Onion Songs

by Tem, Steve Rasnic

  She kept listening for the flap of wings, waiting for a change of smell or shadow. To her great disappointment, nothing came.

  *

  Trish walked through the downtown shopping district with a forced, determined step. She hadn’t brought her purse; she had no plans to buy. She did have a few dollars stuffed into her bra, because she did want to eat. She enjoyed eating these days—she was always hungry. Food becomes me, she thought, and smiled, the way she remembered Harry smiling.

  Around her the narrow lines of the buildings swayed. Threads of various colors floated together briefly, becoming patches of sky and patches of store, power lines and sidewalks, streets, the momentary smear of cars moving with one or more occupants inside. Then the fabric warped and folded, hours passed, the sun tumbled through the sky like a half-eaten fruit tossed languidly into the trash, and there she was again, continuing on her merry way.

  She bent down and picked up a thread—once part of a sidewalk, perhaps connected to a person’s leg or the side of a tree—gave it a yank, then she smiled as the world tightened and leaned over slightly, before returning more or less to form, rumpled like a worn out sweater.

  When she was a little girl her grandmother had knitted her the most beautiful sweater. It had at least six colors knitted into a series of intricate, irregular patterns, as if from some sweater manufacturing machine gone wild, but Trish knew it came from her slightly addled grandmother and her imperfect way of knitting things. Trish had worn that sweater proudly every day until one day one of the threads had come loose, a strand of yarn some two or three inches long. The sweater now looked shabby. Not knowing what else to do, Trish had pulled on the thread, and pulled, until it became a long line of bright color, and, reluctant to ask her grandmother to fix it, Trish had kept pulling, and kept pulling, until after an hour or so the actual shape of the sweater was gone, as if it had never existed, and instead she had this pile of shapeless colored yarn.

  “Mommy, who’s that strange woman?” she heard a child ask nearby.

  Trish’s lips tasted sweet, then salty, and vaguely of sex. She smiled as the thread of the child’s voice stretched out into a long, dreary wail adrift with the rest of the dangling sky.

  OFF THE MAP

  “OK, Kids, we’re going to take this vacation off the map!” The Dad, relaxed and expansive behind the steering wheel, threw back his head and horse-laughed. Big Sis hated the laugh and hated the fact that the Dad pretended like this was something special, when he said the exact same thing on every vacation. Hated it almost as much as she hated being called Big Sis, almost as much as she hated her parents’ insistence that their children refer to them as “the Dad” and “the Mom.”

  Beside her the twins Boyo and Gal Pal voiced their enthusiasm. “Bravo!” they cried in unison, Boyo waving his French beret and Gal Pal her tiny sombrero. This year Boyo was to be a resident of France and Gal Pal a citizen of Mexico. They’d overstuffed their dilapidated cardboard suitcases with the appropriate native clothing, reading materials, and snacks. After weeks of harassment Big Sis had finally decided on somewhere non-specific in the British Isles. At least they spoke English there, more or less.

  The family station wagon cruised the back roads like an out-of-control boat. The Mom chattered to the Dad constantly about this or that seen, or passed recently, or coming up on the right. Big Sis clutched the padded arm rest until her elbow locked, and forced her eyes closed at the worst of it, when the Dad veered too close to tractor trailers, or swung too wide on curves, and the outside wheels spat gravel. “Shit shit shit...” she stuttered.

  “Quelle horreur!” Boyo exclaimed, “Oolala, le potty mouth!”

  “Oh, shut up!” She punched him in the shoulder. “That last part isn’t even French—it’s English with an accent!”

  “Sere Bueno!”

  “German and Spanish, you halfwit!”

  “Pelé.”

  “Brazilian soccer player.”

  “Oh, Big Sis!” the Mom interrupted from the front seat. “Isn’t it all so much easier when you speak the language?”

  Big Sis curled into the corner of the back seat to sulk. Boyo grinned wickedly, chanting bien, bien, bien.

  It was always like this on vacation. Their family had no money in the best of times, certainly no money for trips abroad, although the Dad and the Mom had promised a trip to Europe for as long as Big Sis could remember. The very idea made her shudder. The whole world hated Americans. Maybe the Dad didn’t mind being beheaded—he was mostly head anyway, but why should the rest of the family suffer?

  What they did instead was just like homework! Boyo and Gal Pal had been studying languages and customs for weeks, not that it had helped much in Boyo’s case.

  She’d been lucky the Mom and the Dad had permitted her to choose Britain, which she knew all about, having studied about Queen Elizabeth I in school, and knowing pretty much everything about kings and queens, princes and princesses. There were dukes and earls as well, but she really didn’t understand that much about them, except there was a song, “Duke of Earl,” that the Dad had liked to sing to them when they were little.

  They had been in the car for a very long time. On previous vacations her parents traded house-sitting chores for a place to stay, some out-of-the-way location where they could run their crazy vacation experiments without interference. They thought these deals were some big secret from the Kids, but Big Sis knew—the Mom and the Dad weren’t exactly secret agents. “Look at this empty house we’ve found!” the Dad would exclaim. “How could anyone forget they lived in such a wonderful home?” the Mom would ask, a stupid expression on her face.

  But this summer they didn’t seem to know at all where they were going. Every few miles the Dad would pull off onto a side road, travel down it awhile, then stop near a house. The Kids had to stay in the car with the Mom while he got out, walked around the structure, looked in the windows, knocked on the door. Each time he would come back shaking his head at the Mom and they would drive around some more.

  By dusk Big Sis was getting worried. She’d had nothing but biscuits (which tasted suspiciously like cookies) all day, with nothing to wash them down but unrefrigerated orange juice. Her throat was raw and scratchy, and when once again the Dad stopped the car, just after sunset, the sky an almost painful red, she wanted to yell at them both. Just what did they think they were doing? Both the twins had passed out from the heat in the car, and if they didn’t find the house soon she herself was going to be homicidal.

  But this time the Dad came back smiling, shook the twins awake, and told them all it was time to unload.

  *

  “France is upstairs in the back, Mexico down here by the front door. England,” irritatingly, he bowed, “you have the large bedroom upstairs.” He paused, waving his bright flashlight around like a light saber. “Surprised?”

  “Shocked.”

  “You’re more than old enough now, I’d say.” And for the first time in months she smiled.

  But something was missing. She looked around. Of course—there was no furniture. She stared at the Dad’s flashlight. She walked over to a light switch, flipped it on. Nothing. “There’s no power!”

  “We’re fifty years into the future. Worldwide power outage. The direct result of a foolish use of our natural resources. I have an extra flashlight for you, by the way. It gets pretty dark in Britain after nightfall.”

  She could have punched him, but she took the flashlight instead.

  The next morning was full of the clamor of the French and Mexican wars. The Dad came thundering out of his bedroom wrapped in a bright red silk robe covered with sun-yellow flowers. He saw her staring at him. “Japanese Occupation,” he said, waving his hand dismissively.

  The Mom had packed her British kit for her, obviously not trusting her to do it properly. Beside the fairytale books, a costume jewelry tiara, and the Beatles CD Big Sis had thought to bring herself (but forgetting the CD player completely), the Mom had placed a wool
en tartan scarf (great for summer!), a Fodor travel guide to the United Kingdom, and a shiny green teapot.

  She had already checked the sinks—no running water. Gal Pal, usually quiet even during her hyper times, had said, “Maybe they don’t take baths in Yourup!” Big Sis called her stupid, which sent her running to the Mom.

  The Mom and the Dad weren’t going to be much help, obviously. “You’re a British citizen now,” the Dad said. “What would any good subject of the Crown do in your situation? A good vacation stretches the mind—it teaches you how the rest of the world lives. You travel far enough out of your comfort zone, you journey far enough from home, and you just might find yourself.”

  The Mom, grinning like an idiot, apparently agreed.

  So Big Sis slapped on her tiara, picked up her teapot, and went looking for water.

  *

  The countryside around the house was mostly flat, covered in shiny, bronze-colored grass. She imagined the grass made a jangly sound against her tennis shoes, but knew it had to be a sound from somewhere else, maybe wind chimes, their sound carried by the wind.

  She saw no signs of water, but the wavy ground reminded her of the ocean, so she kept looking for pools somewhere in the low ridges, hiding away clean and pure. Now and then she even thought she heard a fog horn, and once saw a distant bridge stretching between two square towers, but she thought it way too far to travel without help.

  Some day, she would. She would travel as far as her heart’s desire.

  Boyo strolled up beside her, resplendent in his gendarme’s uniform. “Et tu, Senorita?”

  “No, Boyo. That’s Latin and Spanish.”

  “But isn’t Latin, Spanish?”

  “Sort of. Are you here to protect me, Gendarme?”

  “Wie bitte?”

  “Never mind, you’re speaking German again. Können Sie mir helfen?”

  “Was möchten Sie?”

  “Could you tell me why you hate us?”

  “But you’re British. We only hate the British when they act like Americans.”

  “And how do the Americans act?”

  “Why, they act like they’re the Dad.”

  “But I’m not the Dad. We all can’t be the Dad.”

  The creek had risen out of the grass and was flowing toward the ocean now. Big Sis filled her teapot with its clear, liquid gold. Suddenly her tiara fell forward and somersaulted into the fast-moving water. She started crying—now she could never be a princess.

  By the time Big Sis and Boyo returned to the house it was nearing nightfall, and Big Sis was afraid of another night alone in the dark. She knew she would have her family around her, but she also knew that once she closed her eyes she would be alone in the dark again.

  She was surprised and delighted that the Dad and the Mom had built a great bonfire out in the front of the house. Gal Pal was strumming her guitar, singing sad Spanish songs of death and unrequited love. “De la sierra morena.”

  The family sat around and toasted marshmallows. They watched as something bright shot across the sky. The Mom said, “You know, it might just be a meteor. A shooting star.”

  The Dad said, “No, it was just a plane from some airport nearby.”

  Boyo said, “Isn’t it great that all the peoples of the world share the same sky?”

  The Dad said, “No, that isn’t exactly true.”

  Gal Pal, who had offered nothing to this gathering but song, asked the Dad, “Why do you like spoiling things all the time?”

  The Dad replied, “Well, we all die alone, even those of us in families.”

  A dark child wandered out of the night and sat down by the fire. She wrapped her arms tightly around her knees and looked around.

  The Dad said, “Careful! She’s a bomb!”

  Boyo said, “She’s got a short fuse.”

  Big Sis said, “Wait a minute.”

  The Mom said, “Oh Jesus Christ a bomb!”

  Big Sis said, “Please, wait a minute.”

  The Dad said, “We gotta take care of that bomb!”

  Boyo said, “Watch out!”

  Gal Pal said, “Sound the alarm!”

  The Dad said, “A bomb!”

  Big Sis said, “Please...”

  The Dad laughed and said, “Let’s all do this again next year!”

  The Mom said, “Best vacation ever!”

  Big Sis closed her eyes, wishing they’d never left home, and waited for the inevitable explosion.

  UNKNOWN

  Not for the first time he decides to go nameless. Moves to a city where they don’t know him. Tells no one of his new whereabouts. Chooses a new name using identification documents he’s paid a fortune for, then avoids using that expensive new name as much as possible.

  “And your name?” they might ask at a bus stop or in the park.

  “You can just call me Buddy,” he replies. Most do so without blinking an eye.

  Then he spends months trying to erase both the new name and the old name from his consciousness.

  The process is not particularly difficult for him. He doesn’t open his mail—drops it into the trash without a glance. He fills out only those forms he cannot avoid, looking away when he scribbles a bit of graffiti that may or may not be his signature. He answers to “Buddy,” but for him “Buddy” is no more identifying than “Hey, you.”

  He deals with neither banks nor doctors. He isn’t naive enough to think that he’s achieved total anonymity—no doubt his persona has been digitized in a number of different ways. But he doesn’t think much about it. He does not avoid photographs, but always makes sure he is part of a group, which as far as he is concerned is far more anonymous than never having been photographed at all. Similarly, he rejects the life of the hermit, and wraps himself in crowds. He tries to make himself as frequently seen as lampposts and trees.

  You would expect such a man to avoid diaries as if they were forbidden tomes of black lore, but he keeps his religiously, using it to report concise, non-judgmental observations, the only reporting suitable, he thinks, for an anonymous observer:

  Two dogs were run over in the street today. A car avoided the first animal, then plowed into the second. At the same moment the car behind ran over the first dog. The men climbed from their cars and swore at each other. A nearby child was hysterical. No one went to the child, who cried for thirty-six minutes, fifteen seconds. Most would think such lengthy hysteria impossible, but an accurate watch cannot be denied. Eventually a female police officer came and led the child away.

  The temperature was forty-five degrees at 8 a.m., climbing to seventy-six degrees at noon. At 142 Lincoln Street a dark man in a white t-shirt and green pants sat on the front step and watched the sky. At intervals varying between fifteen seconds and three minutes forty-two seconds the man wiped tears from his eyes. He said nothing when the old woman in the blue dress split her grocery bag. A can of peas rolled under a parked white Oldsmobile. She did not see it and left it behind after she’d gathered the spilled groceries. At 5 p.m. the man stood up slowly and went inside. His shoulders and knees appeared to struggle with gravity. A man in a brown suit passed him going out the door, walking very fast.

  There are eight green bottles and a dead cat in the alley across the street. A man enters the alley and counts them every day. He looks at the cat and tries to determine if it has been moved. A newspaper lies beside the cat but he does not reach down and cover the cat with it. He prefers to remain nameless.

  The nameless man wanders down the street with a water bottle in his hand. At every third corner he stops and takes three swallows. At some point in the past he has fainted from dehydration and is determined to avoid such incidents in the future. He continues down the street until he finds a crowd to join. For the rest of the day he moves from crowd to crowd, holding the water bottle, drinking his swallows but trying not to be too obvious about it, trying not to be seen. Both unknown and unknowable, he is a part of the grand movement of the world, he thinks, and there are others who
need the moisture far more than he.

  At the end of the day the man strips off his shirt and stares at himself in the mirror. He drips what’s left of the water over his head. It is a kind of baptism, he thinks, but will not pursue the idea. He imagines the remaining dust of the day dissolving from him, freeing him from this time and place.

  In the morning the traffic noise begins early, at precisely 5.15 a.m. The man without a name dresses in clean gray slacks and a light blue shirt. He puts a newspaper he will not read under his arm and walks out onto the hot concrete. He strolls at a steady pace down the sidewalk with no destination in mind. The man from the day before is again sitting out on the front step crying, silently but unmistakably to those willing to notice. The man with no name walks past the crying man, pretending not to notice.

  The man who will not be named slips into a mass of people on their way to work. Their movements and intentions toward movement make an intricate pattern of gravity and emotional force the nameless man has come to understand and predict. He moves with them as if within a migratory herd of long duration as they pound the pavements, casting off one member after another at bus stops and subway entrances. He is aware of the unhealing carcinoma under one dark man’s ear, a young woman’s blackened eye, the bleeding forearm of an elderly Jew where the skin has been scrubbed raw. The man without a name smells the stink of fear that leaks from pores swaddled in clothing bought with a great deal of money and very little taste. The nameless man tastes the horror in the mouths of those who cannot speak it, yet speaks none of it himself.

  He walks and walks with no destination in mind, with no name and its burden of past association to stop him.

  “Bob!” The voice breaks through the back of his head. “Bob, is that you?”

  The man who has no name turns and looks at the woman who has stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, her hands thrown up to her face as if in joy or grief.