If All Else Fails (6 page)

"I know you didn't.
You never did but I only very re­cently learned that."

"Now the other
hand," said the cop, trying to look any­where in the room where she wasn't.

"Ask me why I took
my clothes off in public," she said. "Ask me why I got tired of becoming the smallest thing in
the known universe."

"The other hand,"
repeated the cop.

"I'll tell you
why," said the piano bird. "It's because I'm in love, in love with all the faces in the dark I
never knew. Maybe even with you."

"Jesus!" said the
cop, looking around to see if anybody overheard her.

"But I wore these
feathers because I wanted everyone to know that no one is going to have me again. No one is going
to own me because I am giving myself to the wind."

They put her in a
featureless room. They stripped her of her feathers. They locked the feathers up in a locker with
the clothes she discarded back at the nightclub. They left her sitting on a bench,
naked.

Then a police
matron with cold hands came into the room and frisked her.

He was one of the
last old people of summer and he came out on a hill, maybe the only one left. They were gathered
there. The old, the young, and the no longer restless, all gathered. And he sat by the cold fires
and, not knowing or caring if any listened, he said, '1 will go do what I have to do." The trees
and birds listened. The people listened. It was a time when all things listened, for there were
soon to be none left to speak.

The people looked
at him like birds seeing torn feathers. They said, "The world ends tonight. You cannot leave your
song here and go. Do not leave your song here. It will warm itself by the fire. It will wait for
you by the fire. But not for long." All this was said with turned-away faces and
silence.

They said, "Do not
go. Your song will go outside to wait for you when you do not return. It will set away from the
fire. It will get cold." This was said with busy motions and precious moments. That is what they
said.

"Tomorrow is cold
for all songs," he said and they knew he was right. They knew he was right.

"I will go," he
said.

"How will you go?"
they asked.

"I will go as an
owl. I will go see the city sitting on its buildings." And quietly like a hawk coming without
claws, he went away over the soft ground.

And the people
shook their heads as he went. And the old
ones, thinking of him, could not see his face in their minds. He was an owl and owls,
when the world ends, say, "Don't look at me with your eyes."

There was a place
he went to first. It was above the city. It was a high place built of concrete and steel on
ground where once a hill stood. It was built there so that one could take pictures of the city to
send home. He was not there to send pictures home.

He who had lived
his life in a long shadow of a city now felt the first moment of going from a darkened room out
into the light. Somewhere down there in the shadow of the city, the sky was hidden. He knew his
strength by the distance he could see, and down there in the city, he would be blind and bent in
shadows. But he had to go down there. And the world was ending and all of the city was ending. In
his heart he knew it was ending, knew that the gray place that did not live was ending but his
heart knew it was not enough.

He drew his arm
across his face in a wing-and-feather mo­tion, shielding his eyes from the sharp face of the sun.
Softly like a bird he moved, like a bird about to soar. He said, "I will fascinate you. I will
tear out your eyes with spirit teeth."

And he laughed and
laughed.

And below him, the
city sat on its buildings.

And he laughed and
laughed.

And Detroit
screamed on its wheels.

And Chicago slid on
slaughtered animals.

And the old man
sucked it up in his breath. The panic of an animal city was like telltale smoke to an
owl.

And Los Angeles
waited like a pregnancy in unmoving traffic.

And the skyline of
New York, for the first time, did not cast any shadows.

And the old man
tore it away like cobwebs and laughed and laughed.

And the closed eyes
of animals, with their heads to the ground, moved slowly with flies.

And the old man saw
it. He saw the city burning. The concrete, the steel, the brick and iron, all burning. And the
wood of dead trees was rusting. And he laughed, sharpening claws he never had. And there was a
song, a little song from his memory and it too was burning.

And the song said,
"Go to sleep and do not cry. Your mother is dead and still you feed upon her breasts." That is
what the song said. It was the end-of-the-world song of a hungry spider who spins his last web,
knowing how to die.

Back there on the
hill, the old man's song got cold waiting for him. And the people set all the dances on fire. All
the dances on fire. And they packed them away still burning, with handfuls of dirt, red earth
like pipestone. They gave the dances all burning to mother earth. Only mother earth can keep
dances when the world ends.

The old man stood
in the harsh glare of the city, wrapped in the soft protection of folded wings of memory. The air
around him was alive with flame as his memories got stronger and the earth moved beneath him with
the power of living before him and after him. He felt the earth moving under his feet like a
child spinning around and around in a secret place known only to boys. Tomorrow was cold and
burnt away to ash. But in the secret place that lived yet in­side of him, the current was slow
and the warm brown river seemed to be standing still.

And the reason that
had sent him away from the hill, when the people gathered, came up the brown river and he could
not say her name. No, he could not say her name. Not even now when the world ends could he say
her name. For the dead take their names with them out of the world.

But he thought of
her in this time of the coming back, in this time of the world ending and coming out of the
ground. His old woman had not come out of the ground. That was
why he was there. That was why he was there to see the city sitting
on its buildings.

There to see the
city that had hidden the sky. The other people had buried their city on her grave.

He listened. He did
not hear the scratching of her fingers as she clawed at the city above her. Or did he? Was the
long animal cry of the city her cry, too? Was it her moving-in-the-grave sound?

The ears of an owl
are sharp and he listened. And then he knew he heard her. The owl can hear many things when the
world ends, and he heard her. The scratching, the painful scratching of her moving.

"She cannot come up
through the sidewalk concrete," he said. That is what he said. And in his face he took her
ham­mer and beat her name into ashes and beat those ashes into a hammer. But the spirit calling
of her to come was not enough. They had buried a city on her grave.

He closed his eyes
and he said, "I will wait and watch. I will not go down there yet. I will not speak and see if
they do not move the city. They do not need the city anymore. Maybe they will tear it down
now."

He was an owl and
that is what he said.

But they did not
move the city. He waited and watched. An owl waited and watched but they did not move the city.
The other people had buried their city. It was behind them even though they still lived in it.
They had buried their city.

He was an owl and
he knew this. He had heard them. He saw them through the eyes of sick animals. The sun was going
to come at them and they had gathered together like a swarm of locusts. They were like
storm-frightened cattle and the wings of frightened birds brought their words to him. They said,
"Let's swim to the moon."

He was an owl and
that is what they said.

The old man looked
up at the flaming sky of high-sun time. It was hot like a pot oven and the sun was
spinning
like a wounded spider, dangling
closer to its prey on a single strand of fire. It filled the sky and moved quickly to the west.
Moving fast like a thrown spear, the sun pulled night after it like a blanket. It was dark coming
at noon. It was the end of the world coming and darkness and flames. Flames and then
darkness.

"I am an owl. I
live in the dark. I will not be angry when it grows dark."

That was what he
said but things within him snapped like twigs in the summer and he sat down on the ground like an
old man. He sat down like an old man.

"I am not an owl!"
he cried and he beat the ground with fists, not wings.

"I shall fascinate
you. I shall tear out your eyes with spirit teeth," he said, and he laughed and laughed and the
sound of his laughter was a noise in a hollow barrel and the warm tears ran out of his eyes into
the ground. He was an old man. And old men cry when the world ends.

Back on the hill
they were gathered. His song had grown cold. His song had no relatives. All his relatives were
gone. They could not be there. The other people had buried their cities on them and the sun could
not see them down there under the city.

And in the city, in
buildings called museums, there were rustling sounds and weeping sounds. In cold gray filing
cab­inets, the bones of the old ones stirred uneasily. In vaults, in labeled boxes, the bones of
the old ones cried restlessly and they could not get free. In one box the leg, an arm in
an­other, the skull filling with tears in a long display case in an­other room. And the sun could
not reach them and mother earth could not bring them awake and they wept, quietly, quietly, in
the museums. And they wept.

The old ones, and
the young ones, and the no longer rest­less ones were sitting quietly on the hill. They talked
and
laughed with their relatives. Far
away on something like a hill, the owl knew what they said. They said, "It is a good day today."
They said, "We have today and each other. It is a good day to die." And behind all these words,
they said one other thing and that was a shy thing that could not be spoken. So it was said with
a time of quiet, or a soft look, or a touch. It was said between father and child, between man
and woman, with quiet movements that brought them to­gether. All together. They were there with
the ground peo­ple and the animal people. All together. They were there and the world was ending
and they were there. And with faces, not words, they said, "No one here gets out
alive."

There was a cold
tiling coming out of the old man's heart. His cold song had come for him. The wind had blown his
song away and it had come for him.

The people on the
hill did not see his song blow away, be­cause in the last of the time left they only had eyes for
each other, only had eyes for those of their own kind, and he had told them he was an owl. That
is what he told them. They could not see his face, all silver and golden, in their minds. They
thought he was an owl and owls, when the world ends, say, "Don't look at me with your
eyes."

Buried animal and
ground people were trying to reach out through the cracks in sidewalks. The ground people moved
restlessly under the concrete.

"I will fascinate.
I will roll my dead fist in your dead eyes." He raised his fist at the city and did not laugh. He
could hear her under the concrete, scratching, scratching.

The world was
ending but the city did not know. There were corpses in clown suits running across each other's
bod­ies on rat legs in the city. There were awkward throats mov­ing out of habit, saying, "Pile
the bodies here and here and here."

Cheated monkeys
with jaded tongues screamed across the years, saying, "I promised to drown myself." Loud noises
choked small throats and softly, softly, like whining children who write on walls, they tumbled
over each other in the darkness of a city that sat on its buildings. And the city did not see an
old man take a hammer from a store with a bro­ken window. And the city did not see an old man
with a hammer trying to move a city.

He swung and hit
and swung and hit but cities are dead and forever when the world ends. He broke the hammer. The
hammer broke on the concrete. And broken, he sat down like an old man and said, "I want my old
woman," and his voice was a tearing sound. "I am not an owl. I want my old woman." This is what
he said and his fists hid his eyes and his shoulders shook.

There was a man
with a book down there in the city. He was all blood and death and writing in a page and he
touched the old man on the shoulder with his book. He touched the old man on the shoulder and he
spoke. His an­cient words went through the air like a knife and his book was bound in snakeskin.
But the old man had been an owl. The bookman ran away. He ran away holding his book with his
knees.

It was getting hot
like a summer-grass fire and the old man looked up. But the sky was hidden by the city. He had
come to the city to find his old woman and now he had lost the sky in the city that hid it. And
old men and owls need the sky when the world ends.