What Is the Opposite of Politics? A shift of rain in the trees. A snow globe in a sandbox. My cousin's scuffed knees. What is the cost of mercy? A spade of silent rust. You'll never know if justice is less refined than dust. Who is that fellow singing? I never knew his kind. You say he's rough and tender. I hope to live forever if heaven is his mind. _____ Christopher Bernard’s most recent book is A Socialist’s Garden of Verses, winner of a 2021 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and named one of the “100 Top Indie Books of 2021” by Kirkus Reviews. He is founder and a principal, with Ho Lin, Steven Hill, and Jonah Raskin, of the webzine Caveat Lector.
Category Archives: BERNARD
Poetry from Christopher Bernard
After By Christopher Bernard After all the tweets are done, and all the posts erased, and all the insta videos are drowned in silicon, and all the newsfeeds freeze while panic-scrolling past, and social media “likes” are hated – yes! – at last, and all the influencers are swallowed by TikTok, and every troll is smothered by every soul they mock, and every “Facebook friend” has ghosted all their contacts, not knowing all their contacts already ghosted them, and all the digerati encrypted and encased are within a frozen chassis, a whited sepulchre where their data asleep forever. and all the web and net have smothered all their flies and fattened like two spiders till all their pixels died, and all the household names have blown to clouds and air, and drifting smoke and ashes are all the billionaires into clouds of musk, and hell’s unlocked gates smother the world’s last jobs suckered to a mark and a betraying oracle and a final dying lark – you and I, my love, my fair, shall hover above their shrines that no one visits, in a love that conquers silicon to a quaint soft-shoe rhythm, all the screen’s illusions, and death’s algorithm, and there we shall dance inscribed in these brave lines, my fairest, sweetest, loveliest one, till the very end of time. _____ Christopher Bernard’s latest collection of poems, A Socialist’s Garden of Verses, won a 2021 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ “Top 100 Indie Books of 2021.”
Poetry from Christopher Bernard
Knock Knock: A Poem for Ukraine Knock knock. Who’s there? Ukrainian boy. I have walked from far, Over fields of snow And ice of roads And cities at war. I don’t know you. Are there any with you? My family is gone, I don’t know where. I’m here all alone. May I come in? I have a number On my hand. Can I call? Not on my land! There’s a country Down the road. Try them there. It’s far, and I’m cold. Knock knock. Who’s there? Ukrainian boy. Can I come in? I’m so tired, And the wind is so cold. . . . Why are you here? What is that In your eyes? Is it tears? Is it sadness or fear? No, it is ice, It is melting there. Go down the road. There is nothing for you here. Knock knock. Who’s there? Ukrainian boy. Can you say where I am? I saw ghosts on the road, They looked like my papa, My mama, my sister, My brother at home. Has anything happened to them? Will you please let me in? I’m so tired, I don’t think I can walk any more. I can’t feel my hands. May I come in here? What is that number Written out on your hand? When I call, there is silence At the other end. Come in and rest On my bed. No, it’s snow . . . When you sleep you will never Fear war again. No, no, I must go, How will I get home If now I don’t go? Come in and rest, Come in and rest, Come in and rest Until you must go . . . Knock knock. Who’s there? Who knocked at our door? Show yourself if you’re there! But there was no one there, Only the sound of the wind, And the snow in the air. The Sunken Palace The curlew calls in the sycamore tree. Do you hear it? A boy’s laugh follows. A rustle of gold flickers over the lake. The sky is cold and on fire. Do you see the fair one, the kind one, the holy? She is not to be seen on the tower. There is only a shadow to be seen in the arch And an iron gate as it closes. He is gone now, and she is not here. Their story, our story, is over. The palace of love was a fable. The rain Fell for long on the meadow. At the season when the moon was a song in the snow And the wind was a shout in the mountains, The ghosts of the palace where the ballroom had drowned Danced in a lake of shadows. The Sound of Falling Trees “There’s no such thing as ‘being a poet.’” —T. S. Eliot It used to be an almost embarrassing compliment. If someone called you that, you skipped a heartbeat of secret bliss, as if the most beautiful girl in class had just blown you a kiss. Now it is almost an embarrassment. “Writers in San Francisco,” New York and L.A. smile to each other with a wink and a nudge. “Aren’t they all poets? They can be safely ignored, left to PEN and AWP, unless you go in for the penniest of penny stocks. They can’t even make themselves any money, let alone the likes of you and me; they’re famous only if they die (I know it sounds bold, but it’s so true) by a monumentally gaudy suicide.” It’s not much of a compliment anymore, yet it is still a kind of destiny, a kind of fate: a compulsive need to find new words for old emotions, old and raw, and make them ring like bells in the winter air— clear and true and fading into oblivion— the crash of trees falling deep in the forest even when there is no one to hear. _____ Christopher Bernard’s latest collection of poems, A Socialist’s Garden of Verses, won a 2021 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ “Top 100 Indie Books of 2021.”
Poetry from Christopher Bernard
The Dragons of Paris (Upon reading Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science, by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont) By Christopher Bernard Once upon a time, in the glamorous, notorious City of Lights that lies across the sinuous Seine like a seductive odalisque of reason and sensuality, beauty, style, good taste, and sense, there appeared a foul and toxic fog, a smoke that belched and bound the town in mental night. The citizens wandered, stunned and blind and crying out in random shouts in words no one could understand: “Le petit a! Jouissance! Différance! Pastout! Afemme! Séméiotiké!” that filled the air all over France from caves deep down in old Lutéce (“Mudville,” once called, now called again), where the Dragons of Paris disbursed, in smog, dank volumes of mephitic breath. The Dragons’ names put terror in the hearts of all good citizens: Lacan le Gros, Foucault le Mal, grinning Baudrillard le Bouffon, Kristeva la Sorciére, Jacques Derrida l’Indécidable, Gilles Deleuze, la Porte Sublime du Dindon de la Charabia, and more, with a host of dragonettes pursuing the work of their dark masters cooking in their dens a glorious madness of chopped dictionaries and tossed charlatanry, spiced with cynicism, that sickened two generations of impressionable, clueless, half-educated youth, most of them – hélas! – American. One day two knights rode from the west – Sir Alan and Sir Jean by name, “Follow the Science!” writ on one shield, “Physics to the Rescue!” upon the other – and bravely stormed the fetid caves whose floors and walls were lined with texts with dragon sweat and guano thick, unreadable, yet cruelly read by generations of undergrads and graduate students until they squealed, “There is no truth, there is no Real, no good not always already a weapon, Big Other, subject, sexual relation (sorry, mom, dad! I never really happened!), no meaning not infinitely deferred, no science, objectivity, facts (“no facts but only interpretations,” as unholiest St. Fritz of Nietzsche said); ‘Il n’y a rien hors de texte!’; no world, nothing whatsoever beyond the Word!” (because, if they didn’t, they wouldn’t get a degree (in English) so they could teach in a nice, respectable university, and maybe someday get tenure – but then, my friends, they wouldn’t even get that – poor dears! – in the end). With a thousand bold strokes, Sir Jean and Sir Alan pierced the hides of the Parisian dragons (“Mathematical gaffes! Scientific misunderstanding! Bad logic, worse grammar, bad French and worse English! Logical dead ends! Arithmetical nonsense! Hang it, just meaningless gibberish!”) and out of the holes in those green slippery skins hot air hissed away in a gale o’er the Seine, and the dragons – the two Jacques, the one Julie, Jean, Gilles, Michel, and a crowd of others – shrieking death cries, flew about in a panic as they shrank like a frantic mob of balloons, gnashing and frothing and hopelessly flying from darkness to darkness – one felt sorry for them, almost – till they shriveled down to what they had been all along: a few inches of thin rubber, with mouths agape, and nothing whatever inside them but air. Sir Alan and Sir Jean, armor dented and scarred, swords flecked with balloons punctured, and smeared with ink, exited the caverns out to the light and the acclaim of a grateful city. “At last!” rose the cry on all sides, “We can again see the sun! We can breathe! We are freed from the impenetrable night that threatened to destroy us – above all, our minds!” The two knights, bloodied, exhausted, but victorious, took their modest bows. “You are really too kind!” Then glanced at each other: it wouldn’t do now to tell these people they were partly to blame for nursing the dragons with their own folly: spare the critic and spoil the intellectual. Don’t get them in the crib, and give them a fight? When (if!) they grow up, they’ll give you a bite! At the banquet that followed, they had stories to tell: close calls with the enemies of thought and light, genuine creation, and piety for the human: intellectual pretentiousness in a shotgun wedding with despotic professional intimidation fueled, on the one hand, by status anxiety and, on the other, by narcissistic delight. Unhappily, they had not gotten all the dragons in the end: one sly dragonette from the Balkans fled, escaping to Slovenia, his innocent home, where he remains, cooking his oracles for the next set of gullible college students, if there are any left! _____ "Christopher Bernard’s most recent book of poems, The Socialist’s Garden of Verses, won a 2021 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence and was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ “Top 100 Indie Boks of 2021.”
Poetry from Christopher Bernard
#littlebylittle (A sequel to “How to Save the World: A New Year’s Resolution”) By Christopher Bernard 1. “Little by little” was the phrase for everything she feared to face, to keep her quiet, calm, unfazed despite whatever she must do that otherwise might make her crazed with the enormity of the true. 2. Who was she? A heart of life, loyal, strong, generous, kind, true, not without strife, not perfect yet good, for me, for us. I save and keep her name. Her love was stronger than life. She taught me love 3. Little by little, we can do what we must do. Strangers, friends, pull back a little here, just so, a little now. Prevent the end. Protect the earth from our dark arts. Preserve the world with your strong heart. _____ Christopher Bernard’s latest collection of poems, A Socialist’s Garden of Verses, won a 2021 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ “Top 100 Indie Books of 2021.”
Essay from Christopher Bernard
How to Save the World: A New Year’s Resolution
By Christopher Bernard
It took me far longer than I wished to win my personal war against tobacco. It took weeks, then months, then years, with many relapses. Several of my principal weaknesses – a blind stubbornness, a willful pride, an almost mystical subjectivity – were at war with each other as much as with my strengths – a fairly clear-eyed honesty with myself and an obstinate common sense. I almost didn’t succeed. But I did, finally. I kicked cigarettes for good. I am profoundly grateful for that. I might not be here if I hadn’t.
And what has that to do with saving the world? I admit it’s a stretch, but let me see if I can show how it might.
I have been following theories of climate change since I first heard the term “global warming” in the mid-1970s. The science seemed compelling, the logic impeccable. Living alone at the time, I cooked most dinners at home: almost every night I would watch a saucepan as the water in it simmered to a rolling boil; it usually took a while, and I soon understood the old saying, “A watched kettle don’t boil.” The example of a frog going to sleep in a kettle of warm water and then being slowly boiled to death before he even noticed what was happening was something I could imagine vividly.
My concerns about the “environment” (I object to this painfully misleading term, since nature does not “environ” us – it is us, down to the marrow of our bones and the thoughts in our minds; I use the word for convenience, but under protest) seemed to be shared by the country at large. The news media reported regularly on pollution and similar issues. The governments of the world seemed to take “environmental matters” seriously, making vague statements of high-minded intent and even passing cautiously worded – some might say, too cautiously worded – laws. Even corporations began advertising something like a sincere concern for something other than their next quarter’s profit. I began to feel what I had not felt in a very long time for our public institutions: hope, even giddy moments of optimism.
After all (I thought, reasonably enough, surely), despite psychopaths and mass murderers galore, many of them in positions of highest leadership, humanity as a whole is not evil, is not suicidal. If I myself ever became aware I was doing something I knew would kill or seriously injure me and those around me, I would stop what I was doing – or I would at least modify it. As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, I was once addicted to cigarettes; I knew the dangers and, during that same decade, I had reduced my smoking, over many months, from two packs to six modest cigarettes a day. I had not stopped, true, but it was a beginning.
I had no difficulty understanding or accepting the recent theories of global warming (“recent” only for us, of course; the first such theories went back to the nineteenth century, so the “novelty” of our “discoveries” seemed painfully ridiculous). They were among the reasons I have never owned an automobile. I was also persuaded that the human population was dangerously near the earth’s carrying capacity; this is one reason I never had children.
We all know what has happened since the 1970s. I watched with sickening alarm as the fossil fuel companies, with the connivance of members of state and federal governments, began to sow self-serving doubts about the scientific evidence for global warming, much as tobacco companies had done in the 1960s against the evidence for health conditions – lung cancer, emphysema, heart conditions – being caused or worsened by tobacco use.
I recognized the playbook instantly and with a feeling of bitterness. A teenager in the 1960s, I had learned the same lesson over and over: to take anything the government or corporations state with the greatest possible suspicion. I was sick to my soul with an awareness of how profoundly corrupt American society, at least in appearance, had become: if an economic activity made some group of people very wealthy, even though that activity was actively fatal to many, the American political system made it extraordinarily difficult, and sometimes impossible, to stop them.
I was at the same time horrified and unshocked at the turn of events. America was playing a game it has been playing since the founding: rhetorical hypocrisy, proactive rapacity, pragmatic nihilism, murderous effects. Lay waste, transmute, consume, accumulate; repeat.
At the darkening heart of the world we were entering during those decades of Thatcher, Reagan, and the theorists of the University of Chicago school of economics, I saw the ravaging effects of a capitalism without limits being unleashed across our globe. I had no illusions as to where we were heading, though I kept to my private mantra: “We must come around, we must face reality, we must, we will, act. After all, we aren’t suicidal.”
But many of my fears were becoming realities. We now know we were deliberately blinded; going back to the 1950s, when fossil fuel companies first became aware that, as long as global society was powered principally by oil and coal, “global warming” was a likely consequence and might have catastrophic consequences for human society and other life forms on earth, it has been corporate policy to obscure and deny what they already knew, and to keep the rest of us ignorant and blind. Greed, hubris, and a pathological contempt for the rest of humanity, and of life itself, drove them: the sociopathy of the corporation, the psychopathology of the drive for increasing profits at any price, drove the rest. A typically human blend of complacency, selfishness, and denial – something of which we are all, alas, guilty – would work its poison throughout the human system.
It took a long time before I discovered that there was one weak link – indeed it was the weakest link of all – in the chain that binds human society to the capitalist Juggernaut. What drives the psychopathology of capitalism? The need to feed the beast with ever greater profits. But what drives those profits?
We do: you who read this, and I who write it. The most powerful drivers of capitalism are the twin steeds of avaritia et gula – greed and gluttony. But the greed would not be successful if gluttony did not reward it.
Or, to use a more modern word for the latter: “consumerism” – or its humbler name: buying – whether of things or experiences – going to a movie, taking a trip, “going shopping.” Whenever we make an economic transaction – of any kind whatsoever – we feed the beast. Whenever we avoid one, we deprive the beast of food, water, air. We contribute to its conquest, perhaps even to its end.
Is it really so simple? Indeed. And like many a simple thing, it may be impossible to change. Because the cruel and bitter truth is that we are addicted to the paradise of consumption – the mirage of an endless satisfaction of every desire – that capitalism has made possible, and as long as we remain subject to it, we are condemning ourselves to a horrible fate. Because we know that the grip of an addiction is ruthless and relentless; once a person is in that grip, it is only a matter of time before they will destroy themselves and any who come near them.
We are that addict. And our addiction is buying. It is an addiction that is encouraged, even demanded, by our entire society, by our governments, by friends, cohorts, colleagues, family. We don’t even call our society, our culture by those names anymore – we call it “the American economy.” We are buyers and sellers, producers and consumers, and not, really, anything else – at least, anything that really matters. We are, as a whole, unable even to imagine any other way of life; even many of our putative solutions to the climate crisis are based on an illusion that our economies will save us; we must consume differently, but we still will, we still must consume. We make uneasy jokes about it: “Shop till you drop!” But that is because we know it is true, and we can’t stop ourselves. We are in its grip. It flatters us, intoxicates us, makes us always desire more. “Don’t you just love Amazon Prime!” It seems to have us by the throat.
And yet – the one thing we also know is that we are never entirely in the grip of anything. And that tiny corner of sanity at the far back of our minds can, at any moment, be accessed and made to prevail; can be used to conquer the beast that seeks to control, enslave, and ultimately destroy us. It is neither easy nor simple nor quick to do this. But human beings are self-directing, self-generating, “self-programming,” though it is in the interests of the powers that be to prove to us otherwise: that we are helpless, strengthless, hopeless, pawns of need, drives, and power. But you and I belong to the species that nature, in her infinite wisdom, or her folly, made free. And that freedom makes us ultimately in control of, and responsible for, our lives. We can conquer even an addiction as deep as this one.
Here is my proposal for a New Year’s resolution for myself and for all of us: to reduce buying in 2022.
Not to end buying. Merely to reduce it.
I have no intention of living like an ascetic, because I know trying to do that will fail. I will rebel against my own good intentions, I will backslide, defiantly. It will even make my bad habits worse.
Did I tell you how I kicked cigarettes? I started small. I was smoking, as I said, two packs a day. For the first month of this experiment in stopping smoking, I actually made myself smoke those two packs a day every single day, even when I didn’t want to,
Then I gradually, over the next year, cut down, one or two cigarettes a month at a time, to one pack a day. Afterward I continued, using the same method of reducing by one cigarette a day each month, till I was down to six cigarettes a day, and at that number I stayed for years.
I hold that everyone should have at least one vice – it keeps you from committing far worse evils. Human beings are not saints, and those who try to become saints often become the worst monsters of all. So I kept smoking, moderately; even my doctor agreed I was not endangering myself too much.
But then, over the years I noticed how the costs of cigarettes, thanks to “sin taxes” (of which my conscience heartily approved) kept creeping up, up, up, until a single pack cost more than twice as much as my daily lunch. This was ridiculous! It was high time to cut back to zero. I concocted a new plan: ease myself off via the vile toxin nicotine itself. I started using various kind of nicotine gum; a cigarette, a piece of gum, a cigarette, a piece of gum, alternating, every day. Another year passed.
Then, one late afternoon, a miracle happened.
I was smoking the fourth or fifth cigarette from a recently purchased pack, and I was struck by an overwhelming sense of disgust at the taste of the tobacco smoke. I crushed the cig, threw it out, and tossed the freshly opened pack into the same trash basket without a qualm. Except for a handful of weakenings over the next few years (I would be struck, out of the blue, by an overwhelming desire for a smoke, purchase a pack, sneak it home, open it (peel off the see-through plastic wrapper, flip open the seductively designed box, unfold the mottled gold sealing paper), pull out the fresh, deliciously smelling cig, then light it up with the serene yellow and blue flame of my old lighter, and voluptuously take a deep inhale – and gag on that same disgust at the awful taste filling mouth, sinuses, throat, lungs, and, with an enormously disappointed shrug, throw both it and pack away into the trash with all the force of bitter disillusionment), since that moment I have not returned to my cigarette addiction since.
Once every few years I still get an urge for a smoke, but I have learned that cigarettes are a waste of time and money; I have learned that smoking a cigar, or the single bowl of a pipe, does the trick, a quarter hour of sybaritic bliss. Then I am free for the next several years.
I have a cigar I bought the other day that I plan to smoke on New Year’s Eve.
The next day, January 1, 2022, I will begin my new resolution: to reduce my buying in 2022. Not painfully, not ascetically. Just a little bit for now. Then, next year, I will reduce it a little more. Again, not too much. I’ll never reduce it entirely till they bury me! And hopefully that won’t be for a long time to come.
And, while thinking of the good work I intend to do in 2022, I’ll be thoroughly enjoying my cigar.
After all, I must have one vice.
Anyway, that’s how I connect quitting cigarettes with saving the world. Because the one way we know the world we live in will end is if we don’t solve the climate crisis.
And both quitting cigarettes and solving the climate crisis are about ending addictions.
So, kind reader: what is your resolution?
Final installment of Christopher Bernard’s story The Ghost Trolley
The Ghost Trolley: A Tale for Children and Their Adults, by Christopher Bernard: The Conclusion
The tower loomed tantalizingly in the distance, the two children leading the way, the two parents hobbling weakly after. Many of the fires had died away from lack of fuel, and they made their way cautiously through the smoking remains of the camp. The ruins reminded Sharlotta of the wreckage of her home, and a dark wave of hopelessness crossed the young girl like a shadow, but she tried not to think about that now. She tried to keep herself focused on the tower, and on escaping the camp. Today must be rescued for there to be any tomorrow at all. Tomorrow would have to take care of itself. She felt herself growing up, fast and hard.
The smoke around them was slowly dissipating; the main fire had moved elsewhere in the camp, where most of the Korgan soldiers had gone to fight it. Those they passed paid no attention to them; they had far more important things to worry about than a small bedraggled band of escaped, defenseless Paonas or their allies.
Petey tried to get Sharlotta to explain what had happened at the fork, but she told him to be silent about it within earshot of her parents; she would tell him later, after they escaped. Petey, feeling puzzled, acceded to her request. “But don’t forget!” he whispered. “I not forget,” Sharlotta whispered back. “Now stop to talk!”
Sharlotta’s mother glanced at the two as they bickered, and felt herself smiling through her anxiety and exhaustion. She whispered to her husband as she helped him walk. “I think Sharlotta find her hero.”
“The lucky fellow find his, I think,” her husband smiled painfully back.
It was early evening, the sky a deepening green, like lime Jello (thought Petey) or an enormous emerald (thought Sharlotta). The four had almost reached the tower and rested in the shadows, waiting for the others, at the edge of a parade ground behind an overturned cart near a row of the tanks with the tall, narrow turrets.
They had been looking out, for long minutes, unsuccessfully, for Miua and the two little ones. At the far side of the ground a gang of Korgan soldiers were dragging off debris to create a fire break (the fires still seemed far from this end of the camp).
Then the evening camp lights, on an automatic clock, turned on, flooding the shadows. The four found themselves at the dead center of a cone of blinding light.
Simultaneously, as they raised their arms to protect their eyes, they heard the distant shout of a young boy.
“Paonas!” came the cry. “Paonas! Firebugs!”
It was Bang Bang. Petey was the first to see him at the far side of the parade ground.
There was a pause, then: “They killed Orgun Ramora!”
The soldiers, who had ignored Bang Bang at first, looked up.
Bang Bang started running toward the four in a kind of demented fury across the parade ground, then Petey heard an even higher pitched shout coming from the base of the tower less than a hundred feet away. Sharlotta was the first to see Miua Blue Moon, in full battle cry, racing to meet Bang Bang.
“You are a li-arrr!” Miua cried. “I killed Orgun Ramora!” and within moments she had thrown herself upon him, pulling him to the ground, and they rolled through the dirt like two enraged cats.
The four snuck behind the cart, huddling together out of the light as the two young Korgans gave each other no quarter.
The little ones must be near the tower’s base. Sharlotta peered up at the guard’s nest atop the tower. It was empty.
The row of tanks led to a fence near the tower, and, as the two fought, Sharlotta led the rest, dashing, one at a time, with the parents coming last, hobbling slowly. Once at the fence, Petey caught sight of Beely and little Johja hiding behind one of the legs of the tower and gaping at the fight with enthralled fascination.
They all watched as the young Korgans kicked, screamed and clawed at each other under the bright lights. Even the Korgan soldiers had stopped to survey the spectacle. The fight was epic, like a playground brawl to end all playground brawls, as the two rolled and leaped and struck in a whirl of legs and arms, knees and elbows, fingers and teeth, and jabbed and kicked and screeched and pounded, and shouted words at each other so nasty they made even Petey blush.
Sharlotta was worried: if Blue Moon lost the fight, even if Bang Bang didn’t find them, how would they escape?
The fence near the tower was like a wall that, tantalizingly, gave a view of freedom outside without showing any way to reach it. There must be a way through it the Korgan girl knew, but it could be anywhere, and there was no time to find it on their own. The parade ground lights didn’t go as far as the fence, which was already beginning to darken in shadow. The sun was setting, the hour of the stars would soon be upon them, a deep green dusk was beginning to suffuse the sky.
Bang Bang was getting the better of the fight. Blue Moon had more passion, but Bang Bang was taller and stronger and more ruthless. Eventually, thought Sharlotta with dismay, as she watched them slug it out, shouting and yelling in frustration and rage, he must win.
Then Petey sniffed something.
He looked behind him and gasped.
The fire had snuck up to within a dozen feet of them, quiet as a cat. It was beginning to eat its way along the fence. This wouldn’t be any help to them, as the fence was made of iron chain links; where the fence broke, melting in the heat as the flames leapt and gnawed and clawed away at it, the fire stood tauntingly between them and escape. And it was moving swiftly toward them.
The rest were too intent on the fight to notice.
Then, just as Petey was opening his mouth to alert them, he saw it. At first he was certain his eyes were playing tricks on him. His teacher in far away Howtiz (how he longed to be back there now!) had recently been teaching the class about optical illusions, and he thought this must be one of them. A great, vague form seemed to be shaping itself in front of him in the flames – a leaping, dancing, shapeshifting form of white and yellow and the black of the smoke, in fluid stripes, with great green eyes – like a huge tiger made of fire, but continually changing its shape, sometimes vast, sometimes small, sometimes like a lion, sometimes like a gazelle, sometimes like a falcon, sometimes like a bear, but always returning to the shape of a tiger – constantly metamorphosing, like the flames Petey watched during winter nights in the chimneypiece at home. And it seemed to be moving toward them out of the fire.
At first Petey was frightened, and almost cried out. But the tiger of flames seemed to warn him, he didn’t know how, not to say anything, as it advanced silently out of the flames.
Then, as it moved toward Petey a step of its giant, flaming paw, it was gone.
And in its place, moving lightly over the ground, was a tabby cat – a cat that looked just like the one Petey had last seen at the black tent, and that he had first seen when he saved its kitten from being tossed about cavalierly by the Korgan children outside the camp.
She stopped, looked up at Petey, and blinked, then turned and dashed along the fence a dozen yards and slipped out through a crack Petey would never have seen on his own. Then she looked back on the other side of the fence, as if to make sure he had seen.
“Hey!” Petey cried out. “I found it!”
“What found?” whispered Sharlotta. “Quiet be . . . !” Then she noticed for the first time the fire moving steadily toward them. Her parents turned to see it too.
“The way out through the fence!” Petey said, pointing, though of course nobody but he could see it clearly from where they stood. “The cat just showed me!”
“What cat?” asked Sharlotta. “What you talk about?”
“Didn’t you see it?” Petey asked, impatiently. And the words came tumbling out, somewhat incoherently, “It came out of the fire and it was as big as a tiger but it turned into the tabby cat that was inside the black tent whose kitten we saved from the kids who were throwing it around like a beanbag outside of the camp and it’s come back and showed me how to escape through the fence!” And Petey ran over to the fence where the cat had escaped and pulled a strip of it back, revealing a gap just big enough to slip through.
Sharlotta turned to her parents, who had heard and seen all of this, though of course without having any idea what tabby cat Petey was talking about, and certainly not having seen a tiger walk out of the fire, though of course all of them now saw the fire. And the open gap in the fence.
“Get Beely and little Johja!” her mother commanded Sharlotta over the sudden roaring of the flames.
“I’ll go,” Petey volunteered and was off like a shot. He ran, close to the ground, to the leg of the tower, gathered up the little ones, who at first resisted, as they both wanted to see the outcome of the donnybrook that seemed to be reaching its shrieking climax, but he grabbed their hands and, using the magic formula – “I’ll take you to Mommy!” – successfully unriveted them from the fascinating spectacle and dragged the pair over to the fence.
The mother held back the strip and all four children slipped through, then the father insisted on holding the fence for his wife, who gave him a quick smile, then managed to scrootch through himself.
Twilight was beginning to gather, and they scurried across a cleared strip of land to the forest edge.
Sharlotta stopped and started back toward the fence.
“Sharlotta!” her mother said in a loud whisper. “What you be doing?”
“Something there be that I must see.”
Sharlotta went up close to the fence and peered through. She just had time to see Bang Bang brutally stomp on Blue Moon with all his might. Then Bang Bang gave her a parting kick, said something Sharlotta couldn’t hear but must have been terribly insulting, then stalked arrogantly away. Blue Moon lay motionless on the ground.
Sharlotta was stunned. Was Blue Moon – was Miua – dead? This Korgan child who had, for mysterious reasons, saved them, fought her father’s torturer, Orgun Ramora, maybe even killed him – for Paonas! For (Sharlotta suddenly gulped) – for her. Was it a mystery she would never solve?
Then she saw a sign of movement in the young girl on the ground – first her arm, then her head, then she slowly pulled herself up.
“Miua!” Sharlotta whispered as loudly as she could.
Miua Blue Moon looked toward her. Thinking that maybe she could see her, Sharlotta waved.
“Me thanks to you,” Sharlotta whispered softy.
Miua stopped and gazed toward Sharlotta for a long moment. Then (or so it seemed – it was hard to see in the deepening dusk) she raised her hand in a little wave.
Sharlotta couldn’t stay. Her parents were calling her from the woods.
Miua knew they had escaped – that was what mattered now.
Sharlotta ran over the clearing into the forest.
Chapter 17. The Yellow Trolley
Sharlotta’s father raised his voice to speak, leaning against his wife. “The Korgans of Ramora be defeated,” he said. “The Paonas of Steed and their friends be safe.” There was a pause before his wife added, quietly, “For now.”
“Now we must go to our home,” the father said. “And build anew.”
“Deddy,” Sharlotta said, hesitantly.
“Yes, Sharlee?”
“I know how the fire start . . .”
“Oh?”
And she looked slyly at Petey.
“Yes. Petey . . .”
It was at that moment that Petey, who was standing a little way from the reunited family, heard in the distance three faint rings of a bell coming from down the slope away from the camp.
Petey stared into the gloaming. It couldn’t be what he thought it was – but it couldn’t not be either.
“That’s my trolley!” he exclaimed, unbelievingly. “I have to go! I have to get home! Sorry!” He looked pleadingly at the small family, worn and weary after their ordeal. They looked at him sadly, but understandingly. “I can’t stay! I have to go! I have to . . . ”
And with a wave, he set off at a run down the slope toward the sound, stumbling and falling in the dusk only once, then pulling himself up and dashing ahead.
Sharlotta, after only the slightest hesitation – glancing at her mother, who understood what Sharlotta was feeling and gave her a small, encouraging smile – dashed after him, setting her feet with greater care than the headlong boy, with her family following more slowly after.
Just past a wall of brush, shadowy and bristly in the darkness, and a staid row of hickory-like trees, Petey found, to his amazement, a pair of trolley tracks running through a cutting in the forest, and there coming toward him, not a hundred feet off, was a yellow trolley, clanking and squealing, its single headlight like a small surprised, brightly lit face.
Soon Sharlotta was beside him, slightly breathless.
“But I thought it was blowed up!” Petey said.
“There be two yellow trolleys between Howtiz and Otherwise: one that come,” Sharlotta said, “and one that go.”
Above the windshield a row of lit-up block letters read “2 HOWTIZ.”
As the trolley came toward them, Petey remembered something.
“You told me you’d say how you did that at the clock . . .”
Sharlotta looked at him quietly before speaking.
“It be what I hear my father tell my mother the night before the Korgans raid our house,” she said. “If you know exactly where you be, and exactly what time it be, and exactly what you be thinking when you make the important decision, and when you say the right words in the right way to the right person, you maybe go back and make it happen ‘otherwise.’ Maybe!”
“So it was the Spell?” said Petey, though he felt just as confused as before.
Sharlotta said nothing.
The trolley clanked noisily up to them and stopped; the doors opened. Petey stood staring at this strange little girl standing in front of him, with the honey brown eyes and the soft, cocoa-colored skin. She reminded him more than ever of the little African American girl in the other fourth grade class who he had such a crush on. But not maybe anymore . . .
“Here,” Sharlotta said. In her hand was a little key.
“Thank you,” said Petey, not looking at the key. “What is it?”
“It be a key, silly.” And she put it into his hand.
Petey stared at it.
“But what is it a key to?” he asked.
“Are you getting in, young man, or not?” said the driver with a humorous smile. “I can’t wait all day, now.”
Petey got up on the first step and looked back, questioningly.
“What is it to?”
But Sharlotta only stared up at him and slowly and solemnly shook her head.
The doors closed and Petey scampered up and put in his token (hoping it was usable in Otherwise – apparently it was, since it slid into the fare box without causing any alarms to go off) and, still grasping the key, sat down in the seat across from the driver.
As the trolley moved off, Petey stuck his head out the open window and looked back at the receding family, lit faintly by the trolley’s back lights. They were standing beside Sharlotta, who seemed to be talking to them while watching the trolley leave) – her father and mother suddenly looked toward Petey and began waving, as if they only now knew how he had helped save all of them, Beely stared round-eyed, and little Johja watched with a look of wondering amazement, and Sharlotta raised her hand and slowly waved, with a sad smile, reaching higher and higher with each wave, as if she wanted to touch the sky.
The mysterious eyes in a small face watched as the trolley rode off through the twilight. The wings fluttered calmly, and another pair of eyes appeared nearby, then another, then another. There was a sound, like a low, quiet “who? who?” that sounded oddly satisfied, as if they already knew the answer. Then their wings fluttered again, and they rose, one, two, three, more, into the gathering night.
Petey, unaware of any of this, watched and watched until Sharlotta and her family vanished in the darkness of the shadows of the forest as the trolley moved away.
“Are you new here, young man?” the driver abruptly asked him. He was a plump, jolly-looking fellow, a bit like a big frog ensconced on the trolley’s throne. He smiled easily at Petey. On his shirt was embroidered a name: MR. CUTTLEBACK.
“Yes,” Petey replied at last. “I’ve only been here since this morning.”
“So, now you’re going home to Howtiz?”
“Yes,” said Petey, with a sigh.
“Just as well,” said the driver with another chuckle. “Howtiz definitely has its charms. I like to go to Howtiz whenever I need a nice rest. Sometimes just thinking about Otherwise makes me dizzy!”
“What . . .” Petey asked hesitantly, “. . . what really is Otherwise?”
“Ah!” said the driver, with a bit of a frown. “That’s a hard nut. Let me think . . .” And the trolley rattled ahead for a time while the driver seemed lost in thought. “Did you ever wonder what would have happened if you had turned left at the corner rather than right when you were taking a walk that time? You might not have met that bully who always makes your life so miserable! Or if you had said anything but what you said to your mother that morning last week? . . .”
“Yep,” Petey said with a sigh. “I sure have.”
“Well, that’s where Otherwise is.”
Petey gave him a perplexed look. “Huh?” Though he was immediately ashamed of how dopey that sounded.
“It’s the place where all the choices you didn’t make, you do.” Which only made Petey look even more perplexed. “Otherwise is where everything that might have been comes true. If you had done your homework rather than played the latest computer game – and got an A rather than a C on the last test of the year! If you had told the truth rather than spun your mother a fairy tale – and gotten off with a heck of a lighter punishment than you did when she found out what really happened. If the wind had blown all those leaves across Mrs. Simpson’s porch rather than into Mr. Howard’s windshield, startling him and making him drive right into Mrs. Simpson’s living room – however small the difference, a whole world would have resulted that would have been, well, Otherwise. There’s no one Otherwise, there’s lots and lots of them, an infinite number, at least in theory, because more are being created every day, every hour, every moment, with everything that might have happened.”
Petey, startled, looked around him, half expecting to see new worlds spinning out all around him made up of everything he might have done but hadn’t in the last few minutes. What a crazy idea! What a scary idea! What an amazing idea . . . Mr. Cuttleback glanced benevolently at him.
“But not to worry! Howtiz will stay as it always has. Howtiz is the world, Otherwise is the world’s dream. Howtiz is what it is. But Otherwise is infinite, just as dreams are. Every time you visit us,” he added, “if you care to visit us, that is, you’ll find another world that might have been.” The bus driver chuckled. “After all, there’s just too much that would be left out if there were only one world. The universe must work out every possibility. That” – And he gave the boy a wry look. – “is the whole point of it.”
After what Petey had just been through, he could understand at least something of what the driver meant. What Sharlotta had told him about the clock at the fork in the lane was almost beginning to make sense. Though the driver seemed a little too complacent about the stability of Howtiz: from what he had learned about the Korgans, there was more leakage, and a lot more peril, between the two than the driver seemed to realize. Maybe Howtiz was not so stable after all!
Petey looked down at the key Sharlotta had given him. It was made of bright, new copper, with an oval head and little wavy notches. Even if he didn’t know of any locks it could open, it would be an excellent lucky charm. A good replacement for the rather too dangerous matchbook!
I guess that means this Otherwise happened when the earth bounced left rather than right? No! Because it rained east, not west? No! Because the moon went to New Jersey? No! Because . . .? he thought confusedly as, as the sound of the trolley’s wheels seemed to say, over and over again, “could have been otherwise, could have been otherwise, could have been otherwise, could have been . . .”
“Petey Stephenson! Wake up! We’re at school!”
Petey suddenly woke, dazzled by the blazing sun just rising in the east in the early winter morning.
Priscilla Li, the pretty girl in the class across the hall from Petey’s, was shaking him roughly by the shoulder. She must have been sitting next to him on the trolley ride to school after getting on while he was asleep.
“Okay,” said Petey, trying to smile and yawn at the same time, which he discovered was a difficult thing to do, it seemed to turn his whole face into salt-water taffy, and he pulled himself together, with his lunchbox and his backpack, with his homework inside it, and his smart phone, he had really missed his smartphone – so the trolley hadn’t exploded after all!
“Priscilla!” he said, excited, and still groggy from sleep. “You’ll never ever believe the dream I just had! I was in a land where everything happens that could never happen and there was a war and there was a big fire and we saved a family and . . .”
He suddenly felt a funny lump in his pocket he didn’t recognize. Hey, where were his lucky matches? . . .
He stopped, pulled it out and stared at it.
It was an bright, new key, with an oval head and curvy notches.
“Hurry up, Petey! You better come now!” Priscilla called out sternly through the half-open window. She had scurried outside while he was gaping at the key. “Otherwise you’ll be late for school. You don’t want to be suspended, do you?”
Suspended! He’d almost forgotten. Now that was a possibility he was sure he didn’t want to happen, ever. Miss Marigold would never believe his story – would she?
He saw her towering over him with her terrifying glare.
“’Howtiz’? ‘Otherwise’? I’ll show you how it is, Petey Myshkin Stephenson, and there’ll be no otherwise about it!”
The little boy, never having felt so young or so vulnerable in all his life, hastily slipped the mysterious key back into his pocket, then jumped from his seat and scrambled in a panic out of the yellow trolley.
“Promise you’ll tell me your dream,” Priscilla called out as they passed through the entrance.
“Okay!” said Petey, “I promise!” And he ran as fast as he could down the hall to class.
Though maybe it hadn’t been a dream after all.
To be continued . . .