The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher Part 22

"Don't be sil-" Though we had our arms round each other, her voice had turned silvery again. "Don't be archai-ic. We've had them all summer. Daddy's got a compound you just touch them with-they drop right off. And I wouldn't want your aunt-" In spite of herself, she s.h.i.+vered. I saw the nostril again. But she didn't mean to. It's their strength.

"Won't it suck your strength?" I said. "Hadn't you better-?" But I knew she could wait. I touched the hoop in her ear-the thinnest wire.

"I'll go home in a minute," she said, snuggling deep into my shoulder. "Then I'll come back." The voice was last year's voice. And my mouth was already on her mouth, taking strength.

How did she spring away? They're like electric, these people. Their feet these days must scarcely touch the ground. There she was, arms spread out against another young birch, yards away. "What's that awful thing on your lip?"

The moon was up. We could see each other clearly. But I knew she wouldn't let me move back close, to see myself in her eye-mirror. And I knew what it was. My hand went to my upper lip, rubbing. At first I couldn't feel anything; then it was there, cool as down under my forefinger. "It's-my moustache." But I knew I was looking at her sideways.

"Green?" She whispered it. "Green?"

"It's the moon. It must be." I whispered back. Funny though, how you fade all the faster. Once you know.

For she made a sound in her throat like a squirrel. "Johnny. Look at your hands."

It was the nails, really. There was a line of green around each of them. I suppose it takes each person according to his substance. "It's only our moss," I said.

But I could only stand there, hands hanging, glad even that I could stand. Even if at first it takes you according to your own nature, in the end, won't it be all the same? I could feel the down on my lip now without touching it. Growing slow, like a shawl. Like the two girls at the grocery, like my aunt and uncle-I was going back to the green, to the gra.s.s, to the ground.

It was then she shrieked; I've never heard screech-owl worse. "You've got a disease! A mortal disease!" She bent over to the thing on her leg, and brushed at it as if it were me. Her head down low and forward, like a dog covering me, she breathed deep and growling, all the voices of the Blazers, hardened into one. "Keep away. Keep away. Don't you ever come near us again, any of you." She shrank back behind the birch tree. "Don't you ever even let us remember you." And then she ran off, low to the ground and bawling, her hand clapped to her leg.

But she had a long way to go, around our pond or their lake-anyway you look at it, and I could hear her for a considerable time, cras.h.i.+ng her way-the sound of the mirage, going back where it belonged.

And the moon through the trees helped me find my echo. The moon was riding higher now, like a sign of how much time I had.

I called after her. "Why am I Johnny One?" I called, "Johnnn-nny Onn-ne? Because there aren't two." And I knew she heard me. All her way back, my echo would carry it.

Then I went home, to see how much time I and the other boys would have to gather, home to look it up on my aunt's calendar, which is a large one, turned regularly to the last days of summer, and with many almanac directions, including moons. The strength her kiss hadn't given me, her scream had.

On the night of the full moon to be, we were ready for them. For almost a week past, never in our house had there been such lights and noises and creepings, such a stamping and a brawling and a blazing-not in my time. I'd gathered them in by every marathon way I could think of, by bikes stole at evening and then pa.s.sed on, by notes sent on by the diesel gas trucks-their drivers were the decentest, by tokens jammed in the pay telephone and then a message to the firehouse, where a town had one, by everything but drumbeat-and a little of that too it almost seemed, as the call got nosed about stronger-and always by our best chariot, shank's mare. It was always hard to believe that something so modern as the Agricultural was only thirty miles away and most of the boys in near the same radius, but now that fact was gold to us. And I had done it, I and my best deputy, the skinny Johnny from Contoocook, who I'd remembered was a Johnny One too. If we had more get-up-and-go than the rest of them, it was because the onlies, like with some plants, fade slower than the rest. And we'd done it. We'd gathered in the club. Once I'd got them collected, I wondered why I hadn't saved my strength by just staring at the sky and calling them in by mental telepathy. For funny thing, I didn't hardly have to open my mouth, to tell them what they were here for.

And now here they were, lolling knees up, or on elbow and stomach, draped around like any boys you might see around a roaring fireplace, though the golden flames made them seem a mite rosier than they were. Gold of any other sort, we didn't have much of. And now, though it was only five o'clock in the afternoon and the moon not to be up for several hours yet, we could tell by our blood that it was going to be one of those Hamps.h.i.+re early in September nights with scarcely a nip in it. The last of the locust-nights; that's what it was. This was the way men in the wilderness used to tell the hours for fires and club-gatherings-by the blood.

And lolling with them, staring to the flames, I was almost happy, in thinking of the gathering business itself, and knowing they were too. I hadn't yet told them everything. They didn't know we were to gather at our side of Willard Pond earlier than they thought; but I'd about decided we weren't to wait for the moon. But they knew all the rest of it, learning it as they brought in the wood from here and there-because for a long time at home there hadn't been axe or arm for it-and bringing in the food by raid, like a cat with a chipmunk, or from some overlooked last pocket of rightful owners.h.i.+p. Bringing in the tools-that gathers people, like proudflesh to a wound. And even bringing in money if you happen to have any; it was Johnny Ten who brought in a sack, that first night we were up to score-a full dozen of us-and showed us old pennies like beans in it, and took one out, an Indian head, and then another, and said, "What's it say? Read it out." It was an old one too. "E Pluribus," I said. Anyone knew that-if you've had my aunt.

Even she and my uncle had helped me as they could, bringing out things from the attic like ideas we hadn't known we had. The old pine-needle mattresses came from the spare rooms we never went into. Like pine pillows they were, though without any inscription. My uncle'd brought out a sackful of bottles to sell, dug from the quarry once, and in ten minutes and four different directions we'd sold them, to buy the steakmeat I'd gone bold as a bear into the supermarket to buy for our strength-and we'd just now eaten, for the early supper I'd insisted on. Even my aunt said every morning "I'll make you a flag"-though she didn't quite know what for, and by evening had forgotten it. I lay there thinking of all this, from that first minute of the week, when John of Contoocook came up the heaved stones of the front walk, just as I was thinking on him, thinking on him-and I said to him, grinning. "How's that pig of yours?" And laying down the sack he was carrying, he answered me, grinning. "Here."

Gathering is the gold. They knew that now as well as I. But I lay there wondering, as any leader must, whether it wasn't all the gold we needed, whether the gathering itself mightn't be enough. But there wouldn't be time to go back to school, to find out.

"We'll train in that barn," I'd said, that first morning we were all here. Plus a peewee little Johnny from the morons; we didn't know what was his count and neither did he. He kept running in and out of our ranks, more trouble to shoo him than to let him stay. And we had to conserve our energy.

"As soon as we get the tools," I said, "we'll train. Go round to all the woodpiles and tight barns, there still are some on our side-and get the axes. Drag 'em, if you can't heft. Go round to all the antique tables after dark-hook anything sharp, or that looks like a tool. There's a thing called a sausage-grinder down in Kelley Two's barn, you'll surely have to drag that." I hadn't made definite plans yet, but that would come. "Scythes," I said.

"Will crocks be useful?" said Johnny from Contoocook. I could tell he was puzzled for a plan of action too.

"No, I don't think ... pitchforks ... no, there's no time for torture ... it's too serious for that." I found I'd decided. "Permanent useful tools only." That way, whatever we made use of for training purposes would come in handy later also, if there was to be a later time. Would that depend on the training? And then the thought came to me, though I hadn't since told any of them, even my deputy-guns. Or at least one gun. I knew who had a sharpshooter's medal-before it was sold. Guns would be best.

You have to understand about the training. Wasn't anything we could plan to do with any weapon-tool, that is-before we could lift. That's what our training was. Over-the-summer had come to be like a hibernation time for our kind, and if we let ourselves get any weaker, this summer would likely be our last. When we could lift again, and swing and grind and mow and reap, each man alone, and not staggering onto the next one or cooling his temple against any wall that was left him to do it on, then maybe we could start to talk about action-or more of it than just a gathering on the night of the moon when their building was to be done, to make a great clatter to scare them with, over there on the opposite sh.o.r.e.

"Or going all the way round to their side to get our message across," said Johnny from Contoocook. "If we are able."

"Carrying the tools, of course," I said.

He looked at me over the others, stern and thoughtful as always. "Oh yes," he said, nudging me to note a Johnny Three from Nelson, who could almost lift a log singlehanded now, and a Four from West Wilton, who could handle the smallest axe. We had a couple of those Buddy names too, the one kid back at school had been so proud of-and what do you know, they turned out to be the weakest of all. "Oh yes. Carrying the tools."

And here we were, on the very night, and almost able, if that steakmeat could be trusted-and I still had no plan of action. But I had the gun.

I'd hooked it from the store maybe easier than I could handle it. Couldn't even call it a steal. He never even moved a shoulder, when I reached up above him and took it from the wall, up above the calendar. Had all I could do not to drop it; I don't know what kind of game he and his china-teeth friends ever thought they'd need a gun like that for, this part of the country. It's a high-powered rifle all right-a thirty-ought-six. With a telescopic lens. I was halfway out the screendoor dragging it in the gunnysack I'd brought, when he opened his mouth and said one word.

"Cartridges."

They were in a tin box on the counter in front of him. So I had to go back in.

And so I practiced in secret with the gun, the way they all were doing with their implements, their tools. I didn't worry about marksmans.h.i.+p. Once I could heft the gun, steadying my arm maybe in the crotch of a convenient tree, I knew I could fire it. And they all watched me, my army, and never said any more to me about our plan of action, just left it to me. But one thing more, I said to them. I was the leader: "We've got numbers to our names, can't help that, it's too late for it." I happened to glance over at Johnny Ten, the highest of us in number and in brain the lowest; his big round face with the silly smile on it looked just like the hubcaps he'd chosen to carry but I wouldn't let him. "But we won't say Johnny any more; that's how they weaken us too." I took a look at my uncle, snoring there in the rocker. "We'll at least say 'John.'" And my dear deputy, who worried me so, he was getting thinner every day-John of Contoocook-grinned at that too. So that's the way that was. Only one we couldn't get to understand it was the little peewee, the moron, and he didn't count; he'd be a Johnny until the end.

Otherwise, it worked fine. We'd had some trouble at first making Johnny Ten understand that our plan of action couldn't be motorcycles. "Get those snazzy foreign ones!" he'd say every day, at training-time. "Wear those black-and-white crash helmets! Then-zoom." And he'd raise the pick-axe with a hubcap on it, almost high. No use telling him that we had as much chance of motorcycles as of getting boats to cross the lake with, like from England to France. There's never been any boats between them and us, only the boats on their side.

"What would that do for us, Ten?" my deputy would answer. His fingers were so dreamy-thin, looked as if they went round the scythe-handle twice. "No, it would just mean that we'd be the ones to move away."

Watching us try to shoulder arms-n.o.body would exactly see twelve high-cla.s.s buck-privates. Sometimes I wondered if, even with the training, anybody could see us at all-we were so faded. My own eyesight is still so d.a.m.n good. But I consoled myself with seeing how at least getting into some action must have helped our circulation. And thinking forward to being Johns again seemed to satisfy everybody, and to improve our complexion too. For the mold that had spotted everyone of us, sometimes in places you wouldn't like to think it-was gone.

One thing we talked out loud about, in those last evenings as we fed the fire before sleeping-was our ecology. We talked a lot about that, and what our summer rebellion could mean to the world. I wished I could ask the instructor. Sometimes we talked about him too, laughing at our secret nickname for him-Mr. Wilderness. For the funniest thing about him, what with all his talk about going to do research work or get him a job as a government forester in one of those high, wild tower overlooks where you can't even have a wife-was that right out in front of the cla.s.sroom, where we could all see it, he had the brightest, fastest, hottest little bug of a new red two-seater sport car.

And while we talked, I sometimes watched my aunt and uncle, him barefoot now in his rocker, her in her shawl. Soon he would be only ten yellow fingernails and ten toenails-he was going back to the horn. She was dozing, my tawny aunt, with her mouth open; soon she would be only a lost freckle on the air. Was this only the way it always should be, for the other generation? But then, what about us young? I wished I could ask the instructor-even him. I hadn't ever told for sure whether his eyes, always so blind with teaching, hadn't seen more about us than we thought he knew. Maybe he could be our control-group, I decided; he'd taught us that in any experiment where you're matching one group of specimens against the other, in the best testing there ought to be still a third. One group, something gets done to it to produce its condition; to the second group, you do the opposite. The control doesn't get anything done to it at all to narrow down its condition; that's what it already is. He could be that.

So, two nights ago, I had written him a letter. He could listen to what we had in mind, I thought. Better still, I thought, as I was writing, he could come to be a witness; it was nothing to that red car, only thirty miles. So I wrote giving him directions where to come and when, and what to look for, and mailed it myself and according to what I knew the distribution time for the mail was out there-so he'd get it just in time to decide to come along for the show or not to; after all that effort I didn't want us prevented. "We're having a summer rebellion," I wrote. "It's to be a test. Not a battle." For I knew it couldn't be that. "It can't be that," I said, "even with the gun. Will you be our witness?" I wrote in the best grammar I had, deciding to use that from now on too, for the other only made me weaker. And I signed it "John," without any number at all. What I'd wanted to do was to put my full last name after it, like one of their signatures-but I didn't feel up to that, yet. Besides, he'd know by the postmark and the handwriting. And he always took the trouble to talk to me specially. He'd know.

So here we were, me and my deputy and all twelve of us, not counting that little thirteenth peewee with his white albino head and pink eyes held away from the firelight. Here we are, I said to myself, in our house that hasn't caved in yet, in our flesh that isn't mold yet, and with our tools we've rescued. And over there, on the other side of Willard Pond, their work is done. Turret on the outside-waiting for the weatherc.o.c.k, but that they'll hang at the ceremony-and on the inside, hammered bra.s.s and hanging lanterns, and tables and chairs like a soda parlor's, and a milk bar like a counter-and a fireplace, for winter. They couldn't have an outside sign, not with their zoning rules, but just for today they had a great poster up on a tripod, with one of our iron kettles hanging on a chain beneath it. "Dedication ceremony. Everybody come and see us hang the weatherc.o.c.k. Six o'clock." But inside, through the gla.s.s door, I'd seen that they had a sign saying The Pancake Palace. So that's where our soda parlor number one, the old sign once on it, had gone. So there they are. Hadn't I seen it all in the storekeeper's binoculars, which on the way out his screen door the second time, he'd let me hock too? They had finished their job in time.

I went outside though, to look again for sure. Yes. It was now only a little past five o'clock, but small as the woods were, I'd better give us three quarters of an hour to get through it, even with the steak. A leader has got to plan. And I hoped I'd thought of everything, except what would have to be left to the last minute-my gun and its target. I'd half wanted to ask him that in the letter, but finally had let it be. For if I have a gun, but don't know my own target-what do I have a gun for at all?

Outside, there was even a kind of double omen. The sun was still s.h.i.+ning in that fool's gold way it has at five o'clock. But on the other side of the world, not in any fair balance yet but trying, there was the palest full moon I'd ever seen in a sky. Even my keen sight could barely see it. Couldn't see how it would ever have the energy to rise, except that moons do.

I went back inside, slamming the housedoor so that it shuddered back, wide-open. That was to be our signal. We don't waste our energy. "Here we are," I said. "And it's time."

One by one, we got each other up from the pine mattresses, and began helping the others fit themselves to their tools. Yes, we still had to do that-we'd only had a week. We still were twelve in number and made an honorable display. We'd kept the pitchforks after all, they handle so easy, and even if you aren't going to use them in any other way, still their outline is so plain. I'd turned the house out, looking for my uncle's clipping-shears, then found out he'd been using Blazer's. So, after two of the forks, and counting my deputy's scythe, we had four axes, large and small according to which could best carry the weight of them, two long butcher knives, one queer-angled iron earthtiller so antique we didn't know what it was for but judged we ought to have it for that reason alone-and a hoe. Ten had let the little peewee have his hubcaps to clash.

I myself helped John of Contoocook with his scythe. We had to strap it on him; this was the only way he could manage it, and I'd have been doubtful of that except for his grin, which was still there. "Know you'll do it," I whispered to him. "After all, we don't have to do anything after we get there but stand. But stand by!" It was the first time I'd used that expression out loud, and his eyes flickered at it. And you have the gun, he could have said to me, but didn't. He's like me in a way, with the difference that I'd hung on to more energy. Matter of fact, he was worse off than any of us. I couldn't forbear asking him why. "Why do you suppose it is?" I whispered, as I buckled the strap. His grin was like the moon, just barely there, and like the sun, getting ready to set. "It was the pig," he answered. "She was my ecology." He's hopelessly smart.

At the door then, I addressed my men at large as they went by me, both of us in a manner not to waste breath-in silence. My eyes keen upon them, I called their ghostly roll. "Johns of Four and Five-pitchforks. Johns Two and Three, Buddy Two-axes. A John Two and a Buddy One-knives." Him with the tiller. Him with the hoe. And the rear guard. "John of Contoocook. Scythe."

To make sure that none would fall by the wayside unless all did, I roped us all together. At the last minute, one of the knives broke down and couldn't make it-one of the Buddies, wouldn't you know? So to fill up the dozen, we had to count the peewee in anyway. Then they were all ready, weaponed and gathered at the door in the formation I'd decided on-a half circle which could at need fall into line. "You of Hillsborough," I said to them. "Of Jaffrey and Hanc.o.c.k, of Dublin and Antrim, of Rindge and of Nelson, and even of Keene. You of the Monadnock Region. And of the winter time. Get ready. Get Set. G-"

And then my uncle got up from his rocking chair.

He faltered over to me, clickety-click. He was even able to dig his sharp fingers into my chest; he's been a strong man in his day. "The old customs," he said, in his wooden-doll voice. "We'll go back to them. But first, we ought to know who we are, son, oughtn't we." He drew himself up straight as he could. "I'm Andrew. And that is Marietta, my wife." Hearing that name, my aunt woke, looked around bewildered, at this battalion in her old sitting room, and then smiled straight at me, too, from her shawl. "And I know you're John," said my uncle. "I know you're John. But son-" I felt his nails through my sweats.h.i.+rt. "Son, remind me. What's our last name? Our surname, as people used to say. I rock and I rock, but I can't remember it."

I smiled back at them, for love and for leaving, both. For who could know what would be, when and if we came back? And I had an awful temptation to say-"It's Wilderness." That little red bug-on-wheels maybe even now skipping toward us-he would like that. But that is not my style of interest. I know who we are. We're not that faded, not to me. And I know who I am. I've always known. It's our other distinction.

"It's Willard," I said. "For the Pond."

And then we filed out the door, and made up our formation again, outside it. I hadn't even had to say Go. But as we closed ranks, shouldering each as we could, with one hand, and ready to help his neighbor with the other, I heard my aunt's voice. "I'm going to make you a flag."

Then we were on the march. Marching is useful too; some say that all by itself it's as useful to the spirit as gathering is, but in our state it wasn't gold to us; it was simply what we had to do. Funny thing though, the woods, pine to maple to birch, were in perfect order for it. Even the underbrush lay quiet, as if somebody had swept. Yet I knew that although they across there had got as far as browning in the gardens and on the water, they hadn't been much to the woods yet, for health. And they hadn't paid to clear here; who would they pay that was left? Sometimes, toward autumn but before the leaves start twirling down, woods look like that, in perfect order for-something one can't say. From tree to tree, these ragged woods of my forefathers let us by now, not putting out a root to trip us, pa.s.sing us on, tree to tree. They stood by us. And we walked.

And we walked. Some might have called our pace a stumble. Or only a dragging, with a rope. But it was our pace. And we did it in silence. We had no extra breath for songs. Even the peewee's hubcaps, heavy enough in his tiny hands scaled with skin rash like a lizard's, were still.

Only my gun talked, braced on my shoulder. And only I heard it; it had such a soft voice. "Blazer, Blazer, go away," it said. "Come again some other day." But that was for rain, not people. I knew that, though my own head seemed now and then about to twirl and fall. Then it said, "Hickory, d.i.c.kory, your son John, took our Barbara with his britches on." Only a nursery rhyme, and wrong at that, but marching was not my true rhythm, and the air at this hour of the day was hot and cold by turns, s.h.i.+ver and blister both. I prayed to the steak in my stomach. I thought I could see the others were too; behind the iron and steel, their lips were moving. But for me, there was worse to come. That gun tried everything. And by the last yard of it-the whole woods isn't half a mile-that gun and I had fallen in rhythm together. "Bar-bar-a Blazer," it said, "is beautiful." And my feet answered, "Beautiful"-treading on moss now, for we were there.

We were on the sh.o.r.eline of my forefathers' pond. We were on the peculiarly mossy and stony patch of it that I could call at least jointly mine, and I turned round to look at my men. They had formed their half-circle again, almost without command from me-my army, my posse, my eleven other Johns and one Buddy. And one whiteheaded peewee. But this was all they could manage. Everything had stopped, but my anger. Above our heads, the sun and moon had stopped too. Or were in perfect balance.

"At ease, men," I said. In silence, their weapons slid to the ground. One voice slid after them. "Hadn't ought to do that, John One. We'll never be able to get them up again."

"Don't worry," I said. "Anger is slow, eight generations slow. But it never stops." And trusting I was right, I inspected my ranks, as must be done before battle-or before testing, to the specimen.

Under that sky of double omen, my friends seemed to me only a step mistier than myself. Their heads were bowl-cut or longhaired like mine, but not in the new style, and their jeans and s.h.i.+rts were ragged, but not ragged new. They were ragged in the old style. They were a strange, weak sight, my winter Apollos, and when their a.r.s.enal was raised against that sky, they would be odder still. But maybe the people over there would see them the better for it. That's what specimens are. And they were standing by. In spite of all suffered or lazed or blamed away, they had not utterly gone down yet-into the gra.s.s, the ground.

I addressed them.

"We're a little late," I said. "It's past six o'clock." We'd taken a little longer than estimated, to go that half mile. "But I see that over across there, they are late too." I raised the binoculars, to hearten the men behind me, though I could see perfectly well without. And faithfully, my men looked heartened, though as they stared sideways under their weedy fringes of hair, I could tell that they saw across the water just as well as me. "We and they are late together," I said. "Maybe that's an omen, too."

None of my men had been with me to the sh.o.r.eline before, only me and my deputy, to scout. And now, in their faces I saw all the sight before us across the water-its gla.s.s doors open to the s.h.i.+ning games inside, and all the tanned people streaming in, or sitting without caution on the green itself. In the face of my Johnny Three, John Three-I saw a pair over there, going in through the door in their waterskis and goggles. Inside the new soda parlor, its hanging lamps were already lit to pale taffy against all that fresh white; I saw their sign, Pancake Palace, in the face of a John Two. One of our Buddies, the one left to us, was seeing that there were even red paper flames in the cookpot under the poster-the Buddy with the knife. Every man and his implement was seeing a detail of it, of that milling, laughing group of sports and silk-headed grandmothers bobbing like cotton-the whole foolish, rosy, expensive Blazer-crowd. On a bench out in front, sat a fat man, no not fat, burly, in bow tie and a flower in his jacket b.u.t.tonhole-Blazer himself. There were babies scattered like plants all over the place, all with the round, superior look of babies whose mothers were not going to die. I could see it all in my men's faces. Wasn't it the way we had always seen the summer people, in the pale, expensive orange-light of the health-money they were always making? In the dream-face next to one's own, isn't that the way one always sees the mirage?

No, said the gun. This time you are seeing by yourself.

Against that joyous little turret, flipped up in paint-glow to the sun, they were now raising a black, lacy ladder. A band began to play; they had the breath for it. And to each ladder of the song, a golden-legged couple was climbing a step gracefully, hand over hand to the platform at the top. He had on cut-off jeans only, carefully sawtoothed off at the knees, the way they do, and his water-streaked hair had been cut with a scissors. The female of a genus, we had been taught, often has more protective coloration. She had on an orange and white swimsuit, sunset-colored as her limbs, and her hair floated, leafing out along the wind. When the two reached the platform, they stepped up on it, then turned and waved-two shadows, two golden statues, waving to one side and then to another, but not to over here. And I saw that the place for the weatherc.o.c.k was still bare. What were they going to raise there-the sun and moon both?

Down below them, Blazer was speaking. On that side of the water, the whole world was orange with the healthy glow of them. Blazer had a nasturtium in his b.u.t.tonhole.

"Get ready," I said. "Get set."

All the better for their light, I told myself. We will make better shadow.

"The test is-will they see us?" I said. "That is the battle."

I had never revealed this to my men before, and I turned to them now, to see how they would take it. I saw that they already knew.

"When I give the command," I said, "raise your weapons. They cannot fail to see us-four axes, a scythe, a knife and a tiller, two pitchforks, and a hoe."

My deputy spoke softly. "And a gun."

I turned my back on him.

Across the way, they had raised the weatherc.o.c.k. It was in place. In the old days the style was often a flying horse or a golden rooster; we had sold them in the shop many a time, whenever we could find an old weatherc.o.c.k to sell. I'd expected it would be one of those; they wouldn't buy new. There are other shapes, of course, including our own from the house, gone so long ago, that I'd forgotten what it was. The shape of this one was new to me, or so at first I thought. It was a double pennant, flying to the breeze from where it was fixed to its rod, fixed there by a heartshape over on its side, pierced by an arrow. Then I recognized it. It was exactly the same in shape as the one high on the Meetinghouse at Hanc.o.c.k, hard by Norway Pond. Had they dared to lift it from there? They were so powerful. And the sh.o.r.eline at Norway Pond is off-limits for some of us, too. Even if n.o.body but a country is named after it.

The shape of that weatherc.o.c.k troubled me. In the flame of the wind, it looked like a man on his side, blowing in the wind, blowing, his head a heart on its side, and an arrow in his head. Maybe they got it from a closed-up church.

Behind me, I heard a murmur. My men were troubled too. And I had brought them here, over a week and a wood, to this sh.o.r.eline. What else could I do?

"Shoulder arms," I said.

I turned to watch them, proud. They were tall, all except the Buddy knife and the peewee, and they helped one another until all their artillery was up, s.h.i.+ning its broadside against the evening clouds and the woods behind. I went from one to the other, straightening them. The scythe was the highest. And the hill we were on was higher than any rise of theirs, and the couple on the platform was still turning and waving, waving and turning. They couldn't help but see us, I thought. We stood there, a thin rank of us, but sightable surely, black and separate, but gathered too. Even the Pond, rising to the last sun, sent off a sheet of light like a thunderflash, to encourage us.

"Steady," I said. "Stand like the trees."

We waited. Stand by, I said to myself. I was the only one of us without a weapon to his shoulder. I don't want to be a John One either, I prayed to them across the water. I only want to be John Willard. See us, standing by.

And the peewee was the one to say it, in his scratchy, dead-white voice. "They don't see us."

Then the Buddy. Then all of them. "They don't see us. We are nothing to them." They murmured it like the leaves. This was all the breath they had.

All except John, my deputy, who swung his weapon high. How could they not see him, even if, all bone as he now was, they only saw the scythe? "If I had a good New Hamps.h.i.+re boulder to ring it on, instead of these old slates!" he cried, and buried the tip in the ground. It made no sound. The others did the same, but a tiller is not made to speak loud against slate, or even granite. The peewee's hubcaps, clashed together, made a faint cry. We had chosen our place too well, or had they chosen it for us? We were moss to the ankles, like the stones in the graveyard those across the water love so well.

"All right," I said. "Stand back." And I bent to the gun. "You can talk," I said. And without any help, bracing myself against a birch tree that presented itself like an aide-de-camp, I shouldered the thirty-ought-six.

Across the water, the couple on the platform each held up a little flag, while the crowd applauded. I could hear them, see them, clear as clear, as pond water. Did the men from Valley Forge, crossing the Delaware, have a flag? They had a boat.

Through the telescopic lens, on the crosshair, I could see the weatherc.o.c.k; slowly it turned in the evening wind, a double pennant, a man on his side, blowing in the wind. I s.h.i.+fted the gun past the boy in his sawed-off jeans. He was a Blazer too, but only her brother. Shaking under the weight of the gun like a body on my shoulder, I brought her slowly to center, on the crosshairs. And there she was, my summer Venus, s.h.i.+ning to the wind like the weatherc.o.c.k of a country I had never seen to the full before, her arms spread to its birches. Would she be the rosier without us, without me?

"Shall I shoot our weatherc.o.c.k?" I whispered to my deputy. "Or the weatherc.o.c.k girl." But n.o.body answered behind me, n.o.body at all. And the gun bore down. But the birch bore up, lifting me like a brother. This was why it took so long to decide.

Caught on the crosshair with her, was all her new countryside. I could see it well. The horses were returning to fill the barns again. In time, as the summer people lingered, there might even be cows. I couldn't see Blazer in the old grocery store for all the teeth in China, but if I studied it with care I could see the son; I could see it well. And what of us? Would we go to the city in our turn, hoping to be seen again by someone? Or back to the freckle on the air, the horn. And is all this just the balance again, blowing like the wind?

They don't need to see you, Johnny One. Or not much. No more than a mirage of upkeepers, holding up the summertime. All that's needed now, is what already is. You see them.

So spoke the gun.

How gray your skies will be without them. They were what drew you through the woods-the biggest mirage of all; you couldn't have done it without them.

So spoke the birch.

My eyes were burning with the choice, and I couldn't last the weight much longer-what did they ever plan to kill with a gun like this, the old-timers?

I centered the gun, holding aim. They would see me across there this time. I shoot to kill.

Was it the birch, holding me? Stand by, John Willard, all of you. It's not just a summer rebellion. Stand by.

Or the last minute, did my foot twitch, saying-"beautiful?"

No. I aimed higher than either, high between the sun and the moon. To shoot a mirage, you have to shoot that high. And I aimed to kill us both.

I fired.

They saw me then.

Everything stopped over there, too. And I could see they saw me, milling and talking among themselves. Some had already scattered, on their way around the rim of the Pond, to this side. One took a boat-still carrying her flag. Others got into it. As they all scattered toward me, I could even see what they had in their mind's-eye. Now that I had put down the gun, or fired it high, I could be a hero if I wanted-for a day. I have excellent sight.

I turned to my companions behind me. Their final effort had been too much for them. They could gather for a week, to help a friend with his summer. They could stumble through his wood, behind him on a string-he was their control. But now they were done for. Except for their implements, they were now so faded that n.o.body but me would see them at all.