From the Dust Returned (16 page)

"Speak up. I know your thoughts, but you must speak them."

"No, I don't want to be like you," said Timothy.

"Is this the beginning of wisdom?" Grandmere said.

"I don't know. I've been thinking. I've been watching all of you and I decided that maybe I want to have a life just like people have always had. I want to know that I was born and I guess that I have to accept the fact that I must die. But watching you, seeing all of you, I see that all these long years haven't made any difference."

"What do you mean?" said Great Grandmere.

A great wind rushed by, sparks flew, singeing her dried wrappings.

"Well, are you all happy? I wonder about that. I feel very sad. Some nights I wake up and cry because I realize that you have all this time, all these years, but there doesn't seem to be much that's very happy that came of it all."

"Ah, yes, Time is a burden. We know too much, we remember too much. We have indeed lived too long. The best thing to do, Timothy, in your new wisdom is to live your life to the fullest, enjoy every moment, and lay yourself down, many years from now, happily realizing that you've filled every moment, every hour, every year of your life and that you are much loved by the Family. Now, let us get ready to leave.

"And now," wheezed old Nef, "you be my savior, child. Lift and carry."

"Can't!" cried Timothy.

"I am dandelion seed and thistledown. Your breath will drift, your heartbeat, sustain me. Now!"

And it was so. With one exhalation, a touch of his hands, the wrapped gift from long before Saviors and the parted Red Sea arose on the air. And seeing he could carry this parcel of dream and bones, Timothy wept and ran.

In the upheaval of wings and scarves of spirit illumination the swift passage of lightless clouds over the valleys in tumult caused such an upthrust suction that all
of
the chimneys, ninety-nine or one hundred, exhaled, shrieked, and let gasp a great outburst of soot and wind from the Hebrides, and air from the far Tortugas, and cyclone layabouts from nowhere Kansas. This erupted volcano of tropic and then arctic air struck and cracked the clouds to pummel them into a shower and then a downpour and then a Johnstown flood of drenching rain that quenched the fire and blackened the House in half ruin.

And while the House was being battered and drowned the downpour so smothered the rage in the mob that it pulled back in sudden clots, slogged about, trailing water, and dispersed on home, leaving the storm to rinse the facade of the empty shell, while there remained one great hearth and chimney which sounded its throat up to where a miraculous residue hung almost upon looms of nothing, sustained by no more than a few timbers and a sleeping breath.

There lay Cecy, quietly smiling at tumults, signaling the thousand Family members to fly here, amble there, let wind lift you, let earth gravitate you down, be leaf, be web, be hoofless print, be lipless smile, be mouthless fang, be boneless pelt, be shroud of mist at dawn, be souls invisible from chimney throats, all list and listen, go, you east, you west, nest trees, bed meadow grass, hitch ride of larks, dog-track with dogs, make cats to care, find bucket wells to lurk, dent farmland beds and pillows with no shape of heads, wake dawns with hummingbirds, hive snug with sunset bees, list, list, all!

And the last of the rain gave the charred shell of House a final rinse and ceased and there were only dying smokes and half a House with half a heart and half a lung and Cecy there, a compass to their dreams, forever signaling their rampant destinations.

There went all and everyone in a flow of dreams to far-away hamlets and forests and farms, and Mother and Father with them in a blizzard of whispers and prayers, calling farewell, promising returns in some future year, so to seek and hold once again their abandoned son. Goodbye, good-bye, oh yea, goodbye, their fading voices cried. Then all was silence save for Cecy beckoning more melancholy farewells.

And all this, Timothy perceived and tearfully knew.

From a mile beyond the House, which now glowed with sparks and plumes to darken the sky, to storm-cloud the moon, Timothy stopped under a tree where many of his cousins and perhaps Cecy caught their breath, even as a rickety jalopy braked and a farmer peered out at the distant blaze and the nearby child.

"What's that?" He pointed his nose at the burning House.

"Wish I knew," said Timothy.

"What you
carrying,
boy?"

The man scowled at the long bundle under Timothy's arm.

"Collect 'em," said Timothy. "Old newspapers. Comic strips. Old magazines. Headlines, heck, some before the Rough Riders. Some before Bull Run. Trash and junk." The bundle under his arm rustled in the night wind. "Great junk, swell trash."

"Just like me, once." The farmer laughed quietly. "No more. Need a ride?"

Timothy nodded. He looked back at the House, saw sparks like fireflies shooting into the night sky.

"Get in."

And they drove away.

For a long while, many days and then weeks, the place was empty above the town. On occasion when the rains came and the lightning struck, the merest plume of smoke would arise from the charred timbers sunk inward on the cellar and its broken vintages and from the attic beams fallen in black skeletons on themselves to cover the buried wines. When there was no longer smoke there was dust which lifted in veils and clouds, in which visions, remembrances of the House, flickered and faded like sudden starts of dream, and then these, too, ceased.

And with the passage of time a young man came along the road like one emerging from a dream or stepping forth from the quiet tides along a silent sea to find himself in a strange landscape staring at the abandoned House as if he knew but did not know what it had once contained.

The wind shifted in the empty trees, questioning.

He listened carefully and replied:

"Tom," he said. "It's Tom. Do you know me? Do you remember?"

The branches of the tree trembled with remembrance.

"Are you here now?" he said.

Almost,
came the whisper of a reply.
Yes. No.

The shadows stirred.

The front door of the House squealed and slowly blew open. He moved to the bottom of the steps leading up.

The chimney flue at the center of the House hollowed a breath of temperate weather.

"If I go in and wait, then what?" he said, watching the vast front of the silent House for response.

The front door drifted on its hinges. The few remaining windows shook softly in their frames, reflecting the first twilight stars.

He heard but did not hear the sussurance about his ears.

Go in. Wait.

He put his foot on the bottom step and hesitated.

The timbers of the House leaned away from him as if to draw him near.

He took another step.

"I don't know. What? Who am I looking for?"

Silence. The House waited. The wind waited in the trees.

"Ann? Is
that
who? But no. She's long gone away. But there was another. I
almost
know her name. What … ?"

The House timbers groaned with impatience. He moved up to the third step and then all the way to the top where he stood, imbalanced by the wide open door where the weather drew its breath, as if to waft him in. But he stood very still, eyes shut, trying to see a shadow face behind his eyelids.

I almost know the name, he thought.

In. In.

He stepped in through the door.

Almost instantly the House sank the merest quarter of an inch as if the night had come upon it or a cloud drifted to weight the high attic roof.

In the attic heights there was a dream inside of a slumber inside of a flesh.

"Who's there?" he called quietly. "Where are you?"

The attic dust rose and sank in a stir of shadow.

"Oh, yes, yes," he said at last. "I know it now.
Your
blessed name."

He moved to the bottom of the stairs leading up through the moonlight to the waiting attic of the House.

He took a breath.

"Cecy," he said, at last.

The House trembled.

Moonlight shone on the stairs. He went up.

"Cecy," he said a final time.

The front door slowly, slowly drifted and then slid and then very quietly shut.

There was a tap at the door and Dwight William Alcott looked up from a display of photographs just sent on from some digs outside Karnak. He was feeling especially well fed, visually, or he would not have answered the tap. He nodded, which seemed signal enough, for the door opened immediately and a bald head moved in.

"I know this is curious," said his assistant, "but there is a child here … "

"That
is
curious," said D. W. Alcott. "Children do not usually come here. He has no appointment?"

"No, but he insists that after you see the gift he has for you, you'll make an appointment,
then."

"An unusual way to make appointments," mused Alcott. "Should I see this child? A boy, is it?"

"A brilliant boy, so he tells me, bearing an ancient treasure."

"That's too much for me!" The curator laughed. "Let him in."

"I already am." Timothy, half inside the door, scuttled forward with a great rattling of studs under his arm.

"Sit down," said D. W. Alcott.

"If you don't mind, I'll stand. She might want two chairs, sir, however."

"
Two
chairs?"

"If you don't mind, sir."

"Bring an extra chair, Smith."

"Yes, sir."

And two chairs were brought and Timothy lifted the long balsa-light gift and placed it on both chairs where the bundled stuffs shown in a good light.

"Now, young man—"

"Timothy," supplied the boy.

"Timothy, I'm busy. State your business, please."

"Yes, sir."

"Well?"

"Four thousand four hundred years and nine hundred million deaths, sir … "

"My God, that's quite a mouthful." D. W. Alcott waved at Smith. "Another chair." The chair was brought. "Now you really must sit down, son." Timothy sat. "Say that again."

"I'd rather not, sir. It sounds like a lie."

"And yet," said D. W. Alcott, slowly, "why do I believe you?"

"I have that kind of face, sir."

The curator of the museum leaned forward to study the pale and intense face of the boy.

"By God," he murmured, "you
do
."

"And what have we here?" he went on, nodding to what appeared to be a catafalque. "You know the
name
papyrus?"

"Everyone knows
that
!"

"Boys, I suppose. Having to do with robbed tombs and Tut. Boys know papyrus."

"Yes, sir. Come look, if you want."

The curator
wanted,
for he was already on his feet.

He arrived to look down and probe as through a filing cabinet, leaf by leaf of cured tobacco, it almost seemed, with here and there the head
of
a lion or the body
of
a hawk. Then his fingers riffled faster and faster and he gasped as if struck in the chest.

"Child," he said and let out another breath. "Where did you find these?"

"
This,
not these, sir. And I didn't find it, it found me. Hide and seek in a way, it said. I heard. Then it wasn't hidden anymore."

"My God," gasped D. W. Alcott, using both hands now to open "wounds" of brittle stuff. "Does this belong to you?"

"It works both ways, sir. It owns me, I own it. We're family."

The curator glanced over at the boy's eyes. "Again," he said, "I
do
believe."

"Thank God."

"Why do you thank God?"

"Because if you didn't believe me, I'd have to leave." The boy edged away.

"No, no," cried the curator. "No need. But why do you speak as if this,
it,
owned you, as if you are related?"

"Because," said Timothy. "It's Nef, sir."

"Nef?"

Timothy reached over and folded back a tissue of bandage.

From deep under the openings of papyrus, the sewn-shut eyes of the old, old woman could be seen, with a hidden creek of vision between the lids. Dust filtered from her lips.

"Nef, sir," said the boy. "Mother of Nefertiti."

The curator wandered back to his chair and reached for a crystal decanter.

"Do you drink wine, boy?"

"Not until today, sir."

Timothy sat for a long moment, waiting, until Mr. D. W. Alcott handed him a small glass of wine. They drank together and at last Mr. D. W. Alcott said:

"Why have you brought this—it—her here?"

"It's the only safe place in the world."

The curator nodded. "True. Are you offering," he paused. "Nef? For sale?"

"No, sir."

"What do you want, then?"

"Just that if she stays here, sir, that once a day, you talk to her." Embarrassed, Timothy looked at his shoes.

"Would you trust me to do that, Timothy?"

Timothy looked up. "Oh, yes, sir. If you
promised
."

Then he went on, raising his gaze to fix on the curator.