bath?”
“I give up. Why?”
“Because he wanted to make a clean getaway!” Jem cackled hilariously, and I laughed, too, though I thought it was a strange joke for a grown person to tell: so simplistic and childlike. But it would be just like Mr. Mott and his sense of responsibility to go around collecting jokes especially to tell to children.
Neither of us spoke as we climbed the front steps of the old farmhouse. There was something awesome as well as mysterious about an old and empty house where people have lived for manygenerations. We peered into each of its bare front rooms, which were already full of shadows at this time of evening. Jem, breathing audibly, took my hand. Still holding hands, we walked around the porch and looked in the windows of a long room with a big fireplace. “This was probably the dining room,” I said, “because the kitchen’s right through there.” Jem said he was sure a big family had lived there. “Then the grandmother got sick and died and the grandfather was so sad he got sick and died, and then the father died, and the people left had to sell the house and all this land so they could go somewhere else to live and have enough for later.” He looked up at me, in the orange light of the setting sun, for confirmation. “Remember the magician?”
“I sure do,” I said.
“You know,” he said, “I still think of that magician almost every day.”
The last year we had lived in Fredericksburg, during the time that my grandfather had been so ill, a magician and his family had moved into a house on our block. During the week, he went on the road, just like my father, but on the weekends he practiced tricks in his garage and let the neighborhood children watch. After we had buried my father and sold the house, and Mother was packing our boxes and labeling which furniture was to go to storage and which to be sold, Jem had walked back and forth through the empty rooms, saying in a surprised voice: “You know who I’m really going to miss? I’m going to miss that magician.”
After we had finished looking through all the windows, I sat on the back steps of the house while Jem climbed a tree. This side of the house faced away from our development, which had spoiled its meadows. From here you saw a thick line of trees and the western sky, which was an orange-pink, with the cirrus clouds that my grandfather had called “mare’s tails” scudding across its surface.
If I had been alone, I might have given myself up to the twilight mood and pretended to be some other person, from another time, sitting on this porch. Sometimes I would meditate aloud up here, pretending I was thinking another person’s thoughts. Strange phrases would come, fully formed, with a sort of predestined ease, from my mouth, as if I were simply repeating what had actually been thought or said at some other time. And then I’d feel refreshed, a little bit magic, and could take a deep breath and go down the hill feeling impervious to the ordinary life that had begun blinking below, from the lamps in the picture windows. This feeling of imperviousness would sometimes last me all the way to the “Raspberry Ice” walls of my room.
That night I dreamed I was riding my bike home from somewhere. Home was, of course, the house in Fredericksburg. It was night and there were no lights in our house. The only light on the street came from the magician’s garage. He was in there practicing his magic, and I could see his figure, with arms outstretched, fingers moving, as he performed some sleight of hand. When I reached our house, the front door was swinging open. I went inside, knowing something was wrong. It was all dark, and I couldn’t find a light switch, but I could see from the magician’s light down the block that our rooms were completely empty and that there was grass growing abundantly all over the floors.
I sobbed out in panic and distress, and then, suddenly, a firm hand pressed my shoulder, and a low,
“I give up. Why?”
“Because he wanted to make a clean getaway!” Jem cackled hilariously, and I laughed, too, though I thought it was a strange joke for a grown person to tell: so simplistic and childlike. But it would be just like Mr. Mott and his sense of responsibility to go around collecting jokes especially to tell to children.
Neither of us spoke as we climbed the front steps of the old farmhouse. There was something awesome as well as mysterious about an old and empty house where people have lived for manygenerations. We peered into each of its bare front rooms, which were already full of shadows at this time of evening. Jem, breathing audibly, took my hand. Still holding hands, we walked around the porch and looked in the windows of a long room with a big fireplace. “This was probably the dining room,” I said, “because the kitchen’s right through there.” Jem said he was sure a big family had lived there. “Then the grandmother got sick and died and the grandfather was so sad he got sick and died, and then the father died, and the people left had to sell the house and all this land so they could go somewhere else to live and have enough for later.” He looked up at me, in the orange light of the setting sun, for confirmation. “Remember the magician?”
“I sure do,” I said.
“You know,” he said, “I still think of that magician almost every day.”
The last year we had lived in Fredericksburg, during the time that my grandfather had been so ill, a magician and his family had moved into a house on our block. During the week, he went on the road, just like my father, but on the weekends he practiced tricks in his garage and let the neighborhood children watch. After we had buried my father and sold the house, and Mother was packing our boxes and labeling which furniture was to go to storage and which to be sold, Jem had walked back and forth through the empty rooms, saying in a surprised voice: “You know who I’m really going to miss? I’m going to miss that magician.”
After we had finished looking through all the windows, I sat on the back steps of the house while Jem climbed a tree. This side of the house faced away from our development, which had spoiled its meadows. From here you saw a thick line of trees and the western sky, which was an orange-pink, with the cirrus clouds that my grandfather had called “mare’s tails” scudding across its surface.
If I had been alone, I might have given myself up to the twilight mood and pretended to be some other person, from another time, sitting on this porch. Sometimes I would meditate aloud up here, pretending I was thinking another person’s thoughts. Strange phrases would come, fully formed, with a sort of predestined ease, from my mouth, as if I were simply repeating what had actually been thought or said at some other time. And then I’d feel refreshed, a little bit magic, and could take a deep breath and go down the hill feeling impervious to the ordinary life that had begun blinking below, from the lamps in the picture windows. This feeling of imperviousness would sometimes last me all the way to the “Raspberry Ice” walls of my room.
That night I dreamed I was riding my bike home from somewhere. Home was, of course, the house in Fredericksburg. It was night and there were no lights in our house. The only light on the street came from the magician’s garage. He was in there practicing his magic, and I could see his figure, with arms outstretched, fingers moving, as he performed some sleight of hand. When I reached our house, the front door was swinging open. I went inside, knowing something was wrong. It was all dark, and I couldn’t find a light switch, but I could see from the magician’s light down the block that our rooms were completely empty and that there was grass growing abundantly all over the floors.
I sobbed out in panic and distress, and then, suddenly, a firm hand pressed my shoulder, and a low,
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