Where'd You Park Your Spaceship?, page 20
man climbs up and out of it. He’s carrying a small chair.
He sets it up and then sits down in it.
He’s holding a pipe. And a book.
He begins reading.
Oh. Each of the homes has a lid like that on the roof.
So you can be alone, but outside, if you want to be.
The man pulls the pan out of the fire, sets it down on the stone ledge that surrounds the fire, pulls a fork out of his back pocket, and begins to eat directly out of the pan.
Firdus.
There is only one Firdus.
A small boy wearing a red cap runs out of one of the
houses. He heads straight for the man with the pan. The
man stabs something with his fork as the boy approaches.
The boy takes a bite and then does a little dance. The man stomps the ground in time as he taps the edge of the pan with his fork.
Their own little music, there before the sun rises.
A breakfast song.
There is a harmony to this scene, a symmetry. Everything
in its right place.
Families, food, fire.
A proper arrangement.
Created with intention.
I help make this possible.
Random?
No.
I swat that thought away.
*
The bakery is up ahead.
A group of women and men are standing in a circle,
watching someone on the ground in the middle.
I get closer.
Ziga Mey.
She’s down on one knee, drawing something on the
ground with a stick. She’s wearing a green dress with blue
boots. Her hair is stacked on top of her head with a pin
through it.
One of the women turns and sees me.
The others turn.
Ziga Mey stands up.
Heen.
I swear she is taller than she usually is.
Will you help us for a moment?
A touch of command in her request.
The circle opens up.
She motions for me to come to her.
I step forward.
She addresses them I want to show you something that
you already know. But it’s important for you to see it
because it’s so simple it’s easy to forget.
She turns her back to me.
Now Heen, place your hands on the top of my shoulders.
I do.
Now give me a little nudge.
I freeze.
Excuse me?
I tilt my head around so I can see the side of her face.
A few laugh.
I’m tough. I can handle it. Just a gentle little nudge.
Okay, if you insist.
I turn to the men and women, who I realize are
significantly older than Ziga Mey. And me.
I just take orders around here.
They laugh again.
How am I suddenly funny?
I give her a very gentle nudge, with my finger tips. She
falls forward just a bit as she plants one foot to steady
herself. She turns to the circle and asks
What just happened?
A woman in the front says He did what you told him to do
and you didn’t fall over.
Obvious. I have no idea where Ziga May is going with
this…Or who these people are. Or what this even is.
Correct. Why didn’t I fall over?
Another woman responds You stuck out your foot.
Exactly. How quickly did I stick out my foot?
Several murmurs. Immediately. Right away. In the
moment.
Yes. That is what happened, isn’t it? Now, the real
question: Did I think about it?
They’re quiet.
What an odd question.
It was instinctual I say.
She turns to me. Yes, it was.
Like a reflex I add.
Yes, Heen, like a reflex.
She places her hand on my shoulder and directs me
towards the bakery. A kind way of saying Now leave.
Thank you for your help Heen.
Several smile at me as the circle parts. I overhear her
using those words reflex and instinct as I walk away.
*
The front door makes its usual bang.
Borns enters.
LIVIN’, LOVIN’, LOAFIN’!!!
On the word LOAFIN’ one finger points straight up with
his arm extended while the other finger points straight
down with that arm extended. I don’t know how he comes
up with a new routine every morning. I thought he would
have run out of moves by now.
He makes his way right to me.
Heen, it is time for you to dine at our house, yes?
This is tricky territory.
Although everything on Firdus feels tricky.
I hesitate.
I’ll have to think about it.
I have no plans. Ever.
Yes, that should work, I can make it.
He dances a little jig.
You have chosen wisely. Tomorrow night?
Tomorrow night it is. I’ll be there.
I shall draw you a map. We shall feast. It shall come to
pass.
Off he goes to put on his apron.
*
I pass a group of kids on the way back to my flat after
work. They’re wearing their school jackets. Not one of
them has taken theirs off. It’s a fairly warm day. These are
not the jackets I noticed them wearing earlier. These
jackets are new. They’re thinner. Made of cotton.
Exactly like I suggested in my report.
*
Piddle. Piddle. And then one more piddle. For the love of
the game.
I hear him speaking before I see him.
He comes up behind me.
Dill Tudd.
He’s wearing what I can only describe as MUSTARD
today. That’s a color, right? Even his bag. All matching.
What’s a piddle? I ask.
They come in threes he replies.
But what is it? My chin juts out. Insistent.
There is no A or IT, there is no SINGULAR with the piddle-do you see? THEY are a THEY, to have one you must have
ALL three.
THEY ARE A THEY I say. I look around, embarrassed.
Grateful no one saw me or heard me say that in broad
daylight to a man drowning in mustard.
Yes, exactly, you’re getting it.
He smiles like he’s very satisfied with how I’m coming
along.
Dill Tudd, who are you? Where do you come from? I don’t
understand what this thing is where you appear out of
nowhere and walk beside me and we have these
conversations-I don’t even know if that’s the right word for
them-about the most obtuse subjects ever and then we
part ways.
It feels good to get it out there.
Excuse me he says, as he turns and walks up to a square
orange building we are passing. There’s a small window
about chest high. He taps on it three times.
A woman comes to the window.
She has a towel wrapped around her head. A purple
towel. With birds stitched on it. Pink birds. Yellow birds.
Black birds. She’s wearing large gold earrings.
She lights up when she sees him.
She opens the window.
He hands her something from his bag.
Again, I can’t tell what it is.
She reaches her hand out of the window. Her arm has
silver and gold bracelets that clink and clatter, like a song
that can’t find the beat.
She pats him on the head.
He does his little Dill Tudd bow.
He rejoins me.
I say nothing about this.
His strangeness has exhausted my capacity for speech.
We keep walking.
We walk over the bridge. Past the pitch. Up the hill with all
those screechy dogs. Down through the forest with the
swings. A woman is singing under a massive oak tree.
Dill Tudd joins her as we pass by. He knows all the words.
And when the evening breeze
Has come and gone
I’ll lay down beside you
Where I’ve been all along…
She waves to us as she sings.
We walk by the school, in among a series of houses with
common fire pits, between the library and the CHARIS
and the MARY.
There is a wordlessness between us, a calm that I have
no name for. This man irritates me to no end. More than
any person I’ve ever met.
And yet.
This wordless stroll.
The trees, the swings, the bridge, that lady singing.
Walking next to him I catch fleeting glimpses of it all
electrified, illuminated, humming with some sort of
current, connected by a sub-surface unity that is sensed
as much as seen.
This is enough.
I think this to myself.
It repeats within me.
Not enough-more than enough.
Beautiful.
In its common, ordinary, everydayness.
Look at me, going on like this.
He has infected me.
We approach the trail that leads to my flat.
He stops.
A celebration of sorts he says.
What are we celebrating? I say this like we’ve been
friends for a thousands laps.
A man and woman showed up at the bakery today-
I interrupt. The bakery?!
Low grade panic.
How does Dill Tudd know where I work?
Has he been following me?
Yes, the bakery. LOAF. Where we shared the ecstasies of
GHOST BREAD…
Ahhhhh. That bakery-yes.
Is there any other? he asks.
I need to cover here.
Of course not…
I give him a THAT’S CRAZY look.
A man and woman showed up first thing in the morning
and asked Freela if she’d step outside to talk with them.
She was cautious, as anyone would be.
Yeah, I get that.
Where is this story going?
They tell her that the owner of the bakery died in the night
and left the bakery to her! Imagine her surprise. He never
said one kind word to her. And then, in the end-peace be
upon him, obviously-he gives her the whole thing! YOU
JUST NEVER KNOW DO YOU??!!
I feel a white hot clammy heat climbing up my spine.
Did they show it to her?
Show her what?
The will?
Dill Tudd shakes his head.
Heen Gru-Bares you manage to find a way to ruin the
festivities with your inquiry! Basic rule of the worlds: If
someone gives you a bakery you say THANK YOU!!!
I ignore that.
The owner died IN THE NIGHT and within hours they’ve
got his estate settled?
I am thoroughly unnerved. And deeply skeptical.
Once again Heen Gru-Bares, you pee in the tent. You rain
on the parade. You gargle at the dinner table.
I backpedal. Okay, okay. My apologies. I’m just impressed
with how it got sorted so quickly, that’s all…
He winks.
Well, these are the ARRANGEMENTS, aren’t they?
There’s a marker log to my left, running parallel to the trail.
I sit down. He joins me.
A man dies, yes. But why so sad?
Deny.
Oh no, not sad. I just have a lot on my mind…
That’s actually true.
Please let Freela know how happy I am for her.
Happy for Freela? Happy for me!
For you as well. Of course.
You know what she said to me as soon as she told me the
news?
I don’t.
She said NOW I WILL MAKE GHOST BREAD FOR
EVERYBODY.
Almost everybody I say, pointing to myself.
Dill Tudd loves this.
I will convert you yet!
He stands up.
Heen Gru-Bares, I am so glad we decided to be friends.
And, as he usually does, he bows and walks away.
I sit there on that log, thinking about the owner of that
bakery.
The dead owner.
The one I mentioned in my report.
A coincidence I tell myself.
Means nothing.
*
I tap the disc.
Yeah, Heen.
Here we go Randy.
I start in on my report.
I falter.
One second Randy, I’m having an issue here. I’ll call right
back. Sorry.
I click off.
The flat I’m renting is small and shaped like a slice of pie.
There is a circular column that runs up the middle of the
building. The stairs are in the column. On each floor there
are 5 flats-5 SLICES of the pie. When you enter the flat
you pass the bedroom on the left, the bathroom on the
right, and then the flat opens up as the walls angle away
to the outer wall, which is a curved sheet of glass.
The effect is spectacular.
I remember Ma’ir Dobie teaching us that SPACES SHAPE SOULS SHAPE SPACES. They had us repeat that sentence out loud, together. We took turns writing it on the wall. We scribbled it in our notebooks. I was a bit young to grasp the truth of it.
But a flat like this.
That literally expands the further you enter.
What a place.
It shapes you.
It opens you up as it opens up.
I do not feel open in this moment, sitting here, staring at
the disc I just clicked off.
I’m rattled.
Wobbly. Woozy.
All I have to do is tell Randy what I’ve noticed.
This has never been difficult before.
I tap it again.
My apologies, Randy.
No worries. What do you have?
It’s just there’s this guy and he keeps appearing and I feel
like I know him because he’s so familiar but he has this
choppy, weird way of talking-
Heen.
And we kind of have a conversation and his hair is short in
front and long in the back and sometimes it seems like
he’s lost in his own world-
Heen.
And his clothes-HIS CLOTHES!-I think he must make
them himself because I’ve never seen anyone dress like he
does and he’s got this bag-actually he wears a different
bag every day to match his clothes-I don’t know what’s in
his bag but whatever it is he hands things out and people
are so happy when they see him-
Heen. STOP. Collect yourself. Get back to me when you’re
ready to report.
Click.
Randy is gone.
*
I turn the page.
Joshua Slocum.
Why was this man not revered on earth?
Why were statues of him not carved in every port?
I read on.
He chops down trees in a place called BOSTON and then
makes planks out of those trees which he uses to rebuild
an old boat, which he then sails ALONE around the
EARTH? Something no human had ever done?
I read on.
He attaches a cooking pan to a rope and drags it behind
his boat, which attracts a shark that he shoots with his
gun?
I read on.
He arrives in a port and tells the people there that he’s
sailing around the world and they don’t believe him
because they believe that the Earth is flat?
I find this man a marvel.
All he had was this wooden boat.
That he made himself.
And he did THAT?
I have a spaceship.
I fly all over the galaxies.
Which is the greater wonder?
Who is this man Joshua Slocum?
I put the book down.
Earth.
What an odd and wondrous place.
*
Early morning.
Lan Zing invites me in to her office.
It’s next to the storage room, behind the room where we wash the sheets and pans.
Her office is an exercise in restraint. There are two chairs,
a small table, walls covered with photographs of her
parents and her posing with various people who have
passed through the bakery over the laps. In some of the
photos she’s a young school girl.
You can trace her life on these walls.
There’s also a boy-he looks to be a lap or two younger
than her-in most of the photos. Her brother? Where is he?
Why is she running the bakery without him? Where did he
go?
This room-it feels like a shrine.
To her parents.
To the boy.
To the bakery.
To bread.
Take a seat, Heen.
She lights a candle on the table.
She crosses her legs up under her on the chair. No one
else in the universe I know of sits like this. Does she know
this? How unusual this is? I want to tell her how singular
this habit of hers is. But then she’ll ask how I know.
I have something important to ask of you.
I brace myself.
This could be anything.
I’ve been doing this for so long…
There is a weariness lingering there in her words. But also
affection. The bonds that come from being rooted in a
place. From giving yourself to something, lap after lap.
I’ve been feeling for a while like it’s time for a change…
