Anyways.
That was in the past.
That was not for me. Not anymore.
I had beenelevated.
A man holding a drink dragged a folding chair to the fence and stepped up on it, trying for a better look over at the home of my charge.Whiskingto him, I entered the orb of his thoughts. He knew my charge by name and reputation, and part of the reason he had agreed to come to this wedding at all, with his sister, who needed a date, was the proximity of the house of my charge, who he very much admired, being as my charge was a self-made guy and knew what was up and got it about the American dream and was someone this gentleman saw himself as emulating though his own business was on a much more modest scale, consisting, as it did, of (only) three oil-change places.
That is: places one went to get one’s oil changed.
Lloyd had been an “absolute fiend” about that.
“Timely oil changes” having been proven to “prolong the life” of the—
No, no, no.
My place was not here, among these revelers, but over there, in the house of the (ugh) dying.
Shame.
Shame on me.
I vaulted up, through the branches of a magnolia, into the bedroom of my charge.
—
The Frenchman sat in an armchair in one corner, as if awaitingme.
He did not seem the same man. He looked younger, was glowing with good health, was out of his mechanic’s garb and wearing the most beautiful set of evening clothes.
Was even twirling a top hat on an ebony cane.
I have found a better method, he said.
He smiled, stood up, lurched toward me with surprising quickness and, before I could step aside, passed into me.
What’s happening? I said.
He abided there, taking a deep breath in, then letting it out.
And, of the instant, I was not me but a schoolgirl from Pennsylvania.
The nerve! I felt.
And yet:
She had long red hair, was tall for her age, was intelligent, wrote poetry, could do seven back walkovers in a row; was (I could feel it) lovely, and knew it.
She was thinking, just now (or had been, as he’d sampled her mind) about (of all things) the weather.
Always, for her fourteen long years on this earth, the seasons had passed in a predictable way: the oppressive close damp heat at the end of August made a girl feel like summer was shutting down (as if August were a dear friend who’d just learned he was to be sent away and was pleading with you not to forget the beautiful times you’d spent together during those first preciousweeks of him) and then came fall’s gradual browning/oranging and, oh, the smell of the covers of one’s new notebooks, plus that good oldI am back to learning again among my summer-changed friendsfeeling, and maybe, let’s say, as you walked to school, a drenching autumn rain converted the leaves underboot into a paint-exuding mush that stained the sidewalk purplish, which, she had to admit, she justlovedthat.
Especially if, for example, in a window of the old Murphree house, on that dull dark rainy morning, a single candle burned.
Which would be spooky.
But in a good way.
