From the Dust Returned

“I’m on a Hudson River boat. William?”

Far off, William called, “London. My god! Newspapers say the date’s August twenty-second, 1800!”

“Cecy?! You did this!”

“No, me!” Grandpère shouted everywhere, all about. “You’re still in my ears, damn, but living my old times and places. Mind your heads!”

“Hold on!” said William. “Is this the Grand Canyon or your medulla oblongata?”

“Grand Canyon. Nineteen twenty-one.”

“A woman!” cried Peter. “Here before me.”

And indeed this woman was beautiful as the spring, two hundred years ago. Grandpère recalled no name. She had been someone passing with wild strawberries on a summer noon.

Peter reached for the fabulous ghost.

“Away!” shouted Grandpère.

And the girl’s face exploded in the summer air and vanished down the road.

“Blast!” cried Peter.

His brothers rampaged, breaking the doors, lifting windows.

“My god! Look!” they shouted.

For Grandpère’s memories lay side by side, neat as sardines, a million deep, a million wide, stashed by seconds, minutes, hours. Here a dark girl brushing her hair. There a blond girl running, or asleep. All trapped in honeycombs the color of their summer cheeks. Their smiles flashed. You could pluck them up, turn them round, send them off, call them back. Cry “Italy, 1797,” and they dance

d through warm pavilions, or swam in firefly tides.

“Grandpère, does Grandmère know about these?”

“There are more!”

“Thousands!”

Grandpère flung back a tissue of remembrance. “Here!”

A thousand women wandered a labyrinth.

“Bravo, Grandpère!”

From ear to ear, he felt them rummage cities, alleys, rooms.

Until Jack seized one lone and lovely lady.

“Got you!”

She turned.

“Fool!” she whispered.

The lovely woman’s flesh burned away. The chin grew gaunt, the cheeks hollow, the eyes sank.

“Grandmère, it’s you!”

“Four thousand years ago,” she murmured.