Rikki Ducornet - Brightfellow

“Show me,” he says. He can see how the forest excites her. He can see that her hair needs washing and that her little cotton dress is stained with more than grass. He knows that in Blackie’s house, much is left undone. When they reach the den and he peers in, it’s the color of midnight. He smells fur. There are leaves and twigs scattered around, and one small bleached bone.

“Shh!” Asthma whispers just as he is about to speak. “She’s sleeping now.” He sees that she is flushed with excitement. Her knuckles are dirty and the little mole on her cheek is almost purple. This is the most beautiful day of his life. What was there to the world if not this?

“I don’t have worms,” Asthma tells him. And then with irritation, “Sometimes Blackie sees worms everywhere !”

“What was your day like?” Billy asks. He has served supper on the screen porch. A restful place, comfy. They sit in the early evening light, the smell of food from other houses mingling with that of Billy’s curry. Rich as a kingdom, the table is studded with little bowls: peanuts, yellow raisins, toasted coconut, chutney. Charter is radiant; he has never been happier. He cannot stop smiling.

“Well!” Billy returns his smile. “You’re in fine fettle.”

“Yes! I am. . in fine fettle !” The phrase tickles him and he begins to laugh. It is fortunate Billy joins him, because Charter cannot stop laughing. He is swept up in it. As the curry cools in their bowls the two of them roar with laughter.

All around the Circle people are at supper. The two Rods have set up a grill; Pea Pod is whining about her bloody portion of porterhouse, and Blackie is scolding Asthma, who has taken her baked potato and charred piece of meat up into a tree. Charter catches a glimpse of her bare legs and feet dangling from either side of a branch.

“Asthma!” cries Blackie. “Come down from there and socialize !” The houses are illuminated, houses filled with numberless things. What would it be like, Charter wonders, to grow up in a house with rooms filled with things so ordinary as to be invisible until the moment one reaches for them out of habit?

Billy stretches and sighs. “Is there any time of day better than twilight?” he wonders aloud.

“None! Look! Goldie’s Rod is doing card tricks.”

“Goldie’s Rod. That’s funny. Charter? What have you unearthed today?” He litters his curry with nuts.

“They have many names for wind.”

“It’s windy!”

“Always. All the time. The island is more or less thoroughly, ceaselessly, raked with wind.”

“Raked!”

“Not a smooth surface anywhere. The vegetation is gnarled, hugs the ground; the leaves of things are small, hard as rubber. There is a plant, the Noola, that produces a large oily nut. They have to pound the shells with a heavy rock to break them open. They sing as they do this. They have songs for everything they do. They cook with Noola oil and rub their bodies with it. Everybody smells of Noola. They have a song for the moon’s rising—”

“And for love?”

Charter blushes.

“You haven’t told me all the names for the wind.”

“Ah. Well. . there is the wind that brings the flies—”

“Hah! Flies are a problem, then?”

“Only in season.”

“And? I know! A Noola-whacking wind!”

“Yes. That too.” Charter grins but for an instant fears he has been found out. But no; Billy continues:

“How good the air smells tonight. I wonder what it must be like to live among people who all smell like Noola! Does it get rancid?”

“You don’t notice after a while.”

“I had forgotten! You’ve been there!”

“Yes.”

“Tell me!”

“It’s a lovely, peaceable island where people never eat one another.”

“For heaven’s sake! Somehow it had not occurred to me—”

They sit on the porch for a time in silence. Night comes; it seems everyone around them has gone to bed except for Blackie, whose typewriter can be heard in the distance. Dr. Ash is nowhere to be seen; perhaps it is still too early for her to feel the full violence of her solitude. Only a cat moves in the grass.

“Puss! Puss!” Billy says to it. “Would you like a piece of curried fish?” But the cat ignores him and seeing something they cannot, dashes off after it.

“When autumn comes,” Billy says, “I’ll make cider. We’ll go to one of the farms and bring back a carload of apples. How does that sound?”

“Thank you,” Charter says, the full impact of his gratitude surging to his neck and face. Without thought he puts his hand on Billy’s knee.

“None of that,” says Billy, gently.

When Charter returns to his room, Asthma’s window is dark. As dark as a fox hole is dark. Shh, Asthma had whispered. She’s sleeping.

How vivid the day! Asthma, a wood sprite bounding and skipping beside him!

“Once I saw a cloud that looked like the face of a fox,” she had told him. “Once a cloud just like an owl, and once just like my daddy’s nose! It was exactly like his nose except it was a cloud!”

It is long after ten. The Circle is empty except for Goldie’s Rod, who remains seated in his backyard nursing his rye. He is vaguely wondering about his teeth. He fears something is the matter with them. Perhaps he should make an appointment. Everything is so tiresome, so tedious. If only Pea Pod were an easier child to live with. And Goldie, too, is difficult. When they met he thought her handsome. He admired her heavy skeleton. She was clearly made to last. But now her size exhausts him. Living with Goldie is like living with a boa constrictor or a large piece of farm equipment. She’s a tyrant, when you think of it, and when she sits down at the piano the world trembles.

Blackie’s Rod is flat on his back, sleeping with his mouth open. Blackie lies beside him chuckling to herself. What would happen if she poured a thimbleful of Triple Sec down his throat? Once, briefly, she was with a man, a sculptor, who wore a long skinny braid down his back. When he abused her she left him, only to be plagued by an extended fantasy about cutting the braid off. She would make a clean cut at the nape of the neck. She would take care to dispose of the braid without leaving a trace. She imagined tracking him to a crowded restaurant. He would be drunk, engaged in an animated conversation. Everybody at the table would be animated, drunk. She would slip past, barely visible in an overcoat and a hat, her face concealed by a delicate web of veil. With a very sharp, small pair of scissors, she would cut the braid off and slip it into her coat pocket. She’d drift around a little as if looking for someone, and then she’d walk out the door. She’d find a garbage can on the street and drop in the braid. She’d continue on to her own favorite restaurant and order the clam linguini. She’d flirt with the owner, who, she knew, harbored a special weakness.

Suddenly she finds herself prodding her Rod. “Rod! Rod!” she cries. “Wake up, darling!”

“Why?” he mumbles and, turning, throws an arm over her. “Why do I have to?”

“Because,” she says. “I’ve come to an important decision.”

“Yes, Blackie,” he mumbles. “Tell me quickly, will you. .”

“We must find a way to have more fun. We must !”

Already he is fast asleep, his nose mashed up against her armpit.

Blackie imagines the sculptor would finish the evening unaware his braid is gone. At evening’s end he would put on his overcoat, the one with the thick fur collar, and drive home. He’d peel off his clothes and tumble into bed. In the morning he’d take a shower. He’d reach for his braid to undo it and it would be gone. He would touch the back of his scalp first with one hand and then with the other. His palms flat against the back of his head he’d shout out a string of obscenities. He’d slam his fists together. He’d confront the inescapable.