The Toynbee Convector

I looked at the sky and the rising moon.

“Nothing out here,” I said.

“Oh, Christ, yes, there is. Look,” he said. “No, wait. Listen.”

I stood turning white cold, wondering why I waited, and listened.

“Do we stand out in the middle of your garden, where they can see us? You don’t have to if you don’t want.”

“Hell,” I lied. “I’m not afraid.” I lifted my glass. “To the Lafayette Escadrille?” I said.

“No, no!” cried Bill, alarmed. “Not tonight. They mustn’t hear that. To them, Doug. Them.” He motioned his glass at the sky where the clouds flew over in squadrons and the moon was a wound, white, tombstone world.

“To von Bichthofen, and the beautiful sad young men.”

I repeated his words in a whisper.

And then we drank, biting our empty glasses so the clouds and the moon and the silent sky could see.

“I’m ready,” said Bill, “if they want to come get me now. Better to the out here than go in and hear them landing every night and every night in their parachutes and no sleep until dawn when the last silk folds in on itself and the bottle’s empty. Stand right over there, son. That’s it. Just half in the shadow. Now.”

I moved back and we waited.

“What’ll I say to them?” he asked.

“God, Bill,” I said, “I don’t know. They’re not my friends.”

“They weren’t mine, either. More’s the pity. I thought they were the enemy. Christ, isn’t that a dumb stupid half-ass word. The enemy! As if such a thing ever really happened in the world. Sure, maybe the bully that chased and beat you up in the schoolyard, or the guy who took your girl and laughed at you. But them, those beauties, up in the clouds on summer days or autumn afternoons? No, no!”

He moved further out on the porch.

‘All right,” he whispered. “Here I am.”

And he leaned way out, and opened his arms as if to embrace the night air.

“Come ont What you waiting for!”

He shut his eyes.

“Your turn,” he cried. “My God, you got to hear, you got to come. You beautiful bastards, herel” And he tilted his head back as if to welcome a dark rain.

“Are they coming?” he whispered aside, eyes clenched.

“No.”

Bill lifted his old face into the air and stared upward, willing the clouds to shift and change and become something more than clouds.

“Damn it!” he cried, at last “I killed you all. Forgive me or come kill me!” And a final angry burst. “Forgive me. I’m sorry!”

The force of his voice was enough to push me completely back into shadows. Maybe that did it. Maybe Bill, standing like a small statue in the middle of my garden, made the clouds shift and the wind blow south instead of north. We both heard, a long way off, an immense whisper.

“Yes!” cried Bill, and to me, aside, eyes shut, teeth clenched, “You hear!”

We heard another sound, closer now, like great flowers or blossoms lifted off spring trees and run along the sky.

“There,” whispered Bill.

The clouds seemed to form a lid and make a vast silken shape which dropped in serene silence upon the land. It made a shadow that crossed the town and hid the houses and at last reached our garden and shadowed the grass and put out the light of the moon and then hid Bill from my sight.