Stone Angel

CHAPTER 9

Death created no problem for Ira Wooley when the bodies were laid to rest in the vaults of existing tombs. A fresh grave required him to memorize the entire cemetery anew, but this was rare. Generally, sameness prevailed, and so this was a favorite place. The people were silent; their monuments and stone houses never changed. But the dying bouquets of All Saints’ Day had been removed from the graves, and now he walked through the alleys of tombs, making minor adjustments in his mind, fixing a new image for this city of the dead, sans flowers. “Hello, Ira,” said a voice behind him.

Startled, he turned around to see a tall figure standing at the rim of the tree circle. It was the sandwich man from Jane’s Cafe, and he was moving forward with long-legged strides, increasing Ira’s fear as he drew closer. The sandwich man was smiling, but facial arrangements for love and anger were all the same to Ira. It was a language he could not read. Now the sandwich man seemed to understand that motion communicated menace, and he stood very still.

Ira ceased to gulp the air, and the rhythm of his heart was slowing, but then he plunged into deep distress. The tall man represented a new object in the cemetery. Ira’s body slowly revolved, eyes passing over the ground, the stones, and the trees to create a new inventory. The sandwich man played the statue with endless patience until Ira had committed each object to a new schematic which incorporated the man as part of the cemetery.

When Ira was done, the man spoke again, but what he said did not come across as words yet, only noises at the moment, for the fear had not entirely subsided.

“Do you remember me? Charles Butler?”

“Do you remember me,” said Ira in a monotone.

“I wonder if you could answer a question about what happened to your hands. Would that upset you?”

“Would that upset you,” said Ira. And in the next moment, the noise had become a few words. His hands – upset him? He looked down on the bandages. His hands had done nothing to upset him.

The man was saying more, but his words became noise again, as unintelligible as the wind in the trees, the musical birdcalls and the more mechanical clicks and whirs of insects. Every sound in the cemetery was melding together, all the same noise. Ira focussed on his bandages as he began the work of shutting down the sound. At last, he entered the peaceful zone of white static.

But the man’s words came through again, noise insisting on itself, rising in inflection.

Ira cried out, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” until the sandwich man learned that ‘yes’ meant ’Shut up! SHUT UP!‘ and the man fell silent. And now Ira taught the tall stranger to stand motionless again, and to drop his eyes. It took only a little time till the man learned not to look at him directly. Then Ira’s attention was captured by a drop of water moving slowly along the leaf of a shrub. He was sliding into a trance when the drop elongated and fell off the leaf to become a perfect sphere in free fall. It splashed on the ground and freed him from fixation.

The sandwich man sat beside him so quietly, he became as the trees and the stones. And now they could talk.

“So you played five notes on the piano, and Babe didn’t like that.”

“Babe didn’t like that,” said Ira.

“Can you tell me why?”

“Tell me why.” Ira rocked back and forth, and then he began to hum. Babe had broken his hands but not his mouth. Humming soothed him and reduced the terror of a new voice which he had not been properly prepared for. Jane’s Cafe was not terrifying because he ate his lunch there every day, and his mother was always beside him. But now he was alone with the very large sandwich man, and this was wrong. The cafe was not supposed to follow him about.

But the man seemed to understand him much better than other people did. He was patient and his voice was calm, asking more questions about Babe.

Babe was dangerous. His mother had told him the man was dead, but Ira had no pictures of a dead Babe, and he had not yet seen Babe’s stone added to the cemetery.

Ira looked over the sandwich man’s shoulder as he prepared to speak to him. He delved into his store of dialogue for something appropriate. He decided upon an instruction he had received in the kitchen one bright morning, years ago. He remembered that scene best for the play of light on the wall, taking its patterns from white lace curtains. Then the fascination with curtain patterns had been displaced by his attraction to the fire of the stove’s front burner, and he had reached for it. His mother had restrained him and spoken to him out of deep concern. Now these were the same words he gave to the sandwich man. “Don’t burn yourself.”

The man changed his expression and hung his head a little lower. Ira perceived a touch of sadness as the sandwich man stood up, said, “Goodbye,” and walked away with his eyes cast down to the gravel path.

“Goodbye,” Ira echoed as he watched the tall man disappear into the encircling trees.

A few seconds passed by before he heard the next sound that did not belong in this place – footsteps so light a cat might have made them. He turned slowly, not wanting to see it, unable to help himself.

Impossible. He sat down on the grass before his knees could buckle underneath him and tumble him to the ground.

It was Dr. Cass.

But she had been made whole again, washed clean of blood. He labored over this a moment more, and worked very hard at his school lessons in an effort to put stored pictures in chronological order.

Cass Shelley was dead. He had attended her funeral service. This was a fragment of early memory which followed the flying stones, the breakage and the blood, Cass’s eyes finally closing – closed. This woman before him could not be Dr. Cass.

“Who,” said Ira, without inflection. She walked toward him, and looked directly at him. In a sudden onslaught of new fear, the sense of the word escaped him. When he said it again, it was as meaningless as the language of the owl. “Who.”

The woman knelt down beside him, her hands rising, reaching out for him. She was going to touch him! He shrank back. No, no, this is too much! No! Don’t touch! Oh, please, no -

She held him firmly by the shoulders. His body went rigid and his eyes rolled up to solid whites. He wanted to scream. He was afraid of her eyes.

“I know you don’t like this,” she said so gently, so softly, it was almost music. “But I need you to pay attention, Ira. Focus. You did that for my mother, and now you have to do it for me.”

The words meant nothing. He was terrified. He wanted to look at her without being seen, and she allowed this, dropping her eyes of intense color. But his fear of her was still so great, it sent her shape into a swirl of bright light that threatened to overload his senses. The sun drenched her hair and set it on fire. Her lips of red jumped out at him, parting to show the perfect rows of her teeth.

She was talking again. “I know you heard the song on the record player, Ira.”

Song?

He listened to her voice on the level of music for a while, having no idea what she might be saying. But soon the meaning was forcing its way into his consciousness. Over and over again, the same music, “What did you see?”

He saw the words now, dancing vibrations in the air before his eyes. He watched the rocks fly into Dr. Cass’s face and the rocks that doubled her body over. He nodded his head and said, “What did you see.” Yes, he was there, he had seen it. “What did you see,” he said, nodding again. She released him. He stood up and began to pace in circles.

She walked behind him, golden shadow, thrumming with color, throbbing with energy. He looked up to the sky, because looking at her was unbearable now, too much intensity. She was an explosion of life. His hands began to flutter in circles. His breathing was rapid and shallow – he was suffocating.

“What did you see?”

“She was red!” he screamed, and watched his words burst into colors which made ripples in his perceptions. “No more noise – the dog cried.” This second phrase tumbled out in quieter tones of stone gray. “The letter was blue.” These last words were dull pebbles thudding on the dirt at her feet.

“The letter?”

“Blue.” He shook his head to say it was blue and nothing else; he knew nothing more.

“How many of them, Ira? The people who threw the rocks! How many?”

She said this many times, walking with him around the cemetery, fifty times around the angel, exactly fifty times, and she was always right behind him. “How many?” she asked without tiring, without any sign of ever stopping. His hands rolled one around the other, faster and faster.

“How many?”

“Twenty-seven people! Eighteen rocks!” His count was exact, he had only to look at the television set inside his head, which replayed everything, each rock in its own turn, each body in the crowd vibrating in a separate hue, and an overall aura of violent energy.

He walked to the statue of Dr. Cass’s angel and wrapped his arms around it. He beat his head against the stone, not feeling the pain, but wanting to. She pulled him away. Her soft hand went to the place on his head where the red flowed.

“She was all red,” he said, seeing Dr. Cass in vivid color.

“I know, Ira. I saw her, too. All red.”

She pulled back her hands and sat down in the grass. After a few moments, he sat down a safe distance away from her. In her hand was his own handkerchief, plucked from his pocket and stained with his blood. He never met her eyes but once and accidentally. She was crooning low music, an old lullaby; he remembered it well. He rocked himself, and she was rocking with him. This was so familiar, something beloved that he had carefully stored away.

He replayed the old pictures of a small girl humming his songs with him as she walked alongside him. She had been his only friend and the only child who had never tortured him.

His old playmate.

Rocking, rocking, calmer now, he leaned his head back and stared at the clouds. “Kathy.”

“Yes, Ira?”

“Kathy,” was all he said, and that was quite a lot. It was said with love.