The Toynbee Convector

“I’m here now, tool” said a young woman’s voice. Grandpa’s mouth had popped wide. “Cecy!” cried everyone. “Farewell!”

“Good night nurse!” said Grandpa. The train chanted away into the hills, west of October.

* * *

The train rounded a long curve. Grandpa leaned and creaked his body.

“Well,” whispered Tom, “here we are.”

“Yes.” A long pause. William went on: “Here we are.”

A long silence. The train whistled.

“I’m tired,” said John.

“You’re tired!” Grandpa snorted.

“Bit stuffy in here,” said Philip.

“Got to expect that. Grandpa’s ten thousand years old, aren’t you, Grandpa?”

“Four hundred; shut up” Grandpa gave his own skull a thump with his fingers. A panic of birds knocked about in his head. “Cease!”

“There,” whispered Cecy, quieting the panic. “I’ve slept well and I’ll come for part of the trip, Grandpa, to teach you how to hold, stay, and keep the resident crows and vultures in your cage.”

“Crows! Vultures!” the cousins protested. “Silence,” said Cecy, tamping the cousins like tobacco in an ancient uncleaned pipe. Far away, her body lay in her bedroom as always, but her mind wove around them softly; touched, pushed, enchanted, kept. “Enjoy. Look around.”

The cousins looked.

And indeed, wandering in the upper keeps of Grandfather’s head was like surviving in a mellow attic in which memories, transparent wings folded, lay piled all about in ribboned bundles, in files, packets, shrouded figures, strewn shadows. Here and there, a special bright memory, like a single ray of amber light, struck in upon and shaped here a golden hour, there a summer day. There was a smell of worn leather and burnt horsehair and the faintest scent of uric acid from the jaundiced beams that ached about them as they jostled invisible elbows.

“Look,” murmured the cousins. “I’ll be darned. Sure!”

For now, quietly indeed, they were peering through the dusty panes of the old man’s eyes, viewing the great hellfire train that bore them and the green-turning-to-brown autumn world swinging by, all of it passing as traffic does before an old house with cobwebbed windows. When they worked Grandpa’s mouth it was like ringing a dulled clapper in a rusty churchbell. The sounds of the world wandered in through his hairy ears like static on a badly tuned radio.

“Still,” Tom admitted, “it’s better than having no body at all.”

“I’m dizzy,” said John. “Not used to bifocals. Can you take your glasses off, Grandpa?”

“Nope.”

The train banged across a bridge in thunders.

“Think I’ll take a look around,” said Tom.

Grandpa felt his limbs stir.

“Stick right where you are, young man!”

Grandpa shut his eyes tight.

“Put up the shades, Grandpa! Let’s see the sights!”

His eyeballs swiveled under the lids.

“Here comes a pretty girl, built one brick atop another! Quick!” Grandpa tightened his lids. “Most beautiful girl in the world!” Grandpa couldn’t help but open one eye. “Ah!” said everyone. “Right, Grandpa?”

“Nope!”