In retreat now returning to his childhood home he had shunned for years. The left-behind, broke-backed younger brother who’d been living alone since their mother’s death, now many years ago. As a young man he’d never considered time as anything other than a current to bear him aloft, propel him into his future, now he understood that time is a rising tide, implacable inexorable unstoppable rising tide, now at the ankles, now the knees, rising to the thighs, to the groin and the torso and to the chin, ever rising, a dark water of utter mystery propelling us forward not into the future but into infinity, which is oblivion.
Returning to the suburban town of his birth and to the house he’s shunned for decades, seeing now with a pang of loss how the residential neighborhood had changed, many of the large houses converted to apartment buildings and commercial sites, and most of the plane trees lining the street severely trimmed or removed altogether. And there was the old Waldman home that had once been their mother’s pride, once so splendidly white, now a weatherworn gray with sagging shutters and a rotting roof and a lush junglelike front lawn awash in litter as if no one had lived there for a long time. Edgar had been unable to contact Edward by phone, there was no directory listing for a phone under the name Edward Waldman, now his heart pounded in his chest, he felt a wave of dread He has died, it is too late. Hesitantly knocking at the front door and listening for a response from within and knocking again, more loudly, hurting his knuckles, and at last there came from within a faint bleating sound, a voice asking who it was and he called out It’s me.
Slowly as if with effort the door opened. And there, in his wheelchair, as Edgar had imagined him, but not so ravaged as Edgar has imagined him, was his brother Edward whom he hadn’t seen in more than two decades: a shrunken individual of no obvious age with a narrow, pale, pinched yet unlined face, a boy’s face, and his hair threaded with gray like Edgar’s, and one bony shoulder higher than the other. Pale blue eyes filling with moisture he swiped at with the edges of both hands and in a scratchy voice that sounded as if it hadn’t been used in some time he said Eddie. Come in.
…WHEN IT HAPPENED COULD never be determined precisely since the bodies were frozen and preserved from decay found together on a leather sofa made up as a bed pulled up to within a foot of a fireplace heaped with ashes in a downstairs room of the old clapboard colonial crowded with furniture and what appeared to be the accumulated debris of decades but which may have been materials for artworks or the very artworks themselves of the eccentric artist known as E.W., the elderly Waldman brothers in layers of bulky clothing must have fallen asleep in front of a fire in the otherwise unheated house, the fire must have burnt out in the night and the brothers died in their sleep in a protracted January cold spelclass="underline" the brother to be identified as Edgar Waldman, eighty-seven, embracing his brother Edward Waldman, also eighty-seven, from behind, protectively fitting his body to his brother’s crippled body, forehead tenderly pressed to the back of the other’s head, the two figures coiled together like a gnarled organic material that has petrified to stone.
Joanne Harris WILDFIRE IN MANHATTAN
IT’S NOT MY NAME-WELL, NOT QUITE-but you can call me Lucky. I live right here in Manhattan, in the penthouse suite of a hotel just off Central Park. I’m a model citizen in every way, punctual, polite and orderly. I wear sharp suits. I wax my chest hair. You’d never think I was a god.
It’s a truth often overlooked that old gods-like old dogs-have to die sometime. It just takes longer, that’s all; and in the meantime citadels may fall, empires collapse, worlds end and folk like us end up on the pile, redundant and largely forgotten.
In many ways, I’ve been fortunate. My element is fire, which never quite goes out of style. There are Aspects of me that still wield power-there’s too much of the primitive left in you Folk for it to be otherwise, and although I don’t get as many sacrifices as I used to, I can still get obeisance if I want it (who doesn’t?)-after dark, when the campfires are lit. And the dry lightning strikes across the plains-yes, they’re mine-and the forest fires; and the funeral pyres and the random sparks and the human torches-all mine.
But here, in New York, I’m Lukas Wilde, lead singer in the rock band Wild-re. Well, I say band. Our only album, Burn It Up, went platinum when the drummer was tragically killed on stage by a freakish blast of lightning.
Well, maybe not so freakish. Our only U.S. tour was stalked by lightning from beginning to end; of fifty venues, thirty-one suffered a direct hit; in just nine weeks we lost three more drummers, six roadies and a truckload of gear. Even I was beginning to feel I’d taken it just a little too far.
Still, it was a great show.
Nowadays, I’m semiretired. I can afford to be; as one of only two surviving band members I have a nice little income, and when I’m feeling bored I play piano in a fetish bar called the Red Room. I’m not into rubber myself (too sweaty), but you can’t deny it makes a terrific insulator.
By now you may have gathered-I’m a night person. Daylight rather cramps my style; and besides, fire needs a night sky to show to best advantage. An evening in the Red Room, playing piano and eyeing the girls, then downtown for rest and recreation. Not a scene that my brother frequents; and so it was with some surprise that I ran smack into him that night, as I was checking out the nicely flammable back streets of the Upper East Side, humming “Light My Fire” and contemplating a spot of arson.
I didn’t say? Yes, in this present Aspect, I have a brother. Brendan. A twin. We’re not close; Wildfire and Hearth Fire have little in common, and he rather disapproves of my flamboyant lifestyle, preferring the more domestic joys of baking and grilling. Imagine that. A firegod running a restaurant-it makes me burn with shame. Still, it’s his funeral. Each of us goes to hell in his own way, and besides, his flame-grilled steaks are the best in the business.
It was past midnight, I was a little light-headed from the booze-but not so drunk that you’d have noticed-and the streets were as still as they get in a city that only ever shuts one eye. A huddle of washouts sleeping in cardboard boxes under a fire escape; a cat raiding a Dumpster. It was November; steam plumed from the sewer grates and the sidewalks were shiny with cold sweat.
I was just crossing the intersection of Eighty-First and Fifth, in front of the Hungarian meat market when I saw him, a familiar figure with hair the colour of embers tucked into the collar of a long grey coat. Tall, slim and ballet quick; you might almost have been forgiven for thinking it was me. Close scrutiny, however, reveals the truth. My eyes are red and green; his, on the other hand, are green and red. Anyway, I wouldn’t be seen dead wearing those shoes.
I greeted him cheerily. “Do I smell burning?”
He turned to me with a hunted expression. “Shh! Listen!”
I was curious. I know there’s never been much love between us, but he usually greets me, at least, before he starts with the recriminations. He called me by my true name. Put a finger to his lips, then dragged me into a side alley that stank of piss.
“Hey, Bren. What gives?” I whispered, correcting my lapels.
His only reply was a curt nod in the direction of the near-deserted alley. In the shadows, two men, boxy in their long overcoats, hats pulled down over narrow, identical faces. They stopped for a second on the kerb, checked left, checked right and crossed over with swift, effortless choreography before vanishing, wolfish, into the night.