Atop an Underwood (16 page)

The Song?

. . . . . Listen to the song of the trees, the swishing song, the swishing song! Oh listen to the song of the trees, the swishing song, the swishing song . . . . .

My trees have stood there for generations, I think, but I myself have been listening to them for ten years. It was ten years ago that we moved into this neighborhood, the furniture van groaning with the stacked weight of our belongings, and that was when I first began to hear those trees sing. In the summer night I used to sleep in the hammock on the screened porch, and there stood my trees tall and black and singing. One night I lay awake right straight through till dawn, listening, and then I rose and passed the milkman as I headed out for the forest in back of our neighborhood. When I returned at sunrise, spent and sated with the glory of it all, I went back to my blankets.

“Get up, you lazy child!” scolded my mother, coming down to do the breakfast and yawning.

Ah, mother, mother.

Those were the rich tumbling days, golden indeed. As I make these observations, sitting on my old porch, it is exactly 2:37 A.M. The night is black. The star-packed sky is drawn right down to the treetops, and shadows loom huge and spectre-like. It is a man's night, I tell you, with Substance and Form. The kind of night that Goudt liked to achieve in his biblical engravings. The kind of night that brings nodding chunkfuls of starsparkle clear down to rooftops in thrilling immanence. My pipe spirals off its fragrant fume, I shift in my seat on the steps, my hat rests on the back of my head, and I am very sad.

You see, I have to pull up my stakes and roll. Tomorrow morning, when the swift and clean dawn appears, a big van will rumble up my little old street, will puff and roar laboriously into position, and release a band of men who will immediately begin to load on our furniture and other household objects. My family is moving away from this neighborhood, from this city and state, and migrating to a strange city, many miles away. This is the last chance I'll have to sit on my porch, looking at the lumpy little dirt street, the three street lamps, tall singing trees, and the drowsy bungalow. It is all over.

I am only a boy, but I know a few things. I know, for instance, the hidden legend of my old neighborhood. We have all lived here for years, our lives plied in casual proximity, garage-door slamming mornings, mother-calling noons, hammer-banging afternoons, child-screaming sunsets, radio-blaring evenings, and finally, river-hushed and tree-swished nights . . . I have seen these things, and never mentioned it to anyone. I have taken it all in with a silent, vague joy. And now, suddenly, I must leave. I must leave the song of my trees forever, and the grief that is in me, the pressure against my shirt-pocket, is unbearable . . . . Time, damned and cursed Time must persist, and does. New Time advances, destroying old Time. Time advances in its maddening amble, unstopping. All things persist and will not delay for one meagre second. Why? Why? Why?

Stop! Go back! Go back, damn you, go back!!!

“Hush, child . . .” moan my trees. “Farewell, child . . . . farewell . . . . farewell . . . .”

Ah, well . . . . this, then, has been my home and my land. That, there, the leaning fence that I knew. And over there, the lean melancholy telephone pole that I knew. These things I knew in my boyhood, and now I must leave. Why couldn't I just simply turn back Time and begin all over again? Why? Why the advance of Time? Why? A slow mounting rage, and then: Stop, Time, stop! Go back! Go back, damn you, go back!!! I hurl my pipe into the little front yard, scattering a furious shower of orange embers.

“What is the grass?” asked the man, fetching it to the child with full hands. And the child saith unto him: Go thou unto thine Host, for he hath spread a sumptuous board; avail thyself of his good cheer, and in partaking, question not.

“Okay, okay,” I say, American-wise. “All right.”

“But now wait!”

Listen!

The breeze just came, a rather cool August breeze, and it is going through my trees. A sound advances . . . .

Listen to the song of the trees, the swishing song, the swishing song! Oh listen to the song of the trees, the swishing song, the swishing song . . . .

Listen to that lullaby! Have you ever heard such lovely music, sir?!!! A million little green leaves in the summer night, trembling together tenderly and all joining in the chorus. Hush . . hush . . wush .. hush . . hush . . wush ... shhhhhhhh .....

The haunting tug at my shirt-pocket grows heavier. In the middle of the night, while people sleep, I sit silently sad.

And suddenly, in a luscious flood, memories come up to me from the beauty and mystery of the night . . . . millions of memories, tumbling in my hat. Ha ha ha, I say. Ha ha ha.

Memories . . . . I have plenty of those, sir. Those were the rich leaping days, golden indeed. The first kid I met was Fouch. He was Greek, lived just across the street, and the first time I saw him he was sitting on his porch steps, if you please, like William Saroyan used to do in Fresno, California. I was pouting at him with silent, outraged interest, hidden behind my mother's parlor curtains. Fouch and I got to know each other well, and since I was the more dominating brat, I took over the reins of our prosperity. We negotiated many a trade with Pete, who lived on the corner, and came out of it with fabulous cargoes of dime novels, including The Shadow, Eerie Tales, Masked Detective, The Spider, and Secret Agent X. Yes, sir, that was back there in those good golden days . . . . hush . . hush . . wush .. hush . . hush . . wush .. shhhhhhhhh . . . . . Here I am on my porch, remembering.

Those dime novels . . . . it wasn't so much the killing in these stories that we used to feed upon, it was rather the dark and mysterious labyrinthal movement of our heroes, the sibilant hiss of their secret sanctumed laugh, the fall of rain on Fifth Avenue mansion at night, the slow creeping menace of masked justice along Manhattan depths, and above all, our hero unmasked and posing before the dull eye of the world as he sits lounged in brown-hushed gentlemen's club, comfortably below Moosehead and cigar smoke, facing fireplace and chessboard with intelligent opulence, while outside the grand window skims a yellow taxi over the rain-sleeked Manhattan street. Ah, but we loved these stories, and how the image of New York grew deeply and slowly into our boy minds!

... hush . . hush . . wush ... I'm on my porch, remembering . . . Into the neighborhood roared Bill, bringing with him his nervous chatter, his boast, his large heart. Bill also was a dominating brat, and there developed between us a tremendous feud, while flitting in the background like a wise Ghost was smiling Hellenic Fouch, calmly inheriting the Golden Mean. Bill and I ranted and raged and roared, and Fouch was right behind us, borne along and smiling. We were kids, we did everything.

Once I ran a newspaper, the Daily Owl. I printed it by hand with a pencil, and pasted pictures at the appropriate spots, using my own delectable hand-wrought captions. Bill was my star reporter. One Sunday my family went riding in the old Plymouth and while we were away, Bill broke into the house and deposited a terrific scoop on my work-desk: LOCAL HOME-MADE WAGONS DISAPPEAR! (Bill failed to mention that these “homemade wagons” of ours were so noisy that in all probability a delegation of neighbors had commissioned someone to eliminate the rickety nuisances from the local scene.) Anyway, it was quite a paper. My Hollywood correspondent was a melancholy little Greek boy named Sebastian; he came from another neighborhood, but had heard from afar of my publication. He used to submit his daily column with a sad smile, and I would print it laboriously into my paper. The subscriber was Fouch's older brother, who was an ill man, and who used to read it from cover to cover. He died some years later. I shall never forget it.

Bill used to draw cartoons, and after a while I closed down the paper and took up cartooning with Bill. Every Sunday afternoon we would sit in my living room, turning out strip after strip of adventure serials, while my mother cooked some caramel pudding for us and while my father sat in the parlor listening to the negro singers with tears in his eyes. Oh, those were the bounding days, rich indeed. We went to school together, and bragged all the way, every day. Once, Bill and I got mad at each other and didn't speak for about six weeks . . . . until one evening we met in the street, both of us carrying a copy of those precious dime novels. I hadn't intended to speak to him, but as I neared him a sudden pang of regret coursed through my boy-heart, and I realized that I liked this fool braggart, that all those six weeks had been wasted weeks.

“Whatchyou got there?” I asked casually.

“The Shadow,” said Bill, thumbing through the exciting pages.

“I've got Secret Agent X,” I said. “Swap?”

“Okay,” said Bill.

We swapped. I felt wonderful, and so did Bill. The world was good . . . . . I'm doing some mighty fine remembering . . .

This fellow Pete I was telling you about . . . . . he used to take us down to his cellar and let us feast our eyes upon his rich store of dime novels. Then he would load our arms generously, jesting continually, large-hearted Pete. “Here you be, Tsi-Gene!” he would say to me drawling. “Cast yore orbs on that fer a while . . . . an' now if you gen'I'men will excuse me, I'm goin' on upstairs for my vittles ....” He had all kinds of magazines down there, but 80% of them were Westerns. He loved them—and I'm sure that the thing he liked about them was the drawl of the thin-lipped cowhands, their smoke-blue eyes, their long lean rawhide walk.

“Shore,” Pete would say. “Shore as yore standin' here .... an' now I reckon I'll lope on to the shack and rustle me some grub .... Adios . . . . .”

Pete had a brother named Mike, who never said anything. He used to walk around with his long arms swinging regularly, his short legs straddling amazingly out of proportion, a huge noiseless stride that seemed forever going uphill. It has never been recorded or proven that Pete and Mike ever spoke to each other, although they were normal and friendly brothers. It's just that they never thought of talking to each other .... it was merely a matter-of-fact thing that required no particular attention on the part of either one. However, we used to play basketball in the park with the two of them. Mike was always on one team, Pete on the other. It was a tremendous spectacle to watch them give each other the old hip . . . . . whack! ...... whap! .... each silent and red-faced with a comical, wordless anger. It was, however, their way of communicating to each other . . . . . whack! ...... whap! .... the old hip, a deft insinuation of the buttock at the right moment . . . . . whack! . . . . . whap! ...

In this little old neighborhood of mine lived a bunch of younger kids who used to fill the sunset hours with the uproar of their gunfights . . . . . taaah! . . . . taaah! . . . . taah! . . . . you could see them dart from barrels and dash heroically through a hail of bullets, blazing at both toy muzzles with Buck Jones abandon. One of these kids was Salvey.

One summer, he suddenly disappeared from these nightly battles, and two weeks later we discovered him, to our amazement, standing on the corner of the Variety Store with the “big guys,” smoking and spitting calmly.

Salvey used to go swimming with us to the Brook, and when he did the jack-knife dive off the grassy bank he looked like something you might call flapping fins. That's how slender and how flexible he was. He was so loose that when he stood relaxed, his abdomen hung dejectedly . . . . . we named him “Cave-in.”

And then there was Mel, a brute of a boy with the power and roar of a gorilla. He was our hero, but it took Fouch to control his mind. Fouch used to get Mel all excited by doing a grotesque, half-squatting dance, adding to that several choice phrases and popping out his big almond eyes in a hypnotic stupefaction that swayed and maddened the boy bull. We were afraid to commit any foul deeds on Fouch, for fear he would unleash his monster and send him after us.

Mel, Fouch, and I used to go to the wrestling matches every week. It was great to sit there and watch the big hams grunt and groan in the throes of their enormous farce. The roped-in square was lost in a sea of cigarette smoke, and sometimes the wrestlers would throw the referee out of the ring.

However, Mel was a fine boy. He was a strict Catholic, and anyone that should show any signs of deviation was certain to incur his bull wrath. We kept our blooming metaphysics to ourselves.

There was still another neighborhood celebrity, back there in those gushing days. We called him Wattaguy, and he used to walk down the street with a ridiculous zeal that flung him along like a bobbing cork. Once when I had been playing alone with my imaginary horse-races in my room, I had heard him enter downstairs and ask my mother for me.

She was following instructions. “He's out,” she said.

“I'll take a look anyway,” he beamed, rubbing his hands vigorously. I put out my light and crawled under the bed. Wattaguy came into the room, turned on the light, and dragged me from under my hiding-place.

“What the hell are you doin' there? Come on out. We're playing chess!” And we did. Wattaguy was a swell kid, just the same.

And then there was the time we had a horse. A wealthy friend of my father's had given it, a six-year-old mare, to myself and my sister. My chum Mike, who lived clear across the city, was nuts about horses. He practically boarded with us while we had it. One day, the horse broke loose from my yard and ran wild-eyed through the entire section. Mike and I chased it with a lasso, up the sandbank, down the street, along the river, up the street, and up the sandbank again. We finally lured the frightened beast with stable food and haltered him. It was a great day in the history of our neighborhood.

And Oh we did a million other things! We were kids, and we did everything . . . .