Light Boxes Page 3

  The War Effort gathered. They watched the Professor lift the light box over his head and set it down until it was tight against his shoulders. In his right hand he held a dented metal box that had a cord attached. Lifting the metal box, he said in a muffled voice, Now, this is the power supply that when switched will simulate the light of the sun which we haven’t seen in a year. The light box itself was constructed of wood fastened at odd angles with metal clamps, except for the front, which was a panel of glass. The top of the glass was where the light was going to shine — bulbs, the Professor called them. As he toggled the switch, everyone could see the sadness and frustration in his face, his eyes looking up at the bulbs as his head jerked from side to side. The switch clicked uselessly. He violently shook the metal box. He clutched the sides of his head and lost his balance a little.

  Then the stench of burning leaves, and the bulbs bloomed crystal white across his face. The War Effort cheered. Some ran out into the snow-filled plains to mock the sky. Others took turns fitting the box over their heads, letting the light soak into their winter beards, their tongues tasting the blood from their splitting lips.

  When Thaddeus went back into the woods the three children weren’t there. Thaddeus looked up and saw the owls on a branch. He asked them if they had seen the three children. Owls can’t speak, and Thaddeus felt foolish. He walked around looking for footprints. A parchment was nailed to the tree. It stated that the three children had been kidnapped and should be added to the catalog of missing children. It was signed, February. Thaddeus saw footprints leading from the tree. They stretched several yards, then formed a circle. They continued straight, then another circle, then straight again. After each circle was a new type of footprint: bear, deer, squirrel, human, et cetera. The footprints continued this way as far into the woods as Thaddeus could see.

  List Written by February and Carried in February’s Corduroy Coat Pocket

  1. I am not a bad person. I have enjoyed June, July and August like everyone else.

  2. I fed you dandelions and picked the stems from your teeth with my tongue.

  3. You smell of honey and smoke. That’s what I call you. Girl who smells of honey and smoke. But you’re more than that. You’re a field of dandelions.

  4. I have this nightmare where I’m standing in the field of dandelions holding a scythe. The horizon is children marching. Each child holds one of your teeth.

  5. I’m so confused it almost feels calm.

  6. I am guilty of kidnapping children. I am guilty of Bianca and causing great pain to Thaddeus and Selah and the town.

  7. I want to be a good person, but I’m not.

  Thaddeus

  The first hot-water attack takes place from our home on the hill. We spend the first night filling large buckets with boiling water. We keep them hot by lighting small fires with piles of tree branches. We pour the buckets downhill toward the town. A cloud of steam rises into the sky as wide, empty trenches expand in the snow. The War Effort applauds like they are watching theater. The midget does somersaults down the hill. For a moment yellow streaks the sky. When I angle my face into the rays of sun, I notice the sky trembling around one of the holes. I see footprints running from the first to the second hole, where the dangling feet are no longer visible. I tell Selah to look up. She does but says she doesn’t see anything except the clouds separating a little. And then the sky flutters like a flag, and then it goes black like closed curtains of wool.

  Bianca

  I could be in an underground cell. I could be dead. I miss air. I miss my father and mother. Every once in a while, the darkness disappears and I can see a man for a few minutes. Like yesterday when yellow streaked the room. He’s tall with hips like mine. I believe this is February. He doesn’t wash himself or clean his clothes. His hair is thick and uncombed, his beard scraggly, his pants torn, his shirt a faded gray. He sits at a desk or walks around the small room where he lives and where I stay hidden behind furniture. He cries a lot, too. Sometimes he just sits at his desk staring at the blank sheets of paper in front of him. But eventually he’ll move and write something down and get up and walk around again. February drinks too much coffee. In the afternoon he eats food that’s two thick slices of bread with a gooey substance and animal parts on the top. February is happy when he eats this meal. Sometimes the animal parts fall off the bread and onto the floor, but February doesn’t mind. He just reaches down and picks them off the dusty wood floor and eats. One time I saw him staring out the window at the snow falling, and he started to cry really loud. There are two holes in the floor. Sometimes I sit on the edge of one. Sometimes I think of jumping down.

  Thaddeus curled himself around the backside of sleeping Selah. In a hazy voice she asked if they would know June again. Thaddeus closed his eyes and saw the town burn to the ground as he nodded his nose down the bumps of her spine. He opened his eyes. He thought of Bianca. When he fell asleep, he dreamed the clouds falling apart, the town starting anew. And when he woke in the morning he tried to remember the dream but couldn’t, no matter how long he spent on the hill with his eyes shut.

  Selah, he yelled down the hill toward their home. Do you remember the dream I had last night.

  Selah was pouring buckets of hot water around their home. She yelled back that she didn’t remember, but it was probably about balloons.

  Of course, said Thaddeus. I would dream about balloons and flight. Thank you.

  Selah wished for a moat to protect their home from February. Selah wished for the end of February and endless sadness and the end to missing children. Selah wished for the rebirth of town and flight. Selah wished for a scrap of something beautiful.

  Thaddeus

  After three days of dumping hot water by single buckets, our arms are long bruises unable to handle the turning of the sparrow-head faucet. Caldor Clemens invents the water-trough-horse system. He works for two days hacking down oak trees and carving out the trunks with knives and axes. When he finishes, the wooden trough is three times longer than our home. It stretches to the middle of where the corn-fields used to grow. Clemens shows us how to stick bits of glass to the bottom of the trough with birch sap he has collected in buckets. The trough itself won’t catch fire this way, he says, and lights a small fire beneath it. The water simmers. Clemens brings six horses up the hill and harnesses them with leather straps to the trough he has readied with boiling water. He raises his hand and sticks the fingers of the other in his mouth and whistles louder than I have ever heard a man whistle. The horses bolt forward, sending a wave of water rushing toward the town, melting the snow into slush.

  We continue the attack for the rest of the week, until the streets clear — we want unfrozen land — and the snowfall melts on the soil like a massive tongue. The children say the clouds look like rippling sails. The holes in the sky turn pink and a body falls from the sky and into the river. The War Effort, their fingers sticky with sap, point to the sky shouting for the death of February.

  FEBRUARY SAT ON A COTTAGE FLOOR with a girl who smelled of smoke and honey. The girl was telling him that she was tired of being around someone who carried so much sadness in his body. February drew his kneecaps to his eye sockets.

  February apologized. He rocked back and forth. When he stretched his legs back out the girl was smiling and running in place. February asked what she was doing. The girl who smelled of honey and smoke said it was to cheer him up.

  I don’t think that’s going to work, said February. I’m sorry, but it just won’t.

  Just try it, said the girl who smelled of honey and smoke. Please.

  February stood up and ran in place. His joints popped. He bumped into a table, knocking over a jug of water.

  Looks like a flood, said the girl who smelled of honey and smoke, who pumped her legs and arms faster.

  It does, said February, who watched the water expand across the table and drip onto the floor with great delight.

  War Member Six (Green Bird Mask)

  The hot wate
r worked better than we imagined. There was some flooding on account of the melted snow, but we used most of it to refill the buckets. February is breaking apart at the horizon seams. There are few clouds. The sky is a soft blue. The children’s cheeks are flushed red from the sun.

  People in town laughed today. Someone even skipped. The first sprouts of green crops can be seen on the hillside. The town feels alive and productive again. We have won an early battle against February but know that anything can happen. For instance, there have been reports from the messengers that dark clouds are cascading from the mountain peaks. Grizzly bears were seen buttoning deer-skinned coats in case of freezing temperatures. The carpenters have boarded up their windows and refuse to leave their homes. They mumble sadness. Sadness sounds like bubbles blowing slowly in stream water.

  THE GIRL WHO SMELLED OF HONEY and smoke enjoyed collecting old books on plants. One night while out on the cottage porch sitting on the swinging bench with February, she opened to a chapter about vines and moss. One page had twelve different pictures of skinny green vines climbing the side of a Victorian brick house.

  When the girl stood up to go inside and check on the pot roast she kissed February on his forehead. February flipped through the plant book until he stopped at a picture that showed a deer skeleton in a forest, spores of moss covering the white bone.

  In only a week, the caption read, this deer skeleton will be blanketed with a spongy green moss.

  The girl came back outside. She asked if he found anything interesting. She said the pot roast was ready. February nodded. He said that he liked the idea of moss.

  Thaddeus

  Spores of moss appeared on the horses’ feet, and layers of green grew on their legs and backs. Selah spent her nights trying to defend against the attack of moss by pulling it out in patches and then soothing the horses’ bloody flesh with wet magnolia petals. We continued the water-trough attacks until the moss collapsed each horse. A dark green blanket grew over their eyes.

  Selah couldn’t destroy the moss with her hands anymore, because it was so thick. It was now bigger than each horse. She slept next to the dying horses until the moss made its way down their throats. After the horses died, the moss moved its way from the woods and up the hill toward our home. Caldor Clemens swung the scythe like he was chopping wheat from an advancing crop field. He screamed and swore against February. Two priests came to sprinkle holy water around our home. They looked confused. The sky turned green, then black, then green again. A wolf stood on its hind legs and ripped opened its stomach. Ants carrying cubes of moss crawled out.

  Eventually we tired. Clemens and I and the War Effort moved inside my home and barricaded the door with our backs. Then the moss moved its way under the door and over our boots.

  Short List Found in February’s Back Pocket

  1. I’ve done everything I can.

  2. I need to know you won’t leave.

  3. I wrote a story to show love, and it turned to war. How awful.

  4. I twisted myself around stars and poked the moon where the moon couldn’t reach.

  5. I’m the kind of person who kidnaps children and takes flight.

  Selah

  To watch the way those horses died. To have felt the waves of their muscles contracting and shaking under that skin of mushy green. It was too much for me. The floor and walls and ceiling of our home were covered in moss. The dog was covered in moss but was still alive, and he ran around the home barking green-colored clouds. Thaddeus was tearing it out in fistfuls from the walls. Caldor was swinging a scythe in wide, low arcs.

  Selah, said Thaddeus, start on the floor. Tear out what you can and burn it in the stove.

  Caldor yelled at me as I stood there with my arms frozen to my sides. I thought about the way the horses died. I thought of death and war and the sadness of this once-colorful town.

  Selah, please, the floor, said Thaddeus, who kicked his feet, flicked at the moss that grew over the toes of his boots.

  I went back to where the horses were.

  I knelt down in the cold, snow-freckled green. I peeled the moss away from their bodies. Their eyes had burst and their tongues were hanging out. Their necks were ropes of muscle and wet moss from the snow that now looked like green foam.

  I placed my head inside a horse’s neck. Deep inside that web of flesh, among the organs and bone, I saw a miniature town that was identical to ours. I saw Thaddeus and Caldor and Bianca and everyone else asleep in hammocks tied to the ribcage. I saw a little balloon carrying horses in a basket. I saw kites pushing clouds into a burning sun. And where the stomach was, I saw myself standing on a frozen river. Wind tunnels around my legs lifted my dress and pulled my hair toward the clouds. I could feel the cracking of ice against the bottom of my feet. Fish ate water and screamed for me to come down and have some tea, have some mint.

  Thaddeus

  The shopkeepers in town said they saw Selah out on the river. One of them went after her. He reached his hand out, but she shook and stamped her feet. She broke the ice beneath her and fell.

  I tried to save her, Thaddeus, said the shopkeeper, who was a little old man with a crooked back. He walked with a cane that had a curved end in the shape of an eagle, which he clutched.

  I lay out on the ice as best I could and tried to find her through the hole. I’m sorry, sir, but what I saw, I don’t know if it’s February getting to me or not. But here, this is what I saw. He quivered, then straightened his back.

  He handed me parchment paper. He shouted for the death of February, and a few other shopkeepers rallied around him, and they disappeared inside the inn. Outside the inn were great big heaps of wilting moss, dying ants, a butcher skinning a wolf.

  I unfolded the parchment. I thought of Bianca and Selah and this ongoing war. I sat on the ground in the street as the wagons passed me by, the wheels slipping in the snow. There was a drawing on the parchment. It was drawn in lead and showed a woman, Selah, underwater. Brown fish with horse heads encircled her. Her hands were angry clouds. Kite strings were wrapped around her body, and she was screaming with a mouth full of snow.

  It continued snowing and the War Effort gathered around Thaddeus, who wouldn’t move from the street. The shopkeepers cleared the snow around him with shovels. Thaddeus held a crumpled ball of parchment in his fist and refused to speak. At one point a wagon wheel crushed his hand, but he didn’t flinch.

  There’s still a war to fight, one War Effort member said.

  The town needs you, said another.

  Caldor Clemens grabbed Thaddeus by the shoulders and shook him.

  You can place your frustration on February, he said, looking into the dark eyes of Thaddeus.

  Thaddeus mumbled and tightened his fists but didn’t move. Three war members — blue bird mask, a carpenter and Caldor Clemens — tried to push him over. Caldor said that it was like trying to move a chimney. They had no choice but to leave him in the street night after night after night.

  The left side of my body is Bianca, and my right side is Selah. With no body I have no reason to move from this spot.

  I dreamed you a field of running horses, Selah. For you, Bianca, a balloon the size of the sky, my body a kite you can throw into the air.

  Pull me by string and horse.

  Tell me everything won’t end in death. That everything doesn’t end with February. Dead wildflowers wrapped around a crying baby’s throat.

  I’ve slowed my heartbeat to three beats a minute. I’ve redrawn the clouds into birds, a fox chasing them into the mountains.

  I’m going to move my hand today.

  I vomit ice cubes.

  There’s a ghost next to me.

  Get up, Dad.

  FEBRUARY WATCHES THE SNOW FALL.

  He thinks about the senseless deaths of Selah and Bianca and the ongoing war against him. He creates ten different shades of gray in the sky and then starts over again. The girl who smells of honey and smoke calls for him to come inside. He thinks, She has a lig
ht in her throat when she speaks. She has strings of light draped inside her body.

  There’s a terrible war against me, he says over his shoulder.

  I know, she says. You can stop it anytime you want.

  The girl who smells of honey and smoke can’t hear him cry but can see the curled shoulders. She can see his black shake.

  Sculptor

  Bianca’s ghost appears in town. She wears red shorts and a white blouse and has long black hair. I watch her buy mint leaves and talk to shop owners about how soon until we will only experience summer. She walks through the streets passing out tulips whose petals have veins that spell out the word July. A bar-keep tells everyone that Bianca’s ghost has a War Plan involving the town children who have been kidnapped by February. An apprentice of mine says that when Bianca cupped her hands together it showed an entire sky of kites.

  Thaddeus hadn’t spoken in a week. But when Bianca’s ghost whispered in his ear, he stood up. He pointed at the sky. He went to his home, where Caldor Clemens had taken over the War Effort. Bianca’s ghost disappeared into the woods.

  Since Thaddeus’s solitude it’s never been so cold or dark in the town. My owl statues became brittle with frost and cracked and crumbled to dust, and I’m lucky I haven’t any children left to feed. That’s a horrible thing to say, but it’s true.

  OWL STATUES — HALF PRICE.

  Caldor Clemens gave a shirtless speech under the two holes in the sky. The War Effort sat in a circle around Clemens, who pumped his fists and spit into snowbanks.