R is for Rocket (26 page)

    Misery in a deep well!

    "Papa, come watch us; it's March!" cried Meg. "And we're going to the Hill with all the kids from town!"

    Uncle Einar grunted. "What hill is that?"

    "The Kite Hill, of course!" they all sang together.

    Now he looked at them.

    Each held a large paper kite, their faces sweating with anticipation and an animal glowing. In their small fingers were balls of white twine. From the kites, colored red and blue and yellow and green, hung caudal appendages of cotton and silk strips.

    "We'll fly our kites!" said Ronald. "Won't you come?"

    "No," he said, sadly. "I mustn't be seen by anyone or there'd be trouble."

    "You could hide and watch from the woods," said Meg. "We made the kites ourselves. Just because we know how."

    "How do you know how?"

    "You're our father!" was the instant cry. "That's why!"

    He looked at his children for a long while. He sighed. "A kite festival, is it?"

    "Yes, sir!"

    "I'm going to win," said Meg.

    "No,
I'm!"
Michael contradicted.

    "Me,
me!"
piped Stephan.

    "Wind up the chimney!" roared Uncle Einar, leaping high with a deafening kettledrum of wings. "Children! Children, I love you dearly!"

    "Father, what's wrong?" said Michael, backing off.

    "Nothing, nothing, nothing!" chanted Einar. He flexed his wings to their greatest propulsion and plundering. Whoom! they slammed like cymbals. The children fell flat in the backwash! "I have it, I
have
it! I'm free again! Fire in the flue! Feather on the wind! Brunilla!" Einar called to the house. His wife appeared. "I'm free!" he called, flushed and tall, on his toes. "Listen, Brunilla, I don't need the night anymore! I can fly by day! I don't need the night! I'll fly
every
day and
any
day of the year from now on! — but I waste time, talking. Look!"

    And as the worried members of his family watched, he seized the cotton tail from one of the little kites, tied it to his belt behind, grabbed the twine ball, held one end in his teeth, gave the other end to his children, and up, up into the air he flew, away into the March wind!

    And across the meadows and over the farms his children ran, letting out string to the daylit sky, bubbling and stumbling, and Brunilla stood back in the farmyard and waved and laughed to see what was happening; and her children marched to the far Kite Hill and stood, the four of them, holding the ball of twine in their eager, proud fingers, each tugging and directing and pulling. And the children from Mellin Town came running with
their
small kites to let up on the wind, and they saw the great green kite leap and hover in the sky and exclaimed:

    "Oh, oh, what a kite! What a kite! Oh, I wish I'd a kite like that! Where, where did you
get
it!"

    "Our father made it!" cried Meg and Michael and Stephen and Ronald, and gave an exultant pull on the twine and the humming, thundering kite in the sky dipped and soared and made a great and magical exclamation mark across a cloud!

"Seems like the town is full of machines," said Douglas, running. "Mr. Auffmann and his Happiness Machine, Miss Fem and Miss Roberta and their Green Machine. Now, Charlie, what you handing me?"

    "A Time Machine!" panted Charlie Woodman, pacing him. "Mother's, scout's, Injun's honor!"

    "Travels in the past and future?" John Huff asked, easily circling them.

    "Only in the past, but you can't have everything. Here we are."

    Charlie Woodman pulled up at a hedge.

    Douglas peered in at the old house. "Heck, that's Colonel Freeleigh's place. Can't be no Time Machine in there. He's no inventor, and if he was, we'd known about an important thing like a Time Machine years ago."

    Charlie and John tiptoed up the front-porch steps. Douglas snorted and shook his head, staying at the bottom of the steps.

    "Okay, Douglas," said Charlie. "Be a knucklehead. Sure, Colonel Freeleigh didn't
invent
this Time Machine. But he's got a proprietary interest in it, and it's been here all the time. We were too darned dumb to notice! So long, Douglas Spaulding, to you!"

    Charlie took John's elbow as though he was escorting a lady, opened the front-porch screen and went in. The screen door did not slam.

    Douglas had caught the screen and was following silently.

    Charlie walked across the enclosed porch, knocked, and opened the inside door. They all peered down a long dark hall toward a room that was lit like an undersea grotto, soft green, dim, and watery.

    "Colonel Freeleigh?"

    Silence.

    "He don't hear so good," whispered Charlie. "But he told me to just come on in and yell.
Colonel!"

    The only answer was the dust sifting down and around the spiral stair well from above. Then there was a faint stir in that undersea chamber at the far end of the hall.

    They moved carefully along and peered into a room which contained but two pieces of furniture — an old man and a chair. They resembled each other, both so thin you could see just how they had been put together, ball and socket, sinew and joint. The rest of the room was raw floor boards, naked walls and ceiling, and vast quantities of silent air.

    "He looks dead," whispered Douglas.

    "No, he's just thinking up new places to travel to," said Charlie, very proud and quiet. "Colonel?"

    One of the pieces of brown furniture moved and it was the colonel, blinking around, focusing, and smiling a wild and toothless smile. "Charlie!"

    "Colonel, Doug and John here came to — "

    "Welcome, boys; sit down, sit down!"

    The boys sat, uneasily, on the floor.

    "But where's the — " said Douglas. Charlie jabbed his ribs quickly.

    "Where's the what?" asked Colonel Freeleigh.

    "Where's the point in
us
talking, he means." Charlie grimaced at Douglas, then smiled at the old man. "We got nothing to say. Colonel,
you
say something."

    "Beware, Charlie, old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft."

    "Ching Ling Soo," suggested Charlie casually.

    "Eh?" said the colonel.

    "Boston," Charlie prompted, "1910."

    "Boston, 1910 . . ." The colonel frowned. "Why, Ching Ling Soo, of course!"

    "Yes, sir, Colonel."

    "Let me see, now . . ." The colonel's voice murmured, it drifted away on serene lake waters. "Let me see . . ."

    The boys waited.

    Colonel Freeleigh closed his eyes.

    "October first, 1910, a calm cool fine autumn night, the Boston Variety Theatre, yes, there it
is.
Full house, all waiting. Orchestra, fanfare, curtain! Ching Ling Soo, the great Oriental Magician! There he is, on stage! And there I am, front row center! 'The Bullet Trickl' he cries. 'Volunteers!' The man next to me goes up. 'Examine the rifle!' says Ching. 'Mark the bullet!' says he. 'Now, fire this marked bullet from this rifle, using my face for a target, and,' says Ching, 'at the far end of the stage I will catch the bullet in my
teeth!
' "

    Colonel Freeleigh took a deep breath and paused.

    Douglas was staring at him, half puzzled, half in awe. John Huff and Charlie were completely lost. Now the old man went on, his head and body frozen, only his lips moving.

    " 'Ready, aim, fire!' cries Ching Ling Soo. Bang! The rifle cracks. Bang! Ching Ling Soo shrieks, he staggers, he falls, his face all red. Pandemonium. Audience on its feet. Something wrong with the rifle. 'Dead,' someone says. And they're right. Dead. Horrible, horrible . . . I'll always remember . . . his face a mask of red, the curtain coming down fast and the women weeping . . . 1910 . . . Boston . . . Variety Theatre . . . poor man . . . poor man . . ."

    Colonel Freeleigh slowly opened his eyes

    "Boy, Colonel," said Charlie, "that was fine. Now how about Pawnee Bill?"

    "Pawnee Bill . . . ?"

    "And the time you was on the prairie way back in seventy-five."

    "Pawnee Bill . . ." The colonel moved into darkness. "Eighteen seventy-five . . . yes, me and Pawnee Bill on a little rise in the middle of that prairie, waiting. 'Sh!' says Pawnee Bill. 'Listen.' The prairie like a big stage all set for the storm to come. Thunder. Soft. Thunder again. Not so soft. And across that prairie as far as the eye could see this big ominous yellow-dark cloud full of black lightning, somehow sunk to earth, fifty miles wide, fifty miles long, a mile high, and no more than an inch off the ground. 'Lord!' I cried, 'Lord!' —  from up on my hill — 'Lord!' The earth pounded like a mad heart, boys, a heart gone to panic. My bones shook fit to break. The earth shook: rat-a-tat rat-a-tat, boom! Rumble. That's a rare word: rumble. Oh, how that mighty storm rumbled along down, up, and over the rises, and all you could see was the cloud and nothing inside. 'That's them!' cried Pawnee Bill. And the cloud was dust! Not vapors or rain, no, but prairie dust flung up from the tinder-dry grass like fine cornmeal, like pollen all blazed with sunlight now, for the sun had come out. I shouted again! Why? Because in all that hell-fire filtering dust now a veil moved aside and I saw them, I swear it! The grand army of the ancient prairie: the bison, the buffalo!"

    The colonel let the silence build, then broke it again.

    "Heads like giant Negroes' fists, bodies like locomotives! Twenty, fifty, two hundred thousand iron missiles shot out of the west, gone off the track and flailing cinders, their eyes like blazing coals, rumbling toward oblivion!

    "I saw that the dust rose up and for a little while showed me that sea of humps, of dolloping manes, black shaggy waves rising, falling . . . 'Shoot!' says Pawnee Bill. 'Shoot!' And I cock and aim. 'Shoot!' he says. And I stand there feeling like God's right hand, looking at that great vision of strength and violence going by, going by, midnight at noon, like a glinty funeral train all black and long and sad and forever and you don't fire at a funeral train, now do you, boys?
do
you? All I wanted then was for the dust to sink again and cover the black shapes of doom which pummeled and jostled on in great burdensome commotions. And, boys, the dust came down. The cloud hid the million feet that were drumming up the thunder and dusting out the storm. I heard Pawnee Bill curse and hit my arm. But I was glad I hadn't touched that cloud or the power within that cloud with so much as a pellet of lead. I just wanted to stand watching time bundle by in great trundlings all hid by the storm the bison made and carried with them toward eternity.

    "An hour, three hours, six, it took for the storm to pass on away over the horizon toward less kind men than me. Pawnee Bill was gone, I stood alone, stone deaf. I walked all numb through a town a hundred miles south and heard not the voices of men and was satisfied not to hear. For a little while I wanted to remember the thunder. I hear it still, on summer afternoons like this when the rain shapes over the lake; a fearsome, wondrous sound . . . one I wish you might have heard. . . ."

    The dim light filtered through Colonel Freeleigh's nose which was large and like white porcelain which cupped a very thin and tepid orange tea indeed.

    "Is he asleep?" asked Douglas at last.

    "No," said Charlie. "Just recharging his batteries."

    Colonel Freeleigh breathed swiftly, softly, as if he'd run a long way. At last he opened his eyes.

    "Yes,
sir!
" said Charlie, in admiration.

    "Hello, Charlie." The colonel smiled at the boys puzzledly.

    "That's Doug and that's John," said Charlie.

    "How-de-do, boys."

    The boys said hello.

    "But-" said Douglas. "Where is the-?"

    "My gosh, you're dumb!" Charlie jabbed Douglas in the arm. He turned to the colonel. "You were saying, sir?"

    "
Was
I?" murmured the old man.

    "The Civil War," suggested John Huff quietly. "Does he remember that?"

    "Do I remember?" said the colonel. "Oh, I do, I do!" His voice trembled as he shut up his eyes again. "Everything! Except . . . which side I fought on. . . ."

    "The
color
of your uniform — " Charlie began.

    "Colors begin to run on you," whispered the colonel. "It's gotten hazy. I see soldiers with me, but a long time ago I stopped seeing color in their coats or caps. I was born in Illinois, raised in Virginia, married in New York, built a house in Tennessee and now, very late, here I am, good Lord, back in Green Town. So you see why the colors run and blend. . . ."

    "But you remember which side of hills you fought on?" Charlie did not raise his voice. "Did the sun rise on your left or right? Did you march toward Canada or Mexico?"

    "Seems some mornings the sun rose on my good right hand, some mornings over my left shoulder. We marched all directions. It's most seventy years since. You forget suns and mornings that long past."

    "You remember winning, don't you? A battle won, somewhere?"

    "No," said the old man, deep under. "I don't remember anyone winning anywhere any time. War's never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns. But I don't suppose that's the kind of victory you boys mean for me to talk on."

    "Antietam," said John Huff. "Ask about Antietam."

    "I was there."

    The boys' eyes grew bright. "Bull Run, ask him Bull Run . . ."

    "I was there." Softly.

    "What about Shiloh?"

    "There's never been a year in my life I haven't thought, what a lovely name and what a shame to see it only on battle records."