“Keep that creature away from me!” his dad shouted. “My eyes! It’s burning my eyes!”
Mike hobbled over to check on Calvin and his mother. The crowd was streaming up toward them as Sheriff Porter placed his dad under arrest and read him his rights. But he smiled as he said them, no grimness, yet not precisely a smile either; it simply looked that way from the natural set of his mouth. June rushed up, followed by Ward at the head of the crowd. His father wept, his guardian huge and white and winged before him, not judging, just displaying openly his life; but Mike could well imagine the impact of that. As people streamed around them, his dad’s guardian glowed like melted butter, and his own companion grew as intense as a heat lamp turned on in his guts.
His father’s eyes went ragged. The deputies tried to hold him but Sheriff Porter said, “Let him go,” and he hit the ground solidly with his back, cuffed hands raised palm out, like a flesh flower resisting the sun. The angel lay above him, soothing, a fought blanket of love. Mike could almost hear his words. But his father buckled and twisted under him, eyes averted, sweat and denial pouring from him until at last, as they watched, he broke. Tears of sorrow alternated with tears of joy, and someone, a young girl of no more than eight, rushed in with a handkerchief wet from the fountain to mop his brow. He kissed her hands.
Mike stood with Mom and Calvin. They watched apart, bruised outside and in. When June’s guardian prompted her to ask absurdly that his dad be allowed to stay and Porter as absurdly agreed—though he refused to drop all charges, saying that Al DeSario would have to cool his heels for at least a night downtown—Mike and the family sat beside him but did not look at him, or only furtively, as he at them. He couldn’t stand it, couldn’t concentrate on anything but the pocket of misery they’d been stuck in, the way it felt like they were all under arrest. Finally he got up, found the left lip of the stage, signaled Ward who ducked behind the mayor speaking her joys into the microphone. “Listen, man, I gotta be next,” he said; his urgent warrior mingled with Ward’s angel so precisely, so perfectly, that he had his assent an instant before Ward nodded.
He lingered at the lip, half on Mayor Cosgrove, half on the crowd. Editor of the Auroville Gazette was burying his ecstasy behind a camera, old guy’s got it up, yeah no kidding, cub reporter by his side, goggling just like his boss, pair of bird-eyed guardians over them, must’ve just arrived. Preacher man from over yonder—Fisher, Fleischer something like that—squatting by the mayor’s husband and looking, bunched-up guardian and all, like he’d lost his best friend, stricken, yeah heartstruck, poor joe. Mike glanced off the wound of his family, tight in the throat. Then the mayor wrapped it up, smiling to him as she passed him—a smile that was genuine, warm, accepting, the whole of her humanity in one look washing over him, bolstering his courage. No barriers and that’s okay. “Kind of scary too I guess,” he muttered, but then he was behind the mike and the surge of humanity hit him full in the face.
“Listen,” he said, adjusting the head, “it blows me away, I’ve hated these sorts of gatherings, always felt I was being judged—but that’s bogus suddenly, I can see the remains of that in your eyes and all, but it’s been blown open by these guys,” gesturing to his angel, silver gleam of strength and nobility like an oak, “and what I feel is acceptance, not the same garbage turned inside-out, but a natural acceptance like you get with rushing water.
“But that’s not why I’m up here.”
His slim hands gripped the mike stand.
You can do it.
Yeah, I know. He looked at his mom, her arm around Calvin. He forced himself to look at his dad, whose angel seemed to curve at his back, a recess of cathedral stone, protective and intimate. His old man didn’t look at him, shame averting his eyes. “Dad, I just wanted to say one thing.” His throat constricted. He relaxed it and moved closer to the mike. “I wanted to kill you last night for what you did to Calvin and Mom, what you did to me. And I wanted to kill you on the way over here. I coulda done it too. I coulda reached behind me when you pulled up, and I coulda swung the shotgun up and jammed the barrel into the seatback in front of me and blown you away. It would have served you right, you know it would.” His father curved a hand up over his mouth, moisture in the pained squints of his eyes. “I kinda didn’t want to get up here and say it. It’s our dirty laundry and all. But you aired it in a big way a while ago, brought these people into it, and my good friend here and me, we figure they became family then in a weird way. They’re family now, helping me out and making it feel okay to say all this. But, Dad, you’re my family, you and Calvin and Mom, and—” a sob wracked his chest and he burst out like a sniveling little boy, high-pitched and hurting, but that didn’t matter, not one good goddamn, and he let the cry rise and subside, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, “—and as much as I hate what you did to us, Dad, I love you. That’s what I wanted to say up here, I love you, old man, and I think we can do better, I think with a little guidance we can make it, we can drop all the crap and make it better again, the four of us.” And then his father rose to his feet and came forward, the sheriff not moving to stop him, tears wet on his face like spring water trickling down rock. And he stumbled onto the stage and Mike held his father for the longest time, the cuffed hands clasped between their chests like a prayer of flesh and bone, angels of white and silver conjoined above them. And Mom and Calvin met them as they descended. And again they sat, this time a tight in-turned circle pretty much oblivious to the speeches which followed, letting only the song of them underscore the looks and gestures that passed back and forth among them like found treasures.
*****
Harold Porter loved the way Thea’s beloved townsfolk smelled. On the walk back to their grassy seats in front of the gazebo after Al DeSario had been subdued, he’d told Thea he needed a sniffing tour and had woven among ambling Aurovillians, rioting inwardly at the sensual assault, his phallus again erect. He inhaled the odors seeping through filtering cloth: his brother’s tight-pored after-the-prom scent from high school days; a tourist couple, the man in need of a bath, whose underlying bouquet was a rich mix of forest and ocean that shouted Santa Cruz; Kitty DeSario’s bruised skin, the savory lip-close of her vulva, the hand-lingerings everywhere from her husband most dominantly but with the unmistakably youthful tang of Luke Petrakis still apparent twenty years after the fact.
Thea had taken the stage and was baring the loveliest facets of her soul as she’d never done before in so public a way. It was beautiful, a dilly, a doozy, Thea’s speech. Partway into it, Harold spied his old bookstore friend on the right fringe of the crowd. “Lyle,” he said as he sat down, “I can see your angel today, nice lemon-smooth lady, a real find.” Lyle joked about being able to see Harold’s hard-on and they both had a chuckle about that, but there was no leer to it, no homophobic backoff from Lyle, just a good-natured ribbing, and his erection persisted. It hung in there through Reverend Fleischer’s shell-shocked squat beside him. It hung in there through Harold’s assurances to the distraught preacher and the poor man’s wander-away along the perimeter of the crowd. It even hung in there, thick and radiant against Thea’s girdled buttocks as she sat before him luxuriating in concealed caresses, through the public exposure and the public healing of the DeSario family’s worst wounds. It was sexual to its very core, a thing of blood and seed and heat, no denying that; but it was so much more. It throbbed with life and vitality and an insatiate eagerness to please. It took the measure of the town, the life imbuing the crowd and the fresh blooms above them, angel substance waving like fields, bristling with communiqués to their charges.
Thea wondered once, confiding, whether she were still mayor, refreshingly unconcerned one way or the other, the ego-grab gone. He’d told her he thought so, and indeed it was clear from the way folks looked at her and referred to her from the stage that that was true. A renewed sense of community was developing, still nascent, as the hours wore on. The speeches bound them, the incessant picture-taking of Clarence Dietz
and his rookie’s pad-in-hand attempts at questions, and especially the arrival of Ted Jameson from up Bedford Avenue, Moses come from the mountain by the way the people—and Harold did not exclude himself—rose up to greet him. He ranted for a while from the stage, but soon relaxed when he saw that Ward and June had matters well in hand and he wasn’t “obliged to be anyone’s messiah,” as he put it. Still, his presence, on and off the stage, was as a sun banking from behind cloud cover to brighten the field of no-longer-hidden guardians, to refresh those fortunate enough to be on the town square of Auroville at this hour, and to reveal, deeply dimensioned, with no compromise to anyone’s individuality, the essential unity which groped its way now toward definition.
When Ward tried to break things up at three and they resisted, Jameson grabbed the mike, telling everyone to go home and come back tomorrow at nine: no more speeches, no more focus on the tired three, just a day of celebration; bring food and blankets, bring friends, let it all unfold as it will. Harold’s brother had his car full, what with Al DeSario being hauled off to jail, so Thea commandeered the deputies and requested, not insisted, that they drive the two of them home. Thea snuggled with him in the back seat, tonguing his ear like an aroused teenybopper, and he liked that, liked it a lot. “Forgive me for doubting you, Harold,” she said, and through her volley of lip-smacking word-stopping kisses he forgave her many times over.
He wondered about the deputies. But his angel, whom he’d begun to call Caroline, assured him. When he glanced askew, he found she was right about them. The one driving seemed content to drive, eyes on the road and scanning the town for anything untoward but occasionally mirroring into the back seat for a good-natured glimpse. Officer Bermel, on the other hand, was turned ninety degrees in his seat, his head another ninety, enjoying full-on the groping Thea and Harold were engaged in. Again no leer. Their passion was sanctioned, indeed divinely replicated, by the angels enmeshed above them. Bermel’s eyes held no hint of lust, though there was surely boyish excitation there, evident most plainly in his bright-faced guardian. But what shone fiercely was simple gratitude, his eyes brimming with it, for the privilege of witnessing at least the beginnings of their lovemaking.
As Thea shoved him out of the squad car, their angels a whipped froth of meringue above them, she tossed Bermel and Blake a breathless thank-you and told them to take the rest of the day off. Then she pawed and thighed and soul-kissed Harold toward the door. Carrie Meacham across the way paused in her troweling to stare open-mouthed at what was going on and Harold started a sheepish wave, but Thea keyed the door open and yanked him inside and Miss Carrie Meacham vanished behind the shumpf of the door kissing its frame.
“Honey,” he said as Thea yanked the shirt out of his pants and gave abrupt freeing twists to each button, “are you sure you’re feeling okay?” not to stop her, no not in the least, but only to take the pulse of her mental well-being. The vestibule wall felt grainy and cool against his back.
“I’ve got the need,” she said, her hands at his belt and below. “Like in Berkeley.” She licked his neck, took a fold of chin into her mouth and tongued it until he had to unsuction it away in a tickle of laughter. “Our first apartment.” Her hands thrust down the back of his pants, grabbing his boxer-shorted buttocks and squeezing. “Where we did it everywhere all the time.” Like lumps of dough, Caroline’s face pressed against the face of Thea’s angel: Siamese cheeks. Their multiple limbs stretched about one another and down to touch and bless their charges. Thea ground her groin against his penis and looked to her left, the sudden rotation of her head turning his right cheek to the wall like a tango dancer. “There, on the living room rug.” She unthrust her hands and broke away, kicking off her shoes and undoing her clothing as she went. Her angel drift-gestured longingly toward Caroline.
It had been years beyond years since they’d made love anywhere but in bed, lights out, all dark, once a month on a Saturday night if he was lucky. Now Thea runnered back drapes, ratcheted up blinds, welcomed in the sun and fresh air, tossed a few plump pillows on the floor, stripped off her everything, and made like the naked maja for him, only not quite so modest when it came to the angle one leg met the other.
Lover, Caroline whispered, though it was also love her, and she repeated it, easy to the throb of blood.
He shucked his clothing like dead husks, sunken chest with its wisps of hair, belly rippled red with the pattern of underwear elastic, bare feet slapping vestibule tile as he unsocked his feet, steadying himself against the wall. His body breathed free. What foolishness, Harold thought, these senseless coverings are. He could smell the pulse of his arousal, the epidermal triumph of being undressed and headed for love in his own home. As he drew close to his wife, he thought he’d swoon with the joy of it, angel magic in the air above her but not blocking the swatch of sunlight that lay across her breasts and belly, light tuft of private hair fanning up like sea kelp. She smelled of dunes and conch shells and slaps of surf lightly bubbling down slopes of flat wet sand. He knelt at her right and touched her body, here, here, awed at its beauty, at how soft it was, how moist. She gleamed and their guardians bled once more into one another, extending phantom hands to touch them where their bodies touched in love. Thea stroked his sex, her eyes blessing the soft wrinkles she bunched over the red-rimmed ellipse of its head, a clear bead of fluid urged out and thumbed about to slicken him. He hardened her nipples with his left hand, softened her below with his right, pink and puffed and baby-tender in the moistness of her folds. He brought his face to hers, seeing her anew, their original love shining through the deadening crust it had suffered over the decades. Tears welled in her eyes and brought tears to his, evaporations of regret and exhalations of love. He drank them with his kisses, kissed deep into her mouth, tasting that sweetness again, that lost upper-lip aroma that had enticed him into her to begin with, her fingers tugging at him, his fingers in exploratory swirl. “I love you, Thea,” he gentled into her ear, and she responded, “ohIloveyou,” all one word, and said it over and over like a sigh until it vaporized with her exhalation. Angelic voices melded about them in duet, no words, just ahs and ohs in a perfect blend of rise and fall, the visible phenomenon of their bodies thinning and mixing and falling like drapes of breeze warm against the flesh of their charges. He spent a fleeting eternity at each breast, nosing it like an infant, setting his sense of smell on an atavistic pursuit of milk, eying the blue veins and the wet red wrinkle of the areole and the blunt stippled plug of the nipple, tightening it, sculpting it, coaxing it into released groans above. Then he nostriled in bloodhound sniff down Thea’s body, soft belly skin and the squozen Oriental squint of her navel caressed by angel hands, as was his face as he meandered. Beads of moisture gleamed in the sunlight of her filamental hair. He tasted them, found the pouch, filled his mouth with the riotous delights of her vulva, nosing deep into her as he feasted on her clitoral flesh. Thea came then, quickly, deeply, her voice rising from the pit, pressing up into his face until her need for his sex eclipsed the delights of his tongue. A clear egg of angel passion enclosed them, the mouths multiplied and O’ing like loops of lace as Harold covered her and kissed her and eased his love deep inside her and felt the walls of her love and the loving hand of her companion explode the love up and out of him into her so that his mind and his heart and his soul willingly lost themselves in the blessed outpouring of love, the screams, the screams at last freeing him like a rutting beast after years of grunted stiflings.
*****
There were times, extremely rare, when Clarence Dietz wished Auroville were big and bustling enough to require a daily. This was one of them.
The Gazette hit the stands, or more precisely eased onto them and slap-flopped against doors and driveways, on Wednesday mornings: a whole week until the next issue and the staff gone for the afternoon. He developed roll after roll himself, calling Tad Stevens repeatedly away from his keyboard to the darkroom to inspect the hanging negatives, to get his take on the proper crop and focus,
to share his excitement at seeing the images rise out of the submerged paper under his rubber-tipped tongs. “Look at that, Tad, isn’t that something?” he’d say in the dead crimson air of the darkroom, and Tad agreed it was, in that annoying yes-sir way of his, a quiet boy, gifted at cobbling words and a force to reckon with when he went after a story, but he was just too damned polite for his own good. Even so, it was clear that he shared Clarence’s astonishment over the pictures squeegeed off and put through the dryer.
“I really like this one,” said Tad.
“Yeah, nice tight shoulders-up shot. Can’t tell why the mayor is smiling so broadly but that’s for us to know, right Tad? One angel beaming down at them, hers it looks like. The other one, Jesus it’s amazing, staring straight into the lens, enough to blow the top of your head off.”
Pulitzer material, said Clarence’s companion, with a look like a pinched priest. Clarence loved him: no side trips, cut to the chase, slice away the baloney.
“What did he say?” asked Tad.
“Couldn’t hear him? He said it was prize quality and maybe he’s right. Perfect composition, such all-American smiles, not an ounce of fake, coming right from the heart, not to mention elsewhere. And those guardians!”
“Every one of them.”
A Flight of Storks and Angels Page 15