The End of October (Part 3 of 4)

for the thousand year winter

       On the floor, in front of the fire, Paxton and his mother sat with the red book in between them. The mother turned the pages—the boy pointed at each one with a reflection of that excitement he’d had the first time he’d caught them. “This one is especially beautiful,” his mother would say, or “look at that red! Why, I don’t think there was anything quite that red in the city, do you?”

       Of course, Lucy did not find much interest in this. She preferred other books, and she preferred to read them in more comfortable places than the floor. But Paxton smiled on and on. Every color to him was different, in the firelight, and he felt as though he could rediscover every single one. Sometimes they would come across a shape, on the skin of the leaf, like they might have done once when looking at clouds.

       Every now and then, if she happened to encounter some truly exceptional shape, some color, she’d turn to her husband, in his chair, and point it out to him with a childish tone and he’d lend a very small portion of his smile. To him, they were really just leaves, just as they had been to his sister, Edith. But they were more to her—and he reflected some small part of her joy, if only at her enjoyment.  

       Doctor Melving was a quiet man. And nobody knew if he’d always been that way, or if he’d learned it somewhere. He didn't laugh much. If anything, this was his greatest fault—in the eyes of his son, he was carved from stone. Of course, he hadn’t always been nearly so stoic. His smile had once been nearly as quick as his little wife’s knitting fingers.

       If Paxton had paid more attention, he might have noticed the commonality. But it’s hard to be observant of the things that are important when you don’t know, until later, just how important they’ll be—Nobody knows why. But that’s the way that it is sometimes. He saw the big things, and even some of the little things. He saw the trees and the way that the leaves fell. And as he watched them, the grass was wilting and the frost was crunching under his boots and his father smiled less often, and he never did notice until later.

       And really, why would he have? Why should he ever think to put those two and two together? Perhaps it is a point in favor of his young innocence that he never did.

       To be painfully honest—and really, honesty is quite often painful—Paxton did not know his father all that well. And really, this wasn’t is fault. Some men really don’t seem knowable.

       He knew, of course, that he was a doctor, and that he’d been a doctor in the army. He knew that, while in the army, his father had been shot. But he knew this in the same way that a person can know what mountains look like from books, having never actually seen them. (And if you’ve ever seen mountains, you understand that those really aren’t the same at all.)

       What Paxton did know was that his father and his father’s mustache had something in common; they were both very serious, and that it took a great deal to stir either one into movement. They were not cruel or angry—they were simply sober. His countenance and spirit had been tempered by reason and science—and worse things, too.

       Those very different eyes saw very different things, when together father and son sat in the silent living room, staring into the fire. To the boy, all was trees and falling leaves and gold, a screeching and fluttering of color, launching up the chimney like bats made of sparks.

       The father saw cannons, in the distance. He heard them, drumming behind him, roaring over his head. As the dark drew in around them and spun cobwebs in the corners, he saw the spine of the sky breaking and the rain pounding down, ringing against his helmet and echoing in his ears like iron drums.

       When the nights went cold and the sky turned black, Paxton saw the frost lean in on the windows and stare between its fingers in at the fire and the books. When his father looked, he saw pale and dirty faces, between the trees.

       Those eyes saw such different things. And of course, one of them had seen death. And as Paxton would learn, the problem with death is that it’s just so damn contagious.

       Like a yawn, inspiring those deep, tired tremors, where there had been none before, and so that cruel, mortal awareness stirs. A tremble, suddenly afraid of drifting off—and at once, welcoming the thought.

       Of course, Paxton had some understanding of how a creature like Rosa had found him—and where, even. He had a picture in his head of that field hospital, and of that even smaller, younger Rosa with an apron on. He knew, to some degree, how the love of that tiny creature had done something transforming to that terribly serious one. But he understood this to the same degree that he understood war. (And his picture of it was as incomplete as his picture of field hospitals.)

       It was her joy that spilled into the doctor, and that tempted him, even, to smile through the deep evening shadows. But it was hard to smile then, even as he watched that laugh climb through her, kicking to escape like a child under too many blankets, and finding its way out her mouth, eyes and curls.

       “There were trees that uncle showed me on the other side of the ridge,” Paxton said excitedly, “like pine trees but gold. And he said that they’d drop their needles, just like the trees here drop their leaves. He said they only last a week or so like that, and then they’re all gone. I’d have brought back a branch, but it wouldn’t fit in our book.”

       The mother laughed. “No, I imagine it wouldn’t have. I suppose that only leaves us with one option, doesn’t it? We’ll have to come back and see them again next year.”

       Paxton’s whole being seemed to light up. “Can we?”

       His mother pointed and whispered, “you’ll have to ask your father.”

       Paxton turned excitedly to his father. “Can we, dad?” He asked.

       There was a long, quiet moment—the father stared not at Paxton, but at his wife, half-glowing in the firelight. The words came out of him almost pained. “Every year,” he said, and he made his mouth perform something very much like a smile. But colder.

       Paxton was ecstatic. He turned to his mother beaming, the words tumbling out of him in a flurry. “Then we can go and see them together,” he said. “Uncle said that they don't ever die—that they only fall asleep.”

       “He’s right of course,” said the mother, smiling. “Nothing really dies. Not ever. And that sleep never lasts forever.” She reached out gently and pulled him into a hug, the fire dancing over the leaves between them. “No matter how dark,” she said, “and no matter how cold, just remember—the night ends.”

       In the joining kitchen, the door swung open and a flurry of cold air rushed in, skittering across the wood floor as uncle entered, his beard parted by the same smile that creased his eyes in so many places.

       “Pax, lad,” he said happily, “I've a bit to show you, here. Come.”

       Paxton jumped up and ran to the door, his uncle's hand on his shoulder. And there, in the rectangle of orange, with the only blue spilling in around his little frame, he watched the snowflakes, tumbling down through the branches.

       The wind tiptoed across the grass; it rustled the leaves and kicked them up, stuck to the bottoms of its feet. Fat, white flakes, the size of dimes, performed a very clumsy newborn ballet against the indigo epilogue of the autumn.

       “Snow!” He shouted. “Snow!” And just like that, in his bare feet, he leapt out into the leaves. He ran around the yard, feeling the sting on his toes, knowing that they were turning as red as his cheeks.

       At the door, his little mother and her beaming face appeared. And even when she needed her brother's help to get down the step, she ran feebly out into the swirling whiteness. Her laugh escaped her in heaps and drifts as her son took her hand and, for a brief moment, regardless of cold, they danced in the building frost, and hardly even felt it on their toes.

       When they went back in, shivering and glowing, Lucy and Edith had appeared as well. They were wrapped in blankets as a household of eyes gathered to doors and windows and watched.

       “Right on time,” said Hollis. “It always storms like this at the end of October.”

       They stood until Paxton's little eyes started to droop, when those hands of his father, which one day would be his own, fell on his shoulder, and the eyes of his mother, already so much like his, settled smiling onto his face.

       She took him to the living room, to the red book, and they closed it together before the mother put a final kiss on his forehead. “This book,” she said, “will help you through the winter. Even if it feels a thousand years long. And even when all the leaves fade. You'll have that hope inside you. Everything wakes up.”

       And so he was taken off to bed. And when the door to his little bedroom closed, he had no way of knowing that his mother nearly fell over, outside it—or that the strong arms that had carried him to bed so many times instead picked up his mother and took her to hers. And he had no way of knowing that that bristling, serious mustache, so hesitant to smile, was kissing her very pale forehead as gently as a falling snowflake, and that those stone-carved cheeks would soon be wet. He didn't know. He didn't hear the goodbyes that were said.

       But of course, he saw that very obvious one, scrawled across the sky outside, as he sat with his face against the glass. He watched the snow, toppling down to join the leaves, so mesmerized by the way things fall. He watched October slip away on a carpet of yesterday’s gold—and he waited for morning to nudge him awake.

       Not everybody runs out of time, you see. Sometimes time runs out on us. Abandons us. Leaves us to ourselves and the winter. Why? I don’t know. But sooner or later, I suppose that everybody has to learn that the world hasn't ended—it’s only night time. And morning will coming.

      

The End of October (Part 2 of 4)

gold in the green; red in the black

       Hollis Norcoat had always seemed like a giant, to his nephew—and he had that sort of giantess that seemed unnatainable, as though no matter how much Paxton grew, he would always have to hurry just to keep up. That day, in his heavy coat and with his giant, tan boots, his thick beard and his smiling cheeks, Uncle Hollis looked like a huge bear—and a happy one, at that. 

       The road wound endlessly up through the avenues of trees—but Paxton didn’t mind. No matter how far they went, they always somehow encountered new colors, brighter and richer, and trees that were different than those down in the groves beside the house. 

       “More evergreen up here,” said the uncle. “But just wait until we get to the top. I’ve got a thing or two to show you, there. I used to take little Lucy up here every year, but she’s got a bit tired of the trek. I knew you’d want to see it, though.”

       The wind was icy, but the sun had a warmth to it, whenever it fond a gap to slip through, and fall slantways onto their shoulders. Paxton’s breath became a cloud that tried to block his eyes as they climbed higher and higher. His lungs ached from the cold and his legs burned from he climb, but with every step his wonder and excitement somehow swelled. 

       It wasn’t long before they reached a spot where his uncle put a hand on his shoulder and pointed to an upcoming break in the trees, through which nothing but sky could be seen. “Just around this corner,” he said eagerly. 

       Paxton could hardly help but run toward the turn, and his uncle didn’t stop him. His breath escaped in bursts as he ran, but when he came around the corner, and when he saw the reason that they’d both come so far, he abandoned whatever little bit of breath he still had. 

       Before him, the road slipped away into a rolling bed of boulders and red rocks, tumbling into the endless expanse of trees. But these trees were different than the ones they'd left around the house. Most were those everyday evergreens, unchanging and familiar—but in their midst, scattered like stars, stood trees of shining, solid gold. They burned like torches amidst the mottled blue and grey, a pattern that wrinkled and rippled into hills crowned in clouds like cotton candy.

       It was unlike anything Paxton had ever seen. He stood, unsure of what to say or do. His eyes were too busy for his brain to really have any say. He was searching—as children often do, for something b which he could make sense of this. Some means of appropriating this glorious view, into something that he could hold onto more plainly. 

       Trees like fire. Like honey. Gold, like his mother’s ring. Like…like something and yet entirely like nothing.

       The problem with autumn, you see, is that it really isn’t like anything. In fact, the more he stared, hunting for words, the more he realized that this was the sort of thing that other things were like—but that was itself like nothing but itself. And there aren’t many things like that. He was lucky, in so short a life, to have already encountered so many. 

       “Two weeks,” his uncle said. “Two weeks, and all the yellow will be gone. They’ll drop their needles and the whole hillside will turn black and white and blue with the snow. Just you wait.” 

       Paxton heard these words with a pang of stark, almost frustrated seriousness. He didn’t really want to see it. He didn’t want to even think of the gold falling off, of snow coming down to cover all this. It was a horrible thought. 

       “I don’t want to watch them die,” he said. 

       “Die?” Hollis chuckled thinly. “Oh, son. They don’t die. They only go to sleep. And the snow comes to tuck them in and keep them warm until morning. And just you see this place then. It’s own beauty, is spring. The colors against the ocean of green.” And then he put a hand on the boy’s shoulder to say, “Nothing dies, really. Everything wakes, in time.” 

       It was strange, to hear such gentle and lovely words come from such a massive and rough-handed man. But it somehow made sense, too. It was somehow autumnal. It reminded Paxton of the strength that his little mother carried around inside her, and at once the thought of her forced his eyes forward again. “I wish mum could see this,” he said. 

       “Oh don’t you worry,” said the uncle, and the hand on the shoulder squeezed fondly. “She’ll see them again. Don’t you worry.” 

       Together the two of them stood, watching the collapse of the afternoon into evening, the sunlight giving out like breaking pillars. The boy thought about his mother; about her little smiles and sweet words and about how much he’d like to bring her here, and about that book that she kept on the floor beside her chair, which she looked into every now and then, to see the colors of the leaves. 

       The uncle thought of his sister. And he thought of the trees—how soon they’d give up. He thought about her pale face, with the cold and the dark looming around it. He saw her like gold against green. And the boy who stood beside him, his mind and heart swelling with wonder, was red against black. Something sturdy. Strong. Something that would last. 

       There was something in him that the uncle recognized. You see, people assume that, in order to truly be magical, a thing has to be disordered, nonsensical, inexplicable—but it doesn’t. They try to make sense of colors and they make sense of changing leaves and assume that just because microscopes exist, real magic can’t. 

       Only they can’t change the fact that what Paxton saw, on those hills, was fire. What he felt was glory, and it tingled. Maybe magic doesn’t exist laboratories—and really why would it?

       But it exists out there. And once you see it, really see it, and once it gets into you, it changes you. 

       You see, the problem with “people” is that they are most always wrong. 

The End of October (Part 1 of 4)

      

 the cricks in all our necks

       Autumn came early, that year. Not loudly at first, but in pieces, all falling into a glorious disarray. Summer was not being replaced—it had simply grown older. Deeper. It had changed into something not altogether different, in the same way that a person who is now grown was once a child. It hadn't turned its back on youth—but it had outgrown it.

       Paxton had seen autumns before. But not like this. He’d seen them out of train windows, and he’d seen them in pictures. But that was like looking at paintings of the ocean, and never actually standing on the beach. Here, he was buried in autumn. Drowning in it. It was falling on his head, and pooling around his boots and leaving pieces in his hair.

       And just like that painting could do nothing to capture what the tide really felt like, what the salt really tasted like, what the foam really smelled like, Paxton was just as surprised, here. At first, it was the smell—the richness, the wetness. It hung on him like the smell of smoke, it crawled through his clothes, but never quite made him cold.

       It was dizzying, at first—and eventually, his neck started to hurt from standing, staring up at the branches. He’d known summers before. And he knew winters very well. He’d stared up at Januarys and Februarys, where the sky was the texture of cotton balls, torn apart and glued down to gray paper. The trees, there, were like cracks into space—the sorts of cracks that he saw in ceilings sometimes, but filled with soot.

       Not here, though. Here, the sky bled through in patches of stark, sharp blue or spilled in all gold, tumbling across the backs of the leaves. And from there it was hard to tell whether the wind rattled the leaves loose, or whether the sunlight talked them into letting go.

       It was there, with October piling up in gutters and reddening his cheeks, that Paxton stood, staring up at the branches, at the golden and red and the green that hung like ornaments from them, wondering what it would be like to fall.

       Some fell straight down. Others hesitated—they spun and danced a little longer, sometimes for so long that he had to let out his pent-up breath, and take another. And these had the most peculiar ability as they fell—though he did not observe it in so many words—as though they could make all of the world stand still. With every swoop and bend, every twist and turn, the sun was pinned; time itself held down at the corners in anticipation.

       And it was these, the ones that fought to stay afloat, that Paxton ran for, with his eyes peeled back as wide as they would open, his fingers spread and palms out, as far as his arms would reach, to snatch them up before they hit the ground. Most often, he’d get there in time; the leaf would nestle into his small hands, and he would take a moment to stare at it.

       He took in all the curling points on the fingers, the little veins in the skin like stained glass windows, or like dragonfly wings. The absolute redness, with its spots of green and its edges of brown.

       Of course, for every one that he caught, there were a hundred he did not. But he was only one boy, and there were hundreds of trees. And yet he caught and held onto each one as gently and with such joy in his eyes as though this, alone, was the very leaf worth catching. And he did it again and again.

       As everybody already knows, there’s no point in catching leaves only to drop them again. And that is not, of course, what a boy—especially a boy such as Paxton—intended to do with them. Instead, he took each precious little handful and ran, kicking through the heaps and the waves of fading gold and snarling russet and toward the old porch, eyes beaming and cheeks stained strawberry from the crisp air.

       From the porch, his mother watched and smiled and sometimes laughed. Her chair rocked slowly, and her hands, with their crocheting, were never quite still, though they were slower now than they were once.

       But of course, Paxton was a very occupied sort of boy, and can therefore be forgiven for not noticing. But his mothers crocheting fingers—in fact, her fingers in general—were slower than they used to be. She, herself, moved at a much slower pace. But Paxton didn't mind.

       He, of course, hadn't slowed down. But nobody made him hurry. He simply did. He treated each accosted leaf as though it was a matter of life and death to scamper them back to shelter.

       Shelter, in this case, was his mother. And more specifically, it was the very large red book that she kept beside her chair, beside the other books that she occasionally picked up to read—the latter were mostly books of poetry, but the former was one of those splendid prices of bookwork left entirely blank, a pliable and eager mess, waiting to be made.

       Paxton's mother was a young woman, and one of those rare and frail sorts who would never seem old. Her name was Rose Melving. Her hair was the color of caramel, and her skin no longer that soft tan, but a sort of cream, which made her eyes only bigger and bluer and her eyelashes longer and the rest of her younger. She hardly looked like more than a child herself, until she spoke.

       When she did speak, she seemed far too old for her body. Her words were soft and strung together like music, and they had color to them, and flavor to the way she made them, as though she'd torn every one of them from one of those poetry books beside her chair.

       On the far side of the books, in a chair of her own and with crocheting of her own, there sat an older-looking woman who frowned a great deal, but not usually because she was unhappy. She was very unlike the young mother, when she spoke, but not unpleasant. To Paxton, she was a piece of that porch nearly as permanently as his mother—but not nearly such a complimentary one. Her name was Edith Price.

       Her daughter, Lucy, was something of a middle ground—neither sitting on the porch with the Onlookers, nor wading through the leaves with the Rescuer. In fact, she didn’t really seem sure where she belonged.  She stood in the space between Paxton and their mothers, raking the leaves into a mountain, higher than her ribs.

       There was an obvious and profound difference between the two, the wonder of one and the experience of the other. It was the difference of familiarity. Of course, Lucy had lived here her whole life, and she’d raked leaves a half-dozen times. Had the roles been reversed, had she been astounded at the hugeness of city streets and the towering, monstrous buildings, she might not have given that little cousin such strange looks.

       But Paxton had that sort of obliviousness on his side that helped to undermine those looks—in short, he didn't notice. There were far more important things to do.

       “What are you doing?” Lucy asked finally, when she’d worn herself out raking and decided that her cousin really did need a talking-to. Then, remembering a game that she’d once played before, added, “Are you looking for the perfect leaf?”

       “No,” Paxton shook his head. “They’re all perfect.”

       Lucy frowned, looking at the wide, curling maple leaf that Paxton had just caught. “That one’s not,” she said, pointing at the creasing edge of the leaf’s fingers. “Look at those brown spots. This one isn’t perfect. But there are perfect ones over there.”

       “Those are freckles,” said Paxton, grinning.

       Lucy thought that this was among the more ridiculous things she’d ever heard. But she also had freckles. So she said nothing, and brushed her rake through the leaves while Paxton ran back to the porch with his new treasure. Of course, she was old enough to realize that she could keep up raking for hours and hardly make a dent. Those trees were maples and birches, and that forest seemed endless, stretching from the back porch and over the hills. She could never hope to pile up them all.

       On the porch, Paxton’s newest rescue was being glued to the open page, a torrent of gold upon the white.

       The woman Mrs. Price, very much of the same mind as the little Ms. Price, had a similar frown. “But why, Paxton?” she asked.

       “Soon,” he said, “all the color will be gone. I’m catching it for later.”

       Lucy had followed, and she was the one spoke next: “But it’s not even a perfect leaf, is it mama?”

       “Well who says what’s perfect?” Said Rosa happily, as she helped her son glue down the corners of the leaf. “The point of colors, after all, is to feel something, isn’t it? And feelings aren’t always the way they’re supposed to be or the way that we expect them. But we feel them anyway.”

       She held up the book to the two children. “What does this make you feel?”

       Lucy frowned. Paxton looked hard, his little forehead creasing with concentration. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “But it does make me feel.”

       “Is that good enough?” Lucy seemed dubious. She crossed her arms.

       But Rosa only smiled. “Yes. I think so.”

       Edith shook her head at Rosa as Paxton and Lucy hurried off again. “I hope you know you’re encouraging that nonsense.”

       “It’s not nonsense,” said the mother warmly, with her gentle laugh. “He’s right. Who says you shouldn’t collect your lanterns before night falls?”

       Edith snorted, but couldn’t quite manage a laugh. In fact, all traces of smile fell off her face, and onto the porch where they sat beside her shoes.

       “Winter is coming,” said Rosa, quietly. “And this one will be very, very cold for him.”

       “Now that,” Edith announced, “Is nonsense.” Only it wasn’t, and she knew it. And if Lucy had been asked, she’d have known it to. Perhaps Paxton was the only one who didn’t. But of course, no one was going to tell him.

       “Let him gather his colors,” said Rosa, more to herself than anything. “Let him gather all the light he can before it goes out. He’ll need it, if only to remind himself that it won’t be gone forever.”

       “They’re only leaves, Rosa,” said Edith, but not unkindly.

       “And he’s only a boy,” she said in response.

       For a moment, they watched in silence as Lucy consecutively raked and stared at her cousin, who continued his mad dash through the trees, his head thrown back and staring between the branches into heaven.

       Edith chuckled. “He’ll give us all cricks in our necks just watching him, if he keeps that up.”

       “Good,” Said Rosa with a smile. “We could all do with a little more looking at the sky and a little less at our feet.”

       And she watched those leaves almost the same way that her son did, watching their every movement with eyes just as wide. Only there was something different, in her. Where he was filled to the brim with wonder, there was a sort of understanding in her—not the familiarity of Lucy, but something deeper. She knew something that he didn’t yet; something about the way that the leaves fall that she saw so very clearly.

       Something he was grabbing at, and holding onto—without even meaning to.

       “Isn’t it beautiful?” said Rosa in that same quiet, poetic way, as she stared out over the lawn. “Their clumsiness. Their grace. That peculiar way in which those things can be the same. The way they fall.”

         Edith didn’t know quite what to make of that—but that was usual. And she stared, for some time, at the scene without quite knowing whether Rosa was referring to the leaves or to the children—it was impossible to tell by the direction of her eyes—and then, of course, whether or not it mattered.