HARPO’S
SHACK
William Kirk
Orion
is the name given to the large constellation of stars that is prominent during
the winter months in the northern hemisphere.
Some of its brightest stars are known by names of Arabic origin: Betelgeuse, Rigel, Saiph . . . . The
three stars that form the central line or the belt of the large
connect-the-dots figure of Orion are Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka.
The man is asleep on a couch in a small house
near the top of a hill in the Coast Range of central California. The house is cold when he awakes. He rises slowly, pulls the quilt around his
shoulders, and shuffles over to the front window to look out west toward the
ocean. He watches until the last
red-orange stripes of diffracted sunlight have dissolved into the water. Time to wake up. Time to get on with it. Whatever it is.
He cannot quite reconstruct the odd dream that
preceded his waking, but it had something to do with seeing his father again
and hearing one of the old man's credo lines:
"Try to live your life."
As contrasted with--what? And of
course that led to some of the other old bits of paternal wisdom that now came
back to him. In the first half of life
you try to find out who you are; in the second half you try to forget it. You can’t be responsible without being
responsive . . . . Right, right. OK, Pop.
Back in
the present, the cold hardwood floor reminds his stockinged
feet that the rotating Earth is still carrying California steadily away from
the sun. Time for corrective
action. Ten minutes worth of burning
propane in the floor furnace will take the chill off the place and add only
trivially to global warming. Very
pleasant prospect. Wrapped in warmth,
wrapped in memory, wrapped in grief. Or
maybe just rapt in grief. Ha ha, a little joke there.
All right, on with it. First decision: not the furnace but a fire in
the fireplace instead. Better to earn
some warmth with something a bit more physical than simply resetting the
thermostat. He checks the fireplace pit,
which is long unused and relatively clean.
Good. So discard the quilt,
adjust bunched-up shirt and pants, slip feet into old loafers, pull on the
sweatshirt from the annual Physics Department softball game, and head toward
the kitchen. Now find a
flashlight--there, next to the good white dishes, on the shelf below the fancy
copper chafing dish. Note in passing
that the kitchen is grungy but all its main objects are neatly in their
assigned places. Now through the back
door into the small garden, where the light coming out through the kitchen
window is reflected back dimly from the orange winter berries that remain on
the graceful nearby shrub. The shrub's
name is . . . cotoneaster? Yes, that
sounds right. Kate must have told him
the name.
Flashlight and canvas wood-tote in hand, he
walks to the woodpile at the back of the house. The night is moonless and
already very dark. The chill air induces
a shiver and a trickle of adrenaline.
The flashlight casts a bright spot on one end of the double stack of
sawn and split logs, one stack against the house wall, the other away from the
wall, with a small space between. He
picks out a few short sticks for kindling, then moves on to the larger
logs. Grasping the third of these, he
hears a soft rustling sound. Then
silence. Then after several seconds the
same sound again. He waits, listening: what, what?
After more seconds: nothing, nothing.
But with his touch of another log the sound comes more distinctly, its
source seemingly in the space between the stacks, the dry rustle now overlain
with a clicking quality.
He jumps back.
A snake! A rattlesnake in these
hills? Vastly unlikely but not unheard
of. He wishes the spot of light were a
flood, but it isn't. He searches along
the fir-needled ground for a longer stick, finds one, uses it to push the same
log again--rustle click rattle! Now the
quick juices of flight and fight generate an energetic burst that carries him
quickly back into the house. Work boots
replace loafers; a heavy jacket covers the sweatshirt. His hands now in thick leather gardening
gloves, he carries the flashlight and a hoe from the edge of the garden back to
the woodpile. Ready!
But better be a little cautious now. He darts the flashlight's narrow beam around
the stacked logs. He considers what he
knows about such snakes. The classic
diamondback, the ability to sense heat, the suddenness of a strike. In this chill air surely the snake must be
sluggish, even hibernating? Except that
it rattled! The picture in his head now
is a thick coil of colored diamond patterns, undulating before the pressure of
some unfelt wind, slowly swelling and subsiding with the patient pulsation of
life. Now the imagined snake suddenly
lashes out, then again, more slowly; then again and again, each time more
slowly, until the motion of the first blurred stroke of violence has run down
into the soft reaching of a caress.
The reverie persists until the head of the
snake in his mind rises up from its coils above a flared and flattened neck: a
wonderful diamondback cobra. Very
creative. The Herpetological Society of
the Pacific will welcome the news.
Announcing the discovery of—but suddenly a name for the snake pops into
his head. The snake's name is
Newberry. He has no idea where the name
came from.
He moves along the woodpile to the remembered
place, flashlight in left hand, gloved right hand squeezing down rhythmically
on the handle of the hoe. No desire to
hurt the snake. No desire to be hurt by the snake. But much desire. He pushes the top log with the blade of the
hoe and listens. No sound but that of
his shallow breathing. He moves the spot
of light quickly down to the base of the stack, fearful that the snake might
come out at him from below. Need a
floodlight for this. Get a flood for
next time. Next time? He uses the hoe to push again at the top of
the stack, alert for a response. . . . No sound, nothing.
Now the absence of sound, of something,
becomes uncomfortable and soon progresses to unendurable. He speaks. "Listen, Newberry, I don't
want to hurt you, but I don't want you living in my woodpile." He smiles.
Except for a few words with the clerk at the Summit Road grocery store,
it has been many days since he has last spoken in person and directly and out
loud to a fellow creature. "So
please come out of there and trot off to somewhere else." The incongruity of "trot" adds a rictal touch to the grin. "Or you can slither, if you
want to. Come right ahead. No problem."
And no answer.
Now the hoe blade hooks behind the front stack of wood and pulls several
logs down to the ground. Thump,
thump. Nothing. Maybe the snake has moved. He steps back from the woodpile and begins to
search along the needled ground for any sign of the snake, or perhaps just for
any sign. He covers the small area in a systematic
grid, at first cautiously but then quickening, as it seems more likely that the
snake has gone. The search grows cold.
The night grows cold. The world
grows cold. He stops searching. He switches off the flashlight and stands
silent for a time, hearing as not before the sissing
white noise of the light wind insinuating itself through the tall firs above
his head. In this part of the Coast
Range some of the climax Douglas firs have twinning genes that produce huge,
almost perfectly symmetrical double-trunked trees. Old Lester Elwell
down the road calls them Schoolmarms.
All right, give it up and move on. But he is not quite ready for that. The story of the almost-snake needs a
resolution. Flashlight back on, he finds
a dried-puddle soft area in the ground, drops the light, then uses both hands
to drive the hoe blade into the clay.
The blade cuts deeply and sticks, the handle rocking out a quick
metronomic tempo behind him as he moves back to the woodpile with light in
hand. He side steps smartly along the
thigh-high stack, right hand pulling the top logs forward to the ground,
sometimes toppling most of a column by pressing down as he pulls. He goes at it vigorously, grunting with the
effort, until all of the forward stack is scattered skewly
about the ground.
He says aloud, "Damn it, Newberry, where
are you?" He is surprised to be
speaking again. He begins to realize that Newberry, perhaps Ms. Newberry, is
not the only intended auditor. A sweep
of the light round the small yard now shows a randomly aligned jumble of
firewood. Chaos and Old Night, before
the creation of the world and the comfort of physical law. But better chaos than frozen symmetry. The spot of light pauses at the driven
hoe. Its handle now resembles the shaft
of a long arrow shot in through the trees from a distant archer. The shaft points back at a shallow angle
under the fir limbs to a spot in the southeastern sky, where the bright star
Sirius with its shy companion is now well clear of the horizon. He raises his arms in mock Eureka and says
without speaking, A sign! A sign! My
kingdom for a sign! Follow, follow the
star!
He moves back toward the house. His sense of self is that he has momentarily
split into two, or perhaps that he is simultaneously present in two different
streams of time. In the garden the
orange winter cotoneaster berries gleam cheerfully in reflected light. His second self feels quixotic, farcical but
brave. He mounts the magic steed, jumps
the barrier into the parallel flow of another time, and enters the back door.
"Kate?" he says. "Kate, let's go up to the Point. I've got a funny story to tell you.”
But
almost immediately the brittle barrier between two selves begins to yield to
the strain of separation; it crazes, cracks, shatters into shards. And with it the separate stream of another
time crashes back into Now with a sound that strangles between a sob and a
sigh. Goddamn it, not even a decent whimper.
Sitting on the floor now, cross-legged and
cramped, chin resting on knuckles, he wishes he could cry. Kate is not here. Of course Kate is not here, nor has she been
here for a long time. The message that
bubbles up from the shrink-infested waters of self-help is that it's OK to
cry. But he can't. Would if he could but he can't. Or maybe there just ought to be a law that,
after a certain age, you don't have to cry anymore. Don't have to if I don't wanna. Don't got to show you no crybaby badges.
Now time decides to take a break, wandering
off and waiting until it is needed again in the local space. It resumes ticking when the man emerges from
reverie, rises, takes off the heavy gloves, keeps the flashlight, sets the
floor-furnace thermostat to fifty-five degrees, and leaves the house, this time
through the front door. He moves out to the road, then walks the several
hundred yards up to the hilltop place they call the Point. Thirty line-of-sight miles across dark water
the lights of the Monterey Peninsula glow warmly in the clear air. In the southern sky above Monterey Orion the
Hunter is halfway through his nightly round as Keeper of the Game Preserve. The
small eyes evolved through endless generations of life watch the night sky and
see that almost nothing ever changes.
The larger eyes evolved through a few recent generations see that almost
nothing ever remains the same.
Now memory selects from the past a night very
like this night--dark water, Monterey, bright sky, Orion--and Kate speaks:
"Beautiful. This is my favorite
place."
"Orion in winter," he says. He says it again, but this time it comes out
as "The Lion in Winter. . . . All right, not the Lion, just the
Hunter."
"I think we should go there."
"Monterey? Good idea.
It's been a while since . . . . Wait a minute, that's not what we’re
talking about, is it?"
"No, not Monterey. Orion is what I mean."
"Uh-huh. I know you're in a playful mood,
so I'll gloss over the difficult travel arrangements and just ask, What's
happening here?"
"'Playful' is about half right. Anyhow, what I've been thinking about lately
is that we should pick a place we'd like to go to in our next lives."
Pause before he says, "I don't think I've really been counting
on a next life, at least not until now.
But if you're half playful, then you're probably half serious, too. Are you?"
"I don't know. I suppose so.
If by 'serious' you mean, am I actually starting to believe in that
stuff—in a next life? No, of course
not. But it's not exactly that I don't
believe it, either. It's just that,
what's the point about believing or not believing? It doesn't change anything."
"I'm afraid that's something of a
minority view of things. But I like
it. If you don't put a lot of energy
into the standard stories, one way or the other, then it probably does free you
up to invent your own story, fairy tale . . . whatever."
"Yes, I guess that's what I'm
doing," she says. She points at the
southern sky and says, "So my story tells me that Orion is where Heaven
is, or Avalon, or the center of the universe--some marvelous place. And the
fairy-tale part of it is that that's the place we'll go to in our next
lives."
"Remember now, the universe doesn't have
a center."
"I know. You've told me that, but I must
say that I can't picture what that could mean."
"I can't make a picture of it, either,
but there’s a case to be made that it’s probably true.”
"Anyhow, don't start going all literal on
me now, right in the middle of the story.
After all, the universe may not have a Heaven or an Avalon, either. But our story says it does."
"All right, I'm with you," he
says. He waves his hand at Orion and
says, "But there's a lot of sky up there.
We'd better pick a starting point, a place to meet."
"I'd like to start with the three central
stars, Orion's belt. I know they already
have names, but I think we should give them our own names so they'll be easier
to remember."
"You've already thought about it, I
gather."
"Yes, I have. I got the idea while I was
listening to the old Negro spiritual."
She sings softly:
Nebuchadnezzar was
the King of Babylon,
Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego.
"That's it? Name the stars after the guys in the
Bible? Oh, of course, that is it-- the stars are the fiery
furnaces.”
"Yes, and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego
were not consumed by the flames."
"Excellent! Great names.
You know what popped into my head when you said 'give them our own
names?'"
"What?"
"Groucho, Harpo, and Chico--not quite as high-brow literary as yours,
I'm afraid."
"No, but more fun. And besides, maybe the harp music in Heaven
has been Harpo’s doing all along. . . . So we have
Meshach or Harpo as the name of the middle belt
star. Which one?
"Let's see: Meshach sounds like 'Myshach.' Or break it into two words and it's 'my
shack.' Or maybe--"
"Harpo's
Shack."
"Perfect!
Now give us a wee hug, luv." A long pause until he says, "There's
just one more thing. Statistically, it's
likely that I'll be the one who gets to go there first. That's good.
That way I can slay any dragons that may pop up between here and Harpo's Shack."
" Dr. Dragonslayer.
. . . All right, but if I go first, I'll
try to tame the dragons with potions and magic spells."
On the way back toward the house, he says,
"That was fun. Playful has its
rewards."
"Yes.
I like the idea of picking a star and giving it a special name. Even if we don't really end up going there
someday, it still serves a purpose."
"Sure.
At best, it's a destination. At
worst--well, there is no 'at worst.'"
"No, but there's an 'at least.' At least it's a nice tombstone in the sky. .
. . Now let's go home and get a fire
going."
And with that the long memory of nights past
runs down to blurry pictures and mumbled sounds above a base of silence. The man turns away from Orion and Monterey
and starts back down the hill toward home.
Along the side of house and approaching the back door, his dark-adapted
eyes make out a small object against the light-colored earth of the garden
path. The flashlight spot picks out the
form of a small lizard, slightly longer but no thicker than a finger. The lizard looks alert, ready to skitter off
at any moment, but does not. It is of
course another cold-blooded animal, like the snake, thus not very lively in the
chilling air. In the bright light its
eyes glow orange and unblinking. Perhaps
it is trapped by the light, as rabbits are or sometimes deer. But when the light moves away to allow
escape, then back again, the lizard is still there.
Now the man drops to one knee on the path
beside the lizard and gently slides the palm-up side of his middle finger under
its little body. The lizard moves for
the first time but only to extend its legs and cling to the rounded surface of
his finger. He rises stiffly, cradling
the lizard in his hand, careful to move slowly toward the door. Inside the house, he sinks awkwardly to a
sitting position on the floor, near the furnace vent, the lizard still placid
in his hand. The lizard is beautiful,
with wonderfully delicate feet and textured dark brown skin, like the curtains
in the bedroom. He wants to call Kate to
come see the lizard, even rehearsing the phrase, but the moment has somehow
become ceremonial, and no words escape into the air.
The warm air rises up from the floor in a broad
column, and after a time the lizard begins to grow restless, shifting its feet
about, then with hesitant steps moving toward the side of his hand. As it grows warmer the lizard walks on, still
slowly but now steadily, with its tiny, long-fingered feet passing from one of
his hands to the other, palm to palm, palm to back of hand, back to palm . . .
each surface moving into place just in time to continue the lizard's
journey. The trek leads nowhere but is
mesmerizing while it lasts. It ends when
the man's attention finally wanders for a moment, and the lizard walks on and
falls the short distance to the hard floor.
Now instantly his eyes start full of tears,
and a deep racking sob assaults the silence.
The crying continues for a time, his face shut down in anguish, and for
at least some partial measure of that time he cries unselfed,
without also watching the crier crying.
It is Eden again, with innocence restored but then quickly lost in the
need to get back to the lizard. He wipes
his forefingers against his eyes until his vision clears enough to see the
lizard before him on the floor. The lizard lies on its belly without moving,
but its eyes are open, and after a moment its little body expands and relaxes
in what seems oddly like a sigh. Now the
lizard draws in its sprawled feet and rises, steps tentatively, sighs again,
raises its head to look around, walks a few steps, alert now, in charge, all
right.
The sense of relief is strong, expressed in a
long exhale. From the earlier dream the
old face of his father comes unbidden into his mind. He speaks, aloud, directly, in person, into
the void:
"I'm trying, Pop."
Now he rises to one knee and lifts the lizard
gently between thumb and forefinger. He
cups the lizard against his chest, feeling the little feet brush softly against
his hands. He moves out through the back
door and places the lizard on the garden path near the spot where he had first
found it. The lizard is still for a
moment, as if assimilating the change back to coldness, then walks a few feet
off into the garden, stopping under the lower branches of the cotoneaster
bush. When the lizard turns back to look
toward the house, its orange eyes are just the same color as the winter
berries. In the light falling through
the kitchen window the man sees the reflections of the berries and of the
lizard's eyes as indistinguishable--silent, cold, unchanging, locked forever in
the penetrating glare of darkness.
But then the little dragon blinked.