I Sing the Body Electric (22 page)

Her shout brought Joseph Pikes running.

He pulled up at the door only in time to see Grandma Loblilly dancing and jumping around on her yellow, high-peg shoes in a wild gyration.

She clapped her hands, laughed, flung her skirts, ran in a circle, and did a little waltz with herself, tears on her face. And to the sunlight and the flashing image of herself in the wall mirror she cried:

“I'm young! I'm eighty, but I'm younger'n
him!
”

She skipped, she hopped, and she curtsied.

“There are compensations, Joseph Pikes; you was right!” she chortled. “I'm younger'n
all
the dead ones in the whole world!”

And she waltzed so violently the whirl of her dress pulled at the box and whispers of chrysalis leapt on the air to hang golden and powdery amidst her shouts.

“Whee-
deee!
” she cried. “Whee-
heee!
”

I
magine a summer that would never end.

Nineteen twenty-nine.

Imagine a boy who would never grow up.

Me.

Imagine a barber who was never young.

Mr. Wyneski.

Imagine a dog that would live forever.

Mine.

Imagine a small town, the kind that isn't lived in anymore.

Ready? Begin…

Green Town, Illinois … Late June.

Dog barking outside a one-chair barbershop.

Inside, Mr. Wyneski, circling his victim, a customer snoozing in the steambath drowse of noon.

Inside, me, Ralph Spaulding, a boy of some twelve years, standing still as an iron Civil War statue, listening to the hot wind, feeling all that hot summer dust out there, a bakery world where nobody could be bad or good, boys just lay gummed to dogs, dogs used boys for pillows under trees that lazed with leaves which whispered in despair: Nothing Will Ever Happen Again.

The only motion anywhere was the cool water dripping from the huge coffin-sized ice block in the hardware store window.

The only cool person in miles was Miss Frostbite, the traveling magician's assistant, tucked into that lady-shaped long cavity hollowed in the ice block displayed for three days now without they said, her breathing, eating, or talking. That last, I thought, must have been terrible hard on a woman.

Nothing moved in the street but the barbershop striped pole which turned slowly to show its red, white, and then red again, slid up out of nowhere to vanish nowhere, a motion between two mysteries.

“…hey…”

I pricked my ears.

“…something's coming…”

“Only the noon train, Ralph.” Mr. Wyneski snicked his jackdaw scissors, peering in his customer's ear. “Only the train that comes at noon.”

“No…” I gasped, eyes shut, leaning. “Something's
really
coming…”

I heard the far whistle wail, lonesome, sad. enough to pull your soul out of your body.

“
You
feel it, don't you, Dog?”

Dog barked.

Mr. Wyneski sniffed. “What can a dog feel?”

“Big things. Important things. Circumstantial coincidences. Collisions you can't escape. Dog says. I say.
We
say.”

“That makes
four
of you. Some team.” Mr. Wyneski turned from the summer-dead man in the white porcelain chair. “Now, Ralph, my problem is hair. Sweep.”

I swept a ton of hair. “Gosh, you'd think this stuff just grew up out of the floor.”

Mr. Wyneski watched my broom. “Right! I didn't cut all that. Darn stuff just grows, I swear, lying there. Leave it a week, come back, and you need hip boots to trod a path.” He pointed with his scissors. “Look. You ever
see
so many shades, hues, and tints of forelocks and chin fuzz? There's Mr. Tompkins's receding hairline. There's Charlie Smith's topknot. And here, here's all that's left of Mr. Harry Joe Flynn.”

I stared at Mr. Wyneski as if he had just read from Revelations. “Gosh, Mr. Wyneski, I guess you know everything in the world!”

“Just about.”

“I—I'm going to grow up and be—a barber!”

Mr. Wyneski, to hide his pleasure, got busy.

“Then watch this hedgehog, Ralph, peel an eye. Elbows thus, wrists so! Make the scissors
talk!
Customers appreciate. Sound
twice
as busy as you are. Snickety-snick, boy, snickety-snick. Learned this from the French! Oh, yes, the French! They
do
prowl about the chair light on their toes, and the sharp scissors whispering and nibbling, Ralph, nibbling and whispering, you
hear!
”

“Boy!” I said, at his elbow, right in with the whispers and nibbles, then stopped: for the wind blew a wail way off in summer country, so sad, so strange.

“There it is again. The train. And something
on
the train…”

“Noon train don't stop here.”

“But I got this feeling—”

“The hair's going to grab me. Ralph…”

I swept hair.

After a long while I said, “I'm thinking of changing my name.”

Mr. Wyneski sighed. The summer-dead customer stayed dead.

“What's
wrong
with you today, boy?”

“It's not me. It's the name is out of hand. Just listen. Ralph.” I grrred it. “Rrrralph.”

“Ain't exactly harp music…”

“Sounds like a mad dog.” I caught myself.

“No offense, Dog.”

Mr. Wyneski glanced down. “He seems pretty calm about the whole subject.”

“Ralph's dumb. Gonna change my name by tonight.”

Mr. Wyneski mused. “Julius for Caesar? Alexander for the Great?”

“Don't care what. Help me, huh, Mr. Wyneski? Find me a
name…
”

Dog sat up. I dropped the broom.

For way down in the hot cinder railroad yards a train furnaced itself in, all pomp, all fire-blast shout and tidal churn, summer in its iron belly bigger than the summer outside.

“Here it comes!”

“There it goes,” said Mr. Wyneski.

“No, there it
doesn't
go!”

It was Mr. Wyneski's turn to almost drop his scissors.

“Goshen. Darn noon train's putting on the brakes!”

We heard the train stop.

“How many people getting off the train, Dog?”

Dog barked once.

Mr. Wyneski shifted uneasily. “U.S. Mail bags—”

“No … a
man!
Walking light. Not much luggage. Heading for our house. A new boarder at Grandma's, I bet. And he'll take the empty room right next to you, Mr. Wyneski! Right, Dog?”

Dog barked.

“That dog talks too much,” said Mr. Wyneski.

“I just
gotta
go see, Mr. Wyneski. Please?”

The far footsteps faded in the hot and silent streets.

Mr. Wyneski shivered.

“A goose just stepped on my grave.”

Then he added, almost sadly:

“Get along, Ralph.”

“Name ain't Ralph.”

“Whatchamacallit … run see … come tell the worst.”

“Oh, thanks, Mr. Wyneski, thanks!”

I ran. Dog ran. Up a street, along an alley, around back, we ducked in the ferns by my grandma's house. “Down, boy.” I whispered. “Here the Big Event comes, what
ever
it is!”

And down the street and up the walk and up the steps at a brisk jaunt came this man who swung a cane and carried a carpetbag and had long brown-gray hair and silken mustaches and a goatee, politeness all about him like a flock of birds.

On the porch near the old rusty chain swing, among the potted geraniums, he surveyed Green Town.

Far away, maybe, he heard the insect hum from the barbershop, where Mr. Wyneski, who would soon be his enemy, told fortunes by the lumpy heads under his hands as he buzzed the electric clippers. Far away, maybe, he could hear the empty library where the golden dust slid down the raw sunlight and way in back someone scratched and tapped and scratched forever with pen and ink, a quiet woman like a great lonely mouse burrowed away. And she was to be part of this new man's life, too, but right now…

The stranger removed his tall moss-green hat, mopped his brow, and not looking at anything but the hot blind sky said:

“Hello, boy. Hello, dog.”

Dog and I rose up among the ferns.

“Heck. How'd you know where we were hiding?”

The stranger peered into his hat for the answer. “In another incarnation, I was a boy. Time before that, if memory serves, I was a more than usually happy dog. But…!” His cane rapped the cardboard sign
BOARD AND ROOM
thumbtacked on the porch rail. “Does the sign say true, boy?”

“Best rooms on the block.”

“Beds?”

“Mattresses so deep you sink down and drown the third time, happy.”

“Boarders at table?”

“Talk just enough, not too much.”

“Food?”

“Hot biscuits every morning, peach pie noon, shortcake every supper!”

The stranger inhaled, exhaled those savors.

“I'll sign my soul away!”

“I beg your pardon?!” Grandma was suddenly at the screen door, scowling out.

“A manner of speaking, ma'am.” The stranger turned. “Not meant to sound un-Christian.”

And he was inside, him talking, Grandma talking, him writing and
flourishing the pen on the registry book, and me and Dog inside, breathless, watching, spelling:

“C.H.”

“Read upside down, do you, boy?” said the stranger, merrily, giving pause with the inky pen.

“Yes, sir!”

On he wrote. On I spelled:

“A.R.L.E.S. Charles!”

“Right.”

Grandma peered at the calligraphy. “Oh, what a fine hand.”

“Thank you, ma'am.” On the pen scurried. And on I chanted. “D.I.C.K.E.N.S.”

I faltered and stopped. The pen stopped. The stranger tilted his head and closed one eye, watchful of me.

“Yes?” He dared me, “What,
what?
”

“Dickens!” I cried.

“Good!”

“Charles Dickens, Grandma!”

“I can read, Ralph. A
nice
name…”

“Nice?” I said, agape. “It's
great!
But … I thought you were—”

“Dead?” The stranger laughed. “No. Alive, in fine fettle, and glad to meet a recognizer, fan, and fellow reader here!”

And we were up the stairs, Grandma bringing fresh towels and pillowcases and me carrying the carpetbag, gasping, and us meeting Grandpa, a great ship of a man, sailing down the other way.

“Grandpa,” I said, watching his face for shock. “I want you to meet … Mr. Charles Dickens!”

Grandpa stopped for a long breath, looked at the new boarder from top to bottom, then reached out, took hold of the man's hand, shook it firmly, and said:

“Any friend of Nicholas Nickleby's is a friend of mine!”

Mr. Dickens fell back from the effusion, recovered, bowed, said. “Thank you, sir,” and went on up the stairs, while Grandpa winked, pinched my cheek, and left me standing there, stunned.

In the tower cupola room, with windows bright, open, and running with cool creeks of wind in all directions, Mr. Dickens drew off his horse-carriage coat and nodded at the carpetbag.

“Anywhere will do, Pip. Oh, you don't mind I call you Pip, eh?”

“Pip?!” My cheeks burned, my face glowed with astonishing happiness. “Oh, boy. Oh, no, sir. Pip's
fine!
”

Grandma cut between us. “Here are your clean linens, Mr…?”

“Dickens, ma'am.” Our boarder patted his pockets, each in turn.
“Dear me, Pip, I seem to be fresh out of pads and pencils. Might it be possible—”

He saw one of my hands steal up to find something behind my ear. “I'll be darned,” I said, “a yellow Ticonderoga Number 2!” My other hand slipped to my back pants pocket. “And hey, an Iron-Face Indian Ring-Back Notepad Number 12!”

“Extraordinary!”

“Extraordinary!”

Mr. Dickens wheeled about, surveying the world from each and every window, speaking now north, now north by east, now east, now south:

“I've traveled two long weeks with an idea. Bastille Day. Do you know it?”

“The French Fourth of July?”

“Remarkable boy! By Bastille Day this book must be in full flood. Will you help me breach the tide gates of the Revolution, Pip?”

“With
these?
” I looked at the pad and pencil in my hands.

“Lick the pencil tip, boy!”

I licked.

“Top of the page: the title. Title.” Mr. Dickens mused, head down, rubbing his chin whiskers. “Pip, what's a rare fine title for a novel that happens half in London, half in Paris?”

“A—” I ventured.

“Yes?”

“
A Tale
,” I went on.

“Yes?!”

“A Tale of … Two Cities?!”

“Madame!” Grandma looked up as he spoke. “This boy is a genius!”

“I read about this day in the Bible,” said Grandma. “Everything Ends by noon.”

“Put it down, Pip.” Mr. Dickens tapped my pad. “Quick.
A Tale of Two Cities
. Then, mid-page. Book the First. ‘Recalled to Life.' Chapter 1. ‘The Period.'”

I scribbled. Grandma worked. Mr. Dickens squinted at the sky and at last intoned:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the Season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter—”

“My,” said Grandma, “you speak
fine
.”

“Madame.” The author nodded, then, eyes shut, snapped his fingers to remember, on the air. “Where was I, Pip?”

“It was the winter,” I said, “of
despair
.”

Very late in the afternoon I heard Grandma calling someone named Ralph, Ralph, down below. I didn't know who that was. I was writing hard.

A minute later, Grandpa called, “Pip!”

I jumped. “Yes, sir!”

“Dinnertime, Pip,” said Grandpa, up the stairwell.

I sat down at the table, hair wet, hands damp. I looked over at Grandpa. “How did you know … Pip?”

“Heard the name fall out the window an hour ago.”

“Pip?” said Mr. Wyneski, just come in, sitting down.

“Boy,” I said. “I been everywhere this afternoon. The Dover Coach on the Dover Road. Paris! Traveled so much I got writer's cramp! I—”

“Pip” said Mr. Wyneski, again.

Grandpa came warm and easy to my rescue.

“When I was twelve, changed my name—on several occasions.” He counted the tines on his fork. “Dick. That was Dead-Eye Dick. And … John. That was for Long John Silver. Then: Hyde. That was for the other half of Jekyll—”