“Isn’t that cool?” said Frankie. He traced it with his fingers. “Isn’t that the coolest thing you’ve ever seen?”
“Pretty cool, Frankie,” I said. “Great. Wonderful.”
“This salamander was around before people,” he said. “It existed when the world was still a dream. When we didn’t even exist yet, Haley. We were all still dreams back then, because the world hadn’t thought us up yet.” He looked at me, a streak of dirt smeared across his forehead. “We all existed in the world’s mind, which means we existed in this salamander’s mind,” he said, “and then he died, and now here we are. He’s like our grandfather or something.”
“This salamander is our grandfather?”
“Well, not exactly our grandfather, but more like our spiritual—”
“Okay, Frankie,” I said. “Whatever you say.”
At that moment there was a whoop from a group of men that were starting up some new game, and simultaneously I felt a rush of air on the back of my neck. It was caused by Adam, who’d leaped over us on his way to join them. I watched him go, hair tossing as he ran.
“He shouldn’t jump over people like that,” said Frankie. “Not without telling them first. We could have gotten hurt.”
“Adam wouldn’t hurt us,” I said. I watched him huddle up with a bunch of town boys and then break and form a defensive line. They were playing shirts and skins, and as luck would have it Adam was on skins. He stripped off his shirt and tucked it in his belt, and I let myself have a good long look before I forced myself to turn my eyes away. “He wouldn’t hurt anybody,” I said.
“Oh, man!” said Frankie, smacking his forehead.
“What?”
“I forgot I had to get my dad some potato chips,” said Frankie. “I gotta go.” He stood up and brushed himself off.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Help me up.”
“I can’t. My dad loves potato chips. So do I.”
“Help me up, damn you,” I said. But Frankie was gone. So there I was sitting by myself next to a rock, in the dirt, in the middle of Mrs. Shumacher’s flower garden. Like an idiot.
“Haley?”
I turned. It was Mrs. Shumacher, wearing an ankle-length dress, her massive bosom sticking out about half a mile in front of her.
“Haley? Did you fall down?” she asked.
Here’s the weird thing—she said this in German. If someone had asked me how to say that phrase in German, I couldn’t have done it; in fact, I couldn’t even have repeated it back. But I understood her perfectly, I guess from listening to my grandmother and my mother talk to each other all my life. It’s strange what the mind remembers sometimes.
“No,” I said in English. “I was just looking at this salamander here.”
She reached down and held out her hand. I grabbed it and she hoisted me up, effortlessly, though if I was going to tell the truth I’d have to say that I was no petite little thing. The Shumacher women were stronger than most ordinary men, I guess because they were Shumachers. Before I knew it I was on my feet, and Mrs. Shumacher bent down and picked a carnation from her flower bed.
“Put that behind your ear,” she said. “That’s your flower, you know. The carnation. You look good with it.”
“My flower is the sunflower,” I said. But I stuck it behind my ear. “Thanks, Mrs. Shumacher,” I told her.
I found myself an unoccupied lawn chair and did my best to ignore the football players. It was a short, injury-prone game, most of the contestants being already half-full of beer, and within half an hour at least four of them were sidelined. I deliberately did not look to see if Adam was all right. Then who did I see standing on the edge of the playing field but my old childhood friend, Roberta Ellsworth.
Good Lord, I thought. What is old Robertums doing here? I’d never seen her at a Shumacher do before. I kind of scrunched down in my seat so she wouldn’t spot me—the last thing I wanted at that very moment was to have to put up with her honking and rasping in my ear.
But as it turned out, I didn’t have to worry. The game was called on account of drunkenness, and what did old Roberta do but make a beeline for Adam himself, before he even had a chance to put his shirt on.
I don’t believe it, I said to myself.
The two of them stood there talking for several minutes, during which I wished all kinds of things to come out of the sky and crash into Roberta’s head: pianos and anvils and anything else I could think of. Then, as I watched in disbelief, Roberta turned and ran, just took off—and what did Adam do but take off after her, laughing his head off, and before I knew it the two of them had disappeared behind the barn, a wolf chasing a very willing deer, and I knew from personal experience there was a side door that allowed you to get in and out of the barn without everyone else at the party seeing you.
That’s men for you, I thought bitterly. They are wolves—sniffing at every pair of legs that walks by, and drooling all over the ankles.
That about tore it for me. I started looking for Mother to tell her I was ready to go home. There were still hours of the party left, but I was damned if I was going to sit there like a bump on a log any longer. But before I could find her I saw Elizabeth, talking to another lady about her age and looking happier than she ever had, since I met her anyway. She waved to me and I headed over to say hello.
“Haley!” she said. “You’ll never guess who I bumped into!”
“Hi, Elizabeth,” I said. “Who?”
“This is Letty Horgan!” she said. “You remember, the girl I was telling you about?”
“I haven’t been a girl for more than fifty years, Lizzy,” said Letty. “Hello, Haley. It’s nice to meet you.”
“That’s a lovely carnation, dear,” said Elizabeth. “Sit down, will you?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said.
“We were just talking about the old days,” said Elizabeth. “And how very much has changed since then.”
I noticed that Elizabeth had by now lost most of her English accent. It must have been because she was talking to someone from the old days, because even though she still used words differently than we did, her way of pronouncing them had gone back to being almost completely American.
“Lizzy hasn’t celebrated the Fourth of July since the nineteen-forties,” said Letty. “Not really, anyway. Can you believe that?”
“Hard to imagine,” I said.
“Indeed,” said Elizabeth. “We observed it formally as a holiday at the Agency, but we certainly never had any picnics.”
“And we were talking about the swimming creek,” said Letty. “Lizzy tells me that’s a favorite haunt of yours, too.”
“Sure is,” I said.
“We were thinking we might take a wee stroll down that way,” said Elizabeth. “It’s not too far, is it?”
I was startled. It would be dark in another hour or so, and the creek was a good half mile off. A lot of the way was over soggy ground, too, which would make it hard going on my crutches. But it suddenly seemed like the greatest idea in the world. I didn’t really want to go home—I just didn’t want to be at the party anymore. Not with those two groping each other in the barn not fifty feet away. Jeez, but I was ticked.
“You serious?” I said. “You mean right now?”
“Surely,” said Letty. “I feel mighty spry tonight. Must be seeing my old girlfriend like this. I think I can make it. What do you say, Lizzy?”
“I’m game,” she said, “if Haley is. We ought to have a young person with us, just in case. Two old ladies wandering around the country at dusk—imagine our cheek!” She giggled then, just flat out giggled. I couldn’t believe my ears.
I’ve read that certain holidays, such as Christmas, actually occur on former pagan holidays—as if there are certain days of the year people are just meant to party, never mind what they call it. I kind of feel that way about the Fourth, too, even though that’s ridiculous. The Fourth of July is clearly not a pagan holiday, it’s an American one. Yet it seems l
ike the perfect day to have a summer celebration. It definitely struck a chord in those of us from the Greater Mannville Metropolitan Area, and not just out of patriotism either—things happened on the Fourth that would never happen at any other time of year. There was a kind of looseness in people that wasn’t ordinarily there. Maybe it was just the summer heat, or Mr. Shumacher’s beer—I don’t know. But heading down to the creek at that hour with two old ladies seemed strange and natural at the same time. Without a word to anyone, the three of us just picked up and started walking.
The creek was in a piece of the woods that had never been touched by tractor or chainsaw or plow. There was no point in clearing it, since the land was too uneven for farming, and there weren’t any houses for quite a distance—it was about as far from the Shumacher’s as it was from mine, and if you drew a line between all three places it would form a perfect triangle. An equilateral triangle, that is. The creek was sheltered by ancient stands of birch and pine, at least the part of it where you could swim. The rest of it meandered through fields and pastures and right through the town of Mannville itself, where it was shunted into a concrete gully to prevent flooding, and then it fed into Lake Erie. In town they called it Walnut Creek, but this far out it didn’t even have a name. It just was. The banks were nice and grassy and the water probably ten feet at the deepest. There was even a little waterfall at the head of it, which had worn away the creek bed little by little over the centuries until it made a nice pool there, just the right depth for diving.
By now the sun had begun to dip below the horizon. The world was covered in orange-and-gold light, and it seemed to reflect with equal intensity off every individual leaf and twig, and especially the white bark of the birches, so that the whole place seemed like some kind of spangly fairy world. The three of us sat down in the grass and dangled our toes in the chilly water. I could only dangle half my toes, of course. But Letty and Elizabeth took off their shoes and stockings and dipped their feet right in.
For the moment, we weren’t talking. I lay back on the grass and looked up at the purpling sky. I had managed to sneak myself enough of that beer to feel it, and I started to drift off a little bit. The whole day and night began to feel kind of like a dream, and I watched the clouds overhead catch the last offerings of the sun and hold them in their wispy arms until it was time to let them go.
I guess I did fall asleep, for a few minutes. When I was next aware of anything, it was of two old-lady voices talking in unison, in some strange language. I didn’t feel scared, and I wasn’t curious enough to sit up and look. I just listened. It took me a while to realize it was Letty and Elizabeth, chanting to each other. I heard the splashing of water. They were in the creek.
Then I sat up. The two of them had taken off their clothes and were standing in the water. They were facing slightly away from me, the water coming up to their middles, and their hands were pressed in prayer position in front of their withered old breasts, eyes closed, aged bodies swaying back and forth like metronomes.
They ignored me, so I sat quiet. I was pretty sure none of what I saw was actually happening. I was sleeping, I reasoned, and this was some kind of strange dream.
Then I looked up across the creek and the dream got stranger. I saw my grandmother standing there, arms folded across her chest, staring straight at me. For the first time in my life, I looked directly into her eyes, and read not anger or hardness or mistrust of the world I lived in but something softer and kinder, almost an invitation. I didn’t bother to wonder how the hell she’d gotten this far from home by herself, or how she managed to be at the creek at exactly the same time I was. We just looked at each other for what seemed like a very long time. Then I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again she was gone—nothing there but deepening shadow, playing tricks on the eyes.
I laid back down on the grass. Letty and Elizabeth had fallen quiet now, and I closed my eyes again.
Some time later I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Haley,” said Elizabeth. “Haley, dear. You’ve fallen asleep.”
I opened my eyes. It was full dark.
“Good gravy,” I said, sitting up. “How long was I out?”
“Not too long,” she said. “Half an hour or so.”
“We’d best be heading back,” said Letty. “I wouldn’t want to turn an ankle walking around in the dark.”
“My goodness, no, not at our age,” said Lizzy.
“I was dreaming,” I said.
I grabbed my crutches and stood up. I lost my balance for a moment, and I put out one hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder to steady myself. Her blouse was soaked through and I could feel her skin under it, leathery and as cold as a clam.
“Were you, dear?” said Elizabeth. “What did you dream of, if I may?”
In the darkness, all I could see of their faces were two white blurs. We were far from the party now, too far to hear it, but there were crickets and frogs singing all around us, and the night was alive with sounds.
“Zam,” I said.
They didn’t say anything, but I could hear their smiles.
Suddenly there was a tremendous boom in the sky. We turned to see a white mushroom of light appear out of nowhere and blossom into brilliance, lighting up everything like lightning during a storm. For several moments I could see both of their faces clearly. The fireworks had started.
“There,” said Letty. “As long as that keeps up, we’ll be able to see our way home.”
We made our way back along a tractor path through someone’s field, pausing when it was too dark to see and moving ahead when the sky lit up again. It took us a long while to get back to the party, and none of us spoke along the way. I was trying to remember: Did I really see my grandmother, or was I dreaming? What were those two doing in the water, chanting away and praying like that? And what did it all mean?
“It seems something has happened,” said Elizabeth suddenly. “I see a group of people standing around someone on the ground.”
She had mighty good eyes for someone so advanced in years. I looked during the next explosion, and sure enough there was a knot of folks standing around the way they might after an accident. Probably someone bashed their head in playing football, I thought. I felt a chill of panic—I hoped it wasn’t Adam, even though he deserved it.
The fireworks had been going for a long time, but they showed no signs of slowing. Mr. Shumacher had gone all out this year. He’d hired pyrotechnic professionals to come in and give the folks a real show, and the sky was filled now with fantastic eruptions of light, and tremendous bangs of manmade thunder. It was the finale. We came to the edge of the yard and headed directly for where the people were standing all together. A hush had fallen over the whole gathering, and nobody was paying any attention to the fireworks. I was pretty sure by now something bad had happened.
As we got closer I could hear a high-pitched wail, a sick-animal sound as though something was having its heart ripped out. I’d heard a sound like that once before, when a stray farm dog had gotten hold of a rabbit and was shaking it to death in its teeth. The rabbit had sounded just like what I was hearing now. We came to the group of people and pushed our way in to see what had happened.
The noise was coming from Frankie. He was on his knees, crying, leaning over someone stretched out full-length on the ground. As the last eruptions of the finale lit up the sky, I got a good look: It was his father, craggy profile in shadow, eyes two dark recesses, as dead as the proverbial doornail.
6
Sympathy and Protection
After surviving four years of World War II, roughly five decades of marriage, and a lifetime of subsistence farming—when it seemed that he’d weathered everything life could throw at a man, including also the birth of a less-than-perfect only son whose mental development had not progressed one inch in seventeen years—Mr. James H. Grunveldt was done in by something as simple as a potato chip. These are the kinds of cruel jokes life plays on us. It was like those poor guys in that German s
ubmarine movie who almost get killed about a hundred times and finally make it all the way home, only to get blown up five minutes later. The fact seems to be that your life probably isn’t going to end anything like the way you think it is, and Mr. Grunveldt was living proof of that. Or dead proof, I guess. Depends on how you want to look at it.
Mr. Grunveldt had always had a weakness for potato chips, even though the doctors had told him they were bad for him. They never could have known just how bad they would turn out to be, of course. It was one of the very chips for which Frankie had abandoned me at the fossil rock that killed him, later that night—stuck in his airway like a golf ball in a vacuum-cleaner hose, and nobody could manage to get it loose, though I heard later that Mr. Shumacher had broken a couple of ribs trying. Mr. Grunveldt’s ribs, I mean, not his own.
Mr. Grunveldt never actually meant much to me. He was already old when I was born, and I didn’t see him much, or know him very well at all. I was saddened by his passing, but I was more worried about how Frankie would take it.
My fears were justified. Frankie pretty much lost what marbles he had left. It took three men to carry him away from his father’s body just so the attendants could lift him into the ambulance. When it pulled away, Frankie made a noise that ran through everyone there like a knife. The fireworks had stopped by then, and the only light came from a few flashlights, and a sliver of moon. It was ghostly and weird, everyone as quiet as church—almost like a murder scene, really. People acted strangely guilty, even though nobody had done anything wrong.
Those same three men later took Frankie home in the back of a pickup truck, where they had to hold him down to keep him from jumping out. He was flopping around like a fish, biting and kicking and hollering at the top of his lungs. Mrs. Grunveldt followed in Mr. Shumacher’s car. She didn’t make a sound. She was quiet and tight-lipped—fatalistic, as Miz Powell would say. I suppose when you get to be that age, death hardly comes as a surprise. Still, she was taking it harder than anyone knew. I heard from Mother the next day that she had to go into the hospital herself, from complications of an old illness she’d once had that everyone thought was licked; and only a few hours after that, she died, too.