Light Boxes Read online

  Light Boxes

  Shane Jones

  A haunting, enigmatic, Kafkaesque modern fairytale, steeped in visual imagery and consolingly lyrical prose. The Times February is persecuting the townspeople. It has been winter for more than three hundred days. All forms of flight are banned and the children have started to disappear, taken from their beds in the middle of the night. The priests hang ominous sheets of parchment on the trees, signed "February". And somewhere on the outskirts of the town lives February himself, with the girl who smells of honey and smoke… In short bursts of intensely poetic language, this beautifully strange and otherworldly first novel tells the story of the people in the town and their efforts to combat the mysterious spectre of February. Steeped in visual imagery, this is a hauntingly enigmatic modern fairy tale in which nothing is as it seems.

  Shane Jones

  Light Boxes

  For Melanie

  The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.

  — Joseph Wood Krutch, The Twelve Seasons

  Praise for Light Boxes

  “Reading this book makes you realize what our American literature has been missing. Wholly original, tremendously imaginative, written with the deftest hand, Light Boxes makes sense of modern life in the way only dreams can.”

  — Joe Meno, author of The Great Perhaps

  “At last, a book that cries out to our inner balloonists. Shane Jones has built a fable that is fresh and surprising, but also familiar in the way that the oldest stories are familiar. I recommend keeping a copy or two handy at all times.”

  — Jedediah Berry, author of The Manual of Detection

  “In his debut novel Shane Jones achieves a glittering clearness that allies it to Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar. There is sense that curiosity and hope are the qualities we most require, that we must resort to in our peril. Balloonists, aloft!”

  — Jesse Ball, author of Samedi the Deafness

  “Shane Jones is a writer who dares to play make-believe in this tired age when too much fiction is tied to that which is only real. Read this book. Heed its inventive warnings.”

  — Peter Markus, author of Bob, or Man on Boat

  “Reading Light Boxes made me feel like I was walking through a series of strange, interesting rooms that I’d never been in before. It also made me feel sad, especially at the end when it finished and I wanted to carry on reading. Shane Jones is one of my favorite new writers.”

  — Chris Killen, author of The Bird Room

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Shane Jones was born in February of 1980. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in numerous literary journals, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, Typo and Pindeldyboz. He lives in upstate New York. This is his first novel.

  Thaddeus

  We sat on the hill.

  We watched the flames

  inside the balloons heat

  the fabric to neon colors.

  The children played

  Prediction.

  They pointed to empty holes in the sky and waited. Sometimes all the balloons lit up at once and produced the nightly umbrella effect over the town beneath, whose buildings were filling with the sadness of February.

  Nights like this will soon die, Selah whispered in my ear.

  Days became cooler, clouds thickened. We sat on the hill. We watched the flames inside the balloons heat the fabric to neon colors.

  Nights like this will soon die, said Bianca. She ran from the woods, where she saw three children twisting the heads of owls.

  Nights like this will soon die, said the butchers, marching down the hill.

  We sat there for the last time to watch the balloons, the neon colors stitched in our minds.

  Pigs shrieked, and windows shattered across the town. A snout, massive and pink, traced the side of a balloon in its arc. The fabric stretched around the dark nostrils and stopped just before tearing, and it stayed there.

  Still the children stood in a line with their lanterns raised to watch the first snowfall of February cover the crop fields.

  Selah lowered her head. Selah folded her hands in her lap. Selah looked at the backs of the children’s heads and saw ice form knots in their hair.

  We can only pray, whispered Selah.

  I looked at Selah and remembered the dandelions stuck in her teeth. I thought of a burning sun, an ice-berg melting in her folded hands.

  They held hands. They formed dozens of circles around their deflated, smoldering balloons. Balloons, silken globes in the colors magenta, grass green and sky blue, were mud-strewn, wet with holy water and burned black through the stitching.

  Bianca said, I don’t understand.

  Thaddeus said, I don’t either.

  Is this February’s doing, she said.

  Maybe, said Thaddeus, who looked up at the sky.

  A scroll of parchment was nailed to an oak tree, calling for the end of all things that could fly. Everyone in town gathered around to read it. Trumpets moaned from the woods. Birds dropped from branches. The priests walked through town swinging axes. Bianca clutched Thaddeus’s leg, and he picked her up under the arms and told her to hold him like a baby tree around the neck, and Thaddeus ran.

  Back outside their home, the balloons were spread out on the ground. Baskets hacked by axes. The priests dipped their lanterns into the fabric of the balloons.

  Thaddeus, Selah and Bianca and others from town formed a circle by holding hands.

  February, they repeated until it became a chant. Until they all imagined a little tree sprouting through the center of their burning balloon.

  The priests walked down the hill and into town where they stopped at the town school and the town library. They confiscated textbooks, tore out pages about birds, flying machines, Zeppelins, witches on brooms, balloons, kites, winged mythical creatures. They crumpled up paper airplanes the children had folded, and they dumped the pages into a burning pit in the woods.

  The priests sank their rusty spiked shovels into the mound of dirt and refilled the hole. Some of the priests felt tears roll down their cheeks but didn’t feel sadness. Others forced their minds to unravel the memory of wind. They nailed a second scroll of parchment to a second oak tree. It stated that all things possessing the ability to fly had been destroyed. It said that no one living in the town should speak of flight ever again.

  It was signed, February.

  Thaddeus, Bianca and Selah painted balloons everywhere they could. They pulled up floor-boards and painted rows of balloons onto the dusty oak. Bianca drew tiny balloons on the bottoms of teacups. Behind the bathroom mirror, under the kitchen table and on the insides of cabinet doors, balloons appeared. And then Selah painted an intricate intertwining of kites on Bianca’s hands and wrists, the tails extending up her forearms and around her shoulders.

  How long will February last, Bianca asked, stretching her hands out to her mother, who was blowing on her arms.

  I really have no idea, said Thaddeus, who watched the snow fall outside the kitchen window.

  In the distance the snow formed into mountains on top of mountains.

  Finished, her mother said. You will have to wear long sleeves from now on. But you’ll never forget flight. You can wear beautiful dresses — that’s what you can wear.

  Bianca studied her arms. The kites were yellow with black tails. The color melted into her skin. A breeze blew over the fresh ink and through her hair.

  Thaddeus

  I kept a kite hidden in my workshop where the priests couldn’t find it. I unfolded the kite from its dusty box and told Bianca she could fly it for a few minutes. I tried to see if the priests were in the woods but only saw owls sidestepping through the snow.

  I said to try again after the kite
failed to take off. A hand pushed the kite to the ground. She tried a few more times, and the kite slammed downward. I saw a cloud shaped like a hand. I thought of Bianca and her happiness like bricks in mud.

  It’s February, said Bianca.

  I said, I’m sorry this didn’t work out. We can try again.

  What’s the point, she said. It’s the end of flight. It’s February.

  The point, I said, is to keep trying for the sake of trying.

  That week we attempted to fly the kite each night. But what felt like a wind gust on my skin wasn’t enough to carry the kite. I went into my workshop, grabbed some glass jars, and back outside I handed them to Bianca. I took the kite and ran as fast I could. I ran like a madman, my mouth open in a sad air-swallowing attempt, heard Bianca laughing in the distance, looked dreamed of Selah and Bianca holding hands with August, carried the kite at my shoulder until I let it go and felt it collapse on my back. I fell face-first on the ground, ate snow and mud, tore my knee open on a rock.

  Back up the hill, Bianca swirled the glass jars through the air. The kites on her arms twitched.

  Here, she said, handing me the jars with careful, kite-stringed fingers. They are full now. Maybe the Professor can figure out what is wrong with our sky. Maybe we can figure out February.

  Bianca

  When I was really little, my father came into my bedroom with a sheet of fabric he said would one day fly in the sky.

  I’ll show you, he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, then sliding toward the middle, where I sat with my legs crossed.

  Through my bedroom window, I watched a tree lose a branch under the weight of snow that had been falling for months. Before the branch hit the ground, a sheet of yellow fabric floated down over my eyes. It felt like silk and smelled of oil and stream water.

  I heard the clank of metal, and then a hot flame near the back of my neck, and then the fabric lifted from my face, and it bloomed into a giant flower that touched the ceiling and grew toward the corners of my bedroom.

  What does this feel like, my father said.

  It’s like being inside one of those globes the shopkeepers make in town, I said, now standing on the bed, fingertips reaching toward the flower. It feels wonderful. It feels like happiness.

  It will be called, my father said, a balloon.

  In the crop field, four people are found standing with their heads tilted back and arms frozen to their sides. Eyes closed, their mouths stretched open and filled with snow.

  Thaddeus was buying apples when he overheard the group of former balloonists known as the Solution.

  How much can we put up with. How many days will this dreadful season extend itself. Our town is a place of no flight and all snow because of February.

  There were five of them, tall and thin, wearing long brown coats and black top hats. They had thin plastic masks over their faces. Each mask was painted as a different-colored bird.

  You, said one of the members, who grabbed Thaddeus’s shoulder and turned him around.

  Thaddeus faced the Solution, holding his basket of apples tight against his chest.

  We’re starting a rebellion, a war, said a yellow bird mask, against February and what it stands for.

  A war, repeated Thaddeus.

  Yes, a war, a war, a war, the Solution repeated.

  An orange bird mask continued, We’re sick of February, who we believe is responsible not only for a season of endless gray and snow but the end of flight.

  A blue bird mask lurched forward and placed a square of parchment in Thaddeus’s coat pocket. He knocked one of Thaddeus’s apples out of the basket and into a pile of snow.

  Remember us, said the Solution.

  And they disbanded, walking, dreaming of flying, in separate directions.

  Professor

  At the entrance to our town stands the Peter statue. Peter initiated the bird migration. This led to the age of flight, which is a rare time of recorded joy for our town. The sky was a land of balloon travel, bird flight patterns and flying-machine experiments. The afternoons were hot, the evenings cool when we went to the top of the hill to watch the nightly umbrella effect. We walked barefoot through streams. The children exploded in piles of corduroy leaves. We named the changes in weather Spring, Summer, Fall and February.

  Peter believed in the life of flight even when he was bound with twine to his balloon by the priests and sent to a deadly altitude. Peter believed that the month of February should be eliminated, that it was possible to move clouds with long poles and extend the seasons of Spring and Summer. He said it could be taken further, that utopia included a town that knew only June and July. He wrote on archived parchment that if February were allowed to expand, it would infest our moods and kidnap our children.

  Thaddeus

  The Solution came to my window last night. They had on their bird masks and black top hats. They wore a single brown scarf around their necks. I said I understood the need to rebel and protect our town against February. I reminded them of the tactics used last year.

  Most important, they said, think of your daughter, Bianca.

  I saw that some snow had gathered in a corner on the ceiling. I grabbed a broom to sweep it away.

  When I turned back around, the Solution was walking away into the snowfall. It looked like they were skipping.

  I closed my eyes. I imagined Selah and Bianca in a canoe so narrow they had to lie down with their arms folded on their stomachs, their heads at opposite ends, their toes touching. I dreamed two miniature suns. I set one each upon their foreheads. I dreamed a waterfall and a calm lake of my arms below to catch them.

  Bianca

  I know it was important to get up, but my body felt too heavy. My parents stood next to my bed and spoke slowly and moved slower. They said their bladders were being filled with lead and soon it would rise into their chests. My father smiled and ran in place, a tactic used against February last year, but I could see tears in his eyes, and then he stopped, shoulders slouched forward, head near his knees. Lead poured from his mouth.

  My parents climbed into bed with me. The smell of mint made my stomach hurt. They held me and told me everything would be fine, that sadness would rise from our bones and evaporate in sunlight the way morning fog burned off the river in summer. My mother rubbed the kites on my hands and arms and told me to think of my lungs as balloons.

  I just want to feel safe, I said.

  Thaddeus

  The Professor told us that to protect Bianca we should feed her mint leaves. In the rare warm months, we grew as much as we could, taking precious crop space to harvest huge bushels of mint we use in the nightly tea, bathwater and

  SELAH’S MINT SOUP

  8 cups chicken stock

  2 cups mint leaves

  3 large eggs

  ½ teaspoon salt

  ¼ teaspoon black pepper

  At night Selah rubs mint leaves into my beard and pats my lips dry with mint leaves. I braid mint leaves into Selah’s hair. I whisper into her ear, You are my sparrow. Through the night we check on Bianca. When Bianca awakes screaming against February, Selah picks her up and holds her and tells Bianca to think of cloudless skies, a moose letting her hang by one hand from his nose.

  Caldor Clemens

  Thaddeus Lowe! The guy who flies balloons. I spent my days collecting sap from the trees. Still do. Always covered in sap, tree bark splintered under my nails.

  I’d be in the woods loosening the buckets and I’d hear the sky hissing. I’d look up. I’d see a scrawny guy with a beard in a basket that had a balloon fastened above it. The balloon was yellow with green stitching. He couldn’t have been more than a few feet above the tallest tree. At one point the basket brushed the heads of the trees and pinecones rained down. Gave me a nasty gash on my nose. I tasted blood, but that was no bother.

  I went up in a balloon once with my sisters and we watched the sun roll across the horizon, clouds going red and pink, colors swirling around us in a mist. I shoul
dn’t be thinking about that anymore, because flight is over. Some people in this town say the more thoughts you have about flight the worse February haunts you. And then there’s the priests, who have locked away believers of flight someplace at the edge of town. But that’s just a dumb rumor. Could be true, though. If given the chance, I’d break open the skull of February. I’d swing a nice big bucket of sap right into the side of his head and watch the ice of his mind explode like confetti.

  Last night everyone in town dreamed the clouds fell apart like wet paper in their hands.

  Six Reports from the Priests

  1. The Solution attempted to fly today.

  2. They failed.

  3. To hell with February, one member shouted. The rest cheered. They are a loud bunch. They wear bird masks. They throw apples through clouds.

  4. The balloon collapsed on one side. The flames shot up. The flames spilled out and crawled across the field and up the birch trees, where flightless birds burned.

  5. The snow continues to fall.

  6. There has been talk of a war.

  When Thaddeus arrived home he told Selah about a war against February. She bathed Bianca in mint water, ran a cloth in circles around her back.

  I don’t know if a war will help anything, she said.

  It’s the Solution, said Thaddeus. They have nothing to lose. I don’t know. It’s something we should consider. For her sake. He tilted his head toward Bianca.