The man who staggered into the police station at five that afternoon was barely able to stand up. His voice was a whisper and he retched as if he’d taken poison. He didn’t look like Uncle Jonn any more. The bells rang all the time, all the time, and he saw people walking behind him with staked chests, who vanished whenever he turned to look.
The sheriff looked up from reading a magazine, wiped his brown mustache with the back of one clawlike hand, took his feet down off a battered desk and waited for Uncle Jonn to speak.
‘I want to report a family that lives here,’ whispered Uncle Jonn, his eyes half-shut. ‘A wicked family, living under false pretenses.’
The sheriff cleared his throat. ‘What’s the family’s name?’
Uncle Jonn stopped. ‘What?’
The sheriff repeated it. ‘What’s the family’s name?’
‘Your voice,’ said Jonn.
‘What about my voice?’ said the sheriff.
‘Sounds familiar,’ said Jonn. ‘Like—’
‘Who?’ asked the sheriff.
‘Like Cecy’s mother! That’s who you sound like!’
‘Do I?’ asked the sheriff.
‘That’s who you are inside! Cecy changed you, too, like she changed Ralph and Bion! I can’t report the Family to you, now, then! It wouldn’t do any good!’
‘Guess it wouldn’t,’ remarked the sheriff, implacably.
‘The Family’s gotten around me!’ wailed Uncle Jonn.
‘Seems that way,’ said the sheriff, wetting a pencil on his tongue, starting on a fresh crossword puzzle. ‘Well, good day to you, Jonn Elliott.’
‘Unh?’
‘I said “Good day.”’
‘Good day.’ Jonn stood by the desk, listening. ‘Do you – do you hear anything?’
The sheriff listened. ‘Crickets?’
‘No.’
‘Frogs?’
‘No,’ said Uncle Jonn. ‘Bells. Just bells. Holy church bells. The kind of bells a man like me can’t stand to hear. Holy church bells.’
The sheriff listened. ‘No. Can’t say as I hear ’em. Say, be careful of that door there; it slams.’
The door to Cecy’s room was knocked open. A moment later. Uncle Jonn was inside, moving across the floor. The silent body of Cecy lay on the bed, not moving. Behind him, as Jonn seized Cecy’s hand, her mother appeared.
She ran to him, struck him on head and shoulders till he fell back from Cecy. The world swelled with bell sounds. His vision blacked out. He groped at the mother, biting his lips, releasing them in gasps, eyes streaming.
‘Please, please tell her to come back,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt anyone any more.’
The mother shouted through the clamor of bells. ‘Go downstairs and wait for her there!’
‘I can’t hear you,’ he cried, louder. ‘My head.’ He held his hands to his ears. ‘So loud. So loud I can’t stand it.’ He rocked on his heels. ‘If only I knew where Cecy was—’
Quite simply, he drew out a folded pocket knife, unfolded it. ‘I can’t go on—’ he said. And before the mother moved he fell to the floor, the knife in his heart, blood running from his lips, his shoes looking senseless one atop the other, one eye shut, the other wide and white.
The mother bent down to him. ‘Dead,’ she whispered, finally. ‘So,’ she murmured, unbelievingly, rising up, stepping away from the blood. ‘Sohe’s dead at last.’ She glanced around, fearfully, cried aloud.
‘Cecy, Cecy, come home, child, I need you!’
A silence, while sunlight faded from the room.
‘Cecy, come home, child!’
The dead man’s lips moved. A high clear voice sprang from them.
‘Here!I’ve been here for days! I’m the fear he had in him: and he never guessed. Tell Father what I’ve done. Maybe he’ll think me worthy now …’
The dead man’s lips stopped. A moment later, Cecy’s body on the bed stiffened like a stocking with a leg thrust suddenly into it, inhabited again.
‘Supper, Mother,’ said Cecy, rising from bed.
They cut the sky down to my size and threw it over the Michigan lake, put some kids yelling on yellow sand with bouncing balls, a gull or two, a criticizing parent, and me breaking out of a wet wave, finding this world very bleary and moist.
I ran up on the beach.
Mama swabbed me with a furry towel. ‘Stand there and dry,’ she said.
I stood there, watching the sun take away the water beads on my arms. I replaced them with goose-pimples.
‘My, there’s a wind,’ said Mama. ‘Put on your sweater.’
‘Wait’ll I watch my goose-bumps,’ I said.
‘Harold,’ said Mama.
I put the sweater on and watched the waves come up and fall down on the beach. But not clumsily. On purpose, with a green sort of elegance. Even a drunken man could not collapse with such elegance as those waves.
It was September. In the last days when things are getting sad for no reason. The beach was so long and lonely with only about six people on it. The kids quit bouncing the ball because somehow the wind made them sad, too, whistling the way it did, and the kids sat down and felt autumn come along the endless shore.
All of the hot-dog stands were boarded up with strips of golden planking, sealing in all the mustard, onion, meat odors of the long, joyful summer. It was like nailing summer into a series of coffins. One by one the places slammed their covers down, padlocked their doors, and the wind came and touched the sand, blowing away all of the million footprints of July and August. It got so that now, in September, there was nothing but the mark of my rubber tennis shoes and Donald and Delaus Schabold’s feet, down by the water curve.
Sand blew up in curtains on the sidewalks, and the merry-go-round was hidden with canvas, all of the horses frozen in mid-air on their brass poles, showing teeth, galloping on. With only the wind for music, slipping through canvas.
I stood there. Everyone else was in school. I was not. Tomorrow I would be on my way west across the United States on a train. Mom and I had come to the beach for one last brief moment.
There was something about the loneliness that made me want to get away by myself. ‘Mama. I want to run up the beach a ways,’ I said.
‘All right, but hurry back, and don’t go near the water.’
I ran. Sand spun under me and the wind lifted me. You know how it is, running, arms out so you feel veils from your fingers, caused by wind. Like wings.
Mama withdrew into the distance, sitting. Soon she was only a brown speck and I was all alone.
Being alone is a newness to a twelve-year-old child. He is so used to people about. The only way he can be alone is in his mind. There are so many real people around, telling children what and how to do, that a boy has to run off down a beach, even if it’s only in his head, to get by himself in his own world, with his own