Light Boxes

by Shane Jones

  Come, said Selah, and Thaddeus followed her voice as if the word were a hook thrown from the bathwater.

  He knelt down beside the tub and placed his face in the mint water. Bianca felt him close to her back. The water rose to her chin. She remembered what it was like to swim in the river with June. The drain in the tub was a fish biting her toe. Thaddeus held his face in the water long enough for the mint to be fully absorbed into his beard.

  There, said Selah tugging upward with a fistful of Thaddeus’s hair.

  Water poured from his beard. Thaddeus walked into the kitchen and made a cup of tea, then went back into the bathroom. He watched his wife continue to bathe Bianca. He made sure to tip the teacup high enough when he sipped so that Bianca could see the balloon painted on the bottom.

  Bianca whispers into the bathwater.

  Maybe the priests aren’t really priests. Look at the way their silly robes move.

  I want to be safe. I want to live inside a turtle shell.

  Thaddeus tugs on his beard.

  A little mint water drips on his palm. He rubs his hands together. He walks into Bianca’s bedroom and soothes her arms and legs with his hands. The idea is that any sadness that occurs during sleep can be decreased by infusing mint into the skin, into the lungs and heart. Thaddeus and Selah take turns, applying the mint throughout the night.

  Before daybreak, Thaddeus smells honey and smoke coming from Bianca’s bedroom.

  In her room he notices that the window is open and snow is blowing in.

  He throws the covers off the bed.

  He looks around the room.

  He looks under the bed.

  He looks in the closet.

  He looks in the hallway.

  He looks at his feet.

  He looks at the bed. He looks at the bed.

  Bianca’s bed is a mound of snow and teeth.

  Bianca is gone.

  Thaddeus

  I’ve been spending more time alone on the hill. I can’t remember it being colder than it is now. The ground is frozen and black, the town windows webbed in snow and ice. When I spark a fire from found branches a snowball falls from the sky and douses the flame. I look up at the sky, the gray waves rolling along. I am growing tired and sad at the disappearance of my daughter and it stirs deep inside me. I snap off a tree branch. I whirl it around in huge circles before letting it fly skyward.

  It flies up, much higher than I imagined, and, climbing higher and higher, it rips through a cloud’s leg, peaks in flight, then descends again, tearing another hole through the shoulder of a cloud.

  In the first hole, there’s a pair of feet dangling from the edge. In the second hole, there’s a man walking around a dark room. I call down to the house for Selah who is shaking out Bianca’s bedsheet, which disintegrates into a little blizzard.

  Am I dreaming right now, I shout. Can you check the bed to see if I’m sleeping.

  No, you’re not dreaming, she yells back after going inside to check our bed. You’re standing outside by yourself with your thoughts. Your daughter has been kidnapped and your thoughts are torturing you. Sometimes you wake in the middle of the night from terrible dreams, but right now you are awake.

  I watch the two holes in the sky until a new breaking of gray rolls across.

  My mind is ice.

  Selah yells, I want our daughter back.

  Deer run against the edge of the woods. Twisted through their antlers is a long quilt, a banner. The quilt says, WAR AGAINST FEBRUARY NOW WAR AGAINST FEBRUARY NOW WAR AGAINST FEBRUARY NOW. The Solution waves from under the pine trees. A man is collecting sap.

  I hesitate but wave back.

  Thaddeus to Bianca

  I climb on the roof. Your bedroom is beneath me. I close one eye and reach my hand out and tear open the horizon. I pull the sky up and toward me like old wallpaper. I see you sleeping in a bed of duck feathers. I close both eyes and finish the dream of us in a balloon. The new sky smells like the ocean. It feels like crushed velvet when you push against it to send the balloon toward your mother waiting on the hill.

  Questions

  Thaddeus asks the children twisting the heads of owls if they have seen a small girl named Bianca in yellow pajamas. The three children sit against an oak tree with their legs stretched out, snow as a blanket to their waists.

  Do the yellow pajamas have flowers printed at the hem, asks the middle child.

  Yes, Thaddeus says.

  Does the little girl have dark hair that smells of honey and smoke, asks the child to the left.

  Thaddeus shakes his head. No, he thinks, she never smelled of honey and smoke. But the room did. Yes, the room.

  The room smelled of honey and smoke. Bianca has dark hair. Her hair doesn’t smell of honey and smoke, but the room did.

  Does the little girl have a drawing of kites on her hands and arms, asks the child to the right.

  Yes, says Thaddeus. Her mother painted those kites. Where is my daughter. What has happened to my daughter.

  The children go back to concentrating on twisting the heads of the owls.

  No, we haven’t seen her, they say.

  I don’t understand, though, you said, Thaddeus says. Now, if you don’t mind, sir, we are much enjoying ourselves by playing with these owls. I hope you find the little girl. She sounds very cute and very beautiful.

  For the rest of the day Thaddeus asks every person in town if they have seen his daughter. Everyone says no. The Solution walks past Thaddeus.

  We could help, they say, smiling.

  The one with the blue bird mask hands Thaddeus an apple, apologizes, then runs to catch up to the group.

  Selah and Thaddeus don’t sleep for several days, in which they decide that a war against February is needed to cure their sadness. They invite the Solution to their home, who talk for hours on strategy to destroy February. When they drink their tea, they lift up their bird masks to expose their blue-wintered lips. Thaddeus tries not to cry when a yellow bird passes him a list of missing children and asks Thaddeus to please add Bianca’s name where there is room. He reads the list over. His eyes fill with tears. He writes down Bianca’s name.

  Will a war bring my daughter back, asks Thaddeus.

  The birds all look at one another.

  It’s possible, they say. Anything is possible when you start a war.

  I want my daughter back, says Thaddeus. I want her back, and I want my wife to be safe.

  He holds her hand.

  The Catalog of Missing Children

  Evie Rhodes—taken from her bed on February the 127th

  Candace Smith—disappeared while feeding birds on February the 175th

  Adam Johnston—vanished while playing in a closet on February the 112th

  John Smith—also disappeared while feeding birds on February the 175th

  Daniel Hill—considered lost in the woods on February the 212th

  Joyce Aikey—drowned while diving for turtles on February the 188th

  Joseph Mendler—taken from his bed on February the 139th

  Estrella Roberts—vanished during a game of hide-and-seek on February the 144th

  Emily Boyce—drowned during a snowball fight on February the 222nd

  Sarah Lock—disappeared in a blizzard on February the 247th

  Bianca Lowe—taken from her bed on February the 255th

  Peter Tuner—never came home from school on February the 199th

  Jessica Chambers—vanished while walking with her dogs on February the 312th

  Suzy Peck—taken from her bed on February the 322nd

  Caldor Clemens

  I was Thad’s number-one guy during the war against February. That’s right, number one. The righthand man. Top wolf. Or top dog. Whatever.

  I thought Thad was crazed because of the kidnapping of Bianca. But after I noticed a change in the ways of the town during the season of February, I went to his house with the Solution to talk about the war. Each week we recruited more and more people from the town
, a whole mess of us cramped up there. Everyone drank tea or some shit. I drank vodka with mud.

  Before Thad spoke, the Solution told me he was the one they were looking for to lead the war. He was their guy. He was their wolf to lead this war. All right, I thought, let’s see what this guy has got to say.

  The one thing that really made me want to be a part of the war, besides the fact that it was bloody exciting, was what Thad and the Professor showed us one night. It was called a mood chart. It explained how our moods change by the seasons. Now, I’m not the Professor, but it was real clear that something was happening to us during the season of February. The sadness quotient peaked, or whatever it’s actually called. Thad pointed to a chart with an ascending line and a frowning face. And to hear about his poor little girl missing and to see my own kids knocking their heads against a wall all February long, it made me so angry that I decided I would give my heart, my blood, for the War Effort.

  The first attack on February occurs. Thaddeus, Selah, Caldor Clemens and the Solution devise a plan to trick February by pretending it’s summer. The men take their shirts off and roll their pants into a ring at their kneecaps and call them shorts. Selah wears a thin summer dress, the one she wore while on her first balloon trip with Thaddeus. It smells like cedar and grass clippings from the floor of his workshop. The rest of the women wear skirts. They unbutton their blouses and untie their bonnets.

  The War Effort claps while discussing the warm weather. They imagine beams of unfiltered sunlight striking their backs as they tend to the crops.

  Caldor Clemens pretends to pick berries. He wipes sweat from his brow before diving into a pile of snow and swimming.

  Thaddeus and Selah move away from the group to make love in the naked snow. They tell each other to concentrate on the ocean teasing their toes, the sand in their hair. Selah imagines that the melting snow between her legs is sweat. Thaddeus licks the ice from her lashes, pushes into the snow. They feel watched and excited.

  At the end of the day, the group struggles to smile. Their bones are frozen. They walk into Thaddeus and Selah’s home to have tea. Everyone is exhausted, their faces beaten red by February.

  We should continue with this tactic until we see some progress, says Thaddeus.

  They all agree by way of tipping their teacups.

  Selah

  One of the strongest supporters of the war was a wild man named Caldor Clemens. Clemens was a former member of the group of balloonists known as the Solution. The Solution was a collective of nine or ten bird-masked men who refused to obey the laws of the end of flight. The Solution staged free falls off the tops of buildings and tied kites like leashes to shop doors. They were an aggressive bunch.

  I wanted my daughter back. I wanted my husband to be safe. So when I saw Caldor Clemens, all seven feet, three hundred pounds of him standing at my door with tears running down his cheeks, I pulled him into my home by the wrist and told him that the blame could be placed directly on February. That a war can only help us.

  This is Caldor Clemens, I said.

  It’s nice to meet you, said my husband.

  Scraps of Parchment Found Under Selah’s Pillow

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  I want my daughter back.

  Thaddeus

  Today I took a trip into town with Caldor Clemens. The air was cold and smelled like apples. I saw a fox sitting on a mailbox. He had duck feathers in his mouth. People asked about the war against February. We couldn’t answer the questions fast enough. The crowd circled us ten rows deep.

  Here, said Clemens, and he knelt down. Feeling somewhat foolish, I climbed onto his shoulders, where I sat perched high above the crowd once he stood.

  I told the townsfolk that the war against February was as necessary as the air we breathed. If we refused to fight back, the cold and gray would settle like an endless blanket of rocks. I told them to remember what it was like to hold hands with May. I told them to remember what the streams sounded like outside their bedroom windows, the water pouring over August rocks, the birds calling from branches of green, dogs howling in the plains. I told them to close their eyes and ignore the snow melting on their faces but to remember what it looked and felt like when they woke in the morning to the sun draped over their beds, over their bare feet.

  Clemens reached up and grabbed me around my ribs. He lifted me from his shoulders with a strange grace and elegance and placed me back on my own two feet.

  Great speech, Thad. Really, really, really good.

  Clemens punched me in the shoulder. It left a bruise the shape of a mallet’s head.

  Caldor Clemens

  Thad paused for a moment. The smell of mint leaves rose like smoke from his skin. Then he mumbled a few positive comments. LIFE IS GOOD. PEOPLE LAUGH WITH JULY. FEBRUARY IS NOTHING, BECAUSE FEBRUARY IS SHIT. He didn’t really say that last one. I said that. The smell stopped. He pointed at the sky. He told me to look for a girl’s feet through a hole. He said they could be Bianca’s. I didn’t see anything but clouds suffocating little stars. We watched for a few minutes until he said that a man and a woman were in a second hole. Still I didn’t see a damn thing. Thad said that the man and woman were fighting, throwing balls of paper at each other. I kept looking. Kind of crazy to think about holes in a sky. But maybe I did see two shadowy figures in that one hole. Who knows? I was drunk on cider, vodka and mud.

  Orange Bird Mask

  Today we go up the hill with our weather-changing poles. Some of them are fifty feet long, requiring a dozen men to raise them. The idea is to destroy the clouds that cover the sun. An old Peter tactic he never had the chance to try.

  It fails, because when we raise the weather poles, an ice storm freezes them together. They blow down the hill and toward the town. One weather pole spikes a shopkeeper’s window.

  By nightfall we feel the sadness inside us that is February. I can smell the mint evaporating from Selah and Thaddeus.

  Not every tactic will be effective against February, Thaddeus says. Everyone stay positive.

  The War Effort has doubled since the great Thaddeus speech. We now have blacksmiths and sculptors and farmers and a little person and beekeepers, and most of them have lost their children to February. Most of them can’t unclench the fingers-into-fists that are their hearts.

  Go home and make a large fire, Thaddeus tells us. Warm yourself until your sweat soaks through your clothes.

  Thaddeus

  February has destroyed dozens of our limbs. Infected men stay in bed where they are sad and useless. The rest of us stay up at night sketching plans for a new war strategy. We take turns pacing, crumpling paper, disregarding each idea that springs from our cold mouths. Selah makes tea with two crossed mint leaves floating on the top of each cup. Without an idea, we question if we should even continue our daily assault of warm-weather tactics. A few of the men have dressed for the day in long pants and sweaters. They throw up their hands and walk out the door. Selah is standing in the doorway trying to make out the mountains behind the clouds. She drops her teacup. Then she says I should come look. I walk over, and she points to her feet and raises her finger up to the roofs of the town. The hot tea has burned a path through the snow from our front door and down into the town.
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  They find Bianca dead on the riverbank. Two members of the War Effort drag her from the water and place her arms at her sides, rest her head on a rock. The members stare. She’s covered in blue ink, random letters they can’t form into words. When they tell Thaddeus, the smell of mint leaves is so strong it turns the windows in town green and the clouds look like moss.

  Thaddeus tries to decipher the words, hopes for a complete sentence. He sends a messenger for the Professor.

  The only word the Professor can make out is OWLS.

  You should know that I would like to join the war against February, says the Professor.

  Fine, says Thaddeus, buttoning his coat.

  In a few days you should call a meeting. There is something you need to see, the Professor says. It’s a tactic against February. I think it could help.

  Very well, says Thaddeus. A meeting tomorrow at my home. Good-bye.

  The Professor’s plan for light boxes was a mess of equations and diagrams nearly three hundred parchment sheets long. He didn’t sleep for days, using Thaddeus’s workshop to construct the first light box. When the pounding of metal, the sawing of wood, the breaking of glass, the tearing of paper stopped on the night of the fifth day, he emerged with his face covered in black grease and arms bloodied.

  It’s finished, he told Thaddeus. He picked glass from his knuckles with his teeth and spit them out. Let’s begin the meeting so I can explain the effectiveness of light boxes.