Rikki Ducornet - Brightfellow

As the first of the rain needles the windows, Billy thinks that if they fit, he will give the oxfords to Charter. Charter will wear them and they will enable him to somehow step into his own life. An insane idea, perhaps, but Billy embraces it. It is too late for me, he thinks. But for Charter the world has only just begun.

By the time Charter descends into the kitchen, Billy is gone, gone to Kahontsi to meet with his lawyer. Billy is happy. Something important has been solved.

The day is dark, chilly — unusually so; there is rain. Looking out the front door, Charter sees Dr. Ash at her upstairs window, her mind brimming with numbers and strange ideas. He knows she is considered a genius; he has seen numbers tattooed on her wrist but does not know their significance, supposes they are emblematic of her profession. His brilliant mind is riddled with lacunae such as this. The chiming in his head is dizzying; he reverberates. His soul’s metal is hammered to within an inch of its life and he is cold. Soon it will be fall, he thinks, although it is only June. Trembling, he decides to build a fire; there is nothing to do but build a fire.

There are no logs by Billy’s fireplace, so he goes down to the basement, where he finds stacks of cardboard, the Ohneka Tribune, and a few old orange crates. He makes logs of cardboard and paper rolled together and tied with string, breaks up the crates, and constructs a fire, setting the logs down on top of the kindling. He spills kerosene liberally and lights a match, then watches as the entire structure bursts into flame. It’s beautiful! But the damned thing starts to roar and smoke floods the room. Charter is at a loss; smoke fills his nose, his eyes; and the mantel is smoking, sizzling! The map of France hanging above it cracks and glass rains down.

Charter dashes to the sofa, grabs a pillow, and shoves it into the hearth; he grabs another, then a third. Runs into the kitchen for a basin of water and sends it cascading into the mess. The room smells like smoke, toasted rayon, and chicken feathers. He sits down on the couch, devastated.

“You’ve really done it now,” says Asthma, coming into the room. She sits down next to him. “Everybody knows these fireplaces are pretend.” Then, quickly, breathlessly, she leans to his ear and says: “Dullfellow. My best-ever friend.”

There is no way out of this dilemma, no way to explain it. Agitated, pale, Charter dashes up the path as soon as he hears Billy’s car. Asthma is there also, bouncing with excitement.

“Something terrible has happened!” Charter cries, clearly distraught. “Something terrible !”

Billy, deeply concerned, embraces Charter, says, “My boy! My boy! What has happened?”

“Fire!” Asthma explodes. “But we caught it in time! Didn’t we, Brightfellow?”

Billy enters the living room, sees the damage to the fireplace, the map of France, the ceiling blackened with smoke — the mess on the floor where the scorched pillows have left a mark.

“It is amazing,” Billy says with good humor, “when you think of it, that this has not happened before. It is irrational, irrational —like so much in our world — to build a fireplace that cannot hold a fire! It’s O.K., Charter. I’ll give a call to Buildings and Grounds and we will get on with what remains of the day.” He bends over and pecks Asthma on the cheek, says, “You have spunk. I do appreciate that in a child.”

“I’ll replace the pillows,” Charter begins, but Billy stops him, says:

“You have better things to do with your insignificant allowance than provide me with pillows!”

When the mornings are lazy, the coffee thoughtfully prepared, the conversation cheerful and already leaning into dinner, one’s shirts pulled hot from the dryer, the refrigerator ample with orange juice and cottage cheese — well then the days are effortless, effortless the hours, and Charter begins to let go, to take things as they come, to take things in. He dares believe there is a place for him. He dares believe he is not so strange after all.

A merry band of men in overalls undo the damage to Billy’s living room. Windows are washed, sheets changed. The lawn has never been greener. The lilac never more fragrant. Billy and Charter go into town to hunt down sofa pillows. There is a lunch in a gracious white inn with a view of the water. Roast-chicken sandwiches made with thick house mayonnaise and pickles.

“Billy!” Charter begins, “This sandwich is—”

“Isn’t it! Charter, dear boy! Isn’t it! ”

The two take their ease, companionable, happy. For the first time Billy speaks of his teaching, his passion for the French poets: the cell of myself fills with wonder. . the whitewashed walls of my secret. .

“What is his secret?” Charter wonders aloud.

“He’s speaking of the deeper self, I think. The one we embodied when we were little children. When we could reinvent the world undisturbed.”

“For days at a time,” Charter whispers. “As outside the snow falls hour after hour.”

“Yes. That is it. Exactly. . I had a student once,” Billy says, “who translated Jouve brilliantly. He died the night he graduated, stupidly, in the river — although he knew how to swim. The entire campus mourned for months.”

On the way home, Charter dwells on the loss of the young man. The faculty and students mourning together as one moves him deeply. And he feels the familiar pang of loss, feels the old longing to have lived in this place as those students did, the place he had abused — yes, this is the word that comes to him — and is abusing still. He fears it is because he is twisted, he is strange. Sitting in the comfort of the car, the windows open to the day’s benevolence, Charter feels the full force of this chronic strangeness once again.

After they return, Charter spends what remains of the afternoon wandering the campus he knows so well, yet not at all. He recalls the many times he has sat on the grass in the sweet nights of Indian summer once classes had begun, listening to chamber music spelling the air around the chapel, or the sound of someone playing a horn, a piano, in the little music studio tucked away in a grove of pines. Such things he recalls. .

In all those years he only once dared step into a classroom. When the professor asked his name he fled. And once he dared creep into the theater, crouched in the wings, watching the rehearsal of a play. He recalls now the pain of that moment, a feeling of such isolation it had been almost untenable. Fearful of discovery, he had remained frozen in the shadows for hours, so crushed by the weight of his own singularity he could barely stand after everyone was gone. He had unfolded his limbs like a crushed Jack rising from a rusty box. Making a terrible joke at his own expense, he had sputtered between his teeth: Screek! Screek!

Now, approaching the Circle, he thinks: I must find a way to be — to be what? True to life. Real. Why was it so hard? It was impossible. Insurmountable. He was an impostor through and through, a coward and a liar. He was one hell of an evasive, secretive, spooky sonofabitch!

In the early light of evening, the campus is resplendent. Somehow unfathomable, so much grander than his own aspirations. Aspirations? Has he aspirations? He who is living such a small life, something cramped and reduced (how is this possible?) despite the promise this place provides him to live out a wealth of dreams? Yet here he is, as always, on the perimeter of that promise, soaking up a lonely man’s many kindnesses, embroiled in the frustrations of the soused faculty wives and their brats — but no! It is not as simple as that! Because. .