"It has always," Dwain began, carefully at first, "Been that I have," he paused, lifting the crystal bottle of cordial, he meticulously poured himself a glass.
Ceane waited impatiently for Dwain to continue, surveying the room, from the oak-panneled door and across the dusty white walls to the mantelpiece, with its pinecones and ornaments. Across the room he saw Sulfura, sitting in her imported chair, slumped back, shifting the tiny multicoloured beads in her palm around with the finger of her other hand, and enjoying it. Every minute.
Dwain seemed to suddenly remember that he had been in mid-sentence a moment ago. Embarassed, he put down the half-empty glass, sending it spinning across the polished stone floor chipped, but not broken, with a gentle knock with his controlling foot.
"Been that I have," he finished.
Sulfura gazed pleasantly, not really listening, her mind taken up with the beads she manipulated and also a memory. A memory when all she once knew was pepper and ice cream, a time when everything was bliss, broken only by the fierce static pain from biting aluminum foil. Her mood perturbed Dwain.
"That I have been in," he said, "In and throughout my being," he stopped, bending down to pick up his fallen glass. It was Ceane's nasty stare that reminded him that he was supposed to keep speaking. "With, a fine-toothed."
Dwain stopped again, smiling and confident that he had accomplished his thought, and picked his glass up.
"Comb," Ceane said, rubbing his nose in discontent. "Silly, stupid old man." If Dwain was listening it wouldn't hurt to call him that.
"Comb," Dwain agreed, at wits end of what to say next, but Ceane and Sulfura never noticed, like most things he did. He explored how the dim lamp-light filtered through the alcohol in the vessel to reach his eyes, and the small rainbows found therein.
Sulfura stretched and yawned, seeing the room for the first time now that she had looked away from her beads. Her eyes fell on Dwain.
Dwain snapped back into action. "Always been that I been through my self, inner self with I, that with a toothed comb. Always. I have always had fine comb within me, hurting." He pinched himself and grimaced.
Sulfura pinched herself too, hoping to recreate the pain that Dwain claimed to perpetually be in. She was interrupted in this process as Dwain sat down on top of her, ignoring her presence in the chair.
"If," Dwain mused, "If I were to understand. This house. Like Deatrice didn't when he died." He blinked. "I might cry when I got fairly alone." A sweat broke out on his forehead which he quickly wiped away.
Sulfura used his speech to squeeze out from beneath him, letting him slide down into the depths of the seat, and she wondered, as she straightened herself, how she could get him out.
Ceane laughed. "How we have changed, old friend! You are the very person you set out to find so many years ago. Sulfura has withdrawn, you have alienated her, like all the others. And me, I am more cynical with each new year that comes to me." Ceane took off one shoe and held it.
Dwain said nothing, but he got up and took in the smell of the window curtains, remembering the day he bought them brand new, and shivered.
It was winter, and the white flakes drifted down, covering the stones, the ramshackle wooden fence and the trees in an icy pelt. The house stood nearby, its yellow paint peeling, cracks in the walls opening wider in the face of colder weather.
Inside it was hot and stuffy. Aunt Meleyne would occasionally lean forward to place another log on the burning fire. The walls themselves were cold, especially near the windows. Funce sat by the window, fingers pressing up against the glass, forming circles of moisture on its frigid surface. He was cold, always looking out the windows.
In the corner was the Christmas tree, decorated from top to bottom with silver balls, toys, stars, and it perched on a pile of gifts, all wrapped in the same kind of white paper, the only kind there was. Most of the presents were for or from Meleyne anyways. Sulfura sat under the lowest branches, cramped into the corner, curled up into a ball. The green quills poked her neck like pins, but she smothered herself, humming a tuneless song she sang for self-comfort. A song for the times when she was alone.
Across from where Meleyne was sitting in her rocking chair was her nephew Loren, the father of Funce and Sulfura. He stared at the opposite wall blankly, without imagination, hands resting upon the orange leather suitcase on his lap. He had nothing to do, as it had been for the last painful eight months since Hazel had died. He sighed, the only thing he did on a daily basis.
Meleyne looked at them all in disgust, her fingers filtering through the black curls of Deatrice's hair as he slept leaning against her legs.
At least the boy will end what I started, she thought.
Funce spoke. "Why aren't we eating?" he asked. "Why aren't we eating?"
Loren, dragged out of his void, wanted to answer him, but Meleyne cut in.
"Dwain is coming home," she interrupted, "The war is over. We are very proud of him, aren't we."
Nobody even reacted when she spoke. In the younger days they would have said something. Now they just sat and stared. Conditioning, and ignorance. Funce and Loren were both like that, almost the same person, except Funce wasn't carrying a suitcase around with him all the time. Meleyne couldn't even see Sulfura. She didn't really care.
A blast of frozen air swept the room, the white paper napkins shifted from their precise places on the empty table. Against the grey sky a figure entered and closed the door behind him, carrying nothing. Dwain was back.
A face tarred with the scars of war, wrinkled and dried, Dwain looked older than he should have been, but didn't.
"Gee, I'm glad that's over," he breathed happily.
Loren just gaped at Dwain. Indeed, the war had changed him. For an instant some part of his consciousness screamed, but Loren was too overcome with emotion to notice.
Meleyne passed Dwain a slice of whole wheat bread as he sat at the table, facing none of them. He would be the last to go, she knew. It's already started.
"Mmmm." Dwain slid the bread over his face, pressing it into his nose and inhaling deeply, feeling the texture and content of the dough.
Funce never took his eyes away from the window.
"Hazel died while you were gone," Meleyne said.
Dwain blinked, but the news didn't seem to register properly. "I'll have to phone the doc tomorrow so he can check me for wounds."
Meleyne laughed. A dry, brittle, biting laugh that made everyone jump. Sulfura uncurled, pine needles sticking into her face. Deatrice's eyes flew open, listening. Funce cocked his head a bit, while Loren actually focussed on the room itself, emerging from his dreams.
All except Dwain, who was toying with his belt buckle.
Meleyne kept on laughing. She had not laughed in years, and all her sneering came out now, concentrated and deadly. Eventually she calmed down.
"This wretched family," she began, "Has been my prison since I entered into it. My life was a farce. I never got my share. And look at you!" She pierced all of them with a nasty glare. "Not one of you has accomplished anything with your lives! You may blame me, but it's not my doing. It's yours. That is why I curse you. I curse you all to your deaths, that none of you will ever attain anything!"
She coughed a few times. Somewhere inside she was crying, but she never spoke with that part of her. All there was left was her angry, bitter shell.
"Merry Christmas," she cackled. "Goodbye. The war is over, they say." She pressed her fist against her chest and there was a muffled crack.
It was at that moment exactly, Hazel had predicted, that as the clock struck its first chime marking five o'clock in the afternoon, that Meleyne would die.
Meleyne, or her shell, fell forward from the chair with such powerful convulsive force that they could hear her forehead crack as it struck the polished wooden floor, her necklace beads scattering about, bouncing and clattering like grease, her whole body never to move again with a final terminant thud, her eyes staying open, wrinkled hands like claws.
There were four more chimes to go before anyone moved, and when they did, not a word was spoken. Meleyne's legacy would curse them until their deaths.
The last thing the family did together was to divide up Meleyne's things among themselves. Those that no one took they burned in the fireplace, but the black smoke and white ash that rose from the cinders had a terrible, acrid odour to it, and it infected everything in the house, so they were always reminded of her.
Funce was happy, however. He took Meleyne's car. He had always wanted it for himself, and in that sense he had won her out. It was a dark navy blue station wagon, dented and bent, a bit rusty and a bit slow on its wheels, but it worked and it had a loud, powerful motor. And Funce knew how to drive it.
Deatrice seemed unaware of the others in the room immediately after Meleyne's death, but he knew they were there, their presence meant nothing to him. He reached down under her old worn blouse and drew out a small pouch, made of black velvet and kept closed with a wire.
He pushed Funce away from the window, and Funce was angry, because he liked the cold air near it, and now the fire scorched him even though it was in the far wall.
Deatrice unwound the wire and opened the pouch, which folded flat into a square shape, and yet there was some stuffing inside of it. Everyone but Sulfura was able to steal a glance at what lay inside. There were five nuts, tropical ones, ovular with a coarse, sharp shell, and they jabbed the fingers when touched. The fifth nut had been broken into brown dust and fragments of shell.
The family rarely saw the pouch again, Deatrice hid it in his room.
When they burned the blouse they burned the dust of the broken nut shell, but Deatrice kept the whole nuts in the pouch. And when the brown crumbs and grains hit the flames, an angry whistle came up, and one tongue of fire turned firey crimson, and it rose up the chimney. That night no one could sleep well.
Deatrice shut himself in his room. Loren didn't want anything, the orange leather suitcase was good enough for him, for a sailor had given it as a present, a mysterious one, and he was fond of it, as were the rest of the family with Meleyne's toys.
Dwain, still an idiot, chose what he wanted without any aforethought. He took a small glass from the table that was next to the breadboard, placed between the scattered white paper napkins that the wind had blown out of place. The glass was his prize and he kept it for a long, long time afterwards.
Sulfura waited until everyone trouped up to bed for the night before she emerged from behind the Christmas tree. She gathered up all the beads that had flown from Meleyne's shattered necklace, and she put them in her pocket, and then she went to bed.
The next morning, Christmas morning, the stockings were full of the sorts of things Meleyne would have given them. No one knew who had filled them, but no one bothered to look and see what they got. All the presents under the tree, each one wrapped the same way, each one in a rectangular box of some shape or another, each one covered in the same blank shiny white paper, was burned in the fire. The stockings soon followed, then the Christmas tree ornaments, and the tree itself thrown outside where it rolled down the hill and landed half-immersed in the frozen stream, sitting there as its needles fell one by one into the passing water.
No one ate breakfast together. Deatrice didn't even come out of his room.
Fifteen years before, somewhere along the banks of the Pacific ocean, a Dutch cargo ship christened "The Pride Of Jerusalem" docked into the port of a Chilean town.
To one side of the port was a small, two-floor villa, of which half the bottom floor had been converted into a stock shop.
When the bell over the door to the shop jingled, Juaro looked up from his magazine.
"Never too early in the day to come see his old friend!"
"It was not I who said it, Swats, it was that damned fisherman and his gang who came in here and ransacked the place yesterday." The magazine was put away quickly.
"Reading again, I see. Tsk tsk."
"Forgive me, for I am bored during the off-season." Juaro indicated a short wooden stool for his friend to sit on. "Perhaps something to drink between ourselves?"
"No, although thank you, I do not have the time." Swats drew out his keys and fingered them restlessly. "Besides, I thought the fisherman's group earned you a pretty penny."
"Ah, not when one is exposed to their banter for a half-hour or more. Had I known, I would have called in sick." Picking up the kettle he left the counter to turn on the heating element in the corner. "I hope you do not mind if..."
Swats gave a nonpartial wave of his hand.
"No, no, make some tea for yourself, I am not thirsty. Would you like to see what I have brought for you?"
Juaro stopped pouring the water. "A gift?"
"Depends. Could be good for business." From his shoulder haulsack Swats produced a number of items, many of them in jars. "Foods, mostly. Getting hard to find in these parts. Show them to the clientele, see if they have interests, and then you can order for more."
Juaro stooped and peered at the contents of some of the smaller jars.
"Olives? Who wants, or even rather needs olives around here? And in this one. Turtle eggs? And lotus in the other? Swats, you have been swindled!"
"Not swindled, friend, but on the verge of a good business connection. Once the demand is starting, we can do nothing but give the supply, and watch our pockets grow!" Swats' eyes gleamed.
But Jauro shook his head.
"I could not sell these. No person who comes to my store would ever buy these things. And the types that would, I do not want to see those types in my store. Who wants these balloons? And these elastic bands? I could use some rope."
"Rope?"
"Yes, rope!" Juaro pulled out his account book from his back pocket. "Look at these figures. That ship alone has ordered enough new rope that it empties half my stock, I will not have enough left in a month, and I will lose good customers."
"Juaro, what if I told you my life depended on getting rid of this junk," Swats said, his gleaming eyes now replaced with a direct look.
"Are you in some sort of trouble, Swats?"
"May I only say that these things were stolen by a thief, and the thief gave them to me, and some of them are cursed, and I must get rid of them or I will surely die!"
Juaro stared at his friend, who was obviously scared. How did one answer to a man who claimed to be condemned? Swats was either quite serious or insane.
Luckily for Juaro the silence was broken once more by the jingling of the bell. Juaro slipped the kettle away while Swats began to pack up his jars.
The man who entered was going bald, in his thirties and held a suitcase with both hands. He was breathing fast, as if he had just been running.
"Loren," Juaro said. "What is the matter?"
"That ship that came to port. I think one of the crew forgot his suitcase. I found it on the pier with no one around, and when I saw the ship preparing to leave I began looking for the owner. Has anyone come in here?"
Shrug. "Aside from you and I, only Swats has come here today, and Swats..." He looked about. "I think Swats has gone to check his shipment in the back when you came in."
"Oh, was I interrupting a discussion of some sort? I can leave anyway, if I'm to return this suitcase..." Loren began heading towards the door.
"No, it was not important," Juaro began, his gaze suddenly falling upon some jars and pouches Swats had inadvertantly left behind. "Perhaps you could take some of these things with you, Swats was trying to get rid of them."
Loren gave the items a quick look and scooped them up. "Thank you, I'll see if I can find a use for them when I get a chance."
He hurried to the door, and as he turned his head back to Juaro to give him a farewell smile, Loren bumped into a sailor entering, sending the jars and pouches across the floor. Many shattered or released their contents.
"Oh, I'm so sorry..." Loren began apologetically.
But the sailor remained calm, acting as though the event had never happened.
"Loren?" the sailor asked.
Loren nodded.
"Loren, you can keep my suitcase, I don't really need it anymore and the things inside it aren't actually mine anyway. These are the adoption papers..." he shoved a sheaf of papers into Loren's arms. The sailor paused a moment in thought before continuing. "All signed and in proper order, of course. Please keep the suitcase well, and never let it out of your sight. Goodbye for now, there is a slight chance we might see each other again in a few years, but I doubt it."
The Dutch ship began its engines and the sailor looked out at the harbour. "My ship seems to be leaving. Excuse me."
With that, the sailor ran from the shop and dove into the ocean, swimming frantically toward the departing ship.
"What was that all about?" Juaro laughed. "You have acquired some truly strange friends, Loren."
"That was no friend of mine," Loren said, looking at the papers the sailor had passed him. On each one was his own signature. "I've never signed these!" he cried.
"What are they?"
"Adoption sheets..." Loren's eyes scanned accross the page. "Legal parental guardians, blah blah blah... my signature, a date... Juaro, these say that Hazel and I have become the foster parents of an orphan!"
"Good for you!" Juaro took out a cigar box from a drawer.
"No no, I never signed these, I don't know what kind of a prank this is..." Loren stood in amazement until he reached a course of action. "Juaro, I must find Hazel and our lawyer immediately. Please excuse me for disturbing you and your friend."
Loren began to pick up the scattered contents of the jars and pouches that had fallen on the floor. Gathering up as much as he could, he turned to leave.
Juaro spoke. "Loren, I will not tell a soul until the matter is cleared up."
"Thank you, Juaro. You are a true friend."
"One question, though."
"Yes?"
"Who is the child?"
"Er..." Loren consulted the form. "An eight-year-old called Meleyne, from somewhere or another..." And with that, he left.
Juaro stood by himself in silence for a moment. He considered putting the kettle on but then decided against it in the face of things.
"Swats?" he called. "Swats, I do not know why you left the room, but he is gone now and there is no one here but you and I."
Swats returned from the back room. "I never ordered a shipment of any sort."
"True, but I needed a reason to give when you left so briskly."
"I left some of my jars and pouches here, I was worried."
"I know you were, Swats, so I gave them to him for free. Does that make you happy? You are rid of some of them now."
Swats' face turned a ghostly white, and Juaro swallowed to make the lump in his throat go away. Perhaps he had done the wrong thing.
"Y-you see he broke some of them," Juaro stammered. "The jars were broken and some of the pouches lost their weight."
Swats said nothing, but his hands were shaking, dropping his keys to the floor. He looked at the mess of broken glass in horror, then he gazed out the window at the harbour.
I must calm him, Juaro thought. One of the black pouches laid safely near the door, so he went to pick it up and show it to Swats. "See here, all is not lost, this one is still intact."
As Juaro walked towards Swats his boot cracked something under its weight, pulverizing it into fragments, and Juaro remarked afterwards that it was a nut of some sort that had rolled out from one of the pouches that Loren had taken with him.
When its shell shattered, Swats cried out, clutching his stomach, and crumpled to the floor, his hands and face cut by the glass about him, for he had been broken, and by the time Juaro had reached him and asked him what was wrong, Swats was already dead.
Raindrops piddled down towards the smoky trenches in a sickening yellow mist. Every ten minutes or so a rifle of the enemy's would shoot of a bullet or two, replied by a short burst of fire from the other side. Ammunition had been low for both sides, and the war in this area could only have been described as pathetically strained to its limits.
The major sat on a muddy box rubbing his hands. In a few moments he was joined by a soldier.
"Major?"
"...If I only had a rock. A big rock the size of my fist. No, a bit smaller than that. Something heavy that fit perfectly into my hand. I bet I could knock one of them down at sixty feet. Well, maybe fifty. But we've thrown all the rocks. There isn't anything left lying around that we can throw. Except mud. You can't throw mud..."
"Sir?"
"...Come to think of it, they must have rocks, too. But they haven't thrown any at us. Which means they must be keeping the ones we threw at them for a double assault back. God, that's good strategy. Why didn't I think of that? Corporal? Issue an order that nothing is to be thrown anymore. If they throw something at us, keep it. We'll wait them out. They'll see!"
"The corporal's not here, sir."
"What?"
"Major?"
"Who the hell are you?"
"Well, my name's Dwain, sir."
"What are you?"
"Footman, sir." A quick salute.
"Go find the corporal, footman."
If there was coffee left, the major would have drunk it long ago. So he waited miserably in the growing drizzle. After a half-hour the soldier returned.
"Missing in action, sir."
"Missing? Christ. What did you want with me before?"
"If I was bothering you..."
"No, no."
"And I'm not bothering you right now?"
"No!"
The soldier paused nervously, shuffling his feet and licking his lips for the moisture.
"...I don't want to fight anymore, sir, in all respect. All these people dying, I don't know any of them, they don't know me, we're all innocent, and..."
The major punched him. Hard. Dwain missed the beginning of whatever the major was saying as he recovered from the shock.
"...a damn wimp and a loafer. You're on K.P. for the next week, mister! And when you're not doing that, you're in the forward trenches! Do you understand me? Right up front! And if I catch you hiding away somewhere, you'll be going over the top! Dismissed."
Dwain stood there, stupefied in the light of his new duties.
"Dismissed!"
Dwain stumbled out, halfway in a dream.
Chaos.
The medics were only able to tell which body was the major's by the badges. The shell had made two other casualties impossible to identify, and they died soon afterwards. Dwain they found flat on his face in the mud outside the tent door. His back stinging with schrapnel, his mouth, eyes, nostrils, filled with the mud.
One month later, when he began to speak again, the bomb shell explosion seemed forgotten. But he lived in a dream. Two years later, from a military hospital that had been in seige, Dwain was dismissed and sent home.
Deatrice peeped out the white curtains at the dusty street, watching the passing of running dogs, cars, children, the clouds... to all of them he gave the same cold fixed stare. No one bothered to look back.
Almost automatically, Deatrice's eyes and thoughts would begin to drift across the room, grazing over the chipping plaster and the clock that no longer told the time.
No sense of rhythm, no sense to stop scurrying like frightened mice. If only the dogs were snarling and wild, the cars black and sleek. The children, sour-faced, never feeling like playing the street games. As for the clouds... Deatrice liked those. The natural, yet sometimes powerfully brutal sense of passivity they held, he enjoyed. But the feeling would leave him, and his mind would return to the Earth, sitting miserably in the frigid winter dust, shivering bitterly.
Ten years ago the family had scattered, most likely never to come together again. At first Deatrice had been happy to see them go, leaving him alone, barely able to take care of himself. The clicking of heels and the striking of matchsticks had been so painful back then, all he desired was silence.
But now, he would have given almost anything to hear those awful sounds, because at least he was familiar with them. No, he thought afterwards, I would not give them anything. They should be here. Never my fault, everyone a traitor.
As Deatrice's blades of self-hatred clawed at his black curls and into his skull, he began to imagine Meleyne's face, and how it never smiled, and how she hated him, hated everyone. And suddenly, Deatrice knew what it was like to be her, and he wanted to cry, but refused to.
The world was wrong. Or was it he? No, the world had made him.
Up the stairs.
He rarely stayed in his room now. When the house was empty of any other people there was a point in concealing oneself, now there was no point at all. The stiff carpet sank beneath his feet as he walked in, the plain white walls reflected what little light the hall gave off.
Behind his ragged bed, in a small box, lay a pouch of three nuts. He knew the best time to use them was near the end of the year, and it always made him happy to do so, at least for a short while. Until the hatred returned.
Deatrice sat on the orange suitcase that was now his since he inherited it. He kept it for two reasons, one being that of irony, the other being one of nostalgia, it was his prize from the last time he had opened the pouch.
Humming contentedly to himself, Deatrice thought about when he would untwist the pouch wires, and the feeling of vengeance he anticipated so much.
Knock. Knock.
"Now how did that tune go?"
Knock.
"Knockety knock knock, knockety knock knock... dum-ba-de dum-dum..."
Knock. The old sailor's thoughts drifted away from knocking on the dry plywood door.
"My gal sure is nuts, she is... Lakes and rivers and sand-wich-es..."
The door opened, a thin, pale woman peering out.
"Yes?"
"She came one day knockin' at my door... I knew right then she weren't no bore... But my gal sure is nuts, she is... Dogs in kennels and green britches..."
"Oh! Are you a singing telegram?"
"...Because when she sat down on my head, I knew right then I couldn't be dead... Knockety knock knock, knockety knock knock... Knocking the bread box, knocking the car, knocking the ice cream, she goes too far... Knocking on windows, knocking on cactus, knocking in mountain, knocking on knock knock..."
The woman frowned, touching her necklace as if it were supposed to explain who this strange man was. "Is this some sort of a joke?"
The sailor continued unabated. "...She knocks my head from day to day, but I love her so much I'm willin' to stay... My gal sure is nuts, it's true... Kites and billiards and derring-do... Fish turn blue in the cause of war... I'm gonna watch T.V. some more... But my gal sure is nuts..."
"Look you, I'm closing the door."
"...it's true, she keeps a bus in a size eight shoe..."
The door slammed.
"...I'd write her a letter but she doesn't go, she's got me shakin' from head to toe..."
The sailor looked at the door. It was still closed. He gave it a shrug and went on.
"Knockety knock knock, knockety knock knock... Knocking the jump start, knocking the Nile, knocking the postman, look at her smile... Knocking on Gordon, knocking on Wednesday, knocking your yard-stick, knocking on knock knock... Knocking knock knock knock, knocking knock knock... Knocking knock-nicky-knock-nick-knock-na-nock... My gal sure is nuts, she is."
Knock knock.
After a brief but unpleasant wait in the winter air, the sailor knocked again. Wasn't there anyone at home?
Finally, after some persistance, the door opened agressively. The sailor found himself face to face with a thin, flushed woman.
"I'm sick and tired of whatever it is you're trying to pull!" she snapped.
It was the sailor's turn to frown. "I don't think we've met," he said, extending his hand cordially.
"Very funny. Go away."
"Did you answer the door earlier?"
"Yes, I did. I'm about to close it again if you don't go away."
"Oh!" he exclaimed, "I didn't notice, I'm sorry. It happens sometimes, with doors and wheels. Have you ever noticed it?" The woman seemed about to reply when he cut her off. "My name is Ceane. Is Loren home?"
She stared at him suspiciously. "Are you a friend of his?"
"Not really."
"Then what do you want?"
"What I meant by saying that I'm not really a friend of his," Ceane explained, "Is that I met him about twenty years ago in South America and I wanted to see how he was getting along."
"Loren's never been to South America."
"Yes he has, I met him there. Are you his wife?"
"No," she said. "I'm his daughter."
"Well, is he home?"
Sulfura shuffled her feet. "He's dead."
Ceane seemed taken aback by this, and he blushed. "I-I'm sorry, I had no idea..."
"It's fine, it's just that... oh, never mind."
Ceane regained his composure. "Would it be alright right to ask how... how Loren..."
"Well, about a year ago he was up at the family house," Sulfura said. "I don't know why, none of us ever visit Loren's nephew. There was some sort of disagreement between them and Loren came home. A few days later he was found in his bed, dead with all his ribs cracked and broken. The coroner couldn't make head or tail of how it happened."
"And the suitcase?" the sailor inquired.
"Oh... his nephew took it," Sulfura thought for a moment. "He had that thing for twenty years?"
"I gave it to him, actually."
"Was it yours? What was in it, anyway?"
Ceane laughed. "No, no, it wasn't mine. I never opened it either, to tell you the truth."
There was a period of silence between them.
Ceane broke it. "So... you must be Sulfura, then, Loren's daughter."
"Yes."
"What do you do?"
"I'm a schoolteacher," she answered.
"Wonderful, wonderful," Ceane said. "I must have your brother and you over someday for a drink. This is my number," he said, scribbling it down on a piece of paper and handing it to her. "Where can I get in touch with... Dwong?"
"Dwain."
"Do you have his number?"
"He doesn't have a telephone," Sulfura said. "He's living in the hospital right now. The one downtown, do you know where it is?"
Ceane beamed. "The hospital? I know where it is. We were in the war together, you know."
"Oh."
There was another period of silence.
"Well," Ceane said, "I must be off. I'll call in about a week and invite you two over."
Ceane seemed ready to leave when a thought occured to him. "That necklace you're wearing... African?"
Sulfura tried to cover it with her hands. "Yes... it belonged to my great-aunt."
"Meleyne."
Sulfura paled visibly.
"And speaking of Meleyne," Ceane continued, "You also always referred to your cousin as your father's nephew. He's your cousin, after all. Why not say Deatrice?"
Sulfura paled even further.
"Get out."
"Did I say something wrong?"
"Get out!"
"Deatrice?"
"GET OUT!"
"But I didn't mean to..."
The door slammed.
"Well, that was rude," Ceane grumbled, and he descended the porch's plywood steps. He had to visit Dwain and invite them both over anyway.
March 5
Newsflash! Funce wins Grand Prix in blue station wagon. "It was an accident, really," he said earlier this week, "I had no idea it could handle so well." Funce plans to use the prize money to fund his trip from Austria to Africa by ship. "Mentally, I'm alrady there. It's where it's at."
April 29
Incident abord the yacht "Jubilee" - Grand Prix winner Funce falls into the Indian Ocean. Captain Brian Yorgi quote "I don't know... I was steering along and I hear this splash." Rescue teams inoperative after flood disaster, Funce probably lost.
July 2
India - man claims to be Funce. Eye-witnesses struck blind! "But I can see fine," said witness, "That's Funce all right. Gosh, we were really getting worried there." Funce afloat for three days in waterproof suit. "The first two days were hell. I think I'm all right now."
November 17
The Funce Guide To The Equator - $14.95 paperback, pp. 614, illus., travel.
December 10
Funce lost! "I haven't seem him around here for years," says paperboy. "I thought he was in Europe." Family gave no comment.
October 8
Tag team search party in Alps find mountain expedition buried in snow. Expedition hit by avalanche and suffocated. Funce, missing over eight months, among the deceased. "We thought we'd never find him after that flood disaster we had," search party leader said.
November 4
Funeral for Funce held in Funce's home town. Inquiries made after his close family. Only available relatives brother and cousin. Brother mentally unwell. Cousin denied reporters inside boarded country home, "I never read newspapers," cousin said. "Why should I care?"
"What a mess," Ceane grumbled as he brushed up the broken glass and the thumbtacks from the previous evening. "Last time I ever have those two over for a drink."
Ceane watered the plants and left the house, vanishing from the Earth for the next eight years or so.
The small child fiddled aimlessly with the miniature plastic shovel. It wasn't moving the sand fast enough, and it would soon be time for a nap again. Once the teacher came back, anyway.
Discarding the primitive digging device, the child resorted to his tiny hands, burying them and scooping out handfulls of brown, wet sand. Here and there the child would encounter objects lost by previous diggers, a model car, a popsicle stick, a green and yellow marble. All of them covered in a thin pelt of sand.
A drop of orange paint dripped down next to him from a paintbrush held by a second child, admiring the hole in the sand the first child was digging. There was a click-clack of heels and the teacher came into the room.
Some of the children sat down where they were. The ones with paint- brushes painted faster to finish their masterpieces that now were becoming unified colours. Others ignored her.
Sulfura couldn't see, anyway. The set of large speakers she carried in her arms prevented her from observing most of the room. Electrical stereo hook-up cords dangled and dragged behind her. Setting them down with a thunk, she leaned and rested on them to gather her breath. A moment later she hurried out of the room again, the sound of her heels clicking along afterwards.
Children sat up and stared at the speakers, curious to touch and feel them, but they sensed something different was going on, and a few were confused and a bit frightened. The children who had hurried to finish their paintings stood there, examining the blotches of colour they had hastily created.
The sound of the heels returned and Sulfura stumbled into the class- room once more, this time bearing a stereo machine, a record player, a pile of records, and a tangled mass of wires and plugs that seemed hopelessly enmeshed.
"Children, children," Sulfura called, setting down the second pile of equipment. "Come and sit down now, time to sit. Come on now."
The children set down their playthings and plunked themselves down on the orange-red carpet, stained with plasticene smears and bubble gum.
Sulfura fumbled with the tangled wires to take out the knots, beginning to assemble the sound system together.
"You don't have to call me by my last name today," she said as she connected the record player to the stereo. "You can call me Sulfura. That's my first name. Like Bobby is Bobby's first name, mine is Sulfura. Can you all say my first name?"
The gathered children were very confused. A few of them managed to mumble "Sulfura" or at least something that sounded like it.
"No nap today," Sulfura said. "Not today..." She clicked the power button, and noticed she had forgotten to plug the speakers in.
Some of the children went "Yay!" but others were still confused, now that the normal pattern of kindergarden class had been broken, they no longer knew what would happen next.
"There," Sulfura finished, placing the power cord into a wall socket. "Children, I'm going to play some music and dance." She sorted through her collection of records and selected one, and placed the record needle on it. As the turntable whirred into action, a pleasant and soft samba piece reverberated across the room.
"Da-te-de, da-te-dum..." she spun around to the beat of the music, letting the music move her, her long skirt twisting around at every turn of the melody.
The children watched quietly.
Sulfura danced on more wildly, her hair becoming undone and spinning about freely like her skirt, she began to lose the air of a prim schoolteacher and began to loosen up.
The children continued to follow her every movement.
Letting her arms and hips go loose, Sulfura danced about, flailing and swooning to the musical beat, until at last she became one with the rhythym. It was a scene many of the children would keep in their memories for long afterwards, though few of them ever understood what was going on. As the last few notes came out, Sulfura turned off the stereo power and settled down, sitting cross-legged on the dirty carpet. She looked different. Sadder, remorseful.
"Children, I love you all very much." She smiled pleasantly. "You're my best and favorite class." It was her only class, but they didn't know that, and besides, she wanted to say it.
Sulfura leaned forward and played with the end of her beaded necklace. "Remember, children, man is a mortal thing. Very fragile, it sweeps by like a single grain of dust in a strong, warm spring breeze. Grasp that knowledge, and never let go, and never be angry with death. Fear it, but not angrily, and know it."
She looked out the window, over the fence that surrounded the school building, towards the blue sky, dotted with grey clouds that winter day, a seagull circling about in the sunlight. In the corner a tap dripped water into a metal faucet, and the traffic could be heard rumbling. She wiped a small tear.
"And never," she stated firmly, "Never, ever, ever, make fun of nor disregard anyone's opinions. Because it'll come back," Surfura said. "It will come back to you, if you wait long enough. And when it comes back, you'll know that you had a part in creating it."
Sulfura's eyes glazed over, and she rose to her feet and began moving toward the door. "Be careful," she told the children. "The world outside is always trying to get in."
She opened the door and the children watched her leave. They could hear the click-clacks of her heels as she walked down the hall, but they were slower, more precise, and calm.
The door opened and the vice-principal looked in, his eyes darting from the wide-eyed children to the sandbox and the stereo equipment.
"What's going on in here?" he asked sternly. "Was this where that music was coming from earlier? Where's your teacher?"
The children glanced at each other nervously.
The click-clack sound of Sulfura's high-heeled shoes came to a sudden and abrupt halt, and then there was nothing more.
Dwain knocked purposefully on the front door of the house, chipping off loosened curls of yellow paint as he did so. He waited but no answer came, so he knocked again. He could hear someone inside, but the lights were off and nothing was moving.
He looked back at the road, where Ceane's figure waved him on encouragingly from the car.
Dwain sighed and tried the handle. Locked. He searched about his pockets and took out a long disused tiny box, several years old. Inside, on a bed of white cotton, lay a small key, dull with the passage of time. Dwain had not used the key for as long as he could recall, but he used it now, and unlocked the front door, which it was for.
The hall was dusty and empty. Where there had once been pictures on the wall, they had been since taken down. The kitchen and its rocking chair were the only two places that seemed to have been used recently.
Up the stairs.
Dwain opened a door that had been painted black, and the hinges creaked, revealing a white shag carpet and a wrinkled bed.
Walking in, he peered around the bed. A youth with black curls of hair squatted upon an orange suitcase. He looked thin and bony, frail, his face long and tear-streaked, his fingers like claws. In front of him lay a small square of fabric and a short wire, alongside three nuts, two whole and one split in half.
The youth stared up at him remorsefully, and a minute of silence passed before either of them spoke.
"Deatrice."
"Dwain."
Dwain looked at Deatrice's eyes, taking in the hatred that emanated from their very core, a hole so deep that he could almost peer into the depths of Deatrice's withered soul.
"What are you doing."
Deatrice pursed his lips and picked up one of the nuts, the larger of the two whole ones.
"I'm going to kill Funce."
"Funce?"
"You can watch, if you like. I don't care anymore. Soon you'll all be gone from my life, and then I shall stay here, and eventually die here, alone, by myself."
Dwain stood over him, but did not speak.
"I hate you," Deatrice spat. "It will be a better day when not a single living member of our wretched family will be left."
"Will that make you happy?"
Deatrice seemed as though he would cry, but his eyes remained as dry as the dust that covered the suitcase.
"Of course it won't make me happy. Nothing ever did."
"You sound like Meleyne."
"I was the only one she ever came close to liking." Deatrice inspected Dwain closely. "You seem to be able to communicate fairly intelligently again. And here I was, thinking you were a blithering idiot all this time, after that stupid war accident."
Dwain blinked. "It's only temporary. I go back to the way I normally am in a few hours or so, whether I want to or not. In the meantime, I intend to do as much as I possibly can."
"Well, I'm going to kill Funce now."
"Funce is dead."
Deatrice almost let out a smile for the first time in years. "It's good to hear someone lie to me again. I was getting tired of lying to myself."
"Funce is dead. Didn't the reporters come here?"
"Yes, but I refused to talk with them. You should know that. Anyway, the world is a big lie. You're lying to me. The reporters didn't know what they were talking about."
"I think you're the one who doesn't know what he's talking about. So you're going to kill Funce now?"
"Yes."
"You didn't manage to kill Sulfura."
"No? What happened?"
"Coma. Deep coma. We're hoping she'll come out of it, she's beginning to respond positively to external stimuli."
"I wondered what had happened. Her nut is this one here, the one that wouldn't shatter properly. All it did was break in two."
"Ah."
Dwain waited. "Aren't you going to kill Funce now?"
"Yes, I was just waiting."
"For what?"
"Waiting for you to say something."
"Oh." Dwain waited some more. "You realize that if you're wrong, the curse kills you instead."
"How would you know?"
"Ceane told me."
They both remained still.
"Are you afraid, Deatrice?"
Deatrice leaned back, the nut between his palms, and he rolled it around. "Yes. I'm scared. And I'm sad, and angry. I've been this way all my life. Who do I blame? Who do I tell?"
Dwain looked away, back at the hall and the black door to the room.
He heard Deatrice's weight shift and there was another long pause.
"Merry Christmas," Deatrice said. "Goodbye. This war is ended."
Crack. Deatrice, or Deatrice's shell, crumpled to the floor, empty.
"Goodbye," Dwain whispered. He carefully placed Deatrice's shattered nut in the pouch of cloth and closed it, placing it deep in his coat pocket.
He left the room, walked down the stairs, through the hall, out the front door, down the walk, to the car, where Ceane was waiting, and they drove for a long time, deep in thought.
The salt water of the Mediterranean Sea lapped against the shore of the beach like a thirsty dog, and the sunrise was bright and miraculous. Dwain sat on the sand, his shoes and socks off, letting his toes soak. His ill-fit army uniform felt stiff and inhuman, and Dwain knew that this would probably be the last moment of peace he would have for a long time.
He watched a school of tadpoles swim by, and a few insects rested on the water surface, rising and falling with the movement of the waves. He could trace the bird footprints in the sand, and make drawings and words with his finger, but he was bored.
A model wooden boat floated into his view, bobbing contentedly and happily, washing up beside him.
Dwain picked it up and examined it, for it was marvellously carved, in exquisite detail. Although it had never been painted, the name of the ship had been etched into the side, but most of it had been worn away. Dwain could make out the word "Pride".
"It's pine wood," a voice said from beside him, and Dwain noticed a tall, thin man in a white navy uniform.
"Is this your ship?" Dwain asked.
"Yes, in a way, it is," the man replied. "Or it could be said that it belongs to many people, but I have it right now. I used to work on that ship."
Dwain nodded. "This is a model of the ship you were assigned to?"
"No," the man said, "That is the ship. It's smaller now, that's the main difference." The man gazed forlornly at the sunrise. "Are you fishing right now?"
"Uh... no, no I'm not." Dwain was confused. "I don't have a pole or anything to fish with."
"Well, it's not important. Never mind. So how do you like the army so far?"
Dwain leaned back further. "Well, I was drafted. My regiment goes to the front tomorrow, I don't know what to think anymore."
"Why don't you ask your commander if you can go home?"
Dwain gave the man a stern look. "No offense, but that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard."
"Oh, sorry. I guess I won't interfere, then." The man looked at the sky.
"Interfere in what?" Dwain asked. He couldn't tell what the man was getting at, and it bothered him.
The man smiled. "Well, it's mostly pre-determined anyway." Then, with no warning, he turned to leave. "Eight years. Don't know if I can wait that long before they let me phase back."
"What?"
"Nothing. I should go now, before I cause any more trouble. Keep the boat, it's yours." The man stepped into the grass and began to walk off.
Dwain was relieved to see him go. "Bye!" he called.
The man cried, "Don't forget! On the first chime of five o'clock on Christmas! Bye!" And with that, he went out of sight.
Dwain balked. Hazel's words spoken from the mouth of a stranger sent a chill up his spine. And, to his surprise, the wooden boat was gone.
As were the man's footprints in the sand.
They buried Deatrice in a cemetary that lay at the bottom of a shadowy revine, where the family had a plot.
Loren's marker and grave lay alongside that of Hazel's, and below theirs was an even smaller stone which marked Funce's resting place.
Deatrice they placed beside the largest tombstone, Meleyne's tombstone. It rose dark and sharply, jutting out against the greenery of the grass around it. All it read was "Meleyne", the only thing the family ever really knew about her.
Both halves of Sulfura's nut were returned to her, and she recovered quickly after that.
Upon opening Loren's orange leather suitcase, they found it stuffed with bright African clothes and wooden toys, all of them labelled with Meleyne's name on them.
When they burned the clothes and toys later on in the fireplace, the black acrid smoke rose up again like it had so long ago, after she had died. And when they burned the small black pouch, a low whistle emerged from its ashes and dwindled away into nothing.
The last nut, the one nut that had never been broken, Dwain took. The day after New Year's, he stepped into the yard of the old house, and he buried it. Dwain planted it one inch down in the soil, so it could grow when spring came, and winter would at last be over.
The curtain rod snapped and folds of cloth settled onto Dwain's head, then slipped off. Dwain took in the sunlight and pressed his fingers to the window pane, feeling the chill of the air outside.
Ceane poured himself another shot. "We'll have to get that fixed." He cast a sideways glance at Sulfura, who was beginning to fall asleep.
Dwain ambled over to the fireplace and set another log on the fire, and soon the room was warmed by a new wave of red flames. From outside came the dull roar of an electric lawnmower, and the smell of damp leaves on the curb.
Filling his chipped glass with wine, Dwain rose again to speak. "The house we have lived in, lived in with house we have, that with I..." He lost his train of thought and stared out into space.
Ceane stifled a giggle. "Come now, you don't truly think it's all over now, do you?" Dwain seemed to think about this. "Do you? Are things really over, once and for all?"
To Ceane's annoyance, Dwain had obviously already forgotten the question. Ceane pulled a small wooden object out of his watch pocket. It was rounded and lumpy, but it fit into his palm like a wide, oblong pebble, and he tossed it into the searing flames.
The scent of pine wood burning spread throughout the room.
The was a sharp crack and Sulfura's imported chair lurched forward, the front legs of it snapping off, as the fabric at the back of it ripped audibly, and stuffing spewed out. Sulfura was thrown onto the floor, her necklace string snapping. The clitter-clatter of the multicoloured beads danced about until they rolled into distant corners of the chamber. Dwain stepped closer but slipped on some of them, and he threw his arms around the couch to balance himself, but his glass flew out of his hand and shattered into a thousand glittering fragments.
When the noise died down there was no sound but that of Ceane laughing to himself contentedly.
"It's over now," he finished, going up to bed.
Dronon Brassmane