Frenchtown Summer (6 page)

Mr. LeBlanc, the landlord,
let them in with his key.
The smell oozing into the hallway
was stronger than chocolate.
“Don't light a match'
Mr. LeBlanc yelled.
“Go home,”
my father commanded me
over his shoulder.
The sound of windows being thrown open
followed me downstairs.

Later, from the pantry,
I heard the low voices
from Pépèrc's kitchen.
“No note!”
Whispers and murmurs.
Then Pépèrc's voice.
If lightning had a tongue
it would speak the way
Pépèrc spoke
at that moment.
“He will not be buried
in the Edges!”
My uncle Med was buried
beside young Cousin Theo
in what my father called
the family plot.
“Room for ten more,”
someone said.

I did not cry.
My eyes burned
but tears would not come
to melt the frozen wasteland
in my chest.

My mother and my aunts
went to Uncle Med's tenement
for his belongings.
I walked behind them,
silent as a shadow.
In Uncle Med's bedroom,
I took a small black box
down from the closet shelf
and opened it to a dazzle
of silver and gold,
a tangle of tie pins,
some plain, some fancy,
one shaped like a rifle,
the ruby on another
catching the afternoon sun.

But he never
wore a tie.

That night,
I dreamed about a black and yellow snake
coiling itself around
the old elm at St. fude's Cemetery,
black tongue flickering
at my feet as I climbed,
slowly, slowly,
away from the darting tongue
while down below
Uncle Med watched,
unmoving,
his eyes as blank
as coins.

My screams woke up the tenement,
my father instantly beside me
on the bed,
and I cried at last
but did not know
for whom.

In the wasteland
of a dying August,
the last days of vacation,
as I delivered the
Times
in sun-struck streets,
my thoughts went to the mysteries
of the summer,
wondering what had happened
to Omer LeFerge
and in what convent
Sister Angela now taught the piano.
On Seventh Street,
I looked up at the piazza
where Mrs. Cartin had stood
like a bird about to take flight.
Would she someday make that leap?
I remembered what my mother said:
“Life is sad sometimes.”
I thought of the mysteries
in my own family
(Did Pépère's prayers
perform a dark miracle
for Uncle Jules?)
and the things I did not want
to think about,
like the sins I didn't tell
Father Balthazar
in the confessional,
but most of all,
most of all,
the spot in the backyard
where I had buried
Uncle Med's tie pins.
But
I
did
not
want
to
think
about
him.

So I delivered the newspapers,
the heat coming off the pavement
like steam from a kettle,
no dogs barking,
no cars passing,
piazzas shrouded
in afternoon shadows.

On Fifth Street,
heading home,
my heart as empty
as my newspaper bag,
I saw
the airplane.

First,
a wink of color,
orange,
in the corner of my eye,
at the far end of an alley
between two three-deckers.
I tossed my paper bag
to the sidewalk
and followed the flash of orange
to a backyard,
where I saw,
unbelievably,
an airplane.
Orange, yes,
with lightning streaks
of white
on the fuselage,
two wings,
a biplane,
the kind of airplane
aviators flew during the World War
over the trenches of France and Germany,
like the airplanes I read about
in magazines like
Wings
and
Aces
at Laurier's Drug Store.
Aviator goggles dangled from the cockpit
as if left there a moment before
by the pilot.

An airplane in a French town backyard?
Impossible!
No room to land or take off
in the narrow backyards
behind the tall three-deckers.
Mesmerized,
I stood there for a moment,
then left in a frenzy,
running through the alley,
heard the gasps of my breathing
as I searched the streets
for someone to tell
of my discovery.

At home, Raymond
and Alyre Tournier
tossed a ball between them,
the black-taped ball
thudding into their gloveless palms.
“There's an airplane in a backyard
on Fifth Street,”
I announced.
They kept throwing the ball to each other.
“It's real—I saw it.”
Watching the ball trace
a rainbow arc between them.
Desperate, I cried:
“It's really there.
An orange airplane.”
My voice on the still summer air
echoed through the neighborhood
and a few kids emerged
from doorways and piazzas,
Leon Montaigne and Paul Roget
and Henri Latour,
among others.
“Come on and see,” I urged.

“Okay, okay,” Raymond said,
striding toward me with his athlete's walk,
swinging his shoulders.
He never got excited about anything
except home runs, double plays
and stretching a double into a three-bagger.

I led the caravan down Mechanic Street,
the focus of all eyes.
I had never hit a home run
but I had discovered an airplane
in a Frenchtown backyard.
We turned into Fifth Street
and they followed me through the alley
as I looked for the flash of orange
that suddenly wasn't there.
Arriving,
I saw only the abandoned garden,
and shriveled tomato plants.

And
no
airplane.

Raymond shook his head,
looking at me with the kind of contempt
—or was it pity?—
he bestowed on players
who struck out with the bases loaded.
Leon and Alyre and Henri straggled away,
glancing at me as they went.
Somebody laughed,
maybe Leon,
and somebody muttered words
I refused to interpret.
Later, I walked home alone
in disgrace.

That evening,
in the gentle twilight
of late summer,
the families gathered on the piazzas
and the small patches of lawn
and talked mildly and gossiped,
while Raymond and the others
played ball in the street.
The men's cigarettes
glowed like fireflies
in the gathering dusk
and the smell of home-brewed beer
spiced the air.

I sat alone on the steps,
the light too dim for reading,
glad to remain twilight-hidden,
although Alyre Tournier,
after catching a fly ball,
muttered, “An airplane,”
shaking his head
with false pity
as he walked away.
When darkness obscured
the flight of the ball,
the game broke up
and the players strayed
toward the piazzas
in lazy end-of-day strides.
A sudden stillness fell
as if fed
by an evening breeze.

My father flicked his cigarette butt
into the air.
We watched it spiral
like a small comet
to the sidewalk.
Looking off into the deepening dusk,
he said,
his voice clear as struck crystal:
“Funny thing.
I saw an airplane this morning
on the way to the shop,
in the backyard of three-deckers
on Fifth Street.”

A match flared as he lit
another cigarette.
“But it was gone
when I looked again
on the way home.”
Smoke circled his head
like a halo.

He motioned to me.
“Eugene saw it, too.”

Raymond looked at me,
mouth agape with astonishment,
and Alyre frowned,
hitching his pants.
Kids approached,
as if coming out of hiding places.
In the descending night,
I told them again and again
about the orange airplane,
the goggles dangling
from the cockpit.

And the night was sweeter
than a cherry soda
at the Happy Times.

The next day,
I waited for my father as usual
late in the afternoon,
standing this time
at the banister of the piazza.
Seeing him at last,
I ran to greet him,
throwing my arms around him,
losing myself in the aroma
of celluloid and smoke
and burned kitchen matches.

I looked up at him.
He passed his hand across my head,
rumpling my hair,
and said:
“I know. I know.”

And we walked home together
in the tender sunlight
of a Frenchtown summer.