Velvet by Joey Brown

http://www.storysouth.com/fiction/2008/02/velvet.html

At 3:20am Auction Guy comes on John’s living room tv.
John would never admit to Dorie why, but he likes Auction Guy, thinks he’s like a cartoon. He’s somebody’s grandpa, or at least wears somebody’s grandpa’s old checked suit. He comes on cable Friday and Saturday nights.
“It’s the best of Bargain City,” Auction Guy says. “Just look at everything we have for you tonight, folks. If you like what you see, call the number on your screen and be the first to bid.”
There is no number on the screen. It’s someone on the stage holding a poster board with a phone number written in Magic Marker. John can see the person’s hand holding up the board.
John knows Bargain City’s set. It’s the stage at the community theater. He’s delivered for Coke there. It’s not his regular route, which is the best one in the Great Plains district, the one with all the convenience stores on US 81. It pays and it pays good for this part of Oklahoma, but John knows all he really does is stock groceries and drive in circles.
Auction Guy is wound up tonight. His toupee is a more cock-eyed than usual. The show raises money for charity, but John doesn’t remember which one. He’s never called the poster board number. He just likes watching Auction Guy’s energy, the way the old man is never slowed when he gives the wrong prices, mispronounces the names of donors. He doesn’t stop even when he breaks things. Tonight he stands in front of a folding table stacked with purple shot glasses, old boxes of hair dye, and dolphin figurines made of genuine porcelain. When Auction Guy bumps the table, the dolphins ring together like bells. “Whoa there, fishies!”
John laughs.
Down the hall the bed creaks. John mutes the tv and listens. Dorie doesn’t move again, but John leaves the sound off. Auction Guy motions his viewers to follow him to some items hanging from a pegboard at the back of the set. The camera jerks and shudders as it follows Auction Guy. He’s already pointing to item in the row, but the picture blurs to refocus as it moves to each one. It looks like something Christmasy, but the camera is too out of focus for John to tell. He leans forward, hopeful. The bed creaks again. John turns the tv off.
In bed he works the pillow, looking for a cool spot. It’s warm for October. Everything feels slightly off. Dorie sleeps like a child. She’s very clear, John has observed, in her wants and her ways. Life is not the mystery to Dorie that it always is for John. She’s good at lots of things, especially playing house and having someone to take care of, and John feels pained sometimes that she’s as good as she is. He had a fantasy once of telling a girl how they’d be partners. That was the word he’d said in the picture in his head: we’re partners. He thinks Dorie might even like that he is the one she takes care of. But he’s not sure if she’s that specific. He hasn’t asked her to marry him, but she seems to assume he will. She gave him a bracelet she made, a leather cuff with two strings that tie. It has silver conchos and looks faintly Indian, and Coke won’t let him wear it while he’s on the job: non-regulation uniform. She says she loves him, and John has never asked for details, like why, for example, but he’s wondered. He kneads the pillow some more, trying to shape it into something he hasn’t found yet.
* * *
In the morning, when it’s light and Dorie is already moving in the house, John wakes on top of the covers. He figures he’s slept about three hours, what has recently become normal. He stares at the clock on his dresser where it sits aligned with his wallet, his watch, and a small black bowl for his change. Dorie brought the bowl when she moved in, and the aligning of his things is all her.
“You’re up?” she says from the doorway. John smells green apple soap and dryer sheets. She holds a laundry basket parked on her hip.
“I’m alive.”
“That’s good news. You got anything you especially want washed today?”
John wears red and tan pinstriped shirts and tan pants everyday, sometimes shorts when it’s hot. It’s the same uniform all the drivers in the Great Plains district wear. He owns little in the way of clothes of his own, but Dorie keeps all he has washed, ironed, and hung in coordinated rows: a-these-shirts-go-with-these-pants kind of thing. She gets most of it done when he’s not looking. He misses doing his own laundry.
“I’m good,” John says.
“Yeah? You don’t look all that good. Maybe vitamins.” She zips through the bedroom checking for items to add to the basket. She has the energy of Auction Guy, but she has all her own hair.
“Vitamins?”
“Maybe if you started taking vitamins. I saw some on tv the other day. Ones for men. If I see the commercial again I’ll order them for you. Okay?”
Dorie stands at the side of the bed and looks down at him. John feels heavy, cemented there. “Thanks,” he says.
Dorie smiles. “Sheets. Get up so I can wash the sheets.”
When John shaves he looks at his face in the mirror for longer than he probably ever has. He is 32 and looks old-man tired. His father would have said “Son, if you was a gas station dog, somebody’d done shot you.” That’s the look John has now.
He doesn’t know why he doesn’t sleep anymore. It’s just this thing that started one night, a few months ago. He lay awake in bed, in the room overstuffed with the dark bedroom suite, in his house that felt so full. He tugged on the sheet, and Dorie tugged back in her sleep. It meant nothing. But he felt the fabric pull from his hand, the slight ripping sound it made. He’d laid there, suddenly restless. Panic had trickled through him that Dorie would awaken and ask why he wasn’t sleeping and he’d be dumb about what to say, how to say it. He’d gone to the couch every night since.
Now of course Dorie knows he doesn’t sleep. She worries. She has bought him teas from a health food store, played soft music when she cooked. She changed all the light bulbs in the house to ones she says give off a diffused glow. She offered to give back her side of the bed. John has okay’ed all of her suggestions, tried each one though he has known all along they would not work. He has assured her she is not the problem, and he doesn’t believe she is. He just thinks about things he can’t put into words.
John craves home and good coffee. He wants to see to the end of his world, but not the end of his life. He wants a day off, but he can not name from what. He wishes keeping a cooler of beer next to his porch swing didn’t make him a redneck. He wants peace and quiet. A book that makes all the sense in the world. His name said out loud, always at the ends of things.
* * *
The day is Saturday. Chris arrives early in his pickup. John doesn’t know where they are going, but he has already said yes.
“I gotta go see a guy in Charlie,” Chris says when Dorie asks.
“Charlie?” she says. “Texas?”
“Charlie, Texas. Yeah, I think that’s what they call it.”
“That’s like fifty miles from here.”
“More like a hundred.” Chris places his palms together and makes an arrow of his hands. He looks down the length of his fingers like he’s sighting a deer standing just south of him. “See, Texas—“ he pauses in a way that John knows irritates Dorie, “Texas is all the way down in Texas.”
Dorie looks at John. “What is there in Charlie?”
“This guy I’m going to see. I told you,” Chris says. “And peaches.”
“Peaches? In October?”
“No, there ain’t no peaches in October. There’s peaches in the summer time.”
“Then why did you say peaches?”
“’Cause you asked about them They’re the best peaches down this way. Everybody goes to Charlie to buy their peaches.” Chris pats himself down, looking for his lighter. “’Cept for those who go to Stratford. Now Stratford’s got some good peaches.”
“Just stop talking,” Dorie says. John watches as her forehead scrunches tighter and tighter. She sorts clothes on the kitchen table. She makes a pile of her panties separate from John’s boxers. “So?”
“I’m going,” John says. “He might need me to help him with some stuff.”
“Stuff?”
They talk as if Chris isn’t in the room.
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.” John stands up. He takes his jacket from a hook by the door.
Chris lights his cigarette. He’s set his Zippo on the highest setting. The hiss crackles in the cool air of the house.
“Outside,” Dorie says. John’s notices she no longer adds “please.”
He watches Chris go out the screen door, puffing smoke through the mesh.
“I don’t mind you going,” she says. “It’s just you’re gonna make yourself sick. You don’t sleep. Then you run around with that one. You can’t be healthy like this.” She moves the clothes into their assigned piles. “Just don’t stay gone all day. Come home before supper.”
“Yeah,” John says. He watches Chris through the screen, shaking his head no.
“Y’all be careful.”
“Harmless fun,” Chris says through the door and smoke. “I’ll bring him back in one piece. Honest, Ma.”
“Not likely if you’re driving.”
“One sheep,” Chris says. He tosses the cigarette into the yard. John watches it pitch into the gray. “I run over one sheep and suddenly I’m the world’s worst driver. Wasn’t even a big one. I’d’ve swerved if it’d been a big one.”
Dorie looks at John. “Just be careful,” she says into his chest.
Chris’s canoe is still tied to the roof of his truck, there since the one trip he took to the river in July.
“You ever going to take that thing off?”
“Nah. It’ll be spring again in . . .” Chris looks at his watch.
The view from the truck’s cab features a triangle of the yellow nylon rope that holds the canoe secure. John stares at the apex of that triangle as it disappears into the hull. He likes the way the rope seems to hold the truck steady when Chris swings onto the road, and the way the hull curves into a point and sails on. Chris has a brown paper bag of beer on the floorboard. John takes one. He doesn’t drink it. Right now he just likes holding it. “Where’re we going?” he asks.
“Hell if I know.” Chris looks in the mirror as if to check all the rest of John’s world stays behind them. “You want to go to Charlie?”
* * *
They arrive close to sundown. The exact distance and direction from John’s house in Oklahoma to Charlie in Texas proved more difficult to remember than either man has anticipated. A two-hour trip has taken the entire day. It is past supper time when Chris pulls them into town. Most all of the 109 population of Charlie mill the few blocks that make up the main drag. Long tables and awnings sit outside the storefronts. Church women sell apple butter and chances on a gas grill.
“Well, if it ain’t Sunday-go-to-meeting,” Chris says.
“Fall Fest.” John reads from the banner strung between streetlights. Rain sprinkles the windshield.
“Looks like we got here just in time.” Chris parks at the end of Main Street and they walk back. John thinks how happy all this would make Auction Guy. He sees pottery, horse blankets, shot glasses in just about every color. A man sits in a lawn chair at the side of a van, its doors thrown open, a brown and white cow hide displayed over the open doors. They pass tables covered in music boxes, necklaces made from rolled strips of newspaper, the same dolphin figurines John had seen on tv last night. Most of the sellers are stowing their things. Wind blows the rain a little harder. A sign, “Hides $295,” hits against John’s leg.
“You boys are late.” A lady puts rag dolls in a white Stroh’s box. “Should’a been here before the weather.”
“That’s us,” Chris says. “Always a day late and five dollars short.”
The lady waves her hand at Chris and they laugh like old neighbors. Chris stops, takes a doll from the box. John walks on to the end of the block, to a blanket spread on the sidewalk. Row after row of paintings on black velvet. They’re all of Mary, Jesus, bullfighters, cowboys, mountain men with pelts. They all look stark and defined against the velvet. John doesn’t know anything about Jesus, but he likes Jesus’ eyes in the picture at the end.
“All pictures ten dollars.”
John notices a woman in a coat so puffy she seems swallowed by it. She sits on the sidewalk next to the portraits. She motions John to look on.
He goes straight for the Jesus picture. He holds the frame loosely, feels the velvet hurriedly tucked and nailed, sees the dust in the pleats. Solid and square and warm and light.
“That is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.” Chris stands behind him now.
“Come on.”
“You come on. You can’t be serious, man. Why would you want that thing?”
“It says something to me.”
The way the fabric holds the paint, the fibers matted underneath. The muted, earthy colors, nubs raised on the surface.
“You know, I ain’t gonna be the least bit surprised if that thing does start saying stuff. Look how its eyes follow me where ever I go.” Chris sways back and forth. “OOOOooooo.”
“Shut up. I like it.”
“You would. But you can’t think Dorie’s gonna let you keep that in the house. She don’t even let you smoke in the house.”
“She doesn’t let you smoke in the house.”
“Same difference. She’s got a lot of rules, is all I mean. When the dog can come in, no shoes on the carpet. She picks your clothes out for you.”
“What do you know?”
Chris taps his temple with one finger, squeezes one eye almost closed. “Ol’ Chris is always paying attention. You think I don’t notice? Chin plowing the ground. Hell, man, your house don’t even smell the same. Something wrong with that.”
Chris turns from the wind and lights a cigarette. John concentrates on the portrait. He spreads one hand across the fabric, pushes in with his fingers. He likes the weight and strength behind Jesus’ eyes.
“I’ll get her to like it.” He reconsiders. “I can explain to her why I like it.”
“Good luck. You’re married to a funny girl, that’s all I can say.”
“We’re not married.”
“You sure about that, man?”
John isn’t. Dorie has a way of shaping his life for him when he isn’t looking. She could have gotten them married and he not know it. She could have his life written out on paper somewhere.
Chris is gone. Johns looks around. A squatty whitewashed building with a red door, The Crack-Up Lounge painted in gold letters, stands across the street. All of the other booths are closed now. He looks back at the painting.
“You buy?” the woman asks. She has packed most of her stuff. Two Mexican boys arrange cardboard boxes like a stacking puzzle. The woman leans in, pretending to admire the portrait. She pats the frame. “Pretty,” she says.
“Yeah.” John stands thinking until the woman shuffles around him. He wants his decision to be clear. He could think clearer if the woman weren’t waiting on him. He holds the last of her pictures to be sold or packed. One of the boys says something in Spanish that makes the other boy laugh. Maybe they are her sons, John thinks. The woman snaps her fingers at them. When John looks up, the three of them stare at him.
“Yeah,” he says again and passes some money to the woman.
She sweeps the cash into her puffy coat somewhere. She and the boys are gone before John makes it to the Crack-Up’s door.
* * *
Inside the Crack-Up is shaped like a spaceship, with red carpet and a domed ceiling. The walls curve down toward the outer rim of the room, and John has to duck to keep from scraping his head when he comes through the door. There are fewer than a dozen people in the Crack-Up. Chris sits a table near the bar, a beer mug already in front of him. When he sees John he says “Oh, Jesus, it’s Jesus,” and laughs.
John feels too noticeable in the small bar. No music plays, but the chatter of the few patrons echoes in the round room. He sits across from Chris and leans the picture on a table leg. A group of old farmer-types watches them. They are strangers here. Chris is too loud for the Crack-Up, and John is too tall with his funny velvet Jesus. He is embarrassed and slides the picture under the table with his foot.
“Man, of all the ways to waste ten bucks,” Chris says.
“Just shut up about it.”
“Fine. You’ll catch enough shit at home, anyway.”
“Shut up about that, too.”
Chris shrugs and smiles. “Fine for that, as well. I’ll just sit here with my mouth closed. I’m shutting up starting now.” Chris points his index finger at the tabletop as if to mark the moment in history.
John gets that feeling again, the one he got the first night he couldn’t sleep. It grows fast. Panic creeps up his chest from his stomach. He places a hand over his jacket, as if he can stop it, then thinks he must look like he’s saying the pledge of allegiance, and puts his hands back on the table. He looks around. There are gold sparkles sprayed onto the low ceiling. Dust is collected over them, dimming their effect.
Chris hums.
John sees a woman with long brown hair. She sits several tables away but looks up when Chris starts to hum. She looks right at John and smiles. She points to the ceiling, then to Chris. “Echo,” she mouths.
John nods, and she looks away. He’s sweating. He thinks the brown-haired woman must be waiting on someone. She seems like she’s waiting, he thinks. But calm. Her face is so clear.
She looks at John again, but John looks away this time.
“I’ll be back” he says.
“Yeah, man,” Chris says.
John walks fast toward the other side of the room. A dark narrow hall extends off the circle and probably is where the restrooms are. He feels a little stupid, and like he wants to leave, but like he doesn’t want to go home. The ceiling curves down again and he feels much too large for the room. He stands out.
Just now, like the brown-haired woman, he hears the echo of Chris’s humming. Only now Chris is half-singing. John gets a funny urge to tell the woman. But this is stupid, too, he thinks. She’ll think he’s crazy. He feels crazy. He should not say anything. He looks over his shoulder but too fast to see her, or anything, in focus.
What John does see, and all too plainly, is the sign posted over the little hall. It is about eye-level to John. HEY, DUCK! it says. There’s even a little red duck smiling at him. But he sees the sign, takes it all in, a split second too late. About two years ago, John had locked the keys in his Coke truck. And the funny thing was, he knew he was going to do it. It was that same split second, the one before he let go of the door handle, that he saw in sharp detail exactly what was going to happen, the keys swinging from the ignition, the click of the door closing. And he’d liked it. That’s how clear it had been.
And just like that, John smacks into the duck sign. He can’t draw a breath. A tinny-feeling pressure ripples through his brain. There is suddenly a lot of noise in the Crack-Up. A roar of sound sweeps up from the floor and over John’s head. It falls like rain from the sparkling ceiling, right down on John.
* * *
“Oh, man, oh man. That was something. You should’a seen yourself, man. You went down like a rock.” Chris demonstrates by whacking fist against palm, then sliding the fist down his arm. He laughs.
John only now hears what Chris is saying. He remembers seeing Chris’s face but not hearing him. It was dark. Were they singing? He remembers laying against Chris’s shoulder a little before now, maybe just a few minutes ago, but he thinks it was far away from here.
“You should keep your head tilted back. I think.” It is the brown-haired woman. John can’t see to his left without turning his head. The woman moves too fast for him. He feels heavy. She unwinds yards of toilet paper off a roll she’s pulled from her purse. She makes a huge ball. “Is that right?” she asks Chris.
“Hell if I know.” Chris squats down next to John. From one eye John watches Chris study his face. Up close, even in the dark, Chris looks much younger than John. They are the same age. “Man, you busted it pretty good. That’s a lot of blood.”
“Thanks,” John says. His skin feels warm and thick.
“Here.” The woman holds the wad of toilet paper out to Chris while she starts another one.
“It’s cold,” John says. No one answers. They both study his face. He realizes they are outside, in the grass lot next to the Crack-Up.
Chris tosses the wad of paper to John, the ends fluttering in the wind. It has stopped raining. “Well, you’re in good hands for the time being.”
“What?”
“Where’re you going? I don’t know what to do,” the brown-haired woman says. She winds and winds more paper.
Chris is standing, already walking away. He grows tiny in John’s vision in just a couple of seconds. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Okay,” the brown-haired woman says. She pushes the first of the paper into John’s hand, tries to help him make a fist. “You should,” she starts to say but doesn’t finish.
John’s entire body except for his head hurts. He thinks that’s weird, and probably a sign of something bad. He holds the toilet paper to his nose with one hand. The woman flinches when the wad meets his face, but John does not feel it land. With his other hand he touches his lips. They feel fine under his fingers, but when he moves his hand away his lips throb like demons.
“I’m gonna lay down,” he says.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to do that.”
“No?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know, really.” But she sounds to John as if she does. The woman shifts to his right every time she talks.
“Am I leaning?” he asks.
“It’s your eye.” She points. John’s left eye doesn’t open.
“I’m gonna lay down now.”
The woman puts her hand on John’s, the one holding the toilet paper, and draws his arm toward her. He sees the paper. It looks black in the dark. When he drops it, she puts a newly winded ball in his hand, a couple more in his lap.
“I don’t think this is gonna be enough,” she says.
“I’m okay,” John says. “Really.” He puts the paper balls in his pocket.
“You sure?”
John stretches his neck to one side, then the other. He imagines each part of his body before he moves it, unsure which parts of him work and which don’t.
“Can I get you anything? Call somebody?”
“No. Really. I just need to sit.”
John looks at her. She is pretty. The more he moves and talks, the less worried she seems. The broken thing inside his head lets go just then. He starts to float. “Do I know you?” he asks.
The brown-haired woman laughs. “No, sweetie. You don’t know me at all.”
She sits next to him, hands him the last of the toilet paper from the roll.
“Then you know me.” He doesn’t know why he says this. Whatever has broken is letting out words John didn’t know he had.
“Maybe,” she says. “Maybe I do know you. John.”
He feels something slip away from him. It’s okay it’s going, he thinks. Whatever it is. Close to him like this, he smells her flowery shampoo. He feels warmth from her body. He thinks maybe he should tell her he’s not that loopy, that he knows what’s going on, that she can leave him there. But he’s not sure that he does, so he doesn’t say that. He just sits.
“It’s okay if I keep an eye on you for a while?”
He thinks about saying an amen. Something inside John is spinning away, leaving his body. “Yeah,” he says.
“All right. I think I’m supposed to ask you questions.”
“Sure,” he says, not catching on.
“Okay. Do you know what day it is?”
“Yeah.”
“No, you’re supposed to say what day it is.”
“Oh. Yeah. I know what you mean.”
“Okay, again. Do you know what day it is?”
“Saturday. It’s Saturday night.” It is long time past time for John to go home. It is too late, he knows. “It’s Sunday morning, maybe.”
“Good,” the brown-haired woman says. “I think you covered all possibilities.”
“Maybe questions aren’t good.”
“Why?”
“I’m just saying stupid things.”
“Not at all.” She smiles.
John is surprised when she moves in front of him, almost right into his lap. “Look at me,” she says.
The brown-haired woman has teeny freckles. She wears no make-up but mascara. John thinks that her eyes are pale green. He can’t see this, not really, in the dark. These are details too fine, but he knows they are there. For a second he thinks about leaning forward. He wonders what she will do if he does.
Just then she places her hands on either side of his face, carefully, and asks, “Okay? Well,” her voice has changed. She talks like she’s talking to someone who’s falling asleep. “I don’t think you need a doctor. Or you can wait, at least. I’m pretty sure you’re going to live.”
“Probably.” John almost laughs. “That’d serve me right.”
“Now, why would you say that,” but she smiles at him. He does not mean to be funny. He is, though, dizzy. The brown-haired woman and he sit here, just like this, for an amount of time John can not count. It might be a few seconds, maybe it is minutes. But John wants it and does not move.
The woman’s hands slide away. They stay there while the wind picks up. It rustles the woman’s hair. They each move, pulling jackets into place, and they look at each other. She is safe, John thinks. Not safe like she’s safe because she’s with him. But John is safe because he is with her.
“I think it’d be okay now if you still want to lay down.”
Then she does. John is bewildered that she seems not to have thought about where they are, that she has never even seen him before this night. Her long brown hair spills over the ground. “There,” she says, and points.
“You don’t have to stay with me. He’ll come back. Some time.”
“This is fine,” she says, and John thinks what a strange and perfect answer it is. “There,” she says again.
John looks up. Tiny silver slits of stars.
“They’re changing as we’re looking at them,” she says.
He’s fascinated, but he’s not sure why, or by what. “How?”
“They’re dying. Really,” John watches as she measures a star with one forefinger and thumb, “they’re already dead. We’re seeing their light from a long time ago.”
“That’s depressing.”
“Not really, just the opposite.” She sounds happy to him, like a giddy girl. “Think about it. They’ve been dead all this time, hundreds and hundreds of years. And here we are still talking about them.
He feels like laughing again. “I guess that’s nice. Nice to be remembered.”
“Yeah. Absolutely.”
The part of John that has broken loose and gone spinning is almost gone completely.
“Ruth,” the brown-haired woman says.
“I can remember that.”
Ruth sits up. John watches her scoop a handful of sand from the ground between them. Then she lays her palm open, and he stares at the sand puddled there. He wants to hold her hand. Or maybe just touch it, or maybe it’s the dirt he’s thinking of. He’s suddenly filled with remembering, even though he isn’t sure what he’s remembering. He doesn’t know where to look, or what to say to this woman. He tips her hand down with his fingers and watches the sand slide out.
She lays back down, closes her eyes. Moonlight shows a grain of sand that has somehow landed in the hollow of her throat. The sand trembles when she breathes in. Its color changes from blue to purple to gold as she moves. John aches for that sand. He aches to wet his finger, to touch the brown-haired woman’s throat, to lift the sand from her skin.
“I bought a picture of Jesus today,” he says.
“Really? Why?”
“Don’t know.”
Ruth doesn’t answer. It is something Dorie would ask more questions about. She wants to fix him, make him feel better.
“I just don’t know.”
John laughs. His head hurts now. He feels drunk and can’t think of another word to say. He lays back on the ground, his face on the sheet Ruth’s hair has made. It’s velvet. She puts her hand on his. He feels the sand grind across their skin. “I haven’t slept in months,” he says, and then he does.
****
“You with me, man, or what?”
John opens his eyes. “What time is it?” His face hurts around his eyes when he talks.
“Finally. Jesus.” Chris stands next to John, where he has been sleeping on the ground outside the Crack-Up. Chris leans close. Ruth is gone.
“You are drunk,” John says.
“I was drunk hours ago, I’m just drunker now.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“I got to talking to this guy in the parking lot. He was okay.”
“Who was he?”
Chris shrugs. “Hey,” he says, “I can feel all the blood in my forehead.”
“Get away from me.”
“Come on.” Chris grabs John’s arms and pulls. “Get up, already. I want to show you something.”
“Leave me here.” John’s face feels flat and thick, like he’s talking through water. He looks past Chris to where the stars had been. He closes his eyes. He’s fine, he thinks, just to stay here.
“Get up, man. It’s really cool. You’ll see.”
“I’m tired of this,” John says. He’s fine, so fine with what has let go and left him. “I’m fine,” he yells.
Chris pulls harder. John stiffens like a board, but Chris keeps pulling. He shows remarkable strength for a man as drunk as he must be. John keeps his eyes closed and resists. Chris’s tugging begins to spin him like some bizarre snow angel. He sees it in his mind and laughs.
“Get up,” Chris yells. “Get up, get up, get up.”
Maybe he is too tired, maybe it’s the laughing. John relaxes, and Chris succeeds in getting him into a sitting position. His head, he’s almost sure, is so heavy it’s still on the ground.
“Just get the fuck up already,” Chris says. He’s laughing, too. “It’s cool. I swear. I swear to God.” Chris lets go, stands up. He backs away. “It’s cool, I swear.” He starts to run. “I swear to that freaking Jesus picture.”
John follows. They wind through Charlie, away from the highway, across a bar ditch, through weeds up the their knees. John follows the sounds Chris makes, unable to lift his rock of a head. They stumble up onto a side street. It’s raining again, or maybe still. They are lost, John thinks, but he doesn’t much care. There is a row of small white houses with a church at the end on one side of the street. It’s nearly sunup. Chris points to the church. “Down there,” he says.
“Where’s the truck?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Chris runs again. “Just come on, old man.”
Chris is being too loud for Charlie again. John waits for lights to snap on in the row of houses, for some pissed-off guy with a shotgun to step out on one of the little porches. But none of that happens.
He walks to the point at which Chris has disappeared. The street ends right in the church parking lot. Two giant floodlights are mounted on either side of the church’s announcement board. Without giving a thought to the consequences, John touches the surface of one of the lights and draws back instantly blistered fingers.
“Look.” Chris stands, his arms spread like a welcoming Jesus. “It’s the circus. Cool, huh?”
John sees the parking lot is packed with folded-down carnival rides. There is a Tilt-A-Whirl, a Zipper, a ride called the King of Hearts. “Are you fucking kidding?”
“We missed it. Can you believe, it?”
“Because you have got to be fucking kidding me.”
Chris looks at him like he’s crazy. John thinks maybe he can’t hear him, that talking through his broken face has made him impossible to hear.
“What? You do see it, right? You see all this stuff?” Chris waits for an answer. “Come on.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Ah, just forget it. You ain’t no good time, anymore.”
John walks through the parking lot, twisting around the bodies of the silent rides. They are all covered in fading paint. Half the ones that would be lighted are missing their bulbs. Worn duct tape hides a split in the Zipper’s seat. A dead armadillo is wedged under the bumper of the ride’s tire, and the sweetening smell makes John want to vomit. He presses his face on the cold wet metal a moment.
Chris sits on the steps of the church when John emerges from the dormant carnival. He takes a bottle from each of his coat pockets. “Here.”
“Where’d this come from?”
“Guy in the parking lot. He was okay. Didn’t I tell you?”
“You told me.”
Chris pulls one hand inside his jacket sleeve and uses the sleeve to twist off the cap. Foam spews over the bottle’s lip and spills a dark star onto the parking lot. John watches the star as it bleeds into the cinder. He holds his bottle in his burned fingers.
“You know what your problem is.” Chris states it as fact. “You think too much. Me?” he says. “I’m a purist.”
“A purist?”
“Yep, I’m a purist. I take things as they come. Not you, man. You’re always fucking thinking.”
Slips of paper, chances purchased on the grill, roll across the parking lot. They stick here and there in the rain, one on the star. John watches as a man’s name and address are wiped away in the rain.
“People say shit about people like me,” Chris says, “but the truth is I’m having a very good time.”
“I can see that.”
They sit on the church’s steps until Chris has finished half his bottle. Then they walk to the pickup at the end of Main Street. They flip the bottles into the bushes.
“Oh yeah,” Chris stops. He pulls something from his pocket. “You lost this. That girl gave it me. Must’a come off when you busted your nose.”
Chris places Dorie’s bracelet on the truck hood.
“Thanks.”
They get in. Chris backs into the street. John’s fingers and face hurt only distantly. Dried blood darkens his jacket. He is a mess hard to explain. He stares ahead, the point of the canoe aimed north. For the first time in months, John doesn’t think about anything but what’s in front of him.
Chris misses the shift on the first try. The transmission lurches, then catches. John watches Dorie’s bracelet sail over the hood and out of sight.

Seven

The magic wand of generous spirit…
A boy who has never known what it is to have enough
spreads the blessings of generosity by his concern for others.

Seven

Cast of Characters

Angelo Delfiero: 20-year-old college student, whose altruism sparks feeling of guilt in his brothers and sisters.
Lemuel: Angelo’s 27-year-old brother; the intellectual who spends most of his time with his books; he believes there are more important things to occupy his mind than other people’s problems.
Miriam: Angelo’s 25-year-old sister, whose main interest centers around “beautiful people” and the “good life” these people lead.
Ben: Angelo’s 13-year-old brother, who looks at the world through a rose-tinted crystal; he believes only things which serve his best interests.
Aling Cion: the Delfiero’s laundry woman, who thinks that even the poor have an obligation to share what they have with their fellowmen.
Mang Tacio: Aling Cion’s husband, who believes that the affluent are under obligation to help the less privileged.
Roni: Aling Cion’s son.

Setting: In the sala of the Delfiero home spectacled Lemuel is comfortably seated on the family sofa with a book, Miriam is in the lounging chair admiring her manicured fingernails and her pedicured toenails. Soft music is wafted through a stereo set.

Miriam: Aling Cion’s son is in the hospital!

Lemuel: How unfortunate! Poor woman!

Miriam: I heard her complaining to mother about money.

Lemuel: Money is everybody’s complaint nowadays. It seems there is never enough of it. (Pauses) Isn’t mother always willing to give her a loan against her laundry work?

Miriam: Mother has already paid Aling Cion five washdays in advance, just imagine, what she is going to earn for the next five washdays was already been spent!

Lemuel: That is no surprise. Most people spend money faster than they make it.

Miriam: Come to think of it, I spend money fast. It takes me only a few hours of shopping to spend what I make in a week.

Lemuel: well, everybody has probems. If it isn’t money, it’s something else.

Miriam: Aling Cion suffers from lack of money at a time her son is seriously ill in the hospital.

Lemuel: It is said that misfortunes don’t come singly. (Pauses) We can’t be overly concerned with other people’s problems. I have more important things to attend to than poke my nose into other people’s affairs. I’m not prepared to worry about the problems of others. I have enough of my own.

(Enter Angelo and Ben)

Angelo: Aling Cion’s son is in the hospital.

Miriam: We have heard about it.

Angelo: He needs a blood transfusion.

Lemuel: Is it that serious?

Miriam: I’m worried. (Pauses). I need my blue dress on Wednesday. There’s no one to do the laundry.

Ben: Aling Cion is a good and religious woman. It’s pity she is having all thses problems.

Angelo: Religion has nothing to do with this. (Pauses). We have got to help her.

Ben: I’ willing to look for blood donors!

Angelo: What Aling Cion needs is cash! Money!

Ben: What’s the difference? She will use the money to pay for blood anyway.

Lemuel: What medicines are needed? I have a brod who has some “samples” he can give away.

Miriam: Mother paid Aling Cion her wages for five washdays.

Ben: So money is out of the question.

Angelo: Are you kidding? Money good for five washdays! You don’t really think that is enough, do you? Do you realize how much it costs to be hospitalized?

Miriam: The timing is wrong. I am reserving my week’s pay for a pair of shoes which I need for the seminar on Monday. I just can’t attend the seminar looking like a pauper.

Lemuel: That’s right. Very bad timing. The down payment on the university ring I have ordered is due tomorrow!

Ben: Yeah! I have been saving my allowance for the basketball championship games Saturday night!

Angelo: For goodness sake! Can’t you make a little sacrifice in the name of charity?

Miriam: Speaking of charity, isn’t there a saying that “charity begins at home”?

Angelo: Oh, my God! What’s this? How can we indulge in our vanities while our neighbors starve? A boy lies inn the hospital bed, dying! Do we ever think of giving relief? No! we have become stingy even with our crumbs! Have we no hearts at all? Are we really this unconcerned?

(Continuous loud knocking at the door. Ben goes to open the door. Enter Aling Cion and Mang Tacio, her husband, looking dejected.)

Ben: Come in, Aling Cion. Come in, Mang Tacio. What brings you here?

Angelo: How is Roni, Aling Cion?

Lemuel: Is Roni all right?

(Aling Cion covers her face with her handkerchief and sobs quietly)

Aling Cion: Roni is dead!

Angelo: Dead? Oh, no! Oh, my God!

Lemuel: (after a stunned silence): I’m sorry!

(All approach Aling Cion and Mang Tacio and clasp their hands)

Aling Cion: (takes out an envelope from inside her dress, fumbles): Roni asked us to give you this envelope containing P200.00, his earnings from his newspaper route. (hands the envelope to Lemuel). He told me to give it to you. It is his share for the basketball court for the less fortunate boys in our barangay. He did not want me to spend it for anything, not even for his medicines.
(All speechless. Lemuel accepts the envelope automatically.)

Lemuel: Why me? I can’t understand it!

Mang Tacio: His last thoughts were only how to share the little he had earned. He was always aware of his obligation to the barangay project. I kept telling him that in our impoverished condition, we cannot be obliged to give or help. It’s the responsibility of the rich.

Aling Cion: He was sorry he could give so little! He said that regardless of one’s station in life, one has an obligation to help his neighbor in any way.

Lemuel: I don’t know what to say! I am not prepared for this!

Aling Cion and Mang Tacio: We must take our leave.

Lemuel: Aling Cion, Mang Tacio, is there anything we can do to help? Please let us help?

Aling Cion: Thank you. You have done more than enough. Your mother and father are very kind. We are very grateful that there are persons like you who are always willing to lend a hand.

(Aling Cion and Mang Tacio exit)

Angelo: Well? It’s a relief, isn’t it?

Lemuel: You don’t have to rub it in. I am sorry for Roni. (Pauses). I’m going to pledge P1000 a month until the basketball court is finished. I’ll even try to get my fraternity to chip in.

Miriam: Count me in, too….P1000 a month until the court is finished.

Ben: My movie money every two weeks.

Angelo: It has taken a death to jolt us into making until a definite commitment for the welfare of our fellowmen.

(All are silent. Sudden burst of the strains of “Bagong Lipunan” is heard. Curtain.)

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was --but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me --upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain --upon the bleak walls --upon the vacant eye-like windows --upon a few rank sedges --and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees --with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium --the bitter lapse into everyday life --the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart --an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it --I paused to think --what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down --but with a shudder even more thrilling than before --upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country --a letter from him --which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness --of a mental disorder which oppressed him --and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said --it the apparent heart that went with his request --which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honoured as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other --it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House of Usher" --an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment --that of looking down within the tarn --had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition --for why should I not so term it? --served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy --a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity-an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn --a pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinising observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me --while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy --while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this --I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality --of the constrained effort of the ennuye man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eve, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence --an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy --an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision --that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation --that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy --a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect --in terror. In this unnerved-in this pitiable condition --I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth --in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated --an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit-an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin --to the severe and long-continued illness --indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution-of a tenderly beloved sister --his sole companion for long years --his last and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread --and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother --but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus probably be the last I should obtain --that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more.For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavours to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my cars. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not why; --from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavour to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least --in the circumstances then surrounding me --there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendour.I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus: I. In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once fair and stately palace -- Radiant palace --reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion -- It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. II. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow; (This --all this --was in the olden Time long ago) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odour went away. III. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically To a lute's well-tuned law, Round about a throne, where sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. IV. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. V. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. VI. And travellers now within that valley, Through the red-litten windows, see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a rapid ghastly river, Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh --but smile no more.I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other men have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones --in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around --above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its evidence --the evidence of the sentience --was to be seen, he said, (and I here started as he spoke,) in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made him what I now saw him --what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none.Our books --the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid --were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indagine, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favourite volume was a small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorum, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and AEgipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic --the manual of a forgotten church --the Vigilae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae.I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its final interment,) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the stair case, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution.At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead --for we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made our way, with toll, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue --but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified-that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch --while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavoured to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room --of the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremour gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened --I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me --to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavoured to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognised it as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan --but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes --an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanour. His air appalled me --but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief."And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared about him for some moments in silence --"you have not then seen it? --but, stay! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this --yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars --nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapour, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion."You must not --you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat. "These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena not uncommon --or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement; --the air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favourite romances. I will read, and you shall listen; --and so we will pass away this terrible night together."The antique volume which I had taken up was the "Mad Trist" of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favourite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild over-strained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling there-with sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarumed and reverberated throughout the forest.At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment, paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me) --it appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story:"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten -- Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin; Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win.And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard."Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement --for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound --the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of the second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanour. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast --yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea --for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:"And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound."No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than --as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver, became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his words."Not hear it? --yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long --long --long --many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it --yet I dared not --oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! --I dared not --I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them --many, many days ago --yet I dared not --I dared not speak! And now --to-night --Ethelred --ha! ha! --the breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield! --say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? MADMAN!" here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul --"MADMAN! I TELL YOU THAT SHE NOW STANDS WITHOUT THE DOOR!"As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell --the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust --but then without those doors there DID stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold, then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zig-zag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened --there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind --the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight --my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder --there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters --and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "HOUSE OF USHER."

Republikang Basahan ni Teodoro Agoncillo

Republika baga itong busabos ka ng dayuhan?

Ang tingin sa tanikala'y busilak ng kalayaan?

Kasarinlan baga itong ang bibig mo'y nakasusi,

Ang mata mong nakadilat ay bulag na di mawari?

Ang buhay mo'y walang patid na hibla ng pagtataksil

Sa sarili, lipi't angkan, sa bayan mong dumaraing!

Kalayaan! Republika!

Ang bayani'y dinudusta.

Kalayaan pala itong mamatay nang abang-aba!

Kasarinlan pala itong ni hindi mo masarili

Ang dangal ng tahanan mong ibo't pugad ng pagkasi.

Malaya ka, bakit hindi? Sa bitaya'n ikaw'y manhik,

At magbigting mahinahon sa sarili na ring lubid!

Kalayaan - ito pala'y mayron na ring tinutubo

Sa puhunang dila't laway, at hindi sa luha't dugo!

Humimbing kang mapayapa, mabuhay kang nangangarap,

Sa ganyan lang mauulol ang sarili sa magdamag.

Lumakad ka, hilain mo ang kadenang may kalansing,

Na sa taynga ng busabos ay musikang naglalambing!

Limutin mo ang nagdaan, ang sarili ay taglayin,

Subalit ang iniisip ay huwag mong bibigkasin!

Magsanay ka sa pagpukpok, sa pagpala at paghukay,

Pagkat ikaw ang gagawa ng kabaong kung mamatay.

Purihin mo ang bayaning may dalisay na adhika,

Ngunit huwag paparisan ang kanilang gawi't gawa.

Republika na nga itong ang sa inyo'y hindi iyo,

Timawa ka at dayuhan sa lupain at bayan mo!

Kalayaan! Malaya ka, oo na nga, bakit hindi?

Sa patak ng iyong luha'y malaya kang mamighati!

Sa simoy ng mga hangin sa parang at mga bundok,

Palipasin mo ang sukal ng loob mong kumikirot.

Ksarinlan! Republika! Kayo baga'y nauulol,

Sa ang inyong kalayaa'y tabla na rin ng kabaong?

Repblika! Kasarinlan! Mandi'y hindi nadarama,

Ang paglaya'y sa matapang at sa kanyon bumubuga!

Bawat hakbang na gawin mo sa Templo ng Kalayaan

Ay hakbang na papalapit sa bunganga ng libingan!

Ang paglaya'y nakukuha sa tulis ng isang sibat,

Ang tabak ay tumatalim sa pingki ng kapwa tabak.

Ang paglaya'y isang tining ng nagsamang dugo't luha,

Sa saro ng kagitinga'y bayani lang ang tutungga.

Bawat sinag ng paglayang sa karimlan ay habulin,

Isang punyal sa dibdib mo, isang kislap ng patalim!

The Chieftest Mourner by Aida Rivera Ford

He was my uncle because he married my aunt (even if he had not come to her these past ten years), so when the papers brought the news of his death, I felt that some part of me had died, too.I was boarding then at a big girls' college in Manila and I remember quite vividly that a few other girls were gathered about the lobby of our school, looking very straight and proper since it was seven in the morning and the starch in our long-sleeved uniform had not yet given way. I tried to be brave while I read that my uncle had actually been "the last of a distinct school of Philippine poets." I was still being brave all the way down the lengthy eulogies, until I got to the line which said that he was "the sweetest lyre that ever throbbed with Malayan chords." Something caught at my throat and I let out one sob--the rest merely followed. When the girls hurried over to me to see what had happened, I could only point to the item on the front page with my uncle's picture taken when he was still handsome. Everybody suddenly spoke in a low voice and Ning, who worshipped me, said that I shouldn't be so unhappy because my uncle was now with the other great poets in heaven--at which I really howled in earnest because my uncle had not only deserted poor Aunt Sophia but had also been living with another woman these many years and, most horrible of all, he had probably died in her embrace!Perhaps I received an undue amount of commiseration for the death of the delinquent husband of my aunt, but it wasn't my fault because I never really lied about anything; only, nobody thought to ask me just how close an uncle he was. It wasn't my doing either when, some months after his demise, my poem entitled The Rose Was Not So Fair O Alma Mater was captioned "by the niece of the late beloved Filipino Poet." And that having been printed, I couldn't possibly refuse when I was asked to write on My Uncle--The Poetry of His Life. The article, as printed, covered only his boyhood and early manhood because our adviser cut out everything that happened after he was married. She said that the last half of his life was not exactly poetic, although I still maintain that in his vices, as in his poetry, he followed closely the pattern of the great poets he admired.My aunt used to relate that he was an extremely considerate man--when he was sober, and on those occasions he always tried to make up for his past sins. She said that he had never meant to marry, knowing the kind of husband he would make, but that her beauty drove him out of his right mind. My aunt always forgave him but one day she had more than she could bear, and when he was really drunk, she tied him to a chair with a strong rope to teach him a lesson. She never saw him drunk again, for as soon as he was able to, he walked out the door and never came back.I was very little at that time, but I remembered that shortly after he went away, my aunt put me in a car and sent me to his hotel with a letter from her. Uncle ushered me into his room very formally and while I looked all around the place, he prepared a special kind of lemonade for the two of us. I was sorry he poured it out into wee glasses because it was unlike any lemonade I had ever tasted. While I sipped solemnly at my glass, he inquired after my aunt. To my surprise, I found myself answering with alacrity. I was happy to report all details of my aunt's health, including the number of crabs she ate for lunch and the amazing fact that she was getting fatter and fatter without the benefit of Scott's Emulsion or Ovaltine at all. Uncle smiled his beautiful somber smile and drew some poems from his desk. He scribbled a dedication on them and instructed me to give them to my aunt. I made much show of putting the empty glass down but Uncle was dense to the hint. At the door, however, he told me that I could have some lemonade every time I came to visit him. Aunt Sophia was so pleased with the poems that she kissed me. And then all of a sudden she looked at me queerly and made a most peculiar request of me. She asked me to say ha-ha, and when I said ha-ha, she took me to the sink and began to wash the inside of my mouth with soap and water while calling upon a dozen of the saints to witness the act. I never got a taste of Uncle's lemonade.It began to be a habit with Aunt Sophia to drop in for a periodic recital of woe to which Mama was a sympathetic audience. The topic of the conversation was always the latest low on Uncle's state of misery. It gave Aunt Sophia profound satisfaction to relay the report of friends on the number of creases on Uncle's shirt or the appalling decrease in his weight. To her, the fact that Uncle was getting thinner proved conclusively that he was suffering as a result of the separation. It looked as if Uncle would not be able to hold much longer, the way he was reported to be thinner each time, because Uncle didn't have much weight to start with. The paradox of the situation, however, was that Aunt Sophia was now crowding Mama off the sofa and yet she wasn't looking very happy either.When I was about eleven, there began to be a difference. Everytime I cam into the room when Mama and Aunt Sophia were holding conference, the talk would suddenly be switched to Spanish. It was about this time that I took an interest in the Spanish taught in school. It was also at this time that Aunt Sophia exclaimed over my industry at the piano--which stood a short distance from the sofa. At first I couldn't gather much except that Uncle was not any more the main topic. It was a woman by the name of Esa--or so I thought she was called. Later I began to appreciate the subtlety of the Spanish la mujer esa.And so I learned about the woman. She was young, accomplished, a woman of means. (A surprising number of connotations were attached to these terms.) Aunt Sophia, being a loyal wife, grieved that Uncle should have been ensnared by such a woman, thinking not so much of herself but of his career. Knowing him so well, she was positive that he was unhappier than ever, for that horrid woman never allowed him to have his own way; she even denied him those little drinks which he took merely to aid him into poetic composition. Because the woman brazenly followed Uncle everywhere, calling herself his wife, a confusing situation ensued. When people mentioned Uncle's wife, there was no way of knowing whether they referred to my aunt or to the woman. After a while a system was worked out by the mutual friends of the different parties. No. 1 came to stand for Aunt Sophia and No. 2 for the woman.I hadn't seen Uncle since the episode of the lemonade, but one day in school all the girls were asked to come down to the lecture room--Uncle was to read some of his poems! Up in my room, I stopped to fasten a pink ribbon to my hair thinking the while how I would play my role to perfection--for the dear niece was to be presented to the uncle she had not seen for so long. My musings were interrupted, however, when a girl came up and excitedly bubbled that she had seen my uncle--and my aunt, who was surprisingly young and so very modern!I couldn't go down after all; I was indisposed.Complicated as the situation was when Uncle was alive, it became more so when he died. I was puzzling over who was to be the official widow at his funeral when word came that I was to keep Aunt Sophia company at the little chapel where the service would be held. I concluded with relief that No. 2 had decamped.The morning wasn't far gone when I arrived at the chapel and there were only a few people present. Aunt Sophia was sitting in one of the front pews at the right section of the chapel. She had on a black and white print which managed to display its full yardage over the seat. Across the aisle from her was a very slight woman in her early thirties who was dressed in a dramatic black outfit with a heavy veil coming up to her forehead. Something about her made me suddenly aware that Aunt Sophia's bag looked paunchy and worn at the corners. I wanted to ask my aunt who she was but after embracing me when I arrived, she kept her eyes stolidly fixed before her. I directed my gaze in the same direction. At the front was the president's immense wreath leaning heavily backward, like that personage himself; and a pace behind, as though in deference to it, were other wreaths arranged according to the rank and prominence of the people who had sent them. I suppose protocol had something to do with it.I tiptoed over to the muse before Uncle as he lay in the dignity of death, the faintest trace of his somber smile still on his face. My eyes fell upon a cluster of white flowers placed at the foot of the casket. It was ingeniously fashioned in the shape of a dove and it bore the inscription "From the Loyal One." I looked at Aunt Sophia and didn't see anything dove-like about her. I looked at the slight woman in black and knew of a sudden that she was the woman. A young man, obviously a brother or a nephew, was bending over her solicitously. I took no notice of him even though he had elegant manners, a mischievous cowlick, wistful eyes, a Dennis Morgan chin, and a pin which testified that he belonged to what we girls called our "brother college." I showed him that he absolutely did not exist for me, especially when I caught him looking in our direction.I always feel guilty of sacrilege everytime I think of it, but there was something grimly ludicrous about my uncle’s funeral. There were two women, each taking possession of her portion of the chapel just as though stakes had been laid, seemingly unmindful of each other, yet revealing by this studied disregard that each was very much aware of the other. As though to give balance to the scene, the young man stood his full height near the woman to offset the collective bulk of Aunt Sophia and myself, although I was merely a disproportionate shadow behind her.The friends of the poet began to come. They paused a long time at the door, surveying the scene before they marched self-consciously towards the casket. Another pause there, and then they wrenched themselves from the spot and moved--no, slithered--either towards my aunt or towards the woman. The choice must have been difficult when they knew both. The women almost invariably came to talk to my aunt whereas most of the men turned to the woman at the left. I recognized some important Malacañang men and some writers from seeing their pictures in the papers. Later in the morning a horde of black-clad women, the sisters and cousins of the poet, swept into the chapel and came directly to where my aunt sat. They had the same deep eye-sockets and hollow cheek-bones which had lent a sensitive expression to the poet's face but which on them suggested t.b. The air became dense with the sickly-sweet smell of many flowers clashing and I went over to get my breath of air. As I glanced back I had a crazy surrealist impression of mouths opening and closing into Aunt Sophia's ear, and eyes darting toward the woman at the left. Uncle's clan certainly made short work of my aunt for when I returned, she was sobbing. As though to comfort her, one of the women said, in a whisper which I heard from the door, that the president himself was expected to come in the afternoon.Toward lunchtime, it became obvious that neither my aunt nor the woman wished to leave ahead of the other. I could appreciate my aunt's delicadeza in this matter but then got hungry and therefore grew resourceful: I called a taxi and told her it was at the door with the meter on. Aunt Sophia's unwillingness lasted as long as forty centavos.We made up for leaving ahead of the woman by getting back to the chapel early. For a long time she did not come and when Uncle's kinswomen arrived, I thought their faces showed a little disappointment at finding the left side of the chapel empty. Aunt Sophia, on the other hand, looked relieved. But at about three, the woman arrived and I perceived at once that there was a difference in her appearance. She wore the same black dress but her thick hair was now carefully swept into a regal coil; her skin glowing; her eyes, which had been striking enough, looked even larger. The eyebrows of the women around me started working and finally, the scrawniest of the poet's relations whispered to the others and slowly, together, they closed in on the woman.I went over to sit with my aunt who was gazing not so steadily at nothing in particular.At first the women spoke in whispers, and then the voices rose a trifle. Still, everybody was polite. There was more talking back and forth, and suddenly the conversation wasn't polite any more. The only good thing about it was that now I could hear everything distinctly."So you want to put me in a corner, do you? You think perhaps you can bully me out of here?" the woman said."Shh! Please don't create a scene," the poet's sisters said, going one pitch higher."It's you who are creating a scene. Didn't you come here purposely to start one?""We're only trying to make you see reason.... If you think of the dead at all...""Let's see who has the reason. I understand that you want me to leave, isn't it? Now that he is dead and cannot speak for me you think I should quietly hide in a corner?" The woman's voice was now pitched up for the benefit of the whole chapel. "Let me ask you. During the war when the poet was hard up do you suppose I deserted him? Whose jewels do you think we sold when he did not make money... When he was ill, who was it who stayed at his side... Who took care of him during all those months... and who peddled his books and poems to the publishers so that he could pay for the hospital and doctor's bills? Did any of you come to him then? Let me ask you that! Now that he is dead you want me to leave his side so that you and that vieja can have the honors and have your picture taken with the president. That's what you want, isn't it--to pose with the president....""Por Dios! Make her stop it--somebody stop her mouth!" cried Aunt Sophia, her eyes going up to heaven."Now you listen, you scandalous woman," one of the clan said, taking it up for Aunt Sophia. "We don't care for the honors--we don't want it for ourselves. But we want the poet to be honored in death... to have a decent and respectable funeral without scandal... and the least you can do is to leave him in peace as he lies there....""Yes," the scrawny one said. "You've created enough scandal for him in life--that's why we couldn't go to him when he was sick... because you were there, you--you shameless bitch."The woman's face went livid with shock and rage. She stood wordless while her young protector, his eyes blazing, came between her and the poet's kinswomen. Her face began to twitch. And then the sobs came. Big noisy sobs that shook her body and spilled the tears down her carefully made-up face. Fitfully, desperately, she tugged at her eyes and nose with her widow's veil. The young man took hold of her shoulders gently to lead her away, but she shook free; and in a few quick steps she was there before the casket, looking down upon that infinitely sad smile on Uncle's face. It may have been a second that she stood there, but it seemed like a long time."All right," she blurted, turning about. "All right. You can have him--all that's left of him!"At that moment before she fled, I saw what I had waited to see. The mascara had indeed run down her cheeks. But somehow it wasn't funny at all.