely wife. Next came the bagpipers, strutting, whirling their sticks, stern and solemn, staring straight ahead. Benign red faces in kilts beat the tattoo of liberty under liberty, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the city councilman in the skyblue car with the two American flags who led the seablue car followed by the horses and other well-intentioned persons; the councilman had read the manual on how to attain and lose happiness.

The councilman leaned down and half whispered to his chauffeur: You know what Frieda kept saying? We were darkness once.

The chauffeur coughed politely.

Frieda and Priscilla had come that morning when the councilman was inexpertly ironing his necktie. (At that moment the chauffeur was still playing catch with his son.)

Is there any luggage that I can help you with? the councilman said.

No, said Priscilla. Can't you see that we didn't bring anything?

He showed them upstairs to the guestroom where Priscilla used to sleep when she was little. On the wall hung an old stick-figure drawing of Frieda's which Emily had framed. Priscilla turned it to the wall. Frieda got the bunk bed. It was the first time he'd seen Frieda since the bad thing before the other bad thing had happened.

I really appreciate this, Frieda said. Especially right before the parade and all. You know, I got into some sort of strange circumstances or I wouldn't be here.

Oh, sure, said the councilman heartily.