Lanya turned and jumped, her blue shirt mapped with sweat; she held a chain high with one hand. She moved her harmonica across her mouth with the other, blowing discord after discord. Her forehead was glazed, her hair wet down her brow.
Jommy, I guess it was, broke out between Mildred and some bird of paradise (Cathedral shouting, “Hey, watch it—”), staggering into the dazzling web, and grabbed a strand for balance. Denny’s end—I jumped—broke (between mirror and prism) but he just whirled the loose length; finally looped it around somebody else’s strand and held it high with both hands. An end someone else had dropped snaked and jerked through fire-lit grass. I stepped forward, grabbed it up, and dodged beneath it, jumping from foot to foot and bellowing. D-t and Spider and Raven and Cathedral and Tarzan (he really can dance good as the niggers) and Jack the Ripper and Filament and Angel made a web: one strand vibrated; another went slack in catenaries between taut lengths. Gladis paused, with a fist full of green cloth over her great belly, swaying and breathing with her mouth wide. She ducked from a strand that tightened against her cheek, swung away, and began to clap.
I stopped shouting soon because my throat hurt; and heard, between the claps: “Bunny, whyn’t you get in there and show ’em how it’s done!”
“Don’t be silly, dear! We’ll just watch.”
“Naw, come on! I ain’t never really seen you dance.”
“Smile when you say that. Why don’t you?”
“Aw, come on. I wanna see what you can do.”
Something in the fire exploded; sparks shot above the flame tips, showering. The myriad narrow parabolas extinguished.
Dollar, his pimply back bright with sweat, stood centered in the clearing, feet wide, knees and head bent. Each clap detonated something in his belly that flung his hands, hips, and shoulders about.
Some of the commune kids were naked.
John danced with his brown beard up, his blond hair back, and his brass orchid waving on his hand overhead. A girl had gotten her legs caught in the chain going around, and fallen; she sat a long time, head forward, hair the color of dry leaves down across one breast. A few times she tried to stand. But another length of chain fell on her shoulder when someone dropped another end; she seemed too weighted to rise.
A griffin flickered twice: Adam bobbed and jerked. Chains and shocked hair swung and clattered and went out behind the reeling beast.
Bunny, barking shrill as a lap-dog, a dozen strands caught among up-thrust fingers, suddenly pranced forward, shaking back silver hair. Pepper, haunched behind him, followed, clapping and grinning like the devil.
An elderly black woman who’d brought some of the supper-boxes, stonily silent till now, cackled, beginning to clap too. The heavy, black-haired man with the bamboo flute had finally gotten out of his pants and danced up to her, trying to bring her into the circle. He piped and bobbed and bounced around: it was pretty phony and for a second I thought she would pinch his crank. But she got into it anyway and clapped for him—
And I stopped, landing on both heels, jarred to the scalp.
I turned in the furor, looking for someone (Thinking: Where did it come from…? Why now…? What…? then throwing that away and just trying to hold on to it); Lanya, shirt open and flapping, breasts shaking, eyes closed under quivering lids, turned to me behind at least five chains. I reached through them and caught her shoulders.
Her eyes snapped wide.
“Michael…” I said.
“What?”
A chain pulled down across my arm; a prism nipped my wrist. Lady of Spain was at one end, hauling.
“Mike Henry…” I looked down between my elbows at the trampled grass. “Michael Henry…?”
One of her bare feet moved. “What’s that?”
Very slowly, I said: “My first name is Mike…Michael. My middle name is Henry.” I looked up. “My last name—Fl…? Fr…?”
Lanya narrowed her eyes. Then she grabbed my forearm with the same hand her harmonica was in.
The edge bit; which brought me back: “What did I say?”
But she was looking around us, among the others. “Denny!”
“Lanya, what did I say?”
Her eyes snapped back to mine. She had a funny smile, intense and scared. “You said your first name was—” around us they clapped—“Michael. Your second name—” they clapped again—“is Henry. And your last…?”
My jaw clamped so hard my head shook. “I…I had it for a second! but then I…”
“It begins with ‘F’” She called again: “Denny!”
“Wait a minute! Wait, I…no, I can’t remember! But the first name—”
“—Michael Henry…” she prompted.
Denny ran up. “What…?” he put a hand on her shoulder, a hand on mine. “Come on, you wanna—”
“Tell him, Kid!”
I dropped Lanya’s elbows and took both of Denny’s.
He was breathing very hard. “My name is Michael—” another clap—“Henry…something. I don’t remember the last one now.” I took a deep breath (clap!). “But two out of three is pretty good!” I must have been grinning pretty hard.
“Wow!” Denny said. He started to say a couple of other things, but finally just shrugged, grinning back.
“I don’t know what to say either,” I said.
Lanya hugged me. She almost knocked me over.
Denny hugged us both, getting his head between ours and wiggling it back and forth and laughing. So Lanya had to hold him up with one hand. We all staggered. I put my arm around him too. Somebody pulled a chain against my back. It either broke or one of the people holding it let go. We staggered again.
Someone put hands against my back and said: “Hey, watch it! Don’t fall!” Paul Fenster—I hadn’t even seen him among the spectators—was steadying me as we came apart.
Re-reading this single description of Paul Fenster between these soiled cardboards, this thought: Since life may end at any when, the expectation of revelation or peripity, if not identical to, is congruent with insanity. They give life meaning, but expectation of them destroys our faculty for experiencing meaning. So I am still writing out these incidents. But now I am interested in the art of incident only as it touches life…but I have written that at least three other places among these pages. What I haven’t written is that, because of it, I am less and less interested in the incidence of art. (“Sex without guilt?” Entelechy without anticipation!) I just wonder would Paul have done anything differently that evening in the park if he’d known he was going to be shot in the head and neck four times, six hours later.
Lanya said: “It’s all right if we fall, Paul. It’s okay.”
Someone threw another length of chain into the circle. Manticore and iguanadon caught it up, blundering together, casting ghost-lights. Clap!
“Hey, I like your school,” Denny said. “I’ve been helping Lanya with her kids.”
“I was telling you about Denny, Paul? He was the one who suggested we take that class trip that turned out so well.”
I said: “I’ve never seen any children there. I’ve heard their voices. On the tape recorder. But I don’t believe you ever had any real children in there.”
Lanya looked at me oddly.
Fenster laughed. “Well, you brought us five of them yourself.”
“But there weren’t any…” Inside, it felt like two disjoined surfaces had suddenly slipped flush; the relief was unbearable. “I put five of them…in the school?”
“Woodard, Rose, Sammy…?” Lanya said.