Dandelion Wine

It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.

Douglas Spaulding, twelve, freshly wakened, let summer idle him on its early-morning stream. Lying in his third-story cupola bedroom, he felt the tall power it gave him, riding high in the June wind, the grandest tower in town. At night, when the trees washed together, he flashed his gaze like a beacon from this lighthouse in all directions over swarming seas of elm and oak and maple. Now …

‘Boy, ’ whispered Douglas.

A whole summer ahead to cross off the calendar, day by day. Like the goddess Siva in the travel books, he saw his hands jump everywhere, pluck sour apples, peaches, and midnight plums. He would be clothed in trees and bushes and rivers. He would freeze, gladly, in the hoar-frosted ice house door. He would bake, happily, with ten thousand chickens, in Grandma’s kitchen.

But now – a familiar task awaited him.

One night each week he was allowed to leave his father, his mother, and his younger brother Tom asleep in their small house next door and run here, up the dark spiral stairs to his grandparents’ cupola, and in this sorcerer’s tower sleep with thunders and visions, to wake before the crystal jingle of milk bottles and perform his ritual magic.

He stood at the open window in the dark, took a deep breath and exhaled.

The street lights, like candles on a black cake, went out. He exhaled again and again and the stars began to vanish.

Douglas smiled. He pointed a finger.

There, and there. Now over here, and here …

Yellow squares were cut in the dim morning earth as house lights winked slowly on. A sprinkle of windows came suddenly alight miles off in dawn country.

‘Everyone yawn. Everyone up. ’

The great house stirred below.

‘Grandpa, get your teeth from the water glass! ’ He waited a decent interval. ‘Grandma and Great-grandma, fry hot cakes! ’

The warm scent of fried batter rose in the drafty halls to stir the boarders, the aunts, the uncles, the visiting cousins, in their rooms.

‘Street where all the Old People live, wake up! Miss Helen Loomis, Colonel Freeleigh, Mrs Bentley! Cough, get up, take pills, move around! Mr Jonas, hitch up your horse, get your junk wagon out and around! ’

The bleak mansions across the town ravine opened baleful dragon eyes. Soon, in the morning avenues below, two old women would glide their electric Green Machine, waving at all the dogs. ‘Mr Tridden, run to the carbarn! ’ Soon, scattering hot blue sparks above it, the town trolley would sail the rivering brick streets.

‘Ready, John Huff, Charlie Woodman? ’ whispered Douglas to the Street of Children. ‘Ready! ’ to baseballs sponged deep in wet lawns, to rope swings hung empty in trees.

‘Mom, Dad, Tom, wake up. ’

Clock alarms tinkled faintly. The courthouse clock boomed. Birds leaped from trees like a net thrown by his hand, singing. Douglas, conducting an orchestra, pointed to the eastern sky.

The sun began to rise.

He folded his arms and smiled a magician’s smile. Yes, sir, he thought, everyone jumps, everyone runs when I yell. It’ll be a fine season.

He gave the town a last snap of his fingers.

Doors slammed open; people stepped out.

Summer 1928 began.

Crossing the lawn that morning, Douglas Spaulding broke a spider web with his face. A single invisible line on the air touched his brow and snapped without a sound.

So, with the subtlest of incidents, he knew that this day was going to be different. It would be different also, because, as his father explained, driving Douglas and his ten-year-old brother Tom out of town toward the country, there were some days compounded completely of odor, nothing but the world blowing in one nostril and out the other. And some days, he went on, were days of hearing every trump and trill of the universe. Some days were good for tasting and some for touching. And some days were good for all the senses at once. This day now, he nodded, smelled as if a great and nameless orchard had grown up overnight beyond the hills to fill the entire visible land with its warm freshness. The air felt like rain, but there were no clouds. Momentarily, a stranger might laugh off in the woods, but there was silence …

Douglas watched the traveling land. He smelled no orchards and sensed no rain, for without apple trees or clouds he knew neither could exist. And as for that stranger laughing deep in the woods …?

Yet the fact remained – Douglas shivered – this, without reason, was a special day.

The car stopped at the very center of the quiet forest.

‘All right, boys, behave. ’

They had been jostling elbows.

‘Yes, sir. ’

They climbed out, carrying the blue tin pails away from the lonely dirt road into the smell of fallen rain.

‘Look for bees, ’ said Father. ‘Bees hang around grapes like boys around kitchens. Doug? ’

Douglas looked up suddenly.

‘You’re off a million miles, ’ said Father. ‘Look alive. Walk with us. ’

‘Yes, sir. ’

And they walked through the forest, Father very tall, Douglas moving in his shadow, and Tom, very small, trotting in his brother’s shade. They came to a little rise and looked ahead. Here, here, did they see? Father pointed. Here was where the big summer-quiet winds lived and passed in the green depths, like ghost whales, unseen.

Douglas looked quickly, saw nothing, and felt put upon by his father who, like Grandpa, lived on riddles. But … But, still … Douglas paused and listened.

Yes, something’s going to happen, he thought, I know it!

‘Here’s maidenhair fern, ’ Dad walked, the tin pail belling in his fist. ‘Feel this? ’ He scuffed the earth. ‘A million years of good rich leafmold laid down. Think of the autumns that got by to make this. ’

‘Boy, I walk like an Indian, ’ said Tom. ‘Not a sound. ’

Douglas felt but did not feel the deep loam, listening, watchful. We’re surrounded! he thought. It’ll happen! What? He stopped. Come out, wherever you are, whatever you are! he cried silently.

Tom and Dad strolled on the hushed earth ahead.

‘Finest lace there is, ’ said Dad quietly.

And he was gesturing up through the trees above to show them how it was woven across the sky or how the sky was woven into the trees, he wasn’t sure which. But there it was, he smiled, and the weaving went on, green and blue, if you watched and saw the forest shift its humming loom. Dad stood comfortably saying this and that, the words easy in his mouth. He made it easier by laughing at his own declarations just so often. He liked to listen to the silence, he said, if silence could be listened to, for, he went on, in that silence you could hear wildflower pollen sifting down the bee-fried air, by God, the bee-fried air! Listen! the waterfall of birdsong beyond those trees!

Now, thought Douglas, here it comes! Running! I don’t see it! Running! Almost on me!

‘Fox grapes! ’ said Father. ‘We’re in luck, look here! ’

Don’t! Douglas gasped.

But Tom and Dad bent down to shove their hands deep in rattling bush. The spell was shattered. The terrible prowler, the magnificent runner, the leaper, the shaker of souls, vanished.

Douglas, lost and empty, fell to his knees. He saw his fingers sink through green shadow and come forth stained with such color that it seemed he had somehow cut the forest and delved his hand in the open wound.