About the story. Of the Children Sing is actually a result of my first NaNoWrimo Project (National Novel Writing Month). Take some memories from childhood, an urban legend from college,a nightmare of Kel's..through in the year 1970 when reality was not nearly the fixed thing that it had been and you have the story.
Chapter One
Long before death moved through ruined
halls with the sound of pain and the zinc-sharp smell of blood, there was a
bright moment of mystery. Before the shadows reached to take away hope, there
were two boys and a magic afternoon.
I can still see them exploding over the hill as they ran to the woods. The redhead with the tanned skin and the beginnings of a toned body is Pat. The towhead with the cola-bottle glasses and the two left feet, that would be me. We did not think about it as joy, or innocence. No child does. It was just the way of the world and for that moment of time was perfect. And what we stepped through that day went beyond perfect into magic.
Pat and I were not wandering the woods
thinking there would be a life changing mystery waiting for us’ In fact there
was .no particular reason that we were out in them except that we were boys and
the woods were there. . Pat wanted to get away from his
older sister who was making his life miserable, which is one of those things which
older sisters are supposed to do. And I just wanted to get away. The truth is
that Katy was not doing too much for my life either, but that was totally
accidental in her case. She
just happened to be the only female I had a lot of outside school or parish contact
with and hormones were started to intrude into my world.
The woods that we spent those early, innocent years were in their own way
unique. For some reason people had never quite decided where the town was going
to be. There we could be walking in what seemed to be the middle of
nowhere and stumble into a partial block of collapsed buildings. Why they were
there we never could understand. Perhaps there was at some time a road
that linked them to the rest of civilization, but it had long
since disappeared. And on occasion, because the land around us had been
European for centuries, you would find the remnants of an old cottage or
farm buildings or log cabins. If we had known what we were doing we could
have become gentlemen of leisure early in life just from the antiques that
we would find scattered in ruins or half buried in the woods.
This is not to say that we did not enjoy finding things in our own way, even if
we had no possible concept of their financial worth For
us they were far more valuable as the mysterious thing that we would make
stories about. Such as the loving cup we found near the foundation of an
old barn one time. We spent an afternoon deciding what it had been an
award for and for whom and of course why it would still be here years after the
buildings had disappeared. I would usually come up with the explanation that it
had belonged to one of those silly British explorers with the huge moustaches
we read about from time to time. Pat
tended to opt for wild Indians. This had led to several of those intense fights
that best friends are capable of. I, being part Seneca, just did not comprehend
that Pat could not know how silly he was being. If Indians had been the party
at fault, of course they would have taken the loving cup.
Today we were mostly just enjoying the last days of freedom from school and of
not having anyone to tell us what to do. We had been arguing about which show
had the bigger hero, The Rifleman or Have Gun Will Travel. Pat thought it was
The Rifleman
because after all he had a rifle that he could shoot as fast as most
gunslingers used their pistols. I opted for the Paladin. He was cool, he
was fast, he dressed in black and he had no kid to distract him in the
middle of saving the town, just a Chinaman who most likely spent most of
his time making bullets for Paladin and cleaning his Colt revolvers in
between gun fights.
I was demonstrating some of the major points in why a handgun was more
efficient and a much better weapon of choice, at least when it came to
close fights. Which real men would always engage in of course.
Only wimps
and cowards would hide behind boulders and take potshots at the hero from
the safe distance that a rifle gave them. Of course if that were really the
case then the good guys would have disappeared years ago but neither of us
stopped to give that particular point any thought. Pat brought up the
rather interesting thought of machine guns. After all, he pointed out with
a sagacity neither of us usually possessed at that age; there was a lot to
be said about having a weapon equal to an entire posse. And although they
did not have Thompson submachine guns in the Wild and Wicked West they did
have the cumbersome but still on occasion useful Gating gun.
I stopped to think about that for a moment. There was something that made
sense about his idea but it didn't quite seem like it fit the Gunslinger’s Code
of the
West. And the still tiny adult part of my brain wondered. If the good guys
could have a Gating gun at their disposal than what was to stop the bad
guys from having one also. I blew imaginary smoke away from the barrel of
the also imaginary Colt Peacemaker I had been fanning. But, I said after
thinking about it for a few seconds, an eternity of thought for a ten year
old, how could two men with a Gatling gun surround an
entire gang of bad
guys. It seemed to me, I continued, it would be the other way around.
Finally we resorted to the ultimate figure in our folk legacy. Would Sgt
Preston of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have a gatling
gun? The mere
idea of such a thing was so ridiculous that we broke out laughing and then
started engaging in a mock gun battle from behind the trees.
It was Pat who found the first hint of today’s mystery even though
it was totally by accident. He was
trying his best to
sneak behind me, which was rather silly to begin with in that this was mostly
old tree stand with very little cover. Making a quick run
for the next oak he stubbed his toe and went sprawling into a multi-coloured carpet of oak leaf. The possibility of real injury
gave a pause, if not a halt, to the gun battle,
Pat sat there rubbing the toe of his sneakers. We looked for the offensive
article that had caused his fall. Hidden in a clump of ragged brush that he
had been running through, was of all things a paving stone. Roots had
forced it up over the years to the point where it had become a hazard to
gunfighters engaged in the sporadic battle in the woods.
Our gun battle was totally and
immediately forgotten in the face of this fascinating new
discovery. We fanned out through the leaf and brush covering looking for
other remnants that might possible be connected to the offending item that
had caused Pat what might have been a cause of embarrassment if someone
were actually looking. I of course did not count because after all I knew
that it was only half by accident. There is a long list of rituals between
friends to avoid embarrassment. We started singing the theme song from
Davy Crockett as we fanned out to search for further clues. Yes I know, it
would seem that we spent far too much time thinking about American TV
shows, but that is part of growing up, or at least it was at the time. And
Pat's dad had finally given to the family request and gotten a TV, with a
screen nestled into a huge fake walnut console. We had been proud owners of
a fine console TV for sometime, the first in the area as a matter of fact. This
was not
because we were wealthy, which we were not, but because Dad had won it at a
raffle some time ago. The truth is that it had seen better days, but it
still worked.
After a few minutes of searching we found another of the flagstones. The
trick with flagstones is deciding which way they are heading. this way...or
are they heading that way. We decided to heat toward the brook. After
all,
we had come from the other direction. And besides, the brook offered a
number of other distractions even in this Autumnal weather. There was rock
skipping and climbing and looking for the snakes that were trying to nestle
into the shale sides of the water for winter.
We broke two low hanging limbs and began clearing the ground in front of
the stone we had just found. One led to another, the only sound at the
moment the soft swishing as the leafs created a path
of clarity across the
stones. We slowly made our way uphill, not really paying attention to where
we were going, absorbed in the task in front of us as only children can be.
A child can lose themselves in a total concentration that is unknown of in
adults. Until, of course, something else comes along more interesting. As it turned out, not much time was really
needed. As we reached the crest of the hill we saw, snuggled into the woods
below us, a small, German looking cottage.
The first thing we thought of naturally was Nazis. In the 50s the Nazis
were still the bad guys, good for tonnes and tonnes of ideas. We yanked
invisible Thompson sub machine guns from our backs and working our way
slowly down the hill. This was less bravery than one might think. There
was no smoke coming from the chimney, which at this time of the year
usually meant nobody being at home.
We did keep waiting for a voice, or for the sound of a bark. For some
reason the cottage that looked like the sort of place that would have a
dog. Not a medium size dog either. It could be one of those little yappy
things that old ladies take, or a German Shepard, brought over by the
escaped Nazi who was living there. Pat and I would capture him and make the
headlines, heroes for the day. Maybe even the Prime Minister would come and
shake our hands. Or, and this gave us both pause, Sgt Preston. Yes, we knew
that he was not a real person, but he was the symbol of all that was right
with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and thus with
in general.
The woods, though, remained silent except for our furtive, and we hoped
Ranger style workings down hill. Finally we reached the clearing where the
cottage stood. The gingerbread shutters were faded, as was the wood siding.
But over all it was still in good shape. This could mean our goose stepper
lived there still. Or, making things interesting in a
different way, the
witch who had decided to live out in the woods to avoid the Inquisition.
Ok, the Inquisition never reached
As we grew closer we did hear a soft noise. We shrank into the ground
cover, looking at grass from the bottom side up. We might be heroes in training,
but we
were also 10 years old. Gradually we worked our way around to the front of the
cottage. As it turned out, one of the shutters (for these were the old fashioned,
actually functional shutters) was moving gently in the November breeze.
Pat and I started exchanging those peculiar to young male daring stares. If
you have ever been, or watched, boys you know what I mean. No words are
needed. The looks are enough to say that the other person should go first.
The truth is, though, that Pat and I were best friends. So in the end, we
both began sneaking up onto the porch together.
There was a scattering of leaf along the wooden floor of the porch that our
feet rustled through as we made our way to the window. Tattered and ragged
curtains hung in the window, a further piece of evidence that the cottage
was abandoned. We tried to look in through the windows from a safe distance but
there was nothing but darkness behind the fluttering pieces of cloth and we
could not really see anything.
At last we managed to get our courage up enough to move over to the door. The
door was
unusual, one we had never seen before. It was a light coloured
wood, carved
in ornamental designs of grapes and leaf chains. There seemed to be no door
knob or latch anywhere on the door. Instead, in the designs, if you
looked
closely, were small figures. Pat said they were faerie folk. As I have
mentioned, at that time I was not terrible familiar with beings of the
supernatural, either fairies or others...
I had grown up in a household where there was little reading, and in a
neighbourhood without a library. So I relied on the
nearest neighbour for
most of my reading material, which tended toward History and aviation. Mr.
Kennedy had been a history teacher before the war and then had become a
pilot. After that he continued to fly, right up till the day his heart
gently flew away and left his body there on a reclining lounger in the back
yard at the age of 43.
As a result, I had to take Pat's word for it. Pat's mom was from
and could be very odd for an adult. She would sing strange songs in an
odd
language, and tended to look at me sometimes in a way that made me feel
that she was seeing something totally different where I was standing. Pat's
dad said she had the sight, which didn't make any sense to me because she
had to wear glasses.
We spent a long time looking at the door, following the designs. At length
we reached out and touched them lightly, our fingers following the
patterns, One or the other of us at one point must
have either pressed too
hard or hit a secret part of the door. It quietly swung open, revealing a
small entry room bare of any furniture except for a
small table on which
stood an old fashioned oil lamp.
We looked at each other. At last curiosity once again proved superior to
fear and we slowly made our way into the cottage. There were doors on
either side of us. We moved to the one on the left. It was an empty room,
devoid of all furniture. Ragged curtains hung in the windows, and there
were visible signs of where picture or mirrors had once hung. We moved over
to the closet, but it too was empty. We were beginning to feel a sense of
disappointment. Too young to appreciate that the house was in too good a
shape to be abandoned, all we noticed was that there was no treasure to be
found.
Our feet scuffled against the hardwood floors in growing disappointment as
we made our way back through the room and the entry hall, opening the door
to the other room. It was there we made our discovery. From floor to
ceiling the room was stacked with hand carved wooden toys. Small
ones,
large ones. Toys that sat there and toys with moving parts. We didn't
really know anything about woods, but it was obvious that these had been
made from a variety of different woods. There were carved clowns, carved
swords and carved knights. There were gypsy caravan wagons, with moving
wheels and horses that seemed like they were about to carry the gypsies
away to safety.
For some reason neither of us said anything. We moved through the room,
examining the toys, showing each other our finds on occasion. But apart
from the occasional sigh of approval, we were silent. The odd thing, I do
not think it occurred to either of us to actually take any of them. This
was sort of a memorial to someone, or a graveyard for a style of toy, which
had now disappeared almost totally from the modern market. These were the
toys our parents, or theirs, had grown up with, not the plastic or tin toys
that we were used to playing with. We knew in out hearts that they were far
better than anything that we had, but also that they would feel out of
place in the world outside this quaint, quirky little cottage.
At length we put down the last of the hand crafted toys with a certain amount of
reluctance at doing so. There was a feel of magic that even I could feel about
the place. Somehow we both knew that this was a once in a lifetime experience.
We might be
able to find our way back to the cottage, but it would never be the same.
The next time it would just be an abandoned cottage off in the woods, to be
avoided because of vermin and snakes. Which was another odd thing; there
was no trace of them here. With all this wood one
would think the mice
would have a field day. And where the mice came, the black racers would not
be too far behind. But the floors were clean, no trace of their having been
here at all. And no gnawed edges seemed to exist on any of the toys.
We began to get a shared, slight feeling of unease. This was all grand, but
there
was something inherently; we weren't sure, not wrong but not
right. As if
we were caught in an instance of something that was beyond TV shows or the
Saturday matinees at the Bijou Theatre.
We were not exactly afraid, not that we would have admitted it anyway. But
all the same, we began to slowly back out of the room by mutual consent. It
was when we reached the little coat room that we smelled smoke. Pat and I
looked at each other and both turned toward the door at once. We were both
used to living in the woods, where smoke tended to be the harbinger of
danger.
We made it out of the house and stood there while trying to understand how to
close the door. A voice carried to us with a wry chuckle 'leave it lads, the
door opens and
closes as it feels like"
If our sneakers had been laced looser I am sure we would have jumped out of
them when we heard that voice. . Rocking away on the porch was an elderly
fellow, a wreath of pipe smoke circling his head. He was wearing a ribbed
forest green turtleneck
sweater and a pair of worn, comfortable corduroy slacks. He was puffing
away on a meerschaum pipe with carvings that almost imitated the ones on
the door. "So boyos, what were you after
thinking of my wee slip of a
collection in there?" I realized why his voice sounded familiar. It was
very, very close to Pat's mother and her accent. He has a grin that made us
both calm down. It was the smile of someone used to smiling, and of
enjoying having others smile with him. By mutual consent, we sat on the
edge of the porch, waiting for him to speak. It seemed obvious that he knew
the questions we had, for he was the sort of man who could grow old and
still remember what it was like to be a boy. Why we thought this I am not
sure, it was just something that felt right. And for the most part we were
right.
The three of us sat there in a companionable silence for a period of time.
We could smell the Cavendish tobacco he was smoking. Off and on he would
whistle quietly, a song I later recognized as the whistling gypsy rover. It was
very easy to get got caught up in watching the wreaths of smoke that drifted
out of the pipe, almost as if
they were stories on their own.
At last he stopped and looked down at us, where we sat on the edge of the
wooden porch, feet swinging in the air, occasionally picking up stones and
throwing them because they were there to throw. His sigh seemed to fit as a
counterpoint to the soft thwacking sound of the pebbles as they landed
outside the clearing. It was, over all, a contented sigh of someone who is
enjoying himself. "Now," he said, his pipe sliding off to one said of
the
rocking chair. I may or may not have thought, if I had
stopped to remember,
that there had been no furniture on the porch when we had first stumbled on
the cottage in the midst of our afternoon adventuring. "You may be after
wondering what all those toys are doing inside there Well you see, it is
sort of like this."
The old man tamped his pipe down and relit it, sending a ring of smoke
wafting across the porch, Oddly enough; it seemed to be coloured,
which was
not normal for any pipe tobacco I had ever encountered before. "When I was
your age I lived in the old country I did, watching the waves roll in with
the tide each day as the men made off for fishing. And the seals would
sport in splendour as if to tell me what a grand
place I was living in. But
I was too young to believe them, and full of the normal dreams about seeing
the Big World, I was. "
": So as soon as I could, I was off. I worked the passenger boats around
the coast of
of the War, I worked the trampers in and out of the
about the time the War ended, I settled here. I had had enough of salt and
foam and wanted to be as far away from the sound of the sea as I could. So
I settled here in the woods, where I had only the sound of that little
stream to contend with."
There was something about his voice. It seemed to wrap itself around us in
a way similar to the way that the smoke did. It was comfortable and lulling
but at the same time kept our interest going as we listened to him ramble.
He told us some of the stories of his life at sea, giving us ideas for
future adventures to have. It was not until much later that it ever
occurred to us that there was something different about his stories. They
seemed to take place not before the War my dad had fought in but a
different one, an earlier one. A time of genteel people
lounging on
elaborate decks and sails gently working their song as they pulled their
magic against the wind. We didn't think of that at the time though. It
was
years later I think, at least for me. I would have asked Pat, but he went
out to the world himself, going South and joining the
military. He had an
argument with a land mine and lost. But neither of us knew our future at
the time, just the moment we were in, sitting on the front porch and
listening to an old man telling us of his youth.
He smiled down on us again. "One day I was walking along, minding my own
business as any drunken Irishmen would, having more of the creature taken
than was most likely good for me. When suddenly what should
pop out of the
path but one of the wee folk. " We looked
at him with the look only a world
wise ten year old can deliver who has learned that magic does not exist.
He chuckled "Tis the truth for all that. Yes I
had more than a drop, but
there he was, as big or small as the case may be, as life. And you know,
didn't he point to a cord of wood sitting there, hand me a knife and then
disappear before these very same baby blue eyes he did. Well what was I to
do after all that. I took the cord home; let it sit on the front porch.
When I came around the next day wasn't the knife staring me in the face all
glistening in the sun as it was? And so I came out here and sat down and
started carving. And you have seen the results. Do you admire them then?"
We both nodded. "There is a new one I am working on, the wee man himself,
my crowning glory. Let me go and get it for you to see." The old man rose
slowly from his chair and shuffled into the house, the door closing behind
him.
We waited there on the front porch for him. After a time we began to wonder
if he had remembered that we were out here at all. We called into the house
for him several times without receiving an answer. Pat tried the door, but
it seemed stuck. We could not get it to open no matter how hard we tried.
We went over to the window and knocked. Pat whispered for me to look. I
did, cleaning off the glass. The room was empty. No old man, no toys,
nothing. We both turned at the same time. There on the porch was an empty
space where the rocking chair had been a scant moment ago. We began walking
slowly under the green canopy and never once looked back at the small cabin. We never, either of us, talked about it again,
or went into that area of the woods. It was not that we were afraid. Perhaps we
just knew that some magics only happen once in a
lifetime, and to try and repeat them just ruins it.
What did any of it mean? I wasn't sure at the time, and to be honest, am
not totally sure even today. Perhaps it was just a way of reminding me that
there is more out there than I had thought possible. Or perhaps the old man
had come back one more time just to spin a tale and we were the ones who
happened by to hear it. I still think of him from time to time, especially
after everything else that has happened since then.
The truth is that over time the entire episode tended to slip away. No
matter how mysterious, there are more important things to a lad growing up
then an old man. We moved and moved, and moved again, following my father's
work. Pat and I lost touch, although his sister would send me Christmas
cards every year, which is how I learned about his death a few years later. They
say he was a post war fatality, and OD in a Toronto Alley. But when I read
about it all I could think of was the look on Pat’s face while the old man
talked to us. Maybe he was just trying to chase the magic again.
I started High School in the States, the odd man out for the most part with
my un-American accent and my tendency toward solitude. Perhaps the
woodcarver had marked me in his own way after all.
More likely it was just
that we were all of us caught up in a world that was changing faster than
the human mind was capable of following.
The high school I was attending was a white, suburban school in the
I had been exposed to a lot more of the world than many of the other
students, or teachers for that matter. This was the 60s, when music was
changing, drugs were flowing, the war was expanding and people were
demanding equality.
And so my encounter in the woods faded in my memory as the world grew, or I
did. I once again became the person who knew nothing about magic, being
dense in the way only the young can be. Then I started University, and
everything shifted again. Having spent most of my life traveling, it was
only moot that I move away from home for school, to a small, old Liberal
Arts College where I was to matriculate in English. In some ways that
person is a stranger to me now, with decades and thoughts between us, so
perhaps that is how I should treat him/me for the next part of the tale. Of
course there will be times when I shall turn once again from storyteller to
rememberer. After all, they are my memories. And I am
the only left to
remember much of it.