Tommy
Racing
fever hit Uncle Einar's hard that spring. Suddenly a whole household
of kids were eating, sleeping and breathing speed and competition.
Every child who could write the alphabet had a scoring plan or a race
course diagram; the littlest ones spun happily through the hubbub
waving their own scribbled pages.
Pete-the-artist
drew a beautiful map of the yard. After much discussion and
comparison and trying out of various routes, the map was embellished
with a course that even Father Einar declared "very
challenging." It started five paces from the foot washing
buckets lined up near the back door, took a sharp right turn around
the blueberry bushes, a hop over the hen house, a zig zag through the
apple trees, a long straight stretch to the duck pond, up and over.
Wet feet were cause for disqualification. Next came a dizzy spin
around the top of a much battered pine, a death-defying drop through
the thorny burned out hole in the arbor where Niles and Lana had
carried on their experiments with magnifying glasses and a last
sprint between the clotheslines. The finish line was the front door.
The
first races were individual matches, which were all won by Zoriah or
Xylina.
Z
for Zoriah and X for Xylina. That made them the two oldest, of
course. Einar and Margaret's thirteen children were named in reverse
alphabetical order, every other letter. They had devised this plan
years ago, while Einar strode back and forth between the garden and
the clothesline, restlessly rolling his left shoulder, the great
broken wing awkward and flapping behind him. They had begun to talk
of children in a theoretical sort of way. He was wild with the
unspeakable fear of never flying again, and tender with gratitude
toward the small woman who had nursed him back to life. She was
tongue tied with the miracle of his coming to her on that storm-dark
night and the yearning to keep him there forever. Humble talk of
families and homes had seemed safe, and they had discovered shyly
that they agreed on a surprising number of things. In a fortnight
the talk had gone quite particular and personal, and twenty years
later here they were still together in the small house, bursting with
four boys, five girls and two sets of twins.
It
was Einar's opinion that 13 was "a good, solid number. Plenty
of history to it." The alphabetical order had been Margaret's
idea. Something about keeping everyone's nighties straight.
"And
it makes a rather nice washline, as well, doesn't it, lambkins"
she said on that spring morning as she surveyed the rising line of
long johns, fresh and sweet smelling, ready to pack up for next
winter. She jiggled baby Bobo on one hip while she unpinned Dinah's
tiny baby sleepers at the tail end of the line and piled them on top
of the mounded basket at her feet.
The
first two babies were born winged, like their father. Margaret
remembered that they had looked "just like a bunch of posies"
as Einar tucked one of them in each arm, Zoriah's buttercup yellow
and Xylina's blushing rose dainty against his great green wings.
Vesper John had reached a year without sprouting, but shortly
thereafter began giggling up out of his bath, following the soap
bubbles. "Cousin Leif used to do that," said Einar
approvingly. "Less of a bother in some ways," he added
comfortably, with a twitch and a rustle of his own wings that
threatened to capsize the little tub, baby and all. A year or so
later when Tommy was born, Margaret was already busy with a lively
trio of little ones and didn't pay much attention to Tommy's lack of
interest in aerobatics, especially when the twins arrived. It was
rather a relief to come into the nursery and find at least one child
on the ground.
Most
often Tommy could be found under something, into something (a fox
hole on one memorable occasion) or flat on his stomach investigating
an ant trail. He never worried his mother dream flying in his sleep
or gliding into the duck pond from the porch roof. At two he would
rather trail behind Margaret as she snapped peas off the vines, and
at three he could tell an asparagus shoot from a sprouting weed.
"Listen for the rip like silk, not the snick of stem" she
said, guiding his small hands in the delicate art of pulling up a
weed with all of its roots intact. By five he had his own little
plot, and at seven he spent winter evenings with his seed catalogues
when the others were lost in tales of flying carpets and broomsticks.
Although
all the children were responsible for a row of vegetables or a pair
of fruit trees, only Tommy and Lana had the patience to tend a whole
plot of their own. Tommy supplied the family with tomatoes and
onions, Lana had rows of zucchini and the pumpkin patch.
Tommy
usually felt that there were just too many other things to do to
bother much with flying. And to tell the truth he wasn't very good
at it. When Lana planted her zucchinis she left no space between the
rows at all, and simply hovered to pick the long green squashes. But
when Tommy tried to pop up over his tomato row to check the other
side for hornworms, the result was a great deal of tomato sauce on
the seat of his pants. Lana told, of course, and he had to put up
with being called Tommy Tomato until his big brother Vesper John got
sick of it and threatened to squash the next person he heard
referring to a tomato, any tomato. Which led to another round of
jokes about squashes which lasted until the summer was over. By that
time, attention had shifted to the pumpkin patch for the likeliest
jack o'lanterns and everyone but Tommy forgot all about his
embarassment.
On
the first day of The Official Racing Season, Tommy slipped off during
the arguing about the first races. After the older girls'
overwhelming victories, several of the losers banded together to
demand teams, and the ritual of "choosing" was in full
swing - teams chosen by ancient rhyme and current rivalry.
Excitement was high and no one really noticed that he wasn't there.
He was peacefully replanting a flat of marigolds. Einar had looked
thoughtfully at the tiny black bugs swarming over the new tomato
leaves and recommended, "Those yellow-faced flowers, they have a
powerful bug magic, I believe." While Tommy dug holes for the
small green plants between the tomato vines, he could hear the yells
and cheers of his brothers and sisters as the team races began.
Mother
Margaret had come out carrying a pile of tattered shirts to mend
while she cheered on the first meet. Within minutes Heloise and
Fergie, who were only four, had come bawling into her lap. Their
team had still been lining up at the starting line discussing how big
a pace was anyway, when Zoriah's and Xylina's team was crossing the
finish line. Margaret patted them on the head and suggested mildly
that the teams be redrawn to spread the littlest and the fastest
evenly.
Though
everyone agreed that this was a good plan, Margaret would not specify
just how they should do it, saying only, "You'll work it out
fairly, dears". Assigning the big kids was easy, which made
three teams, Z, X and V. Then the process sort of broke down. The
sounds of furious debate came clearly around the house where Tommy
was planting the last of the marigolds and startled the tree full of
sparrows over his head into a cloud of twittering flight. At the end
of the row, Tommy straightened up and strolled toward the chaos.
"I
told you, " Pete was shouting, "It's division,
a-rith-ma-tick! Eleven can't be divided into three equal teams unless
we cut Vesper John in two pieces!"
"One
wing each," giggled Roxy, his twin. "May I introduce
Vesper, the half guy, and John, his identical twin!"
"Except"
said Tommy mildly, "one is all left and the other is..."
"All
right!" chorused the twins.
"Thank
you, thank you," Tommy bowed. "So what's the problem, you
guys?"
"I
wanna be on Roxy's team," Fergie hollered.
"Fergie,
shut up!" Pete hollered even louder; Fergie launched himself at
Pete's knees.
"Twins,
alert!" Tommy said, throwing up his hands in mock exasperation.
Out of the air, Heloise and Roxy dive bombed their respective twins
and began tickling. Some minutes later, when all four had subsided
into a gasping heap, Tommy said, "Okay, now. Jill - tell me
what the problem is."
Jill
produced a much smudged square of paper taped to a discarded Monopoly
board. "New Teams" it said at the top. The oldest kids
names were clearly printed on the first line. Under their names a
younger hand had added toddler Diana on Zoriah's team, Fergie on
Xylina's and Heloise on Vesper John's. The rest was a palimpsest of
overwriting that threatened to perforate the paper, and cross-outs
accompanied by corrections jimmied into the spaces until the page
looked like the sand in front of the hen house.
"See,
if Roxy and I are on Xylina's team with Fergie..."Jill
began deliberately. "Yeah!" Fergie said, his voice muffled
since his sister was still sitting on him.
"And
Niles and Lana are on VJ's with Heloise," Pete broke in, "that
leaves me and the baby on Zoriah's team and it's not fair and it
won't work ever because," Pete's voice threatened to go berserk
again, "because, because - we only have 11!"
"Except,"
Jill said calmly, "if Big T here were on your team."
"Oh
yeah, oh yeah!" Pete laughed. "Tommy's on our team! 4 plus
4 plus 4!"
Tommy
smiled uneasily and was about to give an excuse, but in the next
moment he was swept into the excited explanations and found himself
on the starting line behind Pete, with Diana holding his hand and
twirling around his shoulders.
"Feet
on the ground!" hollered Vesper John, and they were off.
Despite
his misgivings, Tommy and Pete were well ahead coming through the
apple trees. The rest of their team was right with them, Diana
riding on Zoriah's shoulders making wild cowboy noises. "This
is it, Tommy, me boy," Zoriah panted as she leapt into the air,
"Take the right side! Less branches!" Pete shot up the
pine tree, keeping clear of the reaching branches, but Tommy lost his
nerve. Looking back he saw Lana just under his feet and
instinctively swerved to avoid falling on her, which was silly, of
course, since they were both flying straight up. She swept up ahead
of him, yelling encouragement to her own team. Niles passed Tommy
thrashing in the branches, without noticing, since he was yelling at
the top of his voice, "Louie's in the duck pond - we're out of
it, Lana!" "Louie, you duck head, this is no time to go
swimming!" Lana screeched. "Those are the breaks, sweetie,"
Xylina crowed as she and Jill swung Fergie up between them. Roxy, of
course, the other member of Xylina's team, was already far ahead,
slowing to negotiate the final run through the clotheslines. Since
her team was not with her to keep an eye on the sheets and
dishtowels, she was determined to not unpin a single one - and to
watch eagle-eyed for any infractions by the other teams.
Jill's
braids got caught in the arbor, but she got free with a furious shake
of her head, leaving behind a yellow ribbon and enough strands of
hair to delight a dozen nesting birds. Her team, Fergie hollering
"We're Number One, we're number one!" were doing a victory
dance by the time Tommy extricated his long legs from the pine tree,
slipped gratefully through the arbor onto solid ground and loped
through the flapping sheets. Diana had burst into tears coming
through the same spot and Zoriah was bouncing her and singing "No
big birds are getting you, Dee Dee, no big white birds," and no
one really took any notice that Tommy was last one in. But he kept
right on going, until he was around the house and deep into the corn
rows, where he flopped onto the ground in disgust.
"Well,
I am never going to fly again", he declared to the sparrows
hopping in the dusty rows. Reluctantly, he thought about Homecoming,
and the family rule that 13 year olds weren't carried, but had to fly
in on their own, and for a moment he hesitated. In October he was
going to meet Old Seed; his father had promised. Old Seed was about
a thousand years old and he knew everything there was to know about
anything that grew. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon had practically
been his whole idea. He'd been living at the big house everyone
called simply Home with lots of Tommy's other relatives ever since
anyone could remember. But he only grew herbs and things in his room
now, and even in this extraordinarily long-lived family, who knew ...
Tommy's
gloomy thoughts were rudely interrupted by the crash landing of the
younger twins. Heloise crushed the corn stalks next to his right
elbow and immediately began to wail. Ferguson had time for a shriek
of warning before ending a magnificent rolling dive directly on top
of Tommy, which sent them both tumbling, with little damage to
either. He crowed and lay among the wreckage, chortling.
"Tommy,
kiss," demanded Heloise, sniffling. Fergie rolled over and
grabbed his hand. "What team you on?" he wanted to know.
"Um, no team, little one," said Tommy. He shrugged. "I'm
not on a team anymore." The twins regarded him solemnly. "Come
on, Tommy!" Fergie insisted. "He doesn't want to, Fergie,"
said Heloise doubtfully. "Well, so, okay for him," Fergie
shrugged, too, hoping he looked just like Tommy. "Come one
Louie, I'll boost you!" They hopped off, gaining altitude with
each spring. "Like chickens trying to get off the ground,"
Tommy smiled, then continued on down the corn rows toward the house.
"There
you are, dear," his mother said distractedly, handing him Bobo,
the littlest of Einar's brood. "Go on with Tommy, love,"
she said, looking back inside the house where a large stewpot was
steaming and beginning to bubble over. Bobo looked at Tommy and his
fat baby face split open in a wide toothless grin. "Okay, frog
boy!" Tommy grunted, swinging the baby up onto his shoulder,
rather glad of the company. The baby felt lighter than he looked and
Tommy thought, "Probably a flyer, then," "But not
today," he said aloud. "Today you can be a farmer!"
He stomped heavily down the path behind the house to make Bobo bounce
and squeal. None of Einar's children were ever afraid of falling.
After
ten minutes he had forgotten the races and the children's voices were
no louder in his mind than the buzz of a big bluebottle Bobo was
trying to catch and eat. Tommy zinged him a green pea pod instead
and the baby settled in to some serious gumming as Tommy worked. His
current project was nursing a variety of tiny epiphytes. Small and
larger pots surrounded him, filled with shapes as various as clouds
and cucumbers.
As
the spring warmed into summer and the tomato vines withered Tommy
rescued several of the wire frames to mount his epiphytes. He placed
the embellished frames in a loose circle around an item he was rather
proud of. After several trials, he had devised a sort of basket
around an old bicycle wheel, with blooming flowers all around the
rim, and the old bare vines twined tightly together at the middle.
"I'll bet it's tight enough to hold water," he thought with
satisfaction. A garden of succulants, epiphytes and several cacti
began to grow, with the basket at the center. One day he realized
that it might be starting to take on a star shape, but when he
levitated up above it, it was lopsided. "If the echeverria was
just a little over to the right," he thought and returned to
earth to adjust one of the wire frames. In a minute he was airborne
again, and hung there as he began to see a pattern in his mind. For
the next week he worked steadily, taking a swim when he got too hot
and dusty, but feeling a profound satisfaction in the garden that was
taking shape.
The
only blot on a happy summer was that he was still avoiding the races.
Racing had settled into a regular entertainment, an alternative to
swimming or floating on whatever scrap of wood could be found, but he
just couldn't face being out-flown by kids five years younger than
he. One evening he sat all by himself at dusk watching the bats zip
through the air and thought, "I'm just not the best at anything.
Who else cares about vegetables? Swimming is okay, but everybody
except Niles is better and he's afraid of water." The memory of
Vesper John floating down on him as silent as a cloud one day and
dunking him made him wince. Standing up he kicked an inoffensive
clod of dirt into dust and went indoors.
There
was a discussion of racing strategy going on among Zoriah, Vesper
John and Xylina, with sleepy comments from Roxy who had just attained
the eleven year olds' right to stay up past Little Ones Down. Pete
had apparently given up his rights and was curled up under the table
fast asleep. Tommy listened for a minute or two, feeling more and
more like an outsider, and retreated to the doorway to watch for his
father to come in from his evening flight.
When Einar ambled in, he
glanced at his son and the huddle of brothers and sisters and greeted
him solemnly. "Did you work out that pentagram yet?" he
asked calmly. "Uh huh," Tommy replied. "Good work,"
Einar said and turned to close the door. Tommy hadn't thought to
tell anyone about the culmination of a week's work to get the last
point filled in. From the air, the pentagram should be a beacon for
any relative who might be drifting or soaring by and he was proud of
it. Feeling a bit better, he swung his hammock down from the rafters
near the door and fell off to sleep with the murmur of his brothers
and sisters in his ears. Margaret and Einar exchanged a look as she
came out from the little ones' room and Einar nodded as if to say,
"He'll work it out." "Off to bed with you, too,"
Margaret said mildly to the older children, "As long as you're
at home, my dears, you'll have to be up as early as the little
chicks."
The
next day, Tommy had just come down from a reconnaisance flight to
place a brilliant green jade tree next to a patch of pink succulents
when Jill came to borrow one of his plant stakes for a scepter. "Can
I, Big T?" she asked. Jill was six and wanted to be ten. She
thought nobody in her family, especially herself, had an interesting
name except Xylina and Zoriah so she made up her own names for every
one of her brothers and sisters. Bobo was her idea, of course.
"Belden!?" she had asked incredulously when he was born.
"After Cousin Belden Knapp, dear," Margaret had replied,
handing her a damp cloth for the laundry pile. "He has Belden's
big shoulders. Probably a strong flier, this one." Jill had
come closer to peer into the baby's fat face. "Bobo," she
announced, "welcome to the family! Hey, he smiled at me!"
She
hadn't hit on just the right name for herself yet; this week it was
Princess Shira.
"Sure,
Shira, your princessship," said Tommy absently, looking up,
where Vesper John was dreamily turning cartwheels in the air high
over the trees.
"How
come you're not in the races?" Jill asked, following his gaze.
"Epiphytes,"
pronounced Tommy distinctly.
"Why
does she?" asked Jill, seriously.
"Why
what?"
"Does
she fight. Eppie's a cool name."
Tommy
stared at her. "Oh," he said finally. "No, I mean,
it's not an Eppie who fights. Epiphyte. It's the name of a kind of
plant that lives in the air. Look, no roots!"
"Weird,"
said Jill, peering underneath. "You know alot of big words, Big
T."
"So
would you if you studied anything the way I study plants."
"Yeah,
I'm sure. But no way," Jill declared, hopping from foot to
foot. "There's no time to study now, Tommy - it's race time!
Even Bobo's been in a race! Roxy's so fast they made her carry him.
He's an Andy Capp!"
"Handicap,"
Tommy corrected her absently. "Maybe, Jill, I mean Your
Highness. But summer's so busy with all the stuff coming up.
Racing's cool, but, well, gardens are cooler!" he finished,
feeling sort of lame about it.
"Weird,"
pronounced Jill. "Well, gotta fly, dude. I hear that old
starting gun!"
So
that was what he had heard. It sounded like someone had set off a
cherry bomb inside one of Niles' drums. Which was exactly what it
was. The children were always well supplied with minor explosives by
their cousins from Mongolia, who brought in a fresh supply nearly
every time they flew in for a visit, and Vesper John had become
something of an expert in re-engineering fire crackers to do all
sorts of interesting things. The birds around their house were kept
in a constant state of nerves by unexpected pops and cracks at odd
hours of the day and night.
The
August sun beat slowly down, almost muffling the explosion. Kids
were deposited in various parts of the yard and stream, mostly doing
nothing at all.
"Dog
days," Lana said, flopping into the shade of an apple tree in
elaborate slow motion.
"I'm
an oooold dog," Fergie replied, rolling onto his back.
A
hand stretched down out of the tree, fingers wiggling.
"Hsst,
Fergie," Lana giggled.
"Wake
up, old doggie," Louie crowed and dropped out of the tree onto
her twin. "It's Championship Day!"
"Oh
yeah," Lana said, "I almost forgot! And V-J's doing
something for the finish line, he won't tell what except it's gonna
be BIG."
Scrambling
up, the three children hopped, bounced and flew past Tommy's garden.
He looked up briefly, wondering what had revitalized them. When they
were out of sight around the house, he smoothly rose up above the
five pointed star of his garden for a final look.
"It's,
well...perfect," he thought with a surge of pleasure. "Just
that one corner," where Niles' pet goose had eaten all the
Lamb's Ears. He retuned to the ground and loped off behind the house
to get the flat he had in reserve. Dimly he heard the familiar pop
of V-J's starting gun, as he loaded up a wheelbarrow with plants,
soil and tools.
At
the front of the house, the couples' final championship races were
getting underway. By the end of the summer teams had been abandoned
in favor of four person races. A list had been drawn up, and posted
next to the front door, so that whenever someone wanted a race they
had to pick a partner first. The older girls had to pick from a list
of younger ones, Roxy had to pick someone slower, and so on. Zoriah
had declared the whole idea of racing boring and was spending most of
her time in a tree as far from the house as possible composing poetry
to a non-winged boy she had met down at the river in July. Niles was
still recovering from a sprained left wing after a sparring session
with his pet goose and Diana at three was content to watch and cheer,
which left two sets of four to fly and run the championship of the
summer. Roxy and Pete had decided to race as a pair, but the younger
twins had paired off with the oldest children, Fergie with Xylina and
Heloise with Vesper John. Jill and Lana made up the final team,
calling themselves The Dreadful Duo, Diamond Jill and Laser Lana.
The
race was close. Everyone was familiar with the course, and flew
almost in a pack. Apples flew off the trees as they came through the
orchard, the hens hadn't time to get panicked before the thunder of
wings over their heads was past, and no one even touched water over
the duck pond, although the ducks put up their usual fuss with great
spirit anyway.
The
pine tree had gone completely bald as hand after hand had spun around
its spindly crown, and as Fergie clutched at the top branch it
snapped off in his hand.
"Hey,
guys!" he yelled, and waved it like a baton. "One, two,
three..." BLAM!
An
enormous explosion sent shock waves across the valley and back.
Tommy, who was just about to take a final look at his garden from the
air, shot up an extra ten feet and narrowly avoided a confused ball
of legs, arms and astonishment.
"What
was that!" Lana was crying.
"Oh
RATS. Oh, my Great Uncle Rufus Rat!" Vesper John yelled. "It
went off too soon!"
In
midair, eleven kids sorted themselves out and streamed toward the
front door, the race forgotten. Tommy zoomed in first, and dropped
to the ground in time to stop Diana from crawling into a rather large
hole where the finish line had been.
"Wow."
Pete whistled. "What did you use, VJ, dynamite?"
"Yes,
Vesper John," said a familiar voice with uncommon firmness, "may
I see whatever that was? Now. Hush, Bobo, yes, a big boom."
The
children stood around in guilty admiration as Vesper John produced a
tube of purple powder from his untouchable stash on top of the door
frame.
"Einar?"
Margaret called.
When
Einar had looked at the powder he began to laugh. The children
grinned nervously.
"Vesper
John," he said solemnly, "this little powder bears the
imprint of the Venerable Thunderer of the Booming Caverns of the
North Bearing Reef. Produces the echoes on calm days. Pinched from
Clarice's, I wouldn't be surprised. I know she uses a pinch now and
then for thunder."
"No,
Dad," Vesper John said, "she gave it to me. Well, she said
'Take anything, just don't bother me', actually. It looked pretty,
and well, I'd never actually tried it before" he finished,
smiling tentatively.
"Well,
no real harm done," said Margaret practically, "that is, if
this hole is filled in before dinner."
"Yes,
ma'am," VJ agreed quickly.
The
children all looked at each other after their parents had gone back
inside, and at the hole, then burst out laughing.
"That
was the best sound I ever heard," Niles declared reverently.
"I've
never flown so fast, or shot up so high," Tommy laughed.
"Yeah,"
Lana agreed, "I thought you were some kind of big bird or a
helicopter! How'd you miss shooting us all out of the sky?"
"Superior
evasive action. I guess my flying has improved over the summer after
all."
And
it had. After the hole had been smoothed in, Tommy brought six
marigolds over and planted them as a memorial, within a circle of
green hen-and-chickens. Everyone trooped over to admire his epiphyte
garden then, for about five minutes, before Margaret's call "Ice
cream in the arbor!" drew them off like bees to honey.
Following
after, Tommy mused on flying and gardening and being the best, and
concluded with a sigh of satisfaction that staying with his garden
for the summer had been well worth it. He still wasn't the best
flyer, and Vesper John's big bang would be recalled in stories longer
than the epiphytes and succulents he loved. But the garden was his,
it was finished, and it was...well, perfect! And that was enough.
