Light Boxes (7 page)

It's me, Bianca, I said. I'm your daughter. Look at my face.

I rubbed the dirt from my cheeks. Made sure my face wasn't coated in snow or ash.

Bianca, I said. Don't you recognize me.

I wrote each letter of my name on a scrap of parchment and slid it across the floor.

My father moved the letters around. He spelled A CABIN. Then he came back to BIANCA. He looked at the letters, the name, then at me. He kept doing this.

Eventually I think he smiled.

Something is wrong with me.

I will help you and the town.

 

FEBRUARY GOES HOME. FEBRUARY
waited in the woods before heading home to the girl who smelled of honey and smoke. He opened the door and handed her a sculpture of an owl with a cracked skull. He bought it cheap from a depressed sculptor. The girl who smelled of honey and smoke cried and hugged February. She whispered in his ear that Thaddeus Lowe now believes in spring and that given time it will infect the entire town.

Maybe we can live in peace, she said.

It was a solution to the war against him. February had suffered through their fake smiling faces, water-trough attacks, sticks thrown at the sky, prayers and War Hymns. He had seen them covered with moss and endless layers of gray. He had seen them saddened with over nine hundred days of February, and he had been blamed for it.

Very well, then, said February. And he sat down in a wooden rocking chair and folded his hands on his lap.

I love you, said the girl who smelled of honey and smoke. And I love you, said February, feeling a little sad.

There is a house builder and his wife. Name the house builder February and refer to the wife as the girl who smells of honey and smoke.

 

 

wars against February, the town's sadness reached a new depth. Two members of the War Effort flung themselves from the blacksmith's ship. Another cut his wrists open in the middle of the street, and dead vines poured from his body, grew through the street and covered a cottage. Shopkeepers wept through the night. The beekeepers had their bees sting their necks in order to stop their crying. Snow mixed with ice and a sheet of lightning fell from the sky. And Thaddeus Lowe could be seen walking through town wearing nothing but cutoff burlap pants, commenting to his neighbors about the beautiful weather.

Remember to trim those hedges, he yelled to a shopkeeper who was sitting on a pile of dirty snow, his knees pulled up to his face as he rocked back and forth.

The underground children came up occasionally to watch the town fall apart. They thought of rebelling against Thaddeus on account of his madness. They held meetings and argued into the late night. They discussed the War Plan given to them by a girl who smelled of honey and smoke, seeing now the consequences of proceeding without the support of the War Effort and townsfolk. Their confusion swept through the underground tunnels.

 

 

in town telling him that February was still occurring. Squares of parchment tied with blue ribbon had been placed throughout his home. Each one had a different style of writing, each from a different person from town or the War Effort. They said things like how February had been the cause of his wife's death, his daughter's and Caldor Clemens's. They pleaded with Thaddeus to remember the days of flight, and one parchment had strands of balloon fabric sewn to the fibers. Thaddeus didn't touch any of these. It was Bianca who began sneaking into the home each evening, placing the squares of parchment around the house as her father drove a tractor through the imaginary fields. When he ignored them, she began unfolding the parchments and placing them in the bathtub, on his bed, sticking them inside cabinet doors with candle wax. Thaddeus started to read them and nailed them to the walls of his home until they covered each room. He studied what they said and thought that he should go back to the home of February in the woods and the girl who smells of honey and smoke and ask more questions.

 

 

wanted to be with a man who had the following characteristics: (1) Gets his hair cut. (2) Has a respectable income. (3) Wears nice clothes that fit him. (4) Acts like a man. (5) Looks healthy. When she looked at February sitting on the floor, occasionally writing something, she saw none of this. His hair hadn't been cut in over six months. It was a mess of brown waves and curls, a dingy mat growing down the back of his neck that embarrassed her when she brought him around her friends. His job at a local store, where he had been working for over two years without a decent raise, was going nowhere. He didn't own a vehicle like other men, because he couldn't afford one. Instead he rode his bike to work each day and didn't object when the girl who smelled of honey and smoke's parents offered to buy them a vehicle. He couldn't afford an apartment, so he lived in his parents' basement, where the girl who smelled of honey and smoke lived also and was now planning an escape each day she woke to the sound of someone's piss spraying the toilet water above her head. His wardrobe consisted of underwear his mother had bought him over six years ago when he first went away to college, a half dozen faded T-shirts and three pairs of jeans that were Christmas gifts from the past three years. When February would spend hours writing a story he wouldn't discuss because it had gotten away from him months before, the girl who smelled of honey and smoke told him that other men do things like take their girlfriends out, buy them flowers and candy, surprise them with picnics. A man, she said, doesn't hide some make-believe story that he can't even finish. And lastly, when she looked at February in the shower, or when he was dressing, she wondered if he was dying. His skin was pale, his arms and leg bones lacked the muscular frame that she believed was sexy. He was six foot two and weighed 155 pounds. Except for the two-mile bike ride to work, he decided against an exercise routine. Occasionally she'd see him in the bedroom, struggling on a third push-up, and she'd notice the uncombed block of hair, the tubelike body trembling, the dirty clothes piled up, the bicycle leaning against the drywall, and it reminded her of what she didn't have, the possibilities waiting outside those dark walls.

 

FEBRUARY HELD A BEARD TRIMMER.
He reread the list of characteristics the girl who smelled of honey and smoke sought in a man until the anger turned to sadness. He stretched his arms out in front of him. He inspected their thinness. He ran his hands through his hair, the thickest part at the back near his neck, a puffy mess that now embarrassed even himself. Then, flipping the plastic switch, that row of rusty little teeth sawing back and forth, February raised it to the front of his head and in one long stroke began shaving off his hair.

When the townsfolk looked up, they believed that it was snowing but as the locks of hair fell down upon their shoulders, lashing them across their cheeks, curling around their ankles and holding them to the streets, sticking to their lips and suffocating their breath, they realized that it was another attack by February.

Look, said Thaddeus to himself. Some summer vines are falling from the clouds. How unusual.

It's February, said a war member.

Thaddeus, please, it's February from above causing this. Can't you see that.

I'm going off to see February at the edge of town again, said Thaddeus.

Thaddeus, it's a trick. February doesn't live at the edge of town. Look up!

Thaddeus was off.

 

 

woods and to the home of February and the girl who smelled of honey and smoke. When he opened the door, he saw a man in a rocking chair cutting his hair with a pair of large sewing shears. The girl who smelled of honey and smoke was sitting on the floor writing on parchment paper, which she folded into tiny squares and bound with blue ribbon.

The man, thought Thaddeus, was February. He wore faded brown pants and a dark blue sweater with holes at the elbows. He cut his hair in odd angles and took a few snips from the chin of his beard.

Thaddeus closed the door.

February dropped the sewing shears. The girl pushed the parchment papers under a bearskin rug. They glanced at each other and looked back at Thaddeus, who was still standing in the doorway.

Well, come in, said February. Don't let the cold air in.

Thaddeus was puzzled. His ankles, beneath his socks, were sticky with sweat.

The girl who smelled of honey and smoke approached Thaddeus and placed her arms around his shoulders. I'm glad you're back, she said. Come in and sit on the floor with me.

February stayed in his rocking chair. He folded his hands in his lap and rocked back and forth. He looks scared, thought Thaddeus.

I thought you were dead, said Thaddeus, looking at February.

February shook his head no.

I'm not dead, he said. As a matter of fact, I don't know who or what I am anymore. Everyone in town is terrified of me. They blame me for an endless season where all it does is snow and the skies are gray and everyone is filled with endless sadness. They blame me for the end of flight. Did you know that I had visions that you were coming to cut my throat, Thaddeus. Just awful. I had to sleep in an empty cottage at the edge of another town. The weather was warm.

Thaddeus didn't know of any other town within walking distance.

February continued. I ran away from the possibility of you killing me to another town that appeared to be abandoned. The weather was warm, the homes newly built, but there were holes in the ground that appeared to go to the center of the earth. It looked like tunnels underground, and inside them were lamps strung like holiday lights.

The girl who smelled of honey and smoke got up to make tea. Thaddeus said yes, that he would drink tea only if the bottom of the cup were stuffed with mint leaves.

I don't understand, said Thaddeus to February.

Neither do we, said the girl who smelled of honey and smoke.

The two holes in the sky, February said, they hold the answer. We believe in a Creator. We believe that the Creator is up inside those two holes in the sky. We believe that the cause of this endless sad season is directly connected to the Creator.

Thaddeus took the teacup from the girl who smelled of honey and smoke. But you're February, he said. You're the cause of it.

I'm not February, February said. You and everyone else including the Creator call me February. I don't even know my name. I'm a builder of houses, I know that. I built this house by myself. I should be called House Builder. Most of the homes in your town, I built with my bare hands. That is, before I was driven away. I hate February.

But you kidnapped the children and buried them, said Thaddeus.

I wouldn't do that, said House Builder, kind of laughing.

The girl who smelled of honey and smoke sat so close to Thaddeus on the floor that their knees were touching.

He loves children, she said. He wouldn't do that.

February the Creator kidnapped the children, said House Builder. February the Creator is responsible for this endless season of sadness.

But you, said Thaddeus, looking at the girl who smelled of honey and smoke. You poisoned me. You made me see spring. When my daughter was taken from her bed, it smelled of honey and smoke and the window was open.

Like I can control what I do and how you are affected. I believe I was only doing it for the safety of my husband. Someone told me to do it, and I did it. I, too, have been mislabeled as a girl who smells of honey and smoke. I'm a Housewife. And as for the smell of the room, Housewife whispered, February is a cruel being, capable of such tricks.

So it is still February, said Thaddeus. All this time February is still occurring.

I'm afraid so, she said.

None of this makes sense, thought Thaddeus.

We feel the same way, said House Builder.

How did you hear that.

You said it out loud, said House Builder. The girl who smelled of honey and smoke nodded.

There was a war planned by underground children, said Thaddeus. It's against February. Or is it against you. I shouldn't have called it off. Should I have called it off. I need to get back to town. And Thaddeus headed to the door.

Please, said House Builder. I know you won't understand this, because I believe it's impossible to understand, but I'm not the cause of the town's troubles. I've been pushed to the edge of town. Look back to the two holes in the sky. That's where the problem is. Or the problem is willpower and what you think you can control. I, for example, got labeled February and my wife here as a girl who smells of honey and smoke. Such nonsense. How awful.