Part 7 (1/2)
”Here comes a pretty girl, built one brick atop another! Quick!” Grandpa tightened his lids. ”Most beautiful girl in the world!” Grandpa couldn't help but open one eye. ”Ah!” said everyone. ”Right, Grandpa?”
”Nope!”
The young Woman curved this way and that, leaning as the train pushed or pulled her; as pretty as something you might win at a carnival by knocking the milk bottles down.
”Bos.h.!.+” Grandpa slammed his windows shut.
”Open, Sesame!”
Instantly, within, he felt his eyeb.a.l.l.s redirected.
”Let go!” shouted Grandpa. ”Grandma'll kill me!”
”She'll never know know!”
The young woman turned as if called. She lurched back as if she might fell on all all of them. ”Stop!” cried Grandpa. ”Cecy's with us! She's innocent and-” of them. ”Stop!” cried Grandpa. ”Cecy's with us! She's innocent and-”
”Innocent!” The great attic rocked with laughter.
”Grandfather,” said Cecy, very softly. ”With all the night excursions I have made, all the traveling I have done, I am not-”
”Innocent,” said the four cousins.
”Look here!” protested Grandpa.
”No, you look,” whispered Cecy. ”I have sewn my way through bedroom windows on a thousand summer nights. I have lain in cool s...o...b..ds of white pillows and sheets, and I have swum unclothed in rivers on August noons and lain on riverbanks for birds to see-”
”I-” Grandpa screwed his fists into his ears-”will not listen!”
”Yes.” Cecy's voice wandered in cool meadows remembering. ”I have been in a girl's warm summer face and looked out at a young man, and I have been in that same young man, the same instant, breathing out fiery breaths, gazing at that forever summer girl. I have lived in mating mice or circling lovebirds or bleeding-heart doves. I have hidden in two b.u.t.terflies fused on a blossom of clover-”
”d.a.m.n!” Grandpa winced.
”I've been in sleighs on December midnights when snow fell and smoke plumed out the horses' pink nostrils and there were fur blankets piled high with six young people hidden warm and delving and wis.h.i.+ng and finding and-”
”Stop! I'm sunk!” said Grandpa.
”Bravo!” said the cousins. ”More!”
”-and I have been inside a grand castle of bone and flesh-the most beautiful woman in the world...!”
Grandpa was amazed and held still.
For now it was as if snow fell upon and quieted him. He felt a stir of flowers about his brow, and a blowing of July morning wind about his ears, and all through his limbs a burgeoning of warmth, a growth of bosom about his ancient flat chest, a fire struck to bloom in the pit of his stomach. Now, as she talked, his lips softened and colored and knew poetry and might have let it pour forth in incredible rains, and his worn and iron-rusty fingers tum bled in his lap and changed to cream and milk and melting apple-snow. He looked down at them, stunned, clenched his fists to stop this womanish thing!
”No! Give me back my hands! Wash my mouth out with soap!”
”Enough talk,” said an inner voice, Philip.
”We're wasting time,” said Tom.
”Let's go say h.e.l.lo to that young lady across the aisle,” said John. ”All those in favor?”
”Aye!” said the Salt Lake Tabernacle choir from one single throat. Grandpa was yanked to his feet by unseen wires.
”Any dissenters?”
”Me!” thundered Grandpa.
Grandpa squeezed his eyes, squeezed his head, squeezed his ribs. His entire body was that incredibly strange bed that sank to smother its terrified victims. ”Gotcha!”
The cousins ricocheted about in the dark.
”Help! Cecy! Light! Give us light! Cecy!”
”I'm here!” said Cecy.
The old man felt himself touched, twitched, tickled, now behind the ears, now the spine. Now his knees knocked, now his ankles cracked. Now his lungs filled with feathers, his nose sneezed soot.
”Will, his left leg, move! Tom, the right leg, hup hup! Philip, right arm, John, the left! Fling! Me for his flimsy turkey-bone body! Ready? Set!”
”Heave!”
”Double-time. Run!”
Grandpa ran.
But he didn't run across the aisle, he ran down it, gasping, eyes bright. ”Wait!” cried the Greek chorus. ”The lady's back there! Someone trip him! Who's got his legs? Will? Tom!”
Grandpa flung the vestibule door wide, leaped out on the windy platform and was about to hurl himself out into a meadow of swiftly flas.h.i.+ng sunflowers when: ”Freeze! Statues!” said the chorus stuffed in his mouth. And statue he became on the backside of the swiftly vanis.h.i.+ng train.
A moment later, spun about, Grandpa found himself back inside. As the train rocketed around a curve, he sat on the young lady's hands.
”Excuse,” Grandpa leaped up, ”me-”
”Excused.” The lady rearranged her sat-on hands.
”No trouble, please, no, no!” Grandpa collapsed on the seat across from her, eyes clammed shut. ”d.a.m.n! h.e.l.l! Statues, everyone! Bats, back in the belfry! d.a.m.n!”
The cousins grinned and melted the wax in his ears.
”Remember,” hissed Grandpa behind his teeth, ”you're young in there, I'm a mummy out here!”
”But-” sighed the chamber quartet fiddling behind his lids-”well act to make you young!” He felt them light a fuse in his stomach, a bomb in his chest.
”No!”