Fade. Part 5

"I've looked at it a thousand times," I said, studying his face, the lines of weariness enclosing his mouth, the dark pouches like bruises under his eyes. "I've always wondered about it."

"Tell me what you've wondered about, Paul."

"Well, you're supposed to be in the picture. Memere and Pepere are. And my father. And all the uncles and aunts. Everybody except you ..."

"Yes," he said. "All except me." His voice sad, wistful.

Gathering my courage, I said: "It's a big mystery, Uncle Adelard. Everybody wonders about you and the picture. I mean, were you there or not? Or were you just playing a prank?"

"It was a prank, Paul," he said.

"Oh."

"What's the matter?" he asked. "You look disappointed."

"It's crazy, Uncle Adelard," I said. "But I always hoped that you hadn't played a trick, that you hadn't just ducked out of the picture, that you ..." My words dribbled away, sounding foolish suddenly.

"That I'd disappeared?" he asked. "Into thin air?"

I nodded, my cheeks flushed, feeling ridiculous.

"But I did," he said.

Blinking, I asked: "Did what?"

"Disappeared."

"But you said it was a prank."

Or was he still playing a prank at this moment but this time on me alone?

"It was was a prank, Paul. I had found out only a day or two before the picture that ..." Now it was his turn to give up on words, to frown and look again at the rain slanting down. a prank, Paul. I had found out only a day or two before the picture that ..." Now it was his turn to give up on words, to frown and look again at the rain slanting down.

"What had you found out, Uncle Adelard?"

My voice echoed strangely on the piazza. Did I already know?

The rain began to fall harder, hissing as it struck the ground. I looked away from him, at the steeples of St. Jude's shrouded in mists, barely visible above the three-deckers. I listened for other sounds in the rain-a car horn, a dog's bark, bird's cry, footsteps, voices, anything-but there was nothing. My uncle and I were alone in a world of our own.

"Paul," he called.

I continued looking at the steeples as they wavered in the wet gray sky.

"Paul," he called again.

Reluctantly, I turned to him.

He was not there.

I stared at the chair in which he had been sitting. It was vacant. His hat was still on the floor beside the chair. The piazza was empty but I had not heard his departure, had not heard his footsteps going across the floor and down the stairs. Yet I didn't feel as if I were alone on the piazza. I felt his presence there, as if he were hiding, just out of sight, a small distance away. Felt also that his eyes were upon me, studying me, watching me.

I blinked and he was there again.

Sitting in the chair, legs crossed, hands folded in his lap, the bandanna around his neck.

In the moment before he appeared, the air in the vicinity of the chair s.h.i.+mmered, as if a thousand stars had congregated, clashed, and dissolved in a burst of brilliance. Out of the brilliance, my uncle Adelard emerged.

He was looking at me with the saddest eyes I had ever seen.

*he strike at the Monument Comb Shop began during the dog days of August, in weather so hot and humid that we were warned by our parents to avoid dogs, which might go on a rampage, mad with the heat, and attack not only complete strangers but people they knew, especially children.

We learned about the strike when my father came home an hour late from work and announced, after he had washed his face and hands at the kitchen sink: "We walk out tomorrow. If they don't meet our demands."

My mother looked up sharply.

"No, I didn't vote to strike," he said as we gathered at the table. "But you have to go with the majority. We agreed to that. I don't think this is the right time to strike but I'll do what the others voted. We have to show we're united."

This was the longest speech my father ever made about the troubles at the shop, unlike my Uncle Victor, who never stopped talking about it.

I wanted to say to my father: At least you won't have to work in the Rub Room during the strike.

Excitement crackled in the air when the men gathered in the streets and marched to the shop in the first days of the strike. Everyone was good-natured, shouting and joking, and there was a lot of clowning around-Mr. Landry, who called the quadrilles at the Sat.u.r.day night dances at St. Jean's Hall, led the parade with a baton like the kind used by drum majors. But the atmosphere changed as the heat intensified in the next few days and men began to realize that there would be no paychecks at the end of the week. The sun was merciless during the daytime when the men picketed the shop, and nightime brought little relief, as if the three-deckers and the pavement had stored up heat all day long and released it after dark.

The absence of paychecks gradually showed its effects, particularly in the Frenchtown stores. Mr. Dondier told me that my services were no longer needed, that he would do without extra help sweeping the floors and delivering orders and packing potatoes into peck bags. He touched my arm, his face long with regret. Miss Fortier, who operated the Lau-rentian Gift Shoppe next door to Lakier's, would close her doors "temporarily" at the end of October and never open them again. Someone said she went back to Canada.

When my uncle Victor dropped in to visit, the strike was the big topic.

"We'll never make up what we're losing," my father insisted. "Depression is no time for a strike."

My mother sighed, knowing the inevitable argument that would follow.

"It's never the right time," Uncle Victor said. "But we have to think beyond the moment. We have to look to next year, ten years from now. Look at your kids, Lou. Do you want them on short time, no job protection, no vacations?"

"My kids aren't going to work in the shops," my father said, determination in his voice. Which made my brother Armand look away in dismay. "Education, Vic. That's the key to the future, not strikes."

"But there'll always be shops, Lou. And people working in them. What we're doing will help people in the future, whether or not they're your flesh and blood...."

My father joined the picket lines, carrying a banner that read UNFAIR TO LABOR, UNFAIR TO LABOR, and I watched him as he paraded in front of the shop with the other strikers, both men and women, my aunts among them. My father's face was grim and he walked stiffly, as if his legs ached. Many of the picket-ers laughed and joked as they paced back and forth, while others scowled or swung their shoulders belligerently, yelling "scab" and swearing at the foremen and office clerks who reported for work as usual when the whistle blew. My uncle Victor did not yell or curse. As a strike leader, he did not walk the picket line, either. He stood to one side, never alone, others cl.u.s.tered about him as he gave orders and answered questions, chewing his cigar. Armand hung out nearby, ready to run errands, eager, panting for action. He did not look at my father and my father did not look at him. and I watched him as he paraded in front of the shop with the other strikers, both men and women, my aunts among them. My father's face was grim and he walked stiffly, as if his legs ached. Many of the picket-ers laughed and joked as they paced back and forth, while others scowled or swung their shoulders belligerently, yelling "scab" and swearing at the foremen and office clerks who reported for work as usual when the whistle blew. My uncle Victor did not yell or curse. As a strike leader, he did not walk the picket line, either. He stood to one side, never alone, others cl.u.s.tered about him as he gave orders and answered questions, chewing his cigar. Armand hung out nearby, ready to run errands, eager, panting for action. He did not look at my father and my father did not look at him.

When Hector Monard reported for work a few moments before the whistle blew, a deadly silence fell. No one yelled or screamed curses at Hector Monard. The strikers regarded him in grim silence as he went by, eyes full of hate, more chilling to me than screams or shouting. There was murder in that silence. He walked with head high, looking neither right nor left, his lips curled into a sneer, the same sneer I had seen the day I brought my father's lunch bag to the shop.

Snow fell early that year, before Thanksgiving, followed by a cold wave that brought sharp winds that took the breath away and rattled the windows of the three-deckers. The strikers never stopped walking in front of the shop, holding their signs, stamping their feet on the frozen ground, bundled now in heavy mackinaws and overcoats, breathing white clouds when they spoke. As the cold intensified, they built small fires in trash barrels and huddled around them.

The strike lasted 121 days, ending on a Wednesday, a week and a half before Christmas. The end came after a night of violence during which my father was taken, along with three other men, to Monument Hospital, with blood gus.h.i.+ng from his wounds.

But before the strike even began back in August, I had learned that I had become a fader.

First of all, the pause.

Then the pain.

And the cold.

The pause is a moment in which everything in your body stops, the way a clock stops. A terrible stillness that lasts only the length of a drawn breath-although it seems longer than that, almost an eternity-and then, at the onset of panic, the heart beats again, blood rushes through your veins and sweet air into your lungs.

After that, the flash of pain, like lightning, pain that darts throughout your body, so intense that you gasp at its brutality. But the pain is merciful in its quickness, gone as quickly as it comes.

The cold begins when the fade begins and remains all the time you are in the fade. It has nothing to do with the time of year or the seasons of the weather. The cold comes from inside, spreading under the surface of the flesh, like a layer of ice between skin and bone.

"The cold is a reminder that you are in the fade," Uncle Adelard had said dryly. "In case you should forget."

I stood on the sidewalk in front of my house in the deepening evening, darkness obscuring the three-deckers and the steeples of St. Jude's Church, although its white stone held on to the vestiges of daylight.

In the fade.

I can do anything, I thought, go anywhere, cross oceans, reach mountaintops.

But at this moment, what do I do?

No mountains to scale in Frenchtown.

No oceans to sail.

The cold invaded my body, causing me to s.h.i.+ver in the August heat, and I wrapped my arms, which I could not see, around my chest, which I could not see. I did not move, absorbing the cold, and then it became less intense, muted, bearable.

I walked toward Spruce Street heading for Third, where the streetlights shone brighter and the store windows splashed lights on the sidewalk. Kids had gathered in front of Lakier's, and I spotted David Renault licking an ice-cream cone as he watched Pete Lagniard and Artie LeGrande matching cowboy cards on the sidewalk, on their knees, flipping the cards expertly. Theresa Terrault, who giggled and pressed herself against boys and wore tight sweaters and skirts that displayed her budding b.r.e.a.s.t.s and rolling hips, leaned against a mailbox, the only girl on the street. Other girls quickly made their way home to the tenements when darkness fell before their brothers came looking for them. Theresa was only thirteen but she did not go home.

I approached with caution, not trusting the fade altogether, wondering whether it would abandon me without warning. Pete Lagniard cursed softly as he lost one of his favorite cards, a Ken Maynard.

Theresa's giggle lit up the night with merriment and I paused, looking at her, my eyes sweeping her face, her flas.h.i.+ng eyes, round cheeks, dimples deep enough to dip your tongue into. Then to her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I drank in the sweetness of her body. I realized that I could never do this before. I could look at the movie screen or pictures in magazines but always had to avert my eyes when looking at a girl or woman in real life, the way I had agonized in my aunt Rosanna's presence, not knowing where to look. So now I filled my eyes with Theresa Terrault, staring deliciously, realized that I could, if I wanted, walk up to her and actually touch her.

I s.h.i.+vered as a wave of cold swept my body.

"What's that?" she cried suddenly, looking around, hugging her arms across her chest.

"What's what?" Andre Gillard asked. He had been showing off in front of Theresa, doing a fancy dance step, and now glanced up at her.

She shrugged, looked around as if a wind had suddenly risen to chill her.

"I don't know," she said, her lips turning downward in a pout. "Something ..."

s.h.i.+vering in the heat, she looked directly at me, six feet away, standing at the edge of the group.

I recoiled, leapt back a step or two, risked exposing myself by making a sound. But a sound wouldn't matter, would it, if she couldn't see me? Could Could she see me? Had I begun to lose the fade? I looked down, saw nothing, only my absence, and remembered what my uncle had said: she see me? Had I begun to lose the fade? I looked down, saw nothing, only my absence, and remembered what my uncle had said: You will be there but not there. They will not see you but they will feel you there, know your presence. You will be there but not there. They will not see you but they will feel you there, know your presence.

The moment pa.s.sed and Andre Gillard kicked his heels as he leapt in the air and Pete Lagniard yelled to him to cut it out, Andre was spoiling his concentration, and Theresa Terrault looked admiringly at Andre once more, giggling behind a hand with blood-red fingernails while I beheld her loveliness, the slenderness of her body, her softness.

Andre and Theresa began to walk away together, away from the glow of the streetlight. Andre's arm circled her shoulder and she leaned against him, and her giggle carried on the night air.

Pete and Artie paid no attention to the departure as they concentrated on their game while David Renault finished his ice-cream cone, the last piece disappearing into his mouth with a satisfied smack.

Andre and Theresa continued down Third Street, in and out of the shadows, caught in the glare of a streetlight for a moment and then becoming lost in darkness. I saw them duck into an empty doorway.

Should I follow?

Should I watch them wherever they went and spy on what they did?

I looked around, at the three-deckers on the other side of Third Street, opposite the stores, saw the lights in windows, glimpses of people sitting on the piazzas in the cool evening air.

I could go anywhere, I thought. Into any of those tenements. Spy on whomever I chose. Watch them talking and arguing and making love. See the women take off their clothes as they went to bed. Stand close enough to touch them. I could slip into parlors and bedrooms.

I was lifted on a wave of possibilities and thought of all the possible heavens at my fingertips.

Why was my uncle always so sad when he talked about the fade?

The cold was still with me as I left Pete and Artie to their card game with David Renault as their solitary audience. I walked in the direction Andre and Theresa had taken, uncertain of my destination.

At Dondier's Market, I saw a light burning inside and Mr. Dondier at the cash register tallying the day's receipts with pencil and pad, touching the tip of his pencil to his tongue as he always did, so that his tongue had a permanent dark spot at its tip.

Mr. Dondier, such a serious man, seldom a smile. I wondered if I could make him smile.

Better yet, could I play a trick on him, among the fruits and vegetables and canned goods, something I never had the courage to do until this moment?

The fade now gave me courage.

I opened the door and closed it carefully. Mr. Dondier looked up, pencil poised at his lips, the overhead bulb s.h.i.+ning on his bald head. He looked at his watch.

The store smelled, as usual, of coffee and oranges and pungent odors I could not identify, odors that clung to Mr. Dondier himself the way the smell of celluloid followed my father.

His pencil leapt across the pad as he resumed his work, and I advanced stealthily. Moving closer to him, amazed at my boldness, I watched as he tabulated the figures, his lips moving with his calculations. I s.h.i.+vered a bit.

He raised his head.

"Who's there?" he called.

He looked directly into my eyes and for a frantic moment, I was again afraid that the fade had failed and I was visible, standing directly in front of him. Then I reasoned that he would not have asked "Who's there?" if he could see me.

Wetting his lips, he bent again to his work, small beads of perspiration on his forehead, like dew on a melon. He looked up again, eyes slitted, scrutinizing the store, trying to see into all corners, muttering words under his breath that I could not understand.

He looked so apprehensive, so weary and haggard, that I knew I could not play any tricks on him.