Things Invisible to See

by Nancy Willard

  “Clare, she’s here!” shouted Davy, and he darted past Helen, almost knocking her down, and took Cold Friday by the hand and tugged her inside.

  Her presence filled the entire hallway. The family photographs opened their eyes: a giantess was passing, jingling, rustling, smelling of juniper, like a ship bearing spices and bells.

  Clare listened, her heart racing. She listened to the door of her room open; she listened for her mother’s voice announcing that Cold Friday was here. Instead, Cold Friday herself walked straight into the room and the door closed behind her.

  Under the bathtub on the third floor, the silver spoons quivered. And the Liberty-head quarter on Cold Friday’s breast sent a message to the creamer and the forks and the knives: Remember me, sisters? I was with you before you were born, when our lode slept in the earth, a single vein.

  Cold Friday unpinned the Liberty-head quarter, settled it in the palm of her hand, and turned to Clare.

  “Open yo’ mouth,” she said, “but don’t swaller.”

  Like a priest giving Communion, she put the quarter on Clare’s tongue. It tasted cool, sweet, not like metal at all. Her mother always told her money was dirty. Wash your hands if you’ve touched money. You never know but what somebody used it to shut the eyes of the dead.

  “Spit,” said Cold Friday and held out her hand.

  Clare spit out the quarter. But how changed! It was now as black as the hand that received it, a bright moon eclipsed. Cold Friday held it in front of Clare’s eyes.

  “You been conjured,” she said. “That’s the clear proof. Now we got to find the party that done it.”

  From the leathern bag she drew a folded paper which she spread out on the floor, a large colored poster of the human body, clothed in nothing but its veins and arteries and major organs, and standing on the words “Compliments of Henderson’s Pharmacy.”

  Just like the pictures in Grandpa’s books, thought Clare, and realized it wasn’t. On the veins and arteries were the names of streets and the numbers of houses. Cold Friday took four glass bottles from the bag and weighed down the corners of the poster. In the first glowed amber water; in the second, amethyst; in the third, emerald; in the fourth, sapphire. A fifth bottle, which she placed in the middle, held—was that blood?

  “Them bottles is for the spell to go into. It can pick the one it likes. I brought bottles and pretty stones and all what they likes. Open yo’ hand.”

  Clare opened it, obedient as a child, and Cold Friday uncorked the fifth bottle and poured a stream of blood into her palm, and Clare thought again of Ben, of broken glass and crushed metal and a mind emptied of memory.

  “Please,” she whispered, “if you’re going to heal anyone, could you heal—”

  “Chicken blood,” remarked Cold Friday.

  She eyed the thick red pool, then reached out and slapped it, and Clare gave a cry as the blood spattered over the poster, gathered itself into a line, and rolled with great purpose along the arteries, past the heart, past the liver, and came to rest on the islets of Langerhans. Cold Friday read the inscription on it.

  “Island Park,” she said. “Do that signify?”

  “That’s where the ball hit me,” said Clare. “That’s where Ben hit it. And now he’s the one that needs healing.”

  Cold Friday gave her a cold look. “It’s you I be called for.”

  She tipped the fifth bottle on its side, and the blood rolled back into it as if summoned. Only after she had corked it and tucked it back into her bag did she speak.

  “The one that hit it ain’t the one that made the spell. You is conjured with one of the old spells the devil sent out when he took his third of the earth. Them is slow, traveling spells. They come from the darkness that moved on the face of the waters ’fore the earth was. And them no-words hid in the water and that no-voice talked it in the water, and it done traveled from water to water, and it done entered the body of Eve. And Cain said to his brother, ‘You be firstborn and give me the brains. You kin have everything else. And that spell got itself handed down, hand over hand, ’cause that spell is so evil. The hand that worked the spell on you didn’t make it. And now we’s got to take that spell off.”

  Cold Friday opened the window, and the leathern bag at her waist began to throb. She reached a comforting hand into it and drew out a ring-necked dove and tossed it free, and then a red-winged blackbird and tossed it after the dove, and then another dove, smaller than the first, and this she threw away also, and then a chickadee, which she flicked outside, and then a sparrow, which did not wait to be sent but swooped to the window.

  “O Lord,” she called after them in a deep voice, “heal this girl. Don’t send Your Son, Lord. Come on down and heal her Yourself.”

  She turned to Clare.

  “Honey, when them birds cross the water, you gonna walk. But we got to help ’em. That old devil, he a powerful demon. He got his lyin’ tongue a-clicking and a-clacking and he got his tail hooked around the good people, around you and me and President Roosevelt—amen!—and he want to pull the people’s hearts from the truth.”

  Out of the bag she pulled a Maxwell House coffee can full of coals, which she set on the floor at Clare’s feet. A sweet smell filled the room, as of leaves being burned in the fall. Cold Friday inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, and her whole body began to rock.

  “Lord, take this demon from this child.”

  When she sang, her voice seemed to rise from the coals themselves:

  “O graveyard,

  “O graveyard,

  I’m walkin’ through the graveyard,

  Lay this body down.

  “I know moonlight,

  I know starlight,

  I’m a-walkin’ through the starlight,

  Lay this body down.

  “I’m a-layin’ in the grave—”

  She stretched out her arms and sat perfectly still, as if the very air were her grave, over which her white headscarf rose like a headstone.

  “Lay this body down …”

  Clare struggled to keep awake but felt her eyes closing; the last living creature she saw before she gave in to sleep was Cold Friday withering into a lizard, which warmed its thin claws over the fire and sang,

  Fire, do y’ know me?

  Fire, do y’ know me?

  She awoke to the room full of smoke and Cinnamon Monkeyshines clawing at her skirt. The coffee can lay on its side, its coals scattered over the carpet, on which flames blossomed like a serpentine field of light.

  “Fire!” shrieked Clare.

  And because the bureau had now caught fire and the edge of the bedspread crackled into flames, and because the demon had met his match and the deep sleep of Clare’s bones was ended, and because Clare herself wanted to live and wanted Ben to live also, she staggered out of bed and ran into the hall.

  “Fire! My room’s on fire!”

  Smoke curled down the stairs in rolling gusts. Nell hustled Davy and Grandpa downstairs, and Clare pelted after them.

  “Look!” screamed Davy. “Clare’s running!”

  Clare grabbed the phone in the front hall and dialed. Her mother rushed to and fro like a spirit, gathering the “good stuff”—silver teapot, knives, spoons, Dresden plates, jade pedestal, porcelain vase—hauling it out in a purple tablecloth.

  “Operator,” said a cheery voice.

  “Fire!” cried Clare. “Send the fire department!”

  “What address, ma’am?”

  “Two-oh-one Orchard Drive. Hurry—there’s smoke everywhere!”

  Only when they were all gathered in the front yard waiting for the fire truck did Clare remember Cold Friday.

  “Oh, Lord!” said Helen. “She’s probably burnt up. Oh, it’s a great day. Oh, Lord, what a tragedy!”

  “I hear sirens,” said Davy.

  “Her car’s gone,” said Nell.

  It was then they discovered that the good stuff was gone, along with the treasure; the lawn lay empty, as though neither treasure nor go
od stuff nor Cold Friday herself had ever been.

  34

  Than When We First Begun

  WHAT BAFFLED THE FIREMEN was the damage. There simply wasn’t any, though Clare swore she had seen flames dancing on the rug, and the bedspread had caught fire before her very eyes. The smoke was real enough, yet the odor did not cling to curtains and clothes, the way it generally did after a fire.

  “God knows,” said Helen, “my exhaustion is real.”

  She felt shorn of her past; she felt years lighter. I paid in treasure, she told herself. Paid for Clare to be made well again.

  Nell announced they all needed a good night’s sleep.

  Only Clare would not go to bed; Helen called her and Nell called her, and at last Helen asked Grandpa to call her indoors.

  “Ever since the firemen left she’s been walking up and down, all through the house. First I found her in the fruit cellar staring at my old wedding bouquet. Then I found her in the dining room, cradling the teapot. I asked her if she wanted me to make her some tea, and she said no, thank you, and put the teapot on her head.”

  “You should have let her visit Ben,” said Grandpa.

  “I thought it would upset her.”

  “Not seeing him upsets her more.”

  “But it’s nearly midnight and she’s walking around the garden!” exclaimed Helen. “Won’t you go down and call her? She listens to you.”

  “Perhaps she’s looking for something,” said Grandpa.

  “Nell asked her if she’d lost something, and she said no.”

  “Perhaps she’s found something,” said Grandpa.

  “Grandpa, please call her. She needs her sleep.”

  “No she doesn’t. She’s been sleeping for months. Let her alone. Leave the door open, and she’ll fly into the cage when she’s ready.”

  The campus carillon began to chime. Ten, eleven, twelve—

  Walking under the pear trees, Clare counted.

  Thirteen.

  Into the backyard crept the fragrance of fresh laundry and leeks and tall grass mowed early in the morning.

  “Is it you, dear lady?” whispered Clare.

  The forget-me-nots on her skirt nodded. When we first met, you came to me on your spirit-legs. Now come to me on your flesh and bones.

  The Ancestress hovered over the lilac bushes, which had just passed their blooming, and Clare ran to meet her.

  “Take me to visit Ben.”

  You don’t need me to travel, my daughter. You know the way.

  And her own breath carried Clare out once more. Out of her body. Weightless and fleshless, she followed the Ancestress into a cloud of unknowing that she knew would take her to Ben.

  The crucifix on the wall: a broken sleeper.

  Through the half-open window drifted sounds from the street: a car careening around the corner, its radio screaming “I got spurs that jingle jangle jingle.”

  This room is larger than the one I had when I was here, said Clare.

  This room is the ward, said the Ancestress. What do you see?

  I see two rows of houses with lamps burning in all the windows, answered Clare.

  Those are the patients whose wounds are healing. Tomorrow they will gather around the radio to hear the game they wanted to play. Your game. Is that all you see, daughter?

  They were entering a private room. Clare did not need to ask whose it was.

  I see a dark house. Is Ben dying?

  Everything alive looks dead and everything dead looks alive, said the Ancestress. Daughter, his spirit is hiding.

  They floated toward Ben.

  What does he love best in the world? asked the Ancestress.

  Baseball, said Clare. Summer.

  You’ve forgotten what he loves most.

  What?

  You. Go into his house, daughter, and breathe on all his lamps. But do not linger. The darkness of a house that is being abandoned is like no other darkness on earth.

  Clare let herself in.

  She never imagined that Ben’s life would look like this: a dark corridor, off which opened dank rooms behind doors rotting on their hinges. The sconces in every room were black with soot. But the gas was still on. The lamps would light for her, if the gas didn’t kill her first.

  She breathed on the first lamp and it glowed softly. The tiniest pilot light awoke at the bottom. She hurried on to the second, and it too awoke at her breath and encouraged the third, which flamed quicker and brighter than the others. She began to feel ill, as if she were trapped in a mine. The air was poisonous. She breathed the fourth lamp to life and the fifth and heard the Ancestress calling her.

  Come back now, daughter, or you will never come back.

  Once outside, she turned to look at him. Every room was sending out a warm, clear light.

  When Hal arrived at the airstrip early in the morning, his heart sank a little. He would have preferred a train, with its ponderous courtesies, not this six-seater, this toy. The pilot, a young man with sandy hair and a sleepy expression, took his valise.

  “You’re traveling light,” he remarked.

  “Presents for my family,” said Hal. “I can’t stay long.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. I got some jewelry in Santa Fe for my mother.”

  Hal thought of the stuffed horned toad mounted on a piece of petrified wood he was bringing for Davy. The little box of minerals for Clare and Helen. Clare would love the names: desert rose, Apache tears.

  “We’ll stow this in back,” said the pilot. “There’s not much room under the seats.”

  “But I’m the only passenger,” said Hal.

  The pilot nodded. “It’s you and me and my copilot and the cargo.”

  Hal wondered where they were taking the cargo—it was packed in three steel boxes, padlocked and unmarked. To Willow Run? He wanted to ask how many stops they’d be making between here and Willow Run, but these last months had taught him to mind his own business.

  He climbed in behind the copilot, a thin, blond man with protruding teeth who reminded Hal of a white rabbit.

  “Nice day for flying,” the rabbit said to Hal. “You’ll get a nice view of the sun rising over the Sangre de Cristo mountains. I saw a mountain goat once. You hardly ever see them so well on the ground.”

  The plane taxied for takeoff, and Hal peered out of the window, not wanting to miss the goat if it was there. He would tell Clare and Helen about the goat and about the aspens shaking their leaves like coins and about these two men and their mysterious cargo. He would walk into the house around supper time, just walk in. No calling beforehand, no letter announcing his arrival. Just walk in, calling, “Hi. I’m home.”

  Father Legg ran up to Clare.

  “You’re the second miracle,” he said and hugged her.

  The first miracle, he told her, was Ben. He was wide awake. Too weak to play, the doctor said, but wide awake. And though it was still too early to say for sure, he appeared to have lost neither speech nor memory nor movement.

  “What did he talk about?” asked Clare.

  “The game. He can’t think of anything else.”

  “Of course,” said Clare.

  “The other team hasn’t arrived yet,” said Father Legg. He avoided uttering the name Dead Knights. “We’re warming up. I hope the crowd doesn’t make you nervous.”

  No, she wasn’t nervous. No. Because there was only the game and the no-game, the players and the watchers, the inside and the outside. Right now only the inside mattered. The people in the bleachers rustled like so many blades of grass, faceless, innumerable.

  The very hairs of your head are numbered, said God.

  “Here are your positions,” said Father Legg, addressing the little group on the bench. He could not accustom himself to seeing the women in slacks and shirts. Look like they all work in a defense plant, he thought. “And we would especially like to welcome Sol Lieberman and Mr. Clackett.”

  The two grinned, their right arms in nearly identical casts.

&
nbsp; “Sol will coach first base and Mr. Clackett will coach third. Please—give me your attention. Mrs. Teresa Bacco, first base. Mrs. Schoonmaker, second base. Mrs. Lieberman, third. Mrs. Henrietta Bacco, shortstop. Ernestina, you’re our catcher.”

  He wanted a tight outfield, he told them. He was counting on Mrs. LaMont in center and Mrs. Clackett in left. Willie would play right field. Wanda and Helen would wait on the bench in case they were needed.

  “And Clare Bishop will pitch,” he added with a grin. A current of warm feeling ran through the women. “And you all know the good news about Ben.”

  He lowered his voice.

  “Dear Lord, Who knowest our needs before we ask them, be with us all, now and in the world to come. Ladies—and Willie—take your positions.”

  Kitty helped Ernestina into her chest protector, and Ernestina laughed nervously and said she felt like an old crawdaddy rigged up like that, and then they all fanned out and trotted to their places. Helen and Wanda made themselves comfortable on the bench.

  Poor Wanda, thought Father Legg. She feels useless.

  “Wanda, let’s see you take a few cuts at the ball,” he said gently.

  Wanda took her stance, knees flexed, at home plate. Clare did not move. The two women stared at each other.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Father Legg.

  “I was just thinking, this is a funny place for us to meet,” said Clare.

  “Good heavens!” exclaimed Father Legg. “I thought you knew each other.”

  Out in left field, Willie shaded his eyes. Were they talking about him? Or was Father Legg giving his pitch on love?

  Suddenly the murmurs of the crowd ceased. Wanda let the bat drop. The air grew faintly chill, as if rain were not far off—yet not rain, either, but the dank moisture on the undersides of stones.

  “They’re here,” said Father Legg.

  They did not run onto the field. They simply appeared, as if they had broken through a wall of air, or an invisible ray into visibility. First, Durkee, tugging on his visored cap, in his old maroon jacket with “AA Pioneers” in white script on the back. Then the players: big, slow-moving men in the uniforms of the teams they had served. They lumbered onto the field and their feet touched the earth, yet the earth did not take note of them; they raised no dust, disturbed no blade of grass.