The forest was empty and still, the path was deserted, the highway was motionless and serene. There was no movement anywhere in a thousand miles.
He started the car motor and let it idle. The car was pointed east where the orange sun was now rising slowly.
“All right,” he said, quietly. “Everyone, here I come. What a shame you’re all still alive. What a shame the world isn’t just hills and hills and nothing else to drive over but hills and never coming to a town.”
He drove away east without looking back.
West of October
The four cousins, Tom, William, Philip, and John, had come to visit the Family at the end of summer. There was no room in the big old house, so they were stashed out on little cots in the barn, which shortly thereafter burned.
Now the Family was no ordinary family. Each member of it was more extraordinary than the last. To say that most of them slept days and worked at odd jobs nights, would fell short of commencement.
To remark that some of them could read minds, and some fly with lightnings to land with leaves, would be an understatement.
To add that some could not be seen in mirrors while others could be found in multitudinous shapes, sizes, and textures in the same glass, would merely repeat gossip that veered into truth.
There were uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents by the toadstool score and the mushroom dozen. They were just about every color you could mix in one restless night. Some were young and others had been around since the Sphinx first sank its stone paws deep in tidal sands.
In all, in numbers, background, inclination, and talent, a most incredible and miraculous mob. And the most incredible of them all was:
Cecy.
Cecy. She was the reason, the real reason, the central reason for any of the Family to come visit, and not only to visit but to circle her a
nd stay. For she was as multitudinous as a pomegranate. Her talent was single but kaleidoscopic. She was all the senses of all the creatures in the world. She was all the motion picture houses and stage play theaters and all the art galleries of time. You could ask almost anything of her and she would gift you with it.
Ask her to yank your soul like an aching tooth and drift it in clouds to cool your spirit, and yanked you were, drawn high to drift in such clouds as sowed rain to grow grass and seed-sprout flowers.
Ask her to seize that same soul and bind it in the flesh of a tree, and you awoke next morning with apples pop ping out of your branches and birds singing in your green-leafed head.
Ask to live in a frog, and you spent days afloat and nights croaking strange songs.
Ask to be pure rain and you fell on everything. Ask to be the moon and suddenly you looked down and saw your pale illumination bleaching lost towns to the color of tombstones and tuberoses and spectral ghosts.
Cecy. Who extracted your soul and pulled forth your impacted wisdom, and could transfer it to animal, vegetable, or mineral; name your poison.
No wonder the Family came. No wonder they stayed long past ranch, way beyond dinner, far into midnights the week after next!
And here were the four cousins, come to visit And along about sunset of the first day, each of them said, in effect: “Well?”
They were lined up by Cecy’s bed in the great house, where she lay for long hours, both night and noon, because her talents were in such demand by both family and friends.
“Well,” said Cecy, her eyes shut, a smile playing about her lovely mouth. “What would your pleasure be?”
“I—” said Tom.
“Maybe—” said William and Philip.
“Could you—” said John.
“Take you on a visit to the local insane asylum,” guessed Cecy, “to peek in people’s very strange heads?”
“Yes!”
“Said and done!” said Cecy. “Go lie on your cots in the barn.” They ran. They lay. “That’s it. Over, up, and—out!” the cried.
Like corks, their souls popped. Like birds, they flew. Like bright unseen needles they shot into various and assorted ears in the asylum just down the hill and across the valley.