Landscape: Memory (9 page)

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24 MAY 1915

It was night again, and there was no moon out. I'd walked from the house through a neighborhood I rarely went to, just uphill from the Fair at its east end. It was still warm from the day and I sat on the stone steps of a large wooden house opposite a family's picnic, feeling the warmth of the stone through my thin cloth trousers. It was twilight then, and the evening stars were bright, other stars emerging, and the sky going black. I watched it all from the steps, just resting there, leaning back on my elbows, resting and feeling the breeze blow across my bare arms and face.

The family had two dogs with lace-lined party hats tied by bows to their doggy heads. The children were dressed up too, some as clowns and others nearly naked Indians. The mother came out the wide-open front door bearing bowls of punch and sporting a hatchet, its blade buried in her skull. It must have been a novelty. They had electric lights, as we did, but seemed also to have some uncommonly strong spotlights, perhaps stage lights and certainly bright enough to be.

I watched the night sky, the thick wash of the Milky Way now in view, and pretended to pay them little mind. It was a night much like all the other nights. The Tower of Jewels lit like a bloody saber, climbing crimson into the black sky, the promise of fog sometime before morning, and most of the city, it seemed, walking the broad avenues of the Fair or taking streetcars and strolling their way over there. I had dressed dapper, just because. Collar and tie, a pair of clean trousers, a soft snap-brim cap and my face well-scrubbed. I even wore a clean white shirt. I don't know why. It felt nice to dress neatly, I suppose, like camouflage.

There by this family I felt invisible, the night settling in and them awash in their own bright lights, playing some elaborate pantomime probably of their own devising. Its meager plot tumbled forward to a close, and then came the dousing of the lights. Everything went suddenly dark.

I felt bathed in the night then, it snapping shut around that big family, wrapping us all up together, and the Indians whooping their courage against the total darkness, whooping loud and long up into the cool, smoky air. Dogs howled and I howled too, on impulse and undetected, howling up to the stars, my neck stretched and chin way up till my head went dizzy, and I howled some more. I could see some now, not just the stars, but the ghostly glow of the pale-skinned Indians running and rolling in the big lawn, laughing and calling in some new game with the clowns.

"British bulldog, British bulldog," I heard one calling loud, and then all the rest rushed at him, all but one reaching the far end of the yard, and that one wrestled to the ground by the boy in the middle, an Indian shorter than me.

"British bulldog," he called again, and the pack rushed back, two now tackled by the two in the middle, so then there were four.

Neighbor kids were coming from out of the dark, running toward the call and joining the mob at one end of the soft, grassy lawn. They all pulled off their shoes and stockings, all familiar, I figured, with the rough-and-tumble of the game. I ran there too, tossing my shoes into the pile and pulling off my stockings as the throng went rushing into the fray, the middle now dense with Indians and clowns and neighbor kids all running and wrestling, wild and muddy.

I lined up for the charge, cocky and bold for no good reason, and I got in with an Indian, his bear hug well-timed and tight around my belly. I broke free when my top buttons burst and I twisted neatly out of my shirt and away to safety. There were eight of us left and nearly a score in the middle. I was tossed, my torn shirt, and I put it on again, always thinking.

"British bulldog" and we rushed in. I smartly lingered a moment, letting the hasty gangs engage themselves, each with a victim. Three of us made it through, I by guile and the other two by brute force.

I was down in an instant on the next rush, my shirt ripped away again and at least ten involved in my demise. The sweaty skin of several Indians smushed up against me and a clown puff fell within easy reach of my grabbing hand. We rolled and wrestled across the quickly muddied lawn, whole piles of dirty kids falling into the fray, no end to the game, and I uncontrollably laughing from excitement, dragging down whomever I could get my hands on.

The cold air was filled with hooting and howling, more kids than I'd ever grabbed before, rubbing each other senseless into the mud. It went on and on, of course, and ended as suddenly as that. Tired kids got up off the ground and poked around by the bushes, looking for shoes and shirts and this and that. They wandered back into the night, to houses whose windows were warm with firelight, up to their rooms or a bath and then bed.

I lay there and looked sideways across the muddy grass, my pale arms stretched out into the dark, and watched the bodies walking away. The ghost white of my shirt lay alone near the bushes, one tear evident on the sleeve. My two black shoes were somewhere behind me. It was another moment like so many moments these days. I watched the lights of the Scintillator playing its curtains of color across the black sky above the bay and remembered that I'd meant to go to the Fair.

The Zone hooted and howled, its bare-bulb lighting shouting up into the dark. Drunks reeled against the fence that ran down Chestnut Street. I could see lines of revelers, their bowlers tipped back, standing in wait for the Aerospace, watching its long iron-boned arm lift the thin metal carriage up into space, an airborne carton of gawkers leaning out against the fenced walls to see as far across the fairgrounds as could be. Buddha gazed serenely out into the night, from atop the center of Japan Beautiful, deep in the Zone. Mother told me it was Buddha and that he always looks sleepy like that.

I went in under the bright white lights at Fillmore, handing my photo pass to a turnstile guard who looked at me with what I took to be suspicion, though, given my appearance, it may well have been concern.

"There's only an hour or so left," he warned me. "You'll not be looking to stay in after closing now." He must have taken me for a vagrant. A vagrant with a season's pass.

"No sir, I'll just be in for some rides. I'll go home to bed," I assured him.

I didn't go for rides straightaway, steering clear of the noisy Zone and walking instead down the Avenue of Progress toward the water. Bright banners hung high the whole length of the avenue, beating about in the wind, casting shadows into stray clouds of steam. They looked like lurid poppies floating in a black pool, all poked and pushed by drunken fish, jumping around there in the night. I got to feeling dizzy, what with the long avenue leading off into infinity and the sky displaced by so many colors. I turned into the shelter of the Court of Mines, its clean, manageable space marked off by high marble walls, sheltered from the wind and nonsense of the broad avenue.

I sat on a rough stone bench and took some deep breaths to relax. Really, the Fair was a bit much without a guidebook. Looking across through the central courts I felt buried by the avalanche of statuary and symbolic ornamentation, legions of nymphs and dryads and slumping Indians facing off against stout pioneers. And all the colors. The guidebook or Mother could set it all straight, accounting for each and every pairing and juxtaposition in the various courts. But now it was a dizzying muddle, what with the jumbled colors leaping off into the night and me feeling a bit piqued. I took some more breaths and looked down into the pretty pink gravel, just watching my two shoes set firmly on the ground.

I saw a pair of lady's boots come into view, a few feet from my shoes, their tips pointed toward mine.

"I see you're in distress," a lovely lady's voice announced. "You don't look well at all." She sat down beside me and put her warm hand to my forehead. "You'll forgive my impertinence, but I am a mother and will not stand on ceremony where a child's health is concerned."

"Do I really look as bad as all that?" I asked, soaking in her concern. "I know I'm a bit of a mess."

"More than a bit," she insisted, "and suffering chills to boot." She put a shawl about my shoulders and picked a clump of grass from my hair. "Your name, child. What's your name?"

"Maxwell."

"Maxwell," she repeated. "Listen to me. Maxwell. I am Mrs. Dunphy and Mr. Dunphy has gone home, as the Fair tires him. Are your parents with you?"

"I'm here by myself." I looked at her with sincerity. "I only need a little rest. I'm just dizzy from ... all of this." We both looked out at the grotesque enormity of it all.

"It is a dizzying sight," Mrs. Dunphy agreed. She shifted around on the bench, tilting her head toward me, beckoning some sort of response.

"I find the avenues leading out to the water especially difficult. It's so unclear whether they end, and the wind is too much for me.

"Yes, precisely." She nodded her head sagely. "The Fair is a difficult treasure. Maxwell. I'm afraid you've not been adequately prepared for its scope."

I took some very deep breaths and smiled a reassuring smile. Mrs. Dunphy kept her hand firmly on my shoulder, keeping me from getting up just yet. I felt bolstered by her strength and calm.

"We'll catch our breath for a few more minutes," she announced, "and then go on to the Court of Ages. It's important you not miss it. You'll need a guide, and it shall be me."

"Of course," I agreed. I was happy to oblige, glad to let myself into her care, rather than striking out into the mysterious Fair alone.

A tiny motorcar came chugging by, pulling a train of tourists in topless carriages, its many compartments looked like railroad cars in a long snaking line. Off they chugged past the stone caldrons (bubbling thick with red liquid and steam), beside the tall walls of the Palace of Mining, and through the high arch leading to the Court of Ages.

"We'll soon follow them in," Mrs. Dunphy said, watching me stare in wonder at the disappearing lights of the caboose.

I ruffled my shoes across the gravel with vigor and smiled brightly at my kind guide, trying to cover my vague dread and nausea. Things still loomed too large and lurid. Grotesque figures stared down from parapets, tiny tourists ferried about below, like brittle little sticks in a raging river.

We walked from our sheltered spot past the grim stone murals, past the plantings and lovely green lattice, and through the Gothic archway into the Court of Ages. The black night sky opened up wide, let loose as the buildings drew back from their close arrangement in the side court. Here the plaza spread out in broad sweeps from the central fountain and throngs milled about the wide-open space, dwarfed by the architecture and towering statuary.

Mrs. Dunphy took my arm and led me toward the center.

"Mullgardt," she began, referring to the genius behind this design, "has succeeded in putting into architecture the spirit that inspired Langdon Smith's poem 'Evolution,' beginning 'When you were a tadpole and I was a fish.' The whole evolution of man is intimated here from the time when he lived among the seaweed and the turtles and the crab."

The whole evolution of man. It seemed an impossibly long time to have put into these massive walls. The presence of those ancient ugly fish swimming frozen in the stone was like a pressure on my eyes. I felt the walls might soon tumble forward, collapsing from the sheer momentum of the ages, let loose like some swollen river finally breaching the levees.

"Even the straight vertical lines used in the design suggest the dripping of water."

I watched clouds of steam roll out above the rough-blown water of the fountain. A light burned blood-red deep within the wide pool. Stone serpents twisted out of heavy caldrons along its perimeter, tangling their slithery forms around gas flames, their sharp eyes staring out in all directions.

"Did Mullgardt design the fountain as well?" I asked to be polite.

"That's Aitken, Maxwell."

"Is he also concerned with fish?" I lost sight of her as a cloud of steam blew in around us.

"Aitken has played with Mullgardt's elemental theme, drawing us back to our primeval origins, further back than even the fish, back, I believe, to the very origin of the planet."

I looked again at the fountain. A small child was playing on the lip, dipping her bare foot into the glowing pool, testing, it seemed, for depth and temperature.

"Specifically, the pagan conception of the sun, Maxwell. Aitken has used the notion that the sun threw off the earth in a molten mass to steam and cool down here and to bring forth those competitions between human beings that reveal the working of the elemental passions."

An older sibling sneaked up and gave the little girl a shove, neatly grabbing her wrist in the same motion. This set her to horrible screaming and an ill-advised tug away from her brother. Attentions turned toward them. Mrs. Dunphy drew me away.

We left the fountain and went west toward two enormous snowflake ornaments, lofted to midair on thin columns. The two flakes burned bright as suns on either side of us, obliterating all else by their light.

"They look like stars, don't they?" Mrs. Dunphy asked as we paused between them.

"From very far away, I suppose."

"Yes." And she paused, for just a moment, to entertain my thought. "And yet they have a history behind them." I closed my eyes to listen to all the sounds as Mrs. Dunphy picked up the thread of her lecture. "They are like the monstrance used in the Catholic Church to hold the Sacred Host, the wafer that is accepted by the faithful as the body and blood of Jesus Christ. These very ornaments contain the Sacred Host in a small glass bulb at their center."

I looked but could not see to their center. The light was too bright.

"They've got a bit of flesh?"

"As it were. Blessed wafer accepted as flesh." A brass band struck up from the Court of the Universe, their
oom-pahs
wavering in and out of sync with the strains of a string quartet close by the fountain. Voices were being raised again back by the lip and the little girl had taken to a constant wailing.