Little, Big Part 8

He stood still. All he could hear was the rain. So intent on making his way along this supposed path that now he'd lost her. And surely he had lost the path too, if there had ever been one. He called out again, a confident, no-nonsense call, no reason to get excited. He got no reply, but just then saw between two trees a true path, quite patent, an easy winding way. She must have found it and just got quickly on ahead while he floundered in the creepers. He took the path and went along, pretty well wet now. Alice should any moment appear before him, but she didn't. The path led him deeper and deeper beneath the crackling forest; it seemed to unroll before his feet, he couldn't see where it led, but it was always there to follow. It brought him eventually (long or short time he couldn't tell, what with the rain and all) to the edge of a wide, gra.s.sy glade all ringed with forest giants slick and black with wet.

Down in the glade, seeming insubstantial in the dripping mist, was the oddest house he had ever seen. It was a miniature of one of Drinkwater's crazy cottages, but all colored, with a bright red tile roof and white walls enc.u.mbered with decoration. Not an inch of it hadn't been curled or carved or colored or blazoned in some way. It looked, odder still, brand new.

Well, this must be it, he thought, but where was Alice? It must have been she, not he, who had got lost. He started down the hill toward the house, through a crowd of red and white mushrooms that had come out in the wetness. The little round door, knockered and peepholed and bra.s.s-hinged, was flung open as he came close, and a sharp small face appeared around its edge. The eyes were glittering and suspicious, but the smile was broad.

"Excuse me," Smoky said, "is this the Woods'?"

"Indeed it is," the man said. He opened the door wider. "And are you Smoky Barnable?"

"Well I am!" How did he know that?

"Won't you come right on in."

If there are more than the two of us in there, Smoky thought, it'll be crowded. He pa.s.sed by Mr. Woods, who seemed to be wearing a striped nightcap, and was presenting the interior to Sthoky with the longest, flattest, k.n.o.bbiest hand Smoky had ever seen. "Nice of you to take me in," he said, and the little man's grin grew wider, which Smoky wouldn't have thought possible. His nutbrown face would split right in two at the ears if it went on growing.

Inside it seemed much larger than it was, or was smaller than it looked, he couldn't tell which. He felt laughter for some reason rise up in him. There was room in here for a grandfather clock with a cunning expression, a bureau on which pewter candlesticks and mugs stood, a high fluffy bed with a patchwork quilt more varied and comical than any he had ever seen. There was a round, much polished table with a splinted leg, and a domineering wardrobe. There were moreover three more people, all quite comfortably disposed: a pretty woman busy at a squat stove, a baby in a wooden cradle who cooed like a mechanical toy whenever the woman gave the cradle a push, and an old, old lady, all nose and chin and spectacles, who rocked in a corner and knitted quickly on a long striped scarf. All three of these noticed his arrival, but seemed to take no notice.

"Sittee down," said Mr. Woods. "And tell us your history."

Somewhere in the blue joyful surprise that filled Smoky to the chin a small voice was trying to say What on earth, but it exploded at that moment like a stepped-on puff-ball and went out. "Well," he said, "I seem to have lost my waya"that is Daily Alice and I hada"but now I've found you, and I don't know what's become of her."

"Right," said Mr. Woods. He had put Smoky in a highbacked chair at the table, and now he took from a cupboard a stack of blue-flowered plates which he dealt out around the table like cards. "Take some refreshment," he said.

As though on cue, the woman drew out from the oven a tin sheet on which a single hot-cross bun steamed. This Mr. Woods put on Smoky's plate, watching him expectantly. The cross on the bun was not a cross, but a five-pointed star drawn in white icingsugar. He waited a moment for others to be served, but the smell of the bun was so rich and curranty that he picked it up and ate it without pause. It was as good as it smelled.

"I'm just married," he said then, and Mr. Woods nodded. "You know Daily Alice Drinkwater."

"We do."

"We think we'll be happy together."

"Yes and no."

"What?"

"Well what would you say, Mrs. Underhill? Happy together?"

"Yes and no," said Mrs. Underhill.

"But how a" Smoky began. An immense sadness flew over him.

"All part of the Tale," Mrs. Underhill said. "Don't ask me how."

"Be specific," Smoky said challengingly.

"Oh, well," said Mr. Woods. "It's not like that, you know." His face had grown long and contemplative, and he rested his chin in the great cup of one hand while the long fingers of the other strummed the table. "What gift did she give you, though? Tell us that."

That was very unfair. She had given him everything. Herself. Why should she have to give him any other gift? And yet even as he said it, he remembered that she had on their wedding night offered him a true gift. "She gave me," he said proudly, "her childhood. Because I didn't have one of my own. She said I could use it any time I liked."

Mr. Woods c.o.c.ked an eye at him. "But," he said slyly, "did she give you a bag to put it in?" His wife (if that's who she was) nodded at this stroke. Mrs. Underhill rocked smugly. Even the baby seemed to coo as though it had scored a point.

"It's not a matter of that," Smoky said. Since he had eaten the hot-star bun, emotions seemed to sweep him alternately like swift changes of season. Autumnal tears rose to his eyes. "It doesn't matter anyway. I couldn't take the gift. You see"a"this was difficult to explaina""when she was young she believed in fairies. The whole family did. I never did. I think they still do. Now that's crazy. How could I believe in that? I wanted toa"that is, I wanted to have believed in them, and seen therh, but if I never dida"if the thought never occurred to mea"how can I take her gift?"

Mr. Woods was shaking his head rapidly. "No, no," he said. "It's a perfectly fine gift." He shrugged. "But you have no bag to put it in is all. See here! We'll give you gifts. Real ones. No holding back on essential parts." He flung open a humpbacked chest bound with black iron. It seemed to glow within. "See!" he said, drawing out a long snake of a necklace. "Gold!" The others there looked at Smoky, smiling in approval of this gift, and waiting for Smoky's amazed grat.i.tude.

"It's a very kind," Smoky said. Mr. Woods draped the glowing coils around Smoky's neck, once, again, as though he meant to strangle him. The gold was not cold as metal should be but warm as flesh. It seemed to weight his neck, so heavy it was, to bend his back.

"What more?" Mr. Woods said, looking around him, finger to his lips. Mrs. Underhill with one of her needles pointed to a round leather box on top of the cupboard. "Right!" Mr. Woods said. "How about this?" He fingered the box from its high place till it fell into his arms. He popped open the lid. "A hat!"

It was a red hat, high-crowned and soft, belted with a plaited belt in which a white owl's feather nodded. Mr. Woods and Mrs. Underhill said Aaaaah, and watched closely as Mr. Woods fitted it to Smoky's head. It was as heavy as a crown. "I wonder," Smoky said, "what became of Daily Alice."

"Which reminds me," Mr. Woods said with a smile, "last but not least but besta" From under the bed he drew out a faded and mouse-chewed Gladstone carpetbag. He brought it to the table and placed it tenderly before Smoky. A sadness seemed to have entered him too. His great hands stroked the bag as though it were beloved. "Smoky Barnable," he said. "This is in my gift. She couldn't give it, no matter that she wanted to. It's old but all the more capacious for that. I bet there's room in it for a" A doubt came over him, and he snapped open the crossbones catch of the bag and looked inside. He grinned. "Ah, plenty of room. Not only for her gift, but pockets too for your unbelief, and whatever else. It'll come in handy."

The empty bag was heaviest of all.

"That's all," said Mrs. Underhill, and the grandfather clock struck sweetly.

"Time you were going," said Mrs. Woods, and the baby choked impatiently.

"What's become of Alice?" Mr. Woods said thoughtfully. He turned twice around the room, looking out the small deep windows and peering into corners. He opened a door; beyond it Smoky glimpsed utter darkness and heard a long, sleepy whisper before Mr. Woods closed it quickly. He lifted his finger and his eyebrows went up with a sudden idea. He went to the tall wardrobe that stood on claw feet in the corner; he threw open its doors, and Smoky saw the wet woods he had come through with Alicea"and, far off, loitering in the afternoon, Alice herself. He was shown into the wardrobe.

"It was very nice of you," he said, stooping to enter. "Giving me all this stuff."

"Forget it," said Mr. Woods, his voice sounding distant and vague. The wardrobe doors shut on him with a long noise like a far great low-voiced bell. He walked through the wet underbrush, slapped at by branches, his nose starting to run.

"What on earth," Daily Alice said when she saw him.

"I've been in the Woods'," he said.

"I guess you have. Look at you."

A thick tangle of creeper had Somehow got twined around his neck; its tenacious p.r.i.c.kles tore his flesh and plucked at his s.h.i.+rt. "d.a.m.n," he said. She laughed, and began to pull leaves from his hair.

"Did you fall? How did you get dead leaves all in your hair? What's that you've got?"

"A bag," he said. "It's all right now." He raised to show her the long-dead hornet's nest he carried; its fine paper-work was broken in places and showed the tunneled interior. A ladybug crawled from it like a spot of blood and flew away.

"Fly away home," Daily Alice said. "It's all right now. The path was there all the time. Come on."

The great weight he felt was his pack, sodden with rain. He wanted desperately to put it down. He followed her along a rutted trail, and soon they came to a great littered clearing below a crumbling bank of clay. In the midst of the clearing was a brown shack with a tarpaper roof, tied to the woods by a dripping clothesline. A pickup truck sat wheelless on concrete blocks in the yard, and a black-andwhite cat prowled, looking damp and furious. A woman in ap.r.o.n and galoshes was waving to them from the wire-bound chicken house.

"The Woods," Daily Alice said.

"Yes."

And yet, even when they had coffee in front of them, and Amy and Chris Woods were talking of this and that, and his discarded pack lay puddling the linoleum, still Smoky felt press on him a weight given him, which he could not shake off, and which gradually came to seem as if it had always been there. He thought he could carry it.

Of the rest of that day, and the rest of their adventures on that journey, Smoky later on would remember very little. Daily Alice would remind him later of this or that, in the middle of a silence, as though she rehea.r.s.ed that journey often when her mind had nothing else to do, and he'd say, "Oh yes," and perhaps really remember what she spoke of and perhaps not.

On that same day Cloud on the porch by the gla.s.s table, thinking only to complete her pursuit of those same adventures, turned up a trump called the Secret, and when she prepared to put it in its place gasped, began to tremble; her eyes filled with sudden tears, and when Mother came to call her for lunch, Cloud, red-eyed and still surprised that she had not known or suspected, told her without hesitation or doubt what she had learned. And so when Smoky and Daily Alice returned, brown, scratched and happy, they found the blinds drawn in the front windows (Smoky didn't know this old custom) and Doctor Drinkwater solemn on the porch. "Auberon is dead," he said.

By the Way Rooks (Smoky supposed) fled home across a cloudstreaked chilly sky toward naked trees which gestured beyond the newly-turned furrows of a March field (he was quite sure it was March). A split-rail fence, nicely cracked and knotholed, separated the field from the road, where a Traveler walked, looking a bit like Dante in Dore, with a peaked hood. At his feet were a row of white, red-capped mushrooms, and the Traveler's face had a look of alarma"well, surprisea"because the last small mushroom in the row had tilted up its red hat and was looking at him with a sly smile from beneath the brim.

"It's an original," Doctor Drinkwater said, indicating the picture with his sherry gla.s.s. "Given to my grandmother Violet by the artist. He was an admirer of hers."

Because his childhood books had been Caesar and Ovid, Smoky had never seen the man's work before, his pollarded, faced trees and evening exactness; he was struck by it in ways he couldn't a.n.a.lyze. It was called By the Way, like a whisper in his ear. He sipped his sherry. The doorbell (it was the kind where you turn a key to make the noise, but what a noise) rang, and he saw Mother hurry by the parlor door, wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n.

He had made himself useful, less affected as he was than the rest of them. He and Rudy Flood dug the grave, in a place on the grounds where these Drinkwaters lay together. There was John. Violet. Harvey Cloud. It was a fiercely hot day; above the maples burdened with awesome weight of leaves there hung a vapour, as though the trees panted it out with their soft breathing in the fainting breeze. Rudy expertly shaped the place, his s.h.i.+rt plastered with sweat to his great stomach; worms fled from their spades, or from the light, and the cool, dark earth they turned out turned pale quickly.

And the next day people arrived, all the guests from his wedding or most of them, appearing in their sudden way, some wearing the same clothes they had worn for the wedding since they hadn't expected another Drinkwater occasion so soon; and Auberon was buried without minister or prayer, only the long requiem of the harmonium, which sounded now calm and Somehow full of gladness.

"Why is it," Mother said returning from the door with a sky-blue Pyrex dish covered with foil, "that everyone thinks you're starving after a funeral? Well, it's very kind."

Good Advice Great-aunt Cloud tucked her damp hankie away in a black sleeve. "I think of the children," she said. "All there today, year after year of thema"Frank Bush and Claude Berry were in his very first cla.s.s after the Deci- sion."

Doctor Drinkwater bit on a briar pipe he really seldom used, took it out and stared hard at it, as though surprised to find it was inedible.

"Decision?" Smoky said.

"Berry et al. vs. Board of Ed," Doc said solemnly.

"I guess we can eat this now," Mother came in to say. "Sort of pot luck. Bring your gla.s.ses. Bring the bottle, Smokya"I'm having another." And at the dining table Sophie sat in tears because she had set without thinking a place for Auberon, who always came to eat on this day, Sat.u.r.day. "How could I just forget," she said through the napkin covering her face. "He loved us so mucha ." Still with the napkin over her face, she went quickly out. Smoky seemed hardly to have seen her face since he arrived, only her retreating back.

"She and you were his favorites," Cloud said, touching Daily Alice's hand.

"I suppose I'll go up and see Sophie," Mother said, irresolute by the door.

"Sit down, Mother," Doc said softly. "It's not one of those times." He helped Smoky to one of the three bowls of potato salad there were among the funeral offerings. "Well. Berry et al. It was thirty some years agoa ."

"You lose track of time," Mother said. "It's more like forty-five."

"Anyway. We're very out-of-the-way up here. Rather than trouble the State about our kids and all, we'd set up a little private school. Nothing fancy at all. But it began to appear that our school had to meet Standards. State Standards. Now the kids could read and write as well as any, and learned their math; but the Standards said they had to learn as well History, and Civics whatever that is or was, and a lot of other stuff we just didn't think was necessary. If you know how to read, the World of Books is open to you, after all; and if you like to read, you'll read. If you don't, you'll forget whatever anybody makes you read, anyway. People around here aren't ignoramuses; just have an ideaa"or rather a lot of different ideasa" about what's important to know, and very little of it's taught in school.

"Well, it turns out that our little school was closed down, and all the kids went outside to school for a couple of yearsa ."

"They said our Standards didn't fit our students for the real world," Mother said.

"What's so real about it?" Cloud said testily. "What I've seen lately doesn't seem so real to me."

"This was forty years ago, Nora."

"Hasn't gotten any realer since then."

"I went to the public school for a while," Mother said. "It didn't seem so bad. Only you always had to be there at exactly the same time every day, spring or winter, rain or s.h.i.+ne; and they didn't let you out till exactly the same hour every day, as well." She marveled, looking back on it.

"How was the Civics and all that," Daily Alice asked, squeezing Smoky's hand under the table because the answer was a venerable clincher.

"You know what?" Mother said to Smoky. "I don't remember a single thing about them. Not a single thing."

And that was just how the School System had appeared to Smoky. Most of the kids he had known forgot everything they learned in school as soon as they left those (to him) mysterious halls. "Boy," he'd say, "you ought to go to school with my father. He never lets you forget a thing." On the other hand, when they questioned him about schoolroom fixtures like the Pledge of Allegiance or Arbor Day or Prince Henry the Navigator, he was made of ignorance. They thought he was strange, when they noticed him at all.

"So Claude Berry's dad got in trouble for keeping him out of the public school, and it became a case," Cloud was saying. "All the way to the State Supreme Court."

"Bent our bank accounts out of shape," Doc said.

"And eventually was decided in our favor," Mom said.

"Because," Cloud said, "It was a religious thing, we claimed. Like the Amish, do you know about them?" She smiled slyly. "Religious."

"A landmark decision," Mom said.

"n.o.body's heard of it, though," Doc said, wiping his lips. "I think, the court surprised itself by the way it decided, and it was kept quiet; don't want to start people thinking, get their wind up, so to speak. But we've had no trouble since then."

"We had good advice," Cloud said, lowering her eyes; and they all consented silently to that.

Smoky, taking another gla.s.s of sherry and arguing from ignorance, began talking about a loophole in the Standards he knew ofa"that is, himselfa"and the superior education he'd anyway received, and how he wouldn't have it any other way, when Doctor Drinkwater suddenly struck the table with his palm, gavel-style, and beamed on Smoky, the light of a bright idea in his eyes.

What About It "What about that?" Daily Alice said to him much later when they lay in bed.

"What?"

"What Dad suggested."

They had just the sheet over them in the heat, which only since midnight had begun to break apart into breezes. The long white hills and dales made by her body s.h.i.+fted cataclysmically and settled into a different country. "I don't know," he said,, feeling muzzy and thoughtless, helpless against sleep. He tried to think of some more pointed answer, but instead fell off into sleep. She s.h.i.+fted nervously again and he was s.n.a.t.c.hed back.