Hornets and Others

low laughs of she and Carl. Tanny hit a camp pan with a spoon and he and Carl sang for her in the back seat. And then, suddenly, there was the scream of locked brakes, and then all the bright colors, green and brown and yellow and blue, turned bright red—

Oh Carl! She cried out, awakening and his name, his face and his deep laugh were all mingled with the sound of locked and screaming brakes.

In the day she looked at her son and wanted to cry because his father was not there for him.

It was snowing when Tanny's birthday present came. It was unloaded by two men, tall, in coveralls and parkas, but they were gone nearly before they were there. The big box was opened and suddenly the truck was gone and Tanny was gone, leaving her stranded outside his closed bedroom door.

'Tanny?' her practiced voice said.

'Thanks, Mom.' The voice was distant.

She began to speak again but then she went away.

Dinner sat and cooled, and after the time for patience came and went she knocked softly on his door. She heard a shuffling, the flick of a switch (scream!). She reached for the knob but suddenly he was there.

'Sorry,' he said, and he rushed past to the dinner table, closing the bedroom door behind him.

There was a candle-flame in his eyes, a warmth that hadn't been there for a long time. It warmed something in her, and for the first time in a long time the screaming went away.

'Tanny?'

He looked up, a startled deer.

Suddenly she didn't need the practiced voice.

'I... know how hard it's been on you since... the summer,' she said, and as she said this the screaming tried to start again, way down at the bottom of her mind. 'I... I know how much you miss your father, how much fun you two had together. I know you miss all those places he used to bring you and the things he did for you. I know you miss the things he used to make, the puppets and the toys he brought home as a surprise, and the popcorn he made, and the surprises he always had. I... wanted you... to know that I...'

She couldn't go on, and then her body was trembling all over and in her ears the sound, the high, tearing, locking sound...

Beyond the screams that filled her ears she heard the soft click of a bedroom door.

In the night, after the dream came and was gone and with it all its horrid sounds, as she lay breathing quietly again in the center of her large, sweat-soaked bed, she heard laughter. Tanny's voice was there, and another one, lower-pitched.

She held her breath and closed her eyes, and the voice didn't go away.

'And then we'll build a campfire,' Tanny's voice said.

Muffled laughter.

'And then can we go to the movies?'

The other voice said something she couldn't hear, and then the two voices laughed again.

In bare, cold feet she made her way to his room. Under the door were colors, red and green. As she threw open the door she suddenly remembered waking up in the hospital to see that Tanny was there but Carl wasn't. I don't know how any of you got out alive, there was nothing we could do for your husband, we think the other driver was drunk, poor boy, growing up now with no father... She remembered the red and white checked sport shirt Tanny still had on, the torn sleeve on one arm, the v-shaped rip showing his bruised skin underneath, the blank, struck-animal look of loss in his eyes...

'Tanny...'

'Mom.'

On the screen before him, as he hit a button, something red moved away into the distance, becoming haze.

'I was just playing a little bit.'

She looked at the screen, at her son.

He held up a fat book of instruction meekly for her inspection. 'You program in numbers and stuff and it...' He looked down. 'It makes someone for you to talk to.'

She reached down to touch him and suddenly she was lost again, powerless, trembling.

'No, Tanny, it's... all right. Go back to bed.'

Oh, Carl!

All through the night she dreamed of Tanny and Carl together again, and in her wakeful moments the laughter and voices from Tanny's room came and went...

In the morning, after Tanny's cocoa cup was drained and his snow-boots were buckled and his mittens dry and secure and his hood and books in place, after the yellow bus had gobbled him up (she always closed her eyes when this happened, listening for the snap of the closing door that would start the screaming in her ears), she went into his room.

She went in there to dust, she told herself. She went in to straighten up, to take all the empty boxes and string and paper stuffing from his birthday present away. She did all this, and more. She straightened the comic books and dusted his reading lamp; put his running sneakers and hiking boots back in the closet. She did all this, and then she stood before the machine.

It looked more of a mystery to her than it had the night before. Now, with its buttons unlit and cold, with its screen a cold green eye, it looked dead and yet somehow alive.

She touched a button and nothing happened.

She touched a green button, way off to the right, and winced at the sound of a flicking switch.

The screen went bright and something, a red shadow, was there, moving across the screen and then gone.

A boy without a father.

'Carl?' she whispered, and then she quickly touched the green button again, watching the screen turn dark, dead green, and hurried from the room.

The days and nights passed, and the voices and laughter continued.

'Tanny, we have to talk.'

'I'll be late for school, Mom.'

'I'll drive you.'

Over his oatmeal, he looked up. 'You never drive,' he said, and it was an accusation.

She said, very slowly and carefully, 'I've heard you every night with your machine.'

'Oh,' Tanny said in a low voice.

'I want you to know it's all right as long as you don't carry it too far.'

He looked as though he wanted to find a place in his oatmeal to hide. 'Thanks.'

'Tanny—' she started to say, wanting to tell him, as her shivering began, how much she wanted more than anything in the world to have his father back again so that she could watch the two of them and be happy, but he pushed away from the table, and was into his coat and out the door just as the bright yellow bus stopped to swallow him up.

In the long morning, at each tick of the hall clock and each creaking sigh of the big empty house settling around her, she sat in her chair and heard the imaginary screaming of brakes.

The world went round. White snow melted into gray slush, which melted into silver water, which melted into the warming earth. Green shoots, tender things with strong roots, shot up, along with white dandelions that waved in the wind and then exploded, sending themselves away. The sun burned warm yellow again. School boys grew thin, as winter mittens were packed into mothball boxes and hooded snowsuits turned, like midnight pumpkins, into canvas jackets with thin zippers.

The spring didn't warm or launch her, but found her wrapped all the more tightly in her cocoon. By day she wandered the house restlessly, straightening and then straightening again; by night she lay awake staring at a spot in the center of the darkened ceiling and listening to the laughter from Tanny's room. She tried to think of Tanny