1/5-5/1/1997 g.g.Ashbrook
Barlow noticed the totality was stopping. The priests all around him winding up their reels and the curtains painted just last Sunday with white crescent moons outlined in blue and orange and stars outlined in red. Folding chairs began to clink and clutter as the ungrateful audience began to leave even before the show had come to a complete halt.
But Barlow sat there still, a little longer then the others. For the sake of courtesy. He wondered about the tribunes for a moment but left the others to do the sweating.
Four dozen tikes marching over the sheep clipped mounds of rolling walk back to camp- and only with that condescending shake of the finger. And eyes rolling only the second half closed. The high pitched mockeries of today’s performance scuttled out in every direction from the picayune generators waving and winding like a yellow mist of tadpoles. The show was over, and the audience already engrossed in the day’s work to come.
He felt bad. The old men draped in chain dangling esoteric jeweled symbols and their black robes and long white beards. Their faces deeply creased everyone of them. And troubling over boxes as there were not enough of them to be exempt from ‘too large a portion’ then would be ideal or preferable. "More then enough," Barlow thought.
The children were gone now. Knocked over chairs littered the hillside along with trash that had been brought along just so the elderly would have to pick it up. Yellowed antique wrappers- remnants of past days of industrial label production. Leafs panted a garish white. Only a few slow and burdened old one young and birds flying around in tight circles supporting the overcast sky so it should not fall.
In a faint rustling of feet, and facial expressions that should have been accompanied by groans, but here only by a heavier shuffling. Heavy boy laden. The beards seemed to grow longer and the creases in their faces deeper. And their eyes darker and beadier, and their skin paler. Sitting so long he had not noticed the chair, but now it seemed… something he would owe. Or something between him and the ground that could coax the ground to swallow him up. Barlow stood up fast and threw repeatedly at the chair glances of discovered betrayal. But he eased up. The chair was thin and wobbly. Tattered backing flapping in a clear wind. One hunched ancient light on his feet, arched around and swooped down picking up the chair and folding it this and that way, into the shape of a suit case. The old man’s eyes glistened with fiery colors like a burst of flames up from the bottom of a lake. Even after the old man was out of sight and behind him he could see his face closering by, closer and closer, again and again. A strange hunched old white and mouth black as soot between lips no different in color or texture then the rest of the face. All bent and bobbing fluid like a buoy. Barlow turned around and watched as they took the last of the stage to pieces. Their jewelry clanking everyone of them a chorus of tiny bells from a shrunken empire across the sea. Chapels of Chrystalline majesty, with strawberries topping the onion domed parapets. The buildings that grew out of the ground like plants and small as saplings. Sounded familiar.
But the swooping swooning had gone, and so had the queer haunting from the priests’ faces. Once in a few moments the wind blew life and mystery through the men, but for the time just long robes under homogenous sky. Barlow turned toward where the boys had run off to; he could just about see the tree tops - birds singing and roasting on spits. Sling shots and cans and lazy boys with feet dangling from hammocks hadn’t even bothered to come for the show.
So he burst into a mad dash. The ground propelling him and ducking under him. Over and up and down, then a slow walking climb up a steep lope. A few goats here and there; once he’d for stopping to push one over and watching it roll down flailing and bleating in protest.
Before he got to the top he lay down and looked out over the other hills. And the insect men with tolling round their necks only spots. He could see that opening of welcome the broad tree trucks always offered. That circular forest for the living. Wandering. The wind with its give and take of the clinking of finger driven machinery from the outskirts.
It was enough and he smiled.
But soon he got back up and ran into the woods. The sounds of conversations turned to the sounds of single persons, and alternating between the two. And then to words. Cheery young voices, but… "Those priests, I get nauseous just thinking of the times –now, thank god passed-- when the ontological malarkey these buffoons spewed swooned and wooed the masses of dehydrated intelleki. It’s amazing we survived this far." Or "Did you see the play three days ago? I usually like their petty attempts at theatricals but this one pushed to ‘banal lever’ too far." Barlow let the words roll off him, and sat down at his type writer.
To his right there was Whinthal Marakesh the third, and he had his head tilted back and a thumb thick plug of a stick in his mouth. Like one might envision a nineteen twenties newspaper columnist with cigar, he even had in improvised visor. The one difference Whinthal was eight years old. He still had a scrutinizing look though- or one attempting at scrutiny. He was a bitter child, and one that never missed an opportunity to point out something he thought Barlow was not doing quite properly. And he was always telling tall lies, tales of wrestling with gazelles just that morning. Or having sold real-estate on the moon to elephants. He even claimed to have the documentation to prove it which of course he had just misplaced- and he would give a half hearted attempt at looking for it shuffling through the papers piled on the desk all around him. Occasionally opening and shutting a drawer without even looking in it. His lips were always pursed and tense, and he would generally never shut up. Accept when you needed to talk to him or ask him something or ask something of him and then he’d be quite content to ignore you in perfect silence. So Barlow learned to ask him something when ever he wanted Whinthal to be quiet. Whinthal looked over and squinted disgustedly at Barlow. "You didn’t go down to see those priests groveling and spitting all over eachother did you?"
"There wasn’t really much spitting, Whinthal, I think you would have liked it."
"Liked it? How can anyone stand religious groveling -it’s not exactly the kind of thing you’d go out of your way to see."
"It was a play, there was not any groveling. That would be like saying looking at a cow would make you uncomfortable because some cows give birth and the thought of you giving birth would be disturbing."
"Are you saying I shouldn’t propagate? Is that what your saying?"
"Yes Whinthal that’s exactly what I’m saying. Your a blind Q-tip and should never be trusted with groceries and besides your an excellent listener. Oh, and John said he wanted you to read over the 8-16 script and see if it held up, or would hold up, he wants it to be up in the front corner of the front cover of the new edition if everyone approves it."
Whinthal turned back to what he’d been writing and started mouthing the words already written there. Then he began plucking away again. Barlow sat and closed his eyes and let the ticks of clicking nick him, and the rolling bowls of chatter lump and speckle him- a thousand tiny rindless honeydew melons bouncing off him. Leaving that sugary residue that conversations always leave regardless of content. But he couldn’t get Whinthal’s voice out of his elbows and knees. It cramped his neck and he could feel his lips wanting snarling and a headache coming on. He started typing… ‘Bulp Makintire,’ now what could he say about our dear Mr. Makintire.
To Barlow’s left sat Tulp Frilg. Uneasy behind a typing machine. Tulp, always with his face close to the paper. Barlow couldn’t tell which was whiter. Only he had once tasted paper when would comparisons be drawn? Tulp always with that look of being burstingly overwhelmed and confused. His eyes swelled and Barlow thought his imagination to be behind embellishment. "They couldn’t be that big, and wet. Why that’s the best walk in the front door of this here store advertising yet- though I’d never say it and I’ve never really seen a store but stories sell you anything." Tulp’s hair was a dirty blond and in a crooked part down the middle. A few times invisible strings pulled up his transparent noodle fingers and he almost touched a key on his writer. But the hand always went back down again, and the face left hanging alone heavy with defeat. Barlow thought about helping him. About walking up and sitting down behind him in the same chair, and lifting up those thin noodle hands to the keys and letting them roll out what editorials or critiques or declarations they may. Or if he could slump forward and drape his chin around Tulp’s neck and they could type together. Or not type just pour off into a grey haze and sounds of -and waterfall mists and a vague feeling of falling. Barlow wished he had a hat on. And he pretended he did and he pulled it down over his ears and all the way to his toes. But when he opened his eyes he found he had not disappeared. And Whinthal had not stopped typing, and Tulp had not begun.
He thought about it, and found he could not remember exactly how many boys were living in the round patch of plane respite that he had and would and was. There seemed about forty, but not forty, forty-at-a-time. As the faces seemed to stay the same only for a few hours or so. That is but for the ones of them he knew. Tulp who by the way was new in coming. Whinthal who knowing was regrettable and spine shattering. Breerphphph who was usually around the fire cooking hot dogs and or vegetables of memory. He did beans well. And Beans the "lamp lighter," they called him. Barlow never knew why as there had not been any electricity for six hundred years or so they said. Tim-Tom the pilly pap shop. He was the ‘man to see’ for opiates, and most did during the full moons when the bonfires climbed high. Then there was Paul Tomly; a sort of supervisor - a smelly boy of bad complexion and most intimidating as he would get in your face and when that happened you couldn’t think at all except about when that awful breath would leave and stay away. Barlow had fantasies about throwing cows at the boy, and hearing that dirty neck snap a thin crisp break -that shudder running through the world and blinding silver flashes trips around the sun in a black bubbled petty coat. Mother taking you to the corner store. Drug store shelves of incredible heights and fragile blue porcelain candle holders you weren’t allowed to touch. Climbing into bed climbing into a milkshake and pulling the covers up bushes of parsley between your legs. Taste that starry night and sail from hot to cold on a poplar leaf dodging rain drops of "where did I put my keys" as big as Volxwagons. Touching the familiar with red lip stick, pulling on a dress and locking the door for a rug night of shame or sham. Barlow opened his eyes again, and thought for a second his name was Bilbo.
Then he got up from his machine and walked through the woods away from all the people to where he could sit alone at the stream where all boys memories ran. He stepped from rock to rock to the modest middle, where there was a bigger rock and he sat down and let his feet dip under.
His was a spungent to pungent willobees. Cry out and take "my ancient rainbow," to looking at skin on sunny clear and flexible days. Smile theer and hair faces, tug toe tongue and under faces. Sliding here from rock and down where the water goes; "Here we go round the prickly pear/ At five o’clock in the morning." Barlow singing his Eliot proudly "So elegant, so intelligent." And the water whisking by and under his hands on hips and face to the sky. Breezing over toes and where the black soil meets on the bank to green grass. Smooth stones pocking the fields and tree trunks cut your tongue with the side of a blade of grass around the fire. Moving out to several spaces. New places the mind has never shone you. Fancy fine walls with fill in the blanks, chairs and red carpeting. Something eager and earnest for now and fast behind you. Walk into the slower rooms. The new paces. No longer what is over there I can see here fine. No longer something. We are tired and comical stoical with the labors of tomarrowsmind hands sun shimmering- undesirable escapades of common ‘where we are now not mixing well with who we were.’ The blue pants. Some may not remember. "I do not remember." And you can say it. Speaking in your different tongues and wondering where you are now. Wondering if it is Ok. Some hang from rope to pope of fear of this or that. Telling reminding me. Barlow looking at the water. He is tired. His knees and he is tired. He moves to the bank and lies down. Some things move into this view of the world is like a bored hole. Sticking fingers in, you spread it wide and no one gets stuck. You can see people walking by in front of a window big enough for whoever stands in front of it. Watching it all go by. Watching everyone stick their fingers in his hole. And that one man who had on nothing but socks and blush who was taking down the stage after a puppet show more then a year ago. And how he told Barlow that nothing was how it seemed. "But how was I to believe it? And now what do I do with my hands should I pretend an angry grab a hand full of tare it out or should I sigh for the long slow where I have been." He wouldn’t get this tired before.
Barlow woke up and there were four rabbits nubling around his toes for pepper corns and they scampered off when he sat up. He did not think it odd not to know any origins. But he had to write a piece of the settling of planets for the next edition. And the one after that why people peel oranges the way they do and not other ways. But he knew nothing of planets and nothing of settling. He looked around and thought it might be nice to do something. So he stood up and stepped back into the water. And when he had had enough he walked back to the forest to get to work.
The setling of Plantats
By Barlow (Haich) Empterferb
The Pan for the Panolt speltoling was mabe and turnered occulting nebuly and smairf Lubri-calities. Affording to the taints of the aink-tiants plan belt sweltering ranges from faber-tone to ex-limb-pouru. Baked on coat of morning day sunshing and Sunday morning dinner tables newspapers part of the wall and curisy of the erfter didlers. Basking down the lour you out there? Setting down to no settle backs and cross rocked catch your hatchets well boys! The long rolled to Dall-d’dead it layed there four squair or four score. Opera singers apple pie to the aberess bat bhe bottbum buff bis bapperlac.
And the first days were hard or they will be. "We need more men," came down as transmissions but the cameras the camerodera’s had exstalled chewed out a biffering stolory. The fleelds plooed aich and agery monding. Talls of hail high Malundergris bailing the lowsighs to the sailing. "we need more supplies," another transpersession came and with screams of agony. My little girl and down to the park side we feed the ducks and she kneels down by the plastic bag dispensers. Tie a bag to a tree for the old and dead. By laugh to croon Tom. Tomer’b bletz to hoist it. This is hammer week- and inventory. Crawling out to the half model shoe company I was almost out of water. My air plane crashed the planet being sucking into the sun my nephew caught ingesting factory equipment. The dolary output lowest as we have seen it in days and a decline like that what else can it mean but endless hours and synthetic replacements of all earth workers. And that is how it always begins one man’s bad day turns into the colonization of another planet. The race enslaved and subject to leisure time and a natural environment. The word friendship regains its meaning but so long as the transmissions keeps being sent, and the scenes of debouchery performed professionally in front of the "hidden" cameras, and so long as the computers and machines have their language distortion chips, the painting will fall the mill like rain drops and the shipment coming from sympathetic underlings who live in boxes with minimal oil rations and feel they are the only kings their planet has ever known. We were all having sex with the company president’s wife and he with ours’ so we turned him into a prototype and that is how it all begins -we higher semanticists to rewrite history in all known languages.
First deployed are the sailing ships that can move through deserts at astounding rates. All the men on crew on board are experts in this or that area but no one is in the know. "Bailing house to brilsome," come in "We are taking down her sides and camping in the valley, the dunes shedding out the artificial light and we should know by morning." They are the moles and kept under given in the after math forests and dream channels. Then they treat the land with a resonance forcer and the forests will be up by the next day with seas of fresh water housed with life according to the preference of the planet itself. Why worship something else when down is barred and all going home. We were all swept away and luring pool house mahogany to the sides of malevolent perfi-centse. "Breaking down house of sides of window pane."
"Barricading, keeping house, loosing, loosing, never moving." "And we will start tomarrow on the other side, the world for only one hour blossoming back through history." We are will the other people in your dreams.
BHE
He sat back and rubbed his neck. Paul Tommly rolled by on a log contraption and snagged the copy out of his hand- smiling out his pestiferous smile. Barlow looked out through the trunks and the sun closing out. Breerphphph had lit a fire and boys were hauling stumps to sit on over to watch it build and to have the comfort of it -nothing so cold as… But there was yet an hour of light to spend before to get your knives and spears and huddle scared.
Barlow was the last one typing most had gone to their hammocks to get bowls and spoons or blankets -the night breezes starting and the tall spruces starting to whistle from the top down. There was no moon at night. During the day the boys got very to feeling independent and even rash and inconsiderate. But the twilight came with a hush of forced humility. Some still walked around at night but not many- and those few usually said little during the day. Barlow decided he was going to ask Tulp to take a walk with him. Still a bit of light left. He looked around at the stream fed cleaning trough; long and carved out of stone --boys chattering away and rubbing-clean knives and wooden spoons. The air felt like it might rain. But he didn’t see Tulp there. So he went to the line waiting corner, where people went if they didn’t have anything to do and got into a line behind a tree. It was a good place to meet people and the line progressed as the people in front of you gradually got bored or realized they did have something to do and got out of line. You could stand there for hours idly or even impatiently should it fit your need. The line ever so slowly trickling out. There were about five tree’s with lines that day, the lines winding out in no particular way. And there, sure enough, was Tulp. He shined like a sheet of petal. Talking to no one and looking nervous and guilty. Hugging his arms to him and looking about periodically. Looking like at any minute he was going to erupt forth a stream of apologies. Tense round wet eyes. Barlow thought perhaps this was a foolish thing to do, this asking. He thought he might as well just turn around. But he’d never talked to Tulp, and he could make up any reason why he should right now. Barlow teetered in his standing for a moment’s moment, biting his lip. Then his shook his head and turned around in a full circle and walked right up to Tulp.
Tulp looked terrified at Barlow like at any minute he was going to be attacked. So Barlow just stood there. What can you say to a person looking at you that way? So he just stood there too and stared at Tulp figuring he’d let Tulp speak first. But after a few minutes of this he remembered how he was the one who walked up and that he really ought to think of something to say, but bitterly detested the common conversations in story books. Comments on the weather and asking how the latest article was going. Or just chit chat on the topic of book binding which no one knew how to do. Some of the dumber boys nourished themselves day to day with talk about carving walking sticks or ‘did you notice this or that stone on such and such a trail had been moved a few inches in some odd direction.’ So he opened his mouth and shut his eyes and let what ever came have it’s chance at it. "Did you brole it was down to two fork?"
Tulp didn’t respond at all.
"Well did you?" Asked Barlow insistently and then he felt guilty about the insistence.
"I don’t know what that means." He said.
Barlow smiled, "Oh that doesn’t matter do you want to take a walk maybe out to the memory stream before the sun goes down all together?"
"Ok,"
So he left the line and those behind him advanced happily their few inches. And out from beneath the cover of the trees to where it was a little lighter for a little longer and off to the edge of the water which they could not yet see but knew where it was because each had been there before.
Barlow was looking at the sky and Tulp at Barlow.
Tulp said something and Barlow didn’t understand what he said but thought he could fake it so he mumbled something unintelligible too with the proper intonation and Tulp gave him a queer look and said how he had liked making breakfast when there was duck, or that he had seen a duck in the past few days because ducks were so cute. Barlow just nodded. There was a big rock right in the middle of their path and it had lichen all over it. Orange and green in splotches and Tulp sat down and so did Barlow. "There I was this morning…"
"what?"
"I don’t know I thought it might go somewhere but there seems to be no end to this my not having anything to say."
"Oh,"
"...And then, ‘you can not escape wherever you go. However far you go. I fear that even in death there will be none of this "peace" they speak of. And when we are restless; we talk of the people we have known, and those days that stand out to us. The tallest hills we climbed and who we’ve leftbehind.’ The other night I didn’t hear who told it but someone told the story of a man who would travel from inn to inn, telling of his Anti-chivalric conquests. Leaving children of his own scattered around in towns he would hit on his scatter-bout path. He would marry and leave that night, or in mid ceremony. He would take his children to see public executions and leave them there to go on his free road where it would take him next wherever. Of the lies he’d told to women. Of the friends to which he’d bound himself by oath and swindled. Or the hearts he’d filched -as who is more lovable then the ‘he’ before treachery of gone-tomorrow. And now old, all his is but stories of past who he was. And every night, in every tavern, in every town, the men and drinkers and musicians leave him the last men in the bar. Looking up from a story told to stools and half way done to tears he couldn’t take it. They say some moans are his, and that he earned them well."
"I ah..."
"Hum? What did you say something?"
"no," said Tulp and he lowered his head and rested it on his propped-up knee and scratched his hair. Then after a while’s pause he stood up and stretched and said, "It was a nice day today." His face settling into a long stare and a profile that woke up the butterflies in Barlow’s tummy. Hand on hips and face to the sky calm and serene as ever. Tension never touched him. It was all a sham. That round belly of a boy.
"It will be night soon," said Barlow. And the wind took up the leafs that were on the ground near them and swirled them like a whirlpool swirls.
So off they went to the stream. Two boys wielding sticks like swards in haphazard parries at insects. A few bees in twilight’s last gleaming getting the last of their treats before the end; of the white flowers made for stepping on.
Barlow’s stomach started to ache as they dipped their toes into the stream. A thousand land mark memories, burbling trickle-down tomorrows over Achilles’ dream of becoming an airplane pilot. Over lost mornings in the other world with other parents in the other house. "Let me out," they hear next store and a girl running across her lawn. Some one turns on the radio but it is not tuned to any station, the whole family comes and listens grinning to the static; all appart- different chairs and opposite ends of the sofa. And they grow old in tomarrows tairing down of the buildings. "Swamp sparrow, fox sparrow, vesper sparrow at dawn, and dusk." And to find a few scraps of last months dinner converstasions and old pollaroids taped together. The rink is built and "What do you know of where we’re going out to breakfast this morning? mind you bring your books; it will be nice. Mrs. Balathatch said she would try to meet us there if she can mannage it."
It was then that Barlow was struck by the recolection of siting finely clad in brown at the top of a high deck out jutting from the uppermost floor of a building. In the back with the woods deep and dark and in the front with the coble stone streets and out to smoke for a little. The others are inside and someone comes out and sits down on one of the chairs. Something had just happen inside and he had stormed out. No one was talking to anyone else and that tension flavoring the air. "It’s just a little nothing," something told him. But he went back inside and found a people lying motionless on the floor. It takes time to remember these things, he thought. So he went back out onto the deck. It was a time of termoil and shifting sands. Many of the people in the streets were diplomatic messangers with their tell tail uniforms- dashing along with some or other document in hand. Out over the buildings and out to the plowed fields he could see the soldures practising and preparing. Rushing with the baonett into grain filled sacks. Shouts of command trickling unintelligable with the hum of insectuses. There was something of nothing in the town. That sweat nothing waiting in the narrow allies. Nothing between the glances of newly-couples roosting above bakeries and butcher shops. That deep nothing in every cup of coffee. The nothing of a sleeping dog and on its back on an oval mat that spirals in with browns and greens and blacks. The luminating nothing of the oil lamps on the walls and on the tables; that flicker nothing when you light them before settling into nothing. And the deep and comferting nothing of all the fabrics. Barlow rested his hands on the railing of the deck. This would be a nothing town forever, he thought. Even if the war started tomarrow. If the soldures came marching down and began to burn the buildings, nothing would happen. But then they would loose the sweet nothing of these old and vitorian. He sloshed around down the stream ----some spots were more gravelly then others and some of those bit his feet.
The sun was just about down. Barlow didn’t know what he had to do when he went back. He wasn’t sure why he’d come here. "The sniffle heads with their march upon parade." "And Kim hummed a funeral march happily," Running up and down hollow transparent tree limbs with honey rubbed on your feet so you wont slip. And just make it down the musiem steps and into the secret hole and they will never catch you. But no, he was standing in a stream with another boy who was bending over picking up popplar leaves and filling his pockets with them. Barlow started off back to the circle woods.
It seemed like it was going to be a chilly night of songs and hot dogs out on sticks. Stories by anyone handed the designated speaker stick. They carved a new one everyday and burned it at the end of the night. The forty or so boys with their wooden bowls and wooden spoons they had all made themselves- complete with personal touches. And the bowls full of a curry of carrots and squash and peas and potatoes and peppers. And a pheasant turning on a spit. The rocks around the fire were black and shiny polished by the waters of some river they were taken from. It was soon coming to be that time when they would be moving to another plot of forest. One more year had passed. They all knew it except maybe for the youngest who on this night were being shone by some of the older boys how to carve useful things out of hickory. Or how to make a snare and fit it down just right. Hulf was making a bow to use with arrows on the sunny days which most of them were. When dinner was done everyone put down their bowls and spoons and bones and pulled out a flute. One boy had a digeridoo. And there was no more talking from ‘here on in.’ It started with Weasel, blowing out a high shrill and then trickling and wrapping it around some other boys who then joined in. About eight played at a time -when one dropped out another picked up. And the digeridoo moving in and out. Sneaking up with a low long tube of bellow as long as the longest valley which, by the way, was the next one over and all along it’s bottom was a forest so dark and thick no one ever dared to enter it.
The fire burned high for a long time. And a new dry log from time to time. Wrapping red and blue fingers doing their dart dance around the wood and up from the bottom. Wherever two logs lay parallel but not quite touching there would, from the underneath, come a fountain of blue and orange and yellow- until the fire shifted like a light sleeper shifts and the logs finding a new most comfortable position. And at that point above the fire, where all the hot air and puffs of smoke pinched in before all the way up it would shuffle the branches of the trees, the orange sparks like bits of clumsy fallen fairies floating up above the crackles with a weightless fated to be quick and over body of color and even one might say of life itself, from where life comes before it enters any body. And they move up as if tracing one edge of a helix. But alternating between that and a path not so unoriginal.
When Barlow would play his flute- sometimes right before he would start he would get nervous and few naughty questions would jump around inside his head and pinch him and erupt into bursts of shrill and arousing and irritating laughter. But when he did pick it up, and when he blew in, his fingers would somehow move in the confidence of all the other fingers around the fire. And each note decided what it would be- so as to taunt or support all the other notes. And his toes would melt into the ground and dip like marionette tree roots probing through the soil feeling all the rocks and other roots and bits of thoughts down there. And his arms would stretch out and merge with and pass out through the other side of everyone else’s arms. His eyes would swell until he could see in every direction. And he was in no one place but always in exactly two, or three. The flute notes crystallizing tree bark into tight, deep protective sanctuaries where all the stories were taking place. And all the tree trunks would become the heads of the other boys, and everything they were thinking would become a crisscross of branches holding the idea. And some questions, birds, who would fly through and between all the trucks moving from mind to mind. And the fire crackled in everyone’s mind and illumined all the rest.
And an image fell on them, of a room full of old men who were laughing long and peacefully at an alien pace. Slow arms and pitchers of water filling tall thin glasses. And then someone falling asleep curled up on sand to the fade out of the old men’s voices. And that was it- the last ember trickled to null and boys all ran stumbling giggling to their hammocks.
The next day was a fine green tree day. The air was permitting, and the colors and stalk and stem castles more chattery. And the wind blew piper tunes through the tree tops, that told sad tales of stranded sailors, and beckoned of storms never seen. It would dip into lonely ballots of commiserating contemplations, and then bring up unexpectantly into a wedding scene, with jigs round whirling and great cauldrons of liquor. And birds perched everywhere on people, piping out little high pitched questions that no one dancing paid any mind to. And non of the boys had ever heard of weddings or of the sea but for the notes’ pictures and the boys all stopped their words when the winds came and watched the pictures. And this is how they learned their history. Some boys were always bitter though, and suspected the wind of ill intention. Some felt so self disposed as to draw out the pictures. Some drawings looked like a jumble of sticks. Others: a proud man in striped shirt, peering through an eye piece off the port bow. One boy drew a dancing scene and in the middle of the dancing ring a young girl being wed to a mushroom about her height. And the priest had crows eyes, and the bride’s grooms had talon’s. And there were people in the distance steeling away with armfuls of wheat and yellow straw. One boy drew a big circle, and spat right in the middle of it, and burst out laughing. And kept on till he fell off his chair.
But the winds died down by noon. And all the boys went right to typing. They had to move on and get this issue done by the end of the day. Tomorrow was going to be another performance but no one had heard exactly who’s it was to be.
By night all the hammocks were lightlyswinging. And a few sleeping mumbles and tossandturns ran rustled restless over dirt press and along up tree trunks. And the night passed there in a silent safe-in-numbers. And Barlow dreamt of lemonade, and of a portable lemonade you could but on your back, and then of another kind of lemonade, the kind you could take with you when you died. It was small enough for a briefcase, and yet it folded out like a kite. And all the long fingers and folding flaps were only sort-of there, and sort-of somewhere else. And in the middle it sung like New Year’s spark wheels would sing in pastlongburriedyears. It had a thousand tip-tervy-curves and it made a mellow marching band for all they were worth, between proud lamp street fix’ins and delicate road arches from tomorrowtohere. He felt it tickle his ‘spole’, and that little nubbin on the bottom of your foot. And right before he woke up, he was running across a lake to give a breakfast box to his somebody. But then he woke up and didn’t remember any of this really. But he felt like potatoes would be a good thing to eat. So he quickly down tree scrambled and tally wafered his truckers over to Smim, who was doing the breakfast today. And Smim said that he would be happy to make potatoes, and that Barlow should remember to wear something yellow to the show today. That’d he dreamt it and so it should be done. And Barlow thanked him with a hardy shake of hand, and a good firm chin twitch, and beard scratch, and he ran off to put on his long yellow shirt.
Breakfast was good and other boys as they woke up and draggled over thought about how potatoes were just perfect for that morning. And for some reason no one could stop yawning and throwing their arms in the air, even if they were holding food which went flying so they had to put the plates on the ground and eat out of them like dogs or some did it like pigeons holding their hand behind their back and dip tipping over. And when all that was done and everything cleaned and the yawns out of their systems, they quickly grabbed their note pads, and ran all and one from the tree patch and through the fields and down the steep slope and over a few hills, to a big sign that had been hammered into the ground, where the performers should have been setting up.
The sign said, in large letters,:
Note Enough Room
And it had a big arrow pointing off to the side. And so the boys scratched their heads for a moment, and then dashed tumbling over eachother or walking sternly or looking at the sky or patting their feet or backwards walking off to where the arrow bade them go. And all made their way down a long purple-lilac covered slope and around a sort of bend where they knew from adventurous explorations that there was a big clearing. And when they turn rounded the corner, they saw a towering trumpeting multicolored village of tents. And men, and men shaped strangely with something wrong with their chests and there legs slightly swollen, and really short people, with odd trumpets that make strange and unusually annoying sounds very loudly. And these little people were always being pushed out of the way. And some people just drifted through things singing old songs in outlived languages; and songs for outlawed holidays. They were the faint people.
The little people marched around in troops; untieing knots and lassoing people to small buckets which clunked and clattered as pulled along. Some of these people were only a foot tall, but they were rightly proportioned, and not a one seemed to be at any loss for energy.
There was one slow one. But he always tried to hit the other one’s with his stick, and so it seemed all right.
The boys didn’t really know what to do. The tents and their shadows were of all shapes and sizes. Some looming up crookedly taller then they were wide. And some so low to the ground only a thrust hand could ever get in or out. And there were alleys between the rows of tents, long side streets that smelled of burnt something, and that were littered with blowing paper debris. And so the boys all wandered in, some in groups, some alone, and made their way to the really humungous tents that were in the middle of it all. And there were three of those. And there was in the air an anticipation of something building.
Inside the largest tent, there were three rings, and the tent seemed filled with people, and laughing, and joviality. There was a man in proper dress, who said the show would begin in ten minutes, and that they were all welcome to come in and find a seat. Most of the boys who had come inside did this, and thanked the man.
Others had found their way elsewhere in the myriad of tents. Some of the offtotheside tents beckoned and inside there were strange classes going on, telling people how to fold things. It looked like the attending people all had mechanical balls of twine. And each of the balls was adorned with things dancing around all along the smooth and ruffled sides.
Barlow, went from one group to another, and then finally went around on his own. He went far back where no one else had gone. And there he saw peculiar things. One tent had three dogs, motionless, stacked on top of eachother and floating in the air. He shut the tent flap quickly and went to the next tent hoping it would be quite different, and telling himself that there wasn’t such an odd feeling about it all. And he keep feeling things tickle his arms, thinking how it was getting colder and colder. He opened another tent where there were large machines, and devises like hammers and wrenches and spinning wheels, all drinking stout and eating jovially over a breakfast of fried birdcage. The large wrench seemed the leader, and he wore a top had, and a red plaid suit. A few pairs of scissors were flapping around like birds, and silverware were growing out of pots with long shining sprouting extensions. He went to the next tent. Where there was no light at all but he could here the sound of running water and hear rain, and he had the feeling he was on a bridge high over water. But a hand yanked him out of the tent, and he turned around to a long spindly armed creature of a man in a tight suit, and the man opened his huge mouth showing rows of teeth, and then he hiccuped out tiny white flowers and then, abashed, he ran around slapping his behind like one slaps a horse and his little hat fell off and he chased it out of sight unsuccessfully.
Then Barlow decided to go back towards the bigger tents. He was a bit relieved when he began opening tents to dogs jumping through hoops, and to clowns practicing knife tricks, or hurling themselves and eachother into giant vats of water; but a part of him felt a wee bit disappointed.
He made his way to one of the big tents and found his way in. Inside there were a dozen or so "Gignant Elphants" as the sight read, but he had never seen anything like them before. With their huge ears, and long noses. And they were moving in circles tossing flowers in the air, while one of the men who had lumps growing and too long of hair was hanging by teeth alone and spinning and spinning a hundred feet above the ground. Then tiny automobiles drove in each packed with fourteen clowns all falling all over eachother. Doing hand stands, and making human pyramids that always collapsed. And Barlow could see the tiny people, tying pieces of trash to the boys in the front-ward rows. Barlow thought this very clever indeed. And to show it he pulled a rubber band out of his pocket and shot one of the elves with it. The elf froze, and turned around slowed, and gave him a long, serious, wide eyed look. And then slowly, grinning, it pulled out of a pack on his back a rubber band so big and thick that when he tried to shoot Barlow with it he fell over backwards. And all the elves around him mocked him and pantomimed suffering bullet wounds.
Then out of the corner of his eye, Barlow saw at the foot of a column, a small thing. And it was looking around, and had a sparrow on its shoulder. Three feet and not an inch taller, and it was the cutest thing he’d ever seen. It was sitting and wrapping twine from the ground around one of it’s toes, and talking to the bird, which chirped from time to time in acknowledgment. It too, was slightly misproportioned in the front, and had a soft face, and long darting fingers, and long hair with bits of twigs and leafs it in, though it looked well combed. It’s eyes were adhesive. And he saw that it had in its lap, a growing, shrinking, swirling, vaporous pinwheel -that never stood still for a moment. Then the creature turned and saw him looking, and it bolted away and jumped into a pile of overturned vats along the tent wall and the bird flew in after.
There was a round of applause when the act was over. Calling shots that the spring is over. The boys and a few disappearing customers left the tent in a fan of spread out this-and-that-way going. And the circus tents were closing, and the venders packing up their wears. The vast Haberdasheries all put away, the animals caged or loose and playing. Some of the clowns were sitting on crates and talking plainly with the boys, showing them their cup collections. Comparing, to see who had the roundest rim. Barlow went off into the by streets, where large black birds were tearing apart bicycles. Where assortments of dresses, glued to the tent sides, glimmer-gleamed out oranges and the colors of fall; some of the dresses falling. And the great old red sun above was passing quickly dodging clouds, and spinning it’s long radial spokes of many personalities. Somewhere a bell tower sounded and the circus was over. All the tent flaps were closed and the boys left, when they left, nothing but tatter paper sheds and fluttering flaps behind. And no one saw Barlow walking into a blue tent, or being carried away by clown, or on the shoulders of elves, and no one heard him say good by because he didn’t. Because none of these happened. They just snagged him the last one leaving and drew up the rope.
And when a day or so had passed, and when people realized Barlow wasn’t around any longer, they gave his desk and hammock to someone else. And people said things like, "Well, he’d been here a long time." and "He was getting a little old to not be performing."
But Barlow was plenty young.
And it rained when he was told to carry his share of the train-car’s weight on his shoulders. The circus moved by train, but there were no tracks, so they had to carry the train. He had been traveling with them for weeks, given a little red butler suit to where and a basket of goods to sell. But he couldn’t sell a thing. So they had him working with the set up crews but he couldn’t even lift he mallets they used to pound in the giant tend stakes. The days passed like nothing because from one to one they were so simmilar and detestable. He had the feeling there was something wrong with this circus. That everyone was just slightly out of step, and the acts almost entertaining, but not really. And the people almost had personalities, but not really. And one day after many, many shows had gone by and after he had well-thoroughly shown himself not at all useful, and generally good for nothing, he, unable to bare it any longer, ran off and didn’t stop running until he came to the woods in a valley. And when he got there, there were old and young people standing around as if they’d been waiting for him. And they all looked tired, and they smiled when they saw him. And he walked in past them, and they all just stood there. And he curled up under a tree and went to sleep.
And he woke up to singing, and very rarely heard speaking ever again. In those woods you weren’t lonely, because there were always other people somewhere, wondering around. And looking around.
The whole next day he spent looking for a nice rock to sit on, and he got a good look-around at the woods doing it. There was a place where the ground was covered with boulders in-between the very large tree trunks. There was the field that had different flowers every morning. There were the innumerable waterfalls of all shapes and sizes. There were the goats and dear and rabbits and frogs and butterflies that always seemed to be everywhere. And when he found the nice rock, it was a very flat one indeed and it reached out over a pool just under a tall but trickling waterfall and the whole face of it carpeted thick moss and spongy plants. And he sat down and was over come by a fast and vast and playful hollow-and-empty feeling. The feeling was all through the woods and now that he was in it he could touch the farthest tree with this fingers. Like he had broken into a new space. So he made a chair for ferns to grow it out of fallen branches, and made a hammock out of vines that he would teach the dear and goats how to relax in. And the bushes told him what berries he could eat, and so on. And by the end of the day he was tired but couldn’t think of a thing to be worried about, and then fell asleep in waves of panic.
In the morning he walked around and found some other people and sat with them. And for a long time not a sound was made, and there was something he couldn’t figure out about the way they would look at him. And they began to teach him how to sing and where to look for and how to dig up the plants that would teach you new ways of singing. And he learned something else, but it is so secret, that if you would ask him what it was he would just smile, and look at you in that way that you wouldn’t be able to figure out.
Barlow lived in those woods for the rest of his days. Where he learned to fly around the world, and paint songs with the others on the air. And it didn’t get cold, in the woods, except at night and in the winter… and on cold days.
Sir. Cuss Willbe,
over the next hill