Rikki Ducornet - Brightfellow

“It goes deeper. Vanderloon is like a father.” At this Billy finds himself resentful of Vanderloon, jealous perhaps. “I owe him everything,” Charter continues. “Three years ago I read an article of his published in the New South Wales Observer. About the island. I decided at once to go. It was not easy to get there. I sailed alone.”

“My god!”

“The island is. . untouched. Vanderloon, exemplary in his reticence, his rigor, his humility—”

“I had no idea!”

“—made friends there. They revealed—”

“Secrets!”

“Yes. All that is — in his words— unbeholdable —”

“Loon beheld!”

“The secret of an ancient, a virgin tradition.”

“ Virgin, you say!”

“Untouched. Unbroken. Pristine.”

Any number of birds are performing on the branches. But for their bellies — these birds have white bellies just like some fish — they are a dirty brown. Dr. Ash thinks they look sorrowful. Sorrowful birds the colors of fish belly and dung. She thinks that if they wore vests they would be secondhand and knitted of cheap yarn.

It is ten o’clock in the morning and already the day is over. Beautiful Dr. Ash, her raven hair falling to her shoulders in clumps a recent lover had seized in his fists, is talking to a jade plant. All her love affairs end in disaster; they begin with a shimmer but before you know it everyone is sobbing and shuddering.

The wonderful things about Dr. Ash are her hair and her breasts, which are set high and far apart. Also her mind. She has a magnificent mind if you appreciate mathematics. (There are twelve people in the world who understand her when she speaks about what she knows best and loves the most.)

Recently she heard on the radio that plants communicate with people. She immediately drove to the florist in Ohneka and bought a jade plant. She thinks that living with a jade plant is like living with an obstinate introvert.

Charter sets off for the library, head high, freshly sudsed, caffeinated, having polished off a preposterous breakfast (his host warms the maple syrup and serves the French toast with a dollop of whipped cream). He cannot help himself but must take the Circle the long way so as to pass Asthma’s house. There at the edge of the lawn, just behind the low hedge, he finds her crouching beside a fallen log swarming with large black beetles as shiny as polished buttons, their one red queen moving dramatically among them. Asthma looks up and sees him.

“Who are you, anyway?” she asks.

“The. . uh. . Fulbright student,” he manages. “From next door.”

“That means you’re bright, then.” She says it solemnly. “And full of—”

“Don’t say I’m full of myself. I’m not. I’m full of French toast.”

“Why are you always poking around?”

“Am I?”

“What do they call you?”

“My name? You must mean my name?” She nods. Her eyes poke into his like two sharp twigs. “Charter.”

“Look at the beetles,” she demands. “Why is one so red?” He steps over the hedge and crouches beside her.

“She is their Papesse.”

“Papesse!” Asthma screams with laughter. “What does that mean?”

“It means a pope. But a female pope.”

“What’s a pope?”

“It doesn’t matter. It just means she’s important like a queen or empress.”

“A princess.”

“No. A queen.”

“Papesse sounds like princess.”

“It does.”

“What does she do ?”

“She lays eggs.”

“Yuck!”

“Thousands.”

“Ew.”

“She mates with one of these fellows—” He points to the skittering mass of beetles.

“Fellows! Fellows? They aren’t fellows ! They are beetles !” Asthma screams. “And then what happens?”

“She incubates the eggs and then finds the right chamber somewhere under the log and she lays them, and then in due time a thousand, who knows how many, baby beetles hatch—”

“But why ? I mean: why are they here ?”

“Why is anything here? Why is anyone here?” With all the delicacy he can muster he touches her heart with his finger.

“Because I want to be.” Asthma says it archly. “That’s why, Mr. Brightfellow.”

“Charter.”

“ I’ll call you Brightfellow.”

“I have far too many names as it is.”

“When I name a thing it is the name it needs . . Brightfellow. So there.”

“You win.”

“Tell me a story.”

How beautiful the world is, he thinks as he sits down beside her on the grass, the beetles fully engaged in their affairs, and in the trees above them all manner of birds.

“Do you have anything in mind?”

“Make it up, Brightfellow, please. From scratch.”

“There was once a planet,” he begins, “made entirely—”

“—of aspic. ”

“Of aspic. It was a frangible planet—”

“Frangible?”

“I mean to say feeble. Not really well enough to orbit the sun.”

“It could not get too close to the sun, either.”

“No, but it did. Each summer its elbows melted.”

“Planets don’t have elbows!” Asthma trills delightedly. “Planets don’t have knees!”

“Planets made out of aspic have elbows and knees.”

“Do they have people?”

“People who live their lives on place mats that float.”

“Place mats! And they sleep under napkins.”

“I have slept under worse things myself.”

“Some look like saltshakers!”

“With heads like green olives. They are vociferous.”

“Big word, Brightfellow.”

“It means they talk all the time. Rather like you.”

“Hmm.” Asthma purses her lips in mock annoyance.

“And they are hirsute.”

“Hmm. . Brightfellow. .”

“Which means they are covered with hair.” Asthma shrieks. “And this. . this dismays them.” Asthma roars with laughter.

At this moment Blackie appears on the front stoop and her voice hatchets into the day like the voices of the birds that go: Chirrup, CRACK! Chirrup, CRACK!

“I have to go.” Asthma knits her brows. “Blackie is taking me to the doctor.” She stands and wipes the grass from the beautiful upended porcelain cups of her knees.

“Asthma!” Blackie shouts. “Who is that?”

“Brightfellow!” she shouts. “He’s moved into the Old Fart’s house across the street. He lives there!”

“Mind your language,” Blackie shouts. “And move your ass over here, Asthma.” Blackie waves at Charter. “Welcome to the neighborhood,” she calls out, an afterthought, and walks to her car.

“I used to have a tail !” Asthma cries as she dashes off. “But I lost it in utero! Now, ” she trills as she climbs into the car, “I have worms. ”

Although the sky is brighter than it has ever been, evening comes. From within the Circle’s few squat screened radios, Ratmutterer’s voice roaches:

I don’t give a plucked hen, a plucked hen — if a faggot is a crackpot — if that dickhead doesn’t swill beet soup. I don’t give a scatophiliac’s fig; he can percolate on an orange crate in front of the universe in his birthday suit, so what? But if he sucks begonias, I don’t care if he’s Woody Woodpecker or Minnie Mouse — he needs to be smashed with a hammer.