Landscape: Memory

by Matthew Stadler

  "Now listen good, Maxwell, what I'm telling you isn't simple. I've been on this here telephone and heard your papa's been gone to help out rescuing and such. Your mama, too," and he waved back behind him at the telephone or where they'd gone or something important because he kept on waving for a bit. "They went early, couldn't wait around for you."

  "Where?" I only half-believed him.

  "Oh, I don't know where, but they've gone now. Couldn't be waiting round what with all this disaster. Don't know when they'll be back." And he shook his head, all puzzled, I guessed, because he couldn't figure out why they'd gone so fast and without me.

  "Maybe they're waiting," I said, trying to help Mr. Porfoy make sense of it all.

  "Nope, not waiting. They've gone for sure," and he nodded some more. We sat there for a moment, puzzling.

  "Can I talk on the telephone?" I asked, thinking it was almost as good an idea as my first one. "They'll probably want to meet me."

  "Nope, no good. Phone's broke now, just after I heard about them two. It's a real shame, but what with the disaster and all." He waved his arms around at all that had gone wrong.

  We sat there together, quiet and helpless. I got very sad and started crying and he held me and I cried and cried on him, wondering how come they left me and why I couldn't meet them at the house or somewhere.

  Mrs. Porfoy sat down with us and stroked my hair which helped me cry more and I pushed my face in against Mr. Porfoy's chest, tasting my tears and his sweat, all snotty and snuffly and shaky in my limbs.

  We joined the procession toward the city, me up again on Mr. Porfoy's shoulders and Mrs. Porfoy singing soft church songs and touching me with her warm wide hand.

  She asked me questions about my school subjects. She asked, "And how do you spell 'torn.' "

  And I answered, "T-O-R-N."

  And she went on to more difficult words like "though" and "carry" and on to mathematics and geography. She kept looking about, right and left and right again. Looking always into the strange, shifting ruins that stretched away in all directions, all the time asking questions.

  "What is the largest state in the Union?" she asked.

  "Texas," I answered. "And California is second," I added because I knew that fact by heart. There were bodies laid out in rows all along the dirty street.

  "And can you name three of the seven seas?" A wing of a great building up ahead shuddered and collapsed inward. At first there was no sound.

  "The Pacific and the Atlantic," I began. The sound of collapsing reached us from up ahead. Dust rose in a heavy cloud, but there seemed to be no fire. "And the Indian Ocean," I finished, remembering a name I could only remember because I've seen Indians swimming in the ocean.

  "And which is the only island continent?"

  I didn't know the answer.

  "It's Australia, honey," Mrs. Porfoy said. "Australia. Think of an ostrich," she suggested. "An ostrich buries its head to be alone. Australia is the only continent that is alone, an island. Ostrich. Australia."

  * * *

  We'd come in past the park and over the crest of a high hill. The bay spread out below, just visible through the thick black smoke drifting north across the city. Mr. Porfoy set me down to sit close by Mrs. Porfoy on a little plot of green grass. He went away to talk to soldiers.

  "Where've Mother and Father gone?" I asked carefully, testing Mr. Porfoy's story.

  Mrs. Porfoy smiled wide and sad and breathed out her nose like dogs do settling down.

  "Don't know," she said simply. "I don't really know." And she rubbed my small shoulders and gazed out across the smoky vista. "I do believe Mr. Porfoy's asking those soldiers there right this very minute about your folks." I was glad. It seemed a good idea to ask soldiers.

  "Are we going to a hotel?" I hoped we were. The time Mother took me to town we stayed in a hotel.

  Mrs. Porfoy shook her head and chuckled, making me giggle too. "Oh, no sir, no sir. I don't know quite yet where we're going. Mr. Porfoy's got to find that out too." And she nodded her head up and down and up and down, yes, yes, yes, yes. I nodded too, giggling and silly now to make her laugh more, yes and yes and yes and yes, and she laughed out loud and pushed me and smushed me in a big hug there in the green grass.

  Mr. Porfoy said the soldiers said to go to Golden Gate Park where there'd be food and tents and Mrs. Porfoy told him I wanted to go to a hotel.

  "We'll do better than that for you," he said, picking me up in his big hands. "You'll get a boat ride to Oakland, over to a nice fancy camp."

  "Why can't I go to your camp?" I didn't want to lose them just now.

  Mr. Porfoy set me down and crouched as low as he could.

  "These soldiers tell me your folks'll be looking for you in Oakland. It's a special camp, a camp for lost children."

  I thought so many things at once I just puffed air out my nose and arranged my arms all impatient the way Father did. I started with the important stuff.

  "Are they there now? Mummy and Papa?"

  "Might be," Mr. Porfoy allowed. "Won't know till we get there."

  "Are you going with me?"

  "Well, now. I'm figuring Mrs. Porfoy to go over and I'll set us up here so we don't get left out in the cold. We'll get you over there safe, Maxwell."

  I looked at Mrs. Porfoy to see if this was true. She raised her eyebrows some but didn't speak up. I figured that meant okay.

  "Why do I have to go to the lost-children's camp if I'm not lost?"

  "So your folks'll find you, sweety, like Mr. Porfoy said."

  "Why couldn't the soldiers tell them to meet me at your tent?"

  Mr. and Mrs. Porfoy looked at each other some and laughed a little but I stayed stern and steady, waiting for an answer.

  "We don't know which tent's ours yet, honey," Mrs. Porfoy told me, wagging her head all fiddle-faddle like I was going to be a pest in a half second. "Otherwise we'd tell those soldier boys just that." I kept my lower lip out and arms tightly crossed trying to figure if there was anything I missed, but it all seemed unbreachable. I took Mrs. Porfoy's hand in mine as tight as I could.

  We three stayed together into the city. The smoke was thick and Mr. Porfoy soaked handkerchiefs in water and we tied them over our faces like bandits do. A woman in a chair sat by a burned-up building with a rifle across her lap and clean white china stacked neatly beside. It was hot from the fire, and thunder rumbled long and loud from buildings blown up by dynamite. The army blew them up to keep the fire from spreading, Mr. Porfoy said. I don't like this part so well. Mr. Porfoy saw a man we saw him too, in a window where soldiers were putting dynamite and he ran yelling because we thought maybe they didn't see the man. But they did see him because they yelled back at us. And when Mr. Porfoy went into the building, this man upstairs being so old and weak-looking we thought he must need help getting down and maybe the soldiers just didn't hear him, they blew up the building right then, when Mr. Porfoy was going in to help this man. They said it was martial law, which is what they said to Mrs. Porfoy to help her from being so hysterical and all, she couldn't speak through her crying. She was all tears and snot so it seemed she was choking and I thought for certain she was and couldn't breathe or hardly move. She just collapsed there onto the ground, with me leaning over her big back trying to hug her to keep from being so scared as I was by what was happening.

  It was a long time there. There was nothing more she said to me. Finally, she was so tired she stopped shaking and was quiet and still. She looked at me and hugged me a long time so it would be better. I tried holding onto her, holding all I could reach while we walked away toward the water and the ferry dock. She wrote my name for me on white tags to put on my wrists and kissed me. She squeezed me, lifting my feet off the ground, and she left. I knew I shouldn't say anything so I didn't.

  There were thousands of children from tiny to big and only a handful of mothers filling the wide flat ferries as fast as they came. I stood at the back of the boat and watched the water churning white
behind us. The land and city and busted buildings were burning. Mrs. Porfoy and all of it were drawing swiftly away. The ocean air washed the smoke smell from out of my hair and blew salty strong and clean across my bare skin, puffing up my pajama top in gusts and filling my open mouth. A boy in too-small shorts, their top button bursting, stood next to me and looked at me tentatively, all red-eyed from smoke or crying and smudged with black ash all over. He said, "I'm not really lost," and I said, "Me neither," and this was Duncan. We said some things and jostled some and turned to watch the black smoke rolling up into the dusky sky. The late sun had turned blood-red and orange over the buildings still collapsing into flames. We stood there as close as we could, shoulder by shoulder, and watched the city burning.

  31 MAY 1915

  This part is very odd for me to write. So much of it is strange and new to me. The first part is two nights ago.

  I fell asleep in my bed near dawn and slept almost till ten at night. I just slept like a rock must sleep, impenetrable numb, dumb sleep. Only when I woke up did I realize how dirty and hungry I was. I had mud and cuts on me and my whole body felt empty and eager for food.

  I took a long soak in the tub and Duncan heard me filling the bath. This was the first I'd seen him since the previous dawn when he went off to sleep and I was gone God knows where before he woke. I hadn't been back here and awake till now. I felt like I'd gone overseas to the war and come back now. I felt so happy at seeing him, as if it had been in doubt whether I'd ever see him and there he was.

  He'd been in bed not sleeping, wondering if I'd ever wake.

  "I thought you'd decided to sleep three days now to make up," he yelled from his dark room, not wanting to leave the warm covers.

  "Well, I didn't," I yelled back. "Get up. I'm hungry."

  "Fuck you." He'd started saying fuck because, word was, soldiers at the front always said fuck.

  "Do you remember us meeting after the earthquake?" I yelled because I wanted to talk about it.

  "What?"

  "The earthquake," I repeated.

  "What about it?"

  "Do you remember it?" I got out of the tub and shook my hair. I dried off on a towel Mother had brought over, and put on some shorts that were probably Duncan's.

  "Come here so I can hear," Duncan yelled and I did, tossing the towel at his sleepy face and sitting on the bedside. "What about the earthquake? Was there another one?"

  "Yeah, dummy, just on the hillside where the dead man is."

  "What do you mean, 'the dead man'?"

  I paused a long moment and then shrugged, not really wanting to talk about that.

  "I meant the earthquake," I explained, "from when the city burned."

  "Yeah? I remember that, clearer even than almost anything."

  He looked up into the dark and just remembered for a while. "I met you then," he said and laughed a little.

  "Yeah, after everything else terrible happened." I shivered some from thinking again and reached over to close the window.

  Duncan lifted up the cover. "Just get in, you'll catch cold all wet-haired like that." I climbed in close and warm.

  "I didn't think it was all so terrible," he said. "All those bells and bangs and fires everywhere. It was the best, better than the circus."

  I tried imagining it that way but couldn't. Mrs. Porfoy's crying had soaked into my bones.

  Duncan looked back at me, propped up on an elbow. "It's like the Fair's the only thing to match it since, all that fire and light and wild colors. God, I can't wait till they blow that thing up." He seemed thrilled by the prospect.

  "Yeah," I agreed softly and a little low. Just like him, I could hardly wait for that inevitable end, that terrible, glorious dynamite boom. It seemed so perfect. But it always got me feeling so tender and sad.

  "I met you then, after all of that," I said again.

  "Yeah," and he lay still and remembered with me. I felt like it feels being so very hungry, all empty and cool inside my mouth and throat.

  "Hhhmmmnn, " I began quiet and a little rough, like the sounds were drifting from deep inside me. I opened my mouth to speak and tried to think exactly but couldn't find words, like there was no thought there, just my blood and muscles feeling. Duncan leaned in closer to make sense of my odd sound.

  "Max?" he said so quietly, sounding a lot like I sounded. I opened my mouth to answer but came up with nothing. He brushed his warm hand up across my belly and let it rest up where my heart beat. This got my blood to rushing all through me and made a shiver right down to the bottom of my spine..

  I was breathing very deeply. I stared at the two small pocks on his forehead, just soft little marks resting there above where his brow knit together, like that was as close as I could get to his eyes. And then I slid my body over in closer so we touched all up and down our fronts. We lay still and close like that for what seemed to be forever. Then he kissed me on my throat and I giggled from the touch and drew back, and I kissed him on his and he laughed more and shook from the shivers and I reached around and put my hand on his butt and really felt it and down onto his leg and he was quiet and put his hand on the nape of my neck and pulled me to him and didn't kiss but felt me all over my body and me all over him all bound up tight together in each other's legs and arms tangled up in his bed and then drawing back some to feel our fronts soft with his hand just touching down across my ribs and on my belly. All the thousand things I thought then. It makes me blush remembering. It was all warm and muscular, just holding each other and touching and sort of kissing, our mouths close and us breathing each other's breath and we slept like that, as close together as we could.

  I woke up when Mother and Mr. Taqdir honked their horn, as was their blessed custom, and roused us rolling out of bed, giddy from the fright of it and the queer feeling of having done what we'd done. We neither of us said anything thoughtful but grinned enough to make it all feel fine and Duncan did knock me down and kiss me full on the mouth, which made all the difference for the whole day for me, not from it feeling nice but because of what it meant.

  Today was our special day on the town with Mother and Mr. Taqdir.

  Mother was sweeping crumbs off the kitchen floor within moments of arriving. I came out from my room, rumpled and wild-haired but actually dressed, which was more than I sometimes did, and was given a kiss.

  "Oh, you do smell like a boy, pumpkin," she began with a squinch of her nose. "You will wash before we go, won't you, dear?" I wanted to wash right there and then, as Duncan was showering and I could think of little else. But I compromised.

  "When Duncan's done. Mother. I'll just smell till then," and I poked about the bread box, drumming thoughtfully on its wooden top.

  Mr. Taqdir was arranging colorful ribbons on the tops of two small boxes, gift boxes, I could tell, about the size of satchels. He was humming a most unmelodic tune, something Persian I'd heard Duncan play many times on the Victrola, all quivery and off-key, notes sliding recklessly all over the face of it like pig's eyes being chased around the plate. I'd only eaten pig's eyes once, and each time I'd press the edge of my fork down onto their ugly green, they'd squirt out from under, sliding clear across the plate and back again. It was disgusting.

  It said in The Call they had typhus in New York City now and also that Dunkirk was being bombed from guns they couldn't find, not anywhere near, they said. The guns are at least thirty miles away and still they bomb Dunkirk. Imagine them sailing in through the stars, whistling like impatient tea kettles, invisible and unerring. Just boom! and you're blown to bits from out of nowhere. I put the paper in the trash.

  Duncan came into the kitchen, clothed and cleaned and wet behind his ears. He pecked Mother on the cheek, got hugged by his dad and bumped me down the counter with a hip. Mother looked at me from under a lowered brow and gestured toward the bath with a flick of her eyes.

  "Yes?" I asked to be a pest.

  "Yes?" Duncan asked me, unaware of Mother's signals.

  "Mother's making faces
," I explained. He looked to see, but she huffed and turned her attention to the little boxes Mr.. Taqdir had set there on the tabletop, and I rushed off to wash.

  * * *

  The boxes had matching sets: a collar, plaid bow tie and lovely gray cap, a soft fuzzy felt snap-brim cap. We modeled them to oohs and ahs and polite clapping. They looked quite smart, that perky tie and sophisticated cap, so we wore them both and dark knickers to boot. Today we'd be motoring, and this would be our motoring costume.

  "Can I drive?" Duncan called predictably from the backseat, as we settled in. "I'm very safe."

  "And can I drive?" I echoed. "I'm much safer."

  "Now pumpkin, you know you don't drive," Mother scolded.

  "I do too," I answered, forgetting my vow to secrecy. We rattled a bit there in the carriage as Mr. Taqdir cranked it to life. Mother manipulating the controls to keep its spark burning.

  "You do, do you?" she tooted. "With whom?" Duncan hit me on the leg and scowled a reminder.

  "No one," I answered cautiously. "I meant I'd like to and that I would be much safer, if I did drive." Mr. Taqdir climbed into the driver's seat.

  "Is it Flora?" Mother persisted. "Has she been letting you drive that horrible motorcar of hers?" I smirked at Duncan and pulled the motoring rug up on our laps.

  "No, Mother," I answered truthfully. "I've not been motoring with Flora. You're so untrusting." I huffed a little, trying to be indignant. Mother turned around in her seat and engaged me as best she could with a firm direct stare.

  "To be clear with you now, pumpkin. If you ever are out driving. If. I must insist you maintain a safe speed and never, ever drive in darkness. And never on busy roads or near horses. Am I clear?"

  "Oh, yes, very clear," I agreed, nodding impatiently.

  "Need I speak to Miss Profuso?" she continued.

  "No, Mummy," I answered. "I really see no need."

  Mother turned back to the front as the rear tires dug into the dirt and we sped away to our breakfast engagement. Duncan and I bounced and bundled in the back, the wind whipping past our smartly shaped caps and fluttering our little bow ties. I felt Duncan's hand come in under the rug and onto my leg, just reaching around on the inside of my thigh, making my stomach rise inside me and a big push in my pants. I smirked and squinted into the wind, doing the same to him. Mother and Mr. Taqdir yelled polite conversation in the front seat as Mother held her hat firmly down, the adulterous couple out motoring with their offspring.