Landscape: Memory (10 page)

"Observe how the ideas in the structure of the walls of the court are carried on in the ornamental details and the tower. The primitive man and woman repeated in a row along the upper edge, drawing the eye naturally to the religious figure in the apse of the tower. Some believe it to be Buddhistic in origin, but it belongs to no particular religion."

The string quartet kept on. All around us people seemed to be moving swiftly toward the central court.

"Will they really blow it all up this winter?" I asked, too dizzy and distracted to inquire about meanings.

"Perhaps not, Maxwell. Some say the city will set it all in stone, if funds can be raised." We looked around the full sweep of the court, I imagining it first blown to bits, then set in stone, a crumbling ruin fixed forever in gray, weathered granite.

Our costumes fluttered in the strong wind blowing in off the bay. Wild currents swirled over the high walls, raising rubbish up in dust devils around the broad court. The brass band and quartet had stopped, perhaps long ago.

"Are you quite all right?" Mrs. Dunphy asked again, looking in close to my eyes. "You seem rather dizzy."

I
was
quite dizzy, and suddenly very empty, feeling as though something in my center had been drawn out with my last breath. It rushed forward with the cold wind. The air seemed to have suddenly gotten much richer or thinner, a queer chill running across my skin. Mrs. Dunphy took my arm and led me on.

Men and women were gathered all around in silent bunches, clotted thicker as we came near the center of the court. Stone fish stared benignly into the night, and I wobbled a bit and lay down on the ground, staring up into the black sky. Mrs. Dunphy was silent now, mute and dumb, her mouth moving and her head drawing near, then away. She was rushing off in a flurry, away into the dark. I could hear nothing.

 
* * *
 

I lay still and stared upward. Past gabardine trousers and flannel overcoats, beyond the colored lights and brittle domes, up into the night, through the chilly thin air, beyond Beachey's altitude record, past the pinpoint stars, beyond the most primitive bird flying alone through the crystalline spheres. I focused as far away, as distant and dark as my eyes knew how. It seemed possible, just then, that I might see through to its farthest end.

The crowd paid me little mind as they shuffled to and fro. Mrs. Dunphy had disappeared into the night to search, I felt certain, for a doctor or a priest or my parents. The sandy ground was cool against my back. A soft thumping beat into my bones through the solid earth, a rhythm of bumps and rumbles that you had to lie down flat against the dirt to feel. I turned my head and laid my cheek against the ground. That little girl was lying by the lip of the fountain, all wet and tiny like a kitten who'd been drowned or just born. Two men held her body down. A third had drawn a thick wool stocking tight across her opened mouth.

"When you were a Tadpole and I was a Fish, in the Paleozoic time ..." Bits and scraps of songs were floating inside my mind. I felt the little girl's convulsions beating into me through the ground. Her tiny body seemed so powerful just then. Her head swung wildly around and I saw her look into me with eyes so big and black I felt I might fall forever into them. The depth of them gave me a spasm of fright so sudden I rose from the ground with no breath left in me. 

Mrs. Dunphy was gone.

I walked away through the pink gravel and down the bannered boulevard, now nearly empty. There, far ahead, by the sea, my mother stood atop a tall thin column. She stared out across the bay, her victory robes flowing, set in stone, a laurel wreath round her head. I saw her in the last illumination, just before closing. Her shadow was cast into the heavy fog. It was rolling in again, displacing the little wisps of steam produced by the Fair's elaborate machinery.

A buoy flying a small black flag floated offshore, lit by a single spot, marking the sight of Beachey's plunge. I dropped big white stones and watched them disappear into the black water. The last lights shut down.

An attendant in nursing whites pushed a limbless man in his wheelchair, rattling along the gravel of the Florentine Court, last and alone excepting me, rushing to the gates before they were finally locked. The little man bounced about like overstuffed luggage, tipping this way and that, righted on occasion by his attendant, talking a blue streak in a language I didn't understand. It made me cry, more for myself being last and alone, I suspect, than for the man's hardship.

I didn't think to stay. 

25 MAY 1915

I can't sleep, it seems. I find my attention quickening as night comes on. And now that I'm up so long it seems a good idea to stay up even longer.

Duncan noticed today. He said, "You haven't slept, have you?" and I nodded no, I haven't. We were at home, him getting dressed and me sitting on his bed looking at the angle of the sunshine, it being very low and casting long shadows up against the fronts of houses. He sat down next to me and tilted my head back to look, I suppose, at my eyes or throat or something.

"Aren't you tired?" he asked, peering into my mouth.

"Not really. I feel kind of loose, like pudding."

He held me round the ribs and shook my loose body, testing.

"How long've you been up?"

"A day now. I slept pretty well before last night." I flopped back on his bed, stretching my arms up to the headboard, and looked for the battle lines of the Marne in the ceiling cracks. "I get all dreamy in my head, but not tired really. Do I make sense?"

He rolled up next to me and felt my forehead.

"You make sense. You just look a mess, like you're living in the woods. Take a shower. You'll think it's morning and you slept and everything." It seemed a good idea, so I did, and Duncan cooked breakfast and we went to school.

I noticed Flora's bosom today, how big it is and that I don't think she restrains it. My feet are too big for my shoes now. And Miss Gillian always closes her mouth when she's not speaking. I felt like prying it open by the end of class, it was so resolutely shut, as she listened with her bright eyes trained on the speaker.

Mostly I noticed the weather, it seeming so much larger and more important than all the talk. It really does move in over the whole face of things. You can smell it coming over the hills, foggy or clear, dry or damp or thunderstorm. It made me jumpy and frisky, just wanting to be out
in
it.

Flora and Duncan and I drove down the Great Highway and ran on the beach, letting all that air wash over me in waves and waves, air from far across the ocean blowing in steady over me, on my face, and I dove into the sand, and got up and dove again, and leaped as high into the air as I could, running far and fast through the wet salty air. I started to strip off my clothes, ready to run into the icy blue water, but Flora and Duncan bundled me off in bear hugs to the car, saving me from certain arrest and probably pneumonia. It was a wonderful day.

There is no more firewood here. I've burned all the wood wanting a good read by firelight. This room is beautiful in the flickering yellow light and shadows. It reminds me of the magic lamp, only these shadows and shapes are even older, unreadable, playing out in patterns you must unfocus your eyes on if you want to make sense of them.

I made it through one hundred and sixty pages of
Melmoth.
I read out loud to Duncan through almost sixty of those, until he fell asleep, curled in at my feet, next to the fire. That was very kind of him, as I know
Melmoth
is not what interests him. He's lying here still, drooling through his warm hand onto my sock, his head resting on my feet.

It's been foggy tonight, gray clouds hugging the ground, rolling close across the windows, close enough to take the flickering shadows of the fire on their faces, before they roll away again with the wind.

There is a light in a house across the way. It's the only light I see that keeps long hours like me. It's burned steady all night tonight, appearing and disappearing through the intermittent fog.

The house is tall and thin, with a stone path leading to its small porch. Inside, I'm sure, the stairs are steep and narrow, two flights of them leading up through the quiet, creaking night to the front room up under the eaves. That's where the light burns. Sometimes I see shadows moving across the curtains, and once or twice a face peering out, ever so briefly, through the neat gap between them.

I think it's a woman and I fancy she's writing a book, a romance adventure book, or thinly veiled autobiography detailing the horrible beatings she's suffered at the hands of her drunkard husband. He, no doubt, is buried in the basement, chopped to neat little bits and mixed with oatmeal, stuffed in canvas sacks and covered by six feet of dirt. She's got a dog, I'm certain, a St. Bernard, all full of fur and drool, who is her lover. Or she's Phoebe Hearst's secret lover, locked up on pain of death, showered with expensive gifts, and unable to leave her lonely prison. The dog, then, is merely her friend and confidant.

Her light has gone out. I wonder if she's seen me, and what she makes of me. There's just enough light left in the fire, I'm sure she can see that I'm still here, staying with her as late as she could possibly stay, last and alone. I'll go to get more wood.

26 MAY 1915

When I got up to go in search of wood Duncan woke and stretched and stirred, rolling his face toward the fire, and mumbled to me as if out of a dream, something about not leaving him just then.

"We need more wood," I explained. "I'm just going out to find some and bring it right back." He rolled back and wrapped around my leg.

"No, Dogey, no. You're staying here. It's warm and toasty. Be my friend."

"I am being your friend," I insisted, pulling my leg free. "I'm getting more wood to keep you warm." But he just lay there all pulled into a little ball.

"No, you keep me warm. Stay and read more, sleep here," and he turned his back again to me, scrunching up closer to the fire.

"I can't read in the dark."

He just shook like a shiver, pretending it was cold. I patted his shoulder and got up to go. I had set my mind on keeping this fire burning, just staying as we'd been, me reading through to the end and Duncan warm and sleepy by the fire.

"I'm going now," I said as nice as I could, pulling my boots on and buttoning a big sweater over my shirt. "I'll be right back."

"So wait for me," Duncan said, still sleepy but waking up just enough. "Dress me, get my pram."

"You are dressed, dummy."

"It's freezing out there," he complained, sitting up and yawning some more. "I'll need furs and a muffler."

"You're funny," I said, wrapping a throw rug around him.

"I'm cold."

I figured Lone Mountain was best for firewood, it being near and unlikely anyone would mind our clearing windfall from a graveyard. We walked down Divisadero to Turk and went west, the fog still hanging thick and silent. I felt we were walking out to sea, walking a long thin peninsula out into the dull gray waters, birds asleep or resting in the calm, the ocean surface like cold lead and silent, and all of it hidden by the heavy fog.

I called long and low, making the sound of a ship in distress, drifting with no compass. Dogs barked back. The clitter-clatter of their dog nails on concrete rattled up the walk, as loud as if they were prancing next to us.

"They need to install buoys," Duncan suggested, tugging his muffler down off his mouth.

The streets were empty as ghosts, nothing moving but us and the dogs. No motors ran, no children screamed or parents scolded, no trolley bells rang.

"Do you suppose we might get lost?" Duncan asked, bumping into me like a tugboat.

"If you like," I allowed. "We might get lost."

"I've never been lost in a graveyard."

"Have you been in a graveyard?"

"Yes." And he stopped bumping.

"I've only been for an uncle I never knew, and once just sneaking around," I said, remembering the odd formalities that attended my uncle's disposal. We all dropped black handkerchiefs into his grave.

"I went for a friend once. He died in the fire."

"The big fire?" I had just met Duncan then, on the boat to the lost-children's camp.

"Uh-huh. We buried him after I'd been in Oakland."

"After you'd been at the camp?" He hadn't said anything about his friend then.

"Yeah."

"Were you sad?"

"Yeah. We'd been best friends." He'd said something about a best friend before, but never that he'd died.

"You never told me he died."

"Nope. I don't think about it much."

"Why not?" If that had been my friend, I figured, that's all I would think about.

"It makes me sad, so I don't think about it." He looked at me now, to see if I understood.

"I guess I understand," I allowed. "But if it were me that's all I'd ever think about. I just can't help thinking about stuff like that."

We walked along Geary to the southern edge of Lone Mountain, looking through the mist up Greenwood, looking at the pale collapsing obelisk of James King of William. The Laurestina hedge was in need of a trim, all overgrown and tangled, reaching frantically up into the graying dawn like poisonous vapors. Duncan walked so silently. I kept looking to make certain he was there. He bumped up close and held on for a bit as we cut across the corner of Odd Fellows and on into Calvary.

This graveyard was not well kept. It was overgrown and thick with low twisted oak trees, all wind blown and shaggy, home to warblers and thrush. In its better days, my father told me, Calvary had an elaborate network of gas lines, feeding tiny guide flames, bordering all the paths at intervals of two or three feet. It was called then, he said, the Graveyard of the Eternal Flame, but the quake broke it to bits and now it's just Calvary again.

There was a row of Dunphys, laid out side by side, dead in a long succession of mothers and sons and babies who didn't have names yet when they died.

Dead flowers lay dry and crumbling on the flat gravestones. It looked so sad to me. I'd rather leave nothing than have it go so publicly bad. Duncan brushed them off into the overgrown yellowing lawn as we walked by. He was behind me, resting both hands on my shoulders as in Freight Train, only he didn't know about Freight Train.

I looked ahead, down the gentle slope of the hill. The rough grass covered its long face, disappearing down into the low-lying fog. We could see the black silhouettes of the oak trees gathered in a grove at the bottom. There seemed to be some broken limbs lying in the grass, fallen by their dead weight or blown off by the wind.

"D'you ever play Freight Train?" I asked Duncan. He was hopping now as we went.

"Nope," he said, sounding certain.

"It's just like we are now, except you need six or seven kids, all lined up, hands up on shoulders." Duncan started making train sounds.

"Does it have to be in a graveyard?" he asked, chugging right into me and taking the engine spot.

"No, but you've really gotta get a bunch of kids. Otherwise it's just engine and caboose and that's not right. You can't
always
be engine and caboose, it's just too much." But my caution went unheeded. Duncan tooted and chugged us down the hill without a second thought, and I just followed, attached by the game to his undisciplined engine.

We loaded armloads of mostly rotting wood and walked back up toward the crest of the hill. The sky had washed out gray in the east where the clouds had lifted up from off the land. At Masonic we tossed the wood over, hoping no one was up and about to be beaned by our treasure. The good wood bounced with a healthy bang, and the rest landed, we could hear, like crumbling sand or damp cardboard. The bad wood we left there, in the bushes.

Some assorted citizens were out, briskly taking their morning constitutionals, motoring past us on legs like pistons, grunting a hearty hello or making some comment about wood. It was good we lived near else our arms might have dropped off.

I walked behind Duncan and watched the lines of sweat drip out of his wet dark hair, down his bare neck, and disappear into his shirt. It was a night like so many other nights.

At home he slept and I stoked the dying embers with our damp wood, reading in the gray light of dawn while the oak smoldered and smoked, finally catching flame after a good half hour of slow kindling. It was an elixir to me, that plucky yellow flame, coming clean in the thick smoke, dancing up into the blackened bricks of the fireplace. I sat up close as could be, watching its wispy base licking the wood, uncertain what its connection must be and unable to locate its activity. When a flame is just catching, one can't really see the wood burn, only the bright, flickering light. I couldn't imagine those logs would eventually be consumed and I strained to watch as long as I could, waiting for the wood to turn to glowing coals, eaten hollow by the flame, waiting for the inevitable collapse of the whole thing, down into embers and ash.

27 MAY 1915

I'm not certain why or exactly when, but I went back to that small hollow in the Presidio woods last night. I was dirty and cut from the fog in thick so long it made mud of the woods. I was slipping and sliding and grabbing too late at handholds I couldn't see, it being night still. Birds were crazy in the trees this time. I listened for the laughing and the metal banging like before, convinced it really was the rocks and wind, but it wasn't. Not nearly like with Duncan. The wind blew stronger this time, and yet no sound came up, at least none so human as before. Something real is down there, I know that now.