A Scent of Sarsaparilla

Hannahan's Pier for a box-supper and listen to the brass band. How about it?»

«Supper's ready. Take that dreadful uniform off.»

«If you could make a wish and take a ride on those oaklaned country roads like they had before cars started rushing, would you do it?» he insisted, watching her.

«Those old roads were dirty. We came home looking like Africans. Anyway,» she picked up a sugar-jar and shook it, «this morning I had forty dollars here. Now it's gone! Don't tell me you ordered those clothes from a costume house. They're brand-new, they didn't come from any trunk!»

«I'm ?» he said.

She raved for half an hour, but he could not bring himself to say anything. The November wind shook the house and as she talked, the snows of winter began to fall again in the cold steel sky.

«Answer me!» she cried. «Are you crazy, spending our money that way, on clothes you can't wear?»

«The attic,» he started to say.

She walked off and sat in the living-room.

The snow was falling fast now and it was a cold dark November evening. She heard him climb up the step ladder, slowly, into the attic, into that dusty place of other years, into that black place of costumes and props and Time, into a world separate from this world below.

He closed the trap door down. The flashlight, snapped on, was company enough. Yes, here was all of Time compressed in a Japanese paper flower. At the touch of memory, everything would unfold into the clear water of the mind, in beautiful blooms, in spring breezes, larger than life. Each of the bureau drawers, slid forth, might contain aunts and cousins and grandmamas, ermined in dust. Yes, Time was here. You could feel it breathing, an atmospheric instead of a mechanical clock.

Now the house below was as remote as another day in the past. He half-shut his eyes and looked and looked on every side of the waiting attic.

Here, in prismed chandelier, were rainbows and momings and noons as bright as new rivers flowing endlessly back through time. His flashlight caught and flickered them alive, the rainbows leapt up to curve the shadows back with colours, with colours like plums and raspberries and Concord grapes, with colours like cut lemons and the sky where the clouds drew off after storming and the blue was there. And the dust of the attic was incense burning and all of time burning, and all you need do was peer into the flames. It was indeed a great machine of Time, this attic, he knew, he felt, he was sure, and if you touched prisms here, doorknobs there, plucked tassels, chimed crystals, swirled dust, punched trunk-hasps, and gusted the vox humana of the old hearth-bellows until it puffed the soot of a thousand ancient fires into your eyes, if, indeed, you played this instrument, this warm machine of parts, if you fondled all of its bits and pieces, its levers and changers and movers, then, then, then!

He thrust out his hands to orchestrate, to conduct, to Hourish. There was music in his head, in his mouth shut tight, and he played the great machine, the thunderously silent organ, bass, tenor, soprano, low, high, and at last, at last, a chord that shuddered him so that he had to shut his eyes.

About nine o'clock that night she heard him calling, «Cora!» She went upstairs. His head peered down at her from above, smiling at her. He waved his hat. «Good-bye, Cora.»

«What do you mean?» she cried.

«I've thought it over for three days and I'm saying good-bye.»

«Come down out of there, you fool!»

«I drew five hundred dollars from the bank yesterday. I've been thinking about this. And then when it happened, well... Cora...» He shoved his eager hand down. «For the last time, will you come along with me?»

«In the attic? Hand down that step-ladder, William Finch. I'll climb up there and run you out of that filthy place!»

«I'm going to Hannahan's Pier for a bowl of Clam Chowder,» he said. «And I'm requesting the brass band to play Moonlight Bay. Oh, come on, Cora....» He motioned his extended hand.

She simply stared at his gentle, questioning face.

«Good-bye,» he said.

He waved gently, gently. Then his face was gone, the straw hat was gone.

«William!» she screamed.

The attic was dark and silent.

Shrieking, she ran and got a chair and used it to groan her way up into the musty darkness. She flourished a flashlight. «William! William!»

The dark spaces were empty. A winter wind shook the house.

Then she saw the far west attic window, ajar.

She fumbled over to it. She hesitated, held her breath. Then, slowly, she opened it. The ladder was placed outside the window, leading down on to a porch roof.

She pulled back from the window.

Outside the opened frame the apple trees were lush green, it was twilight of a summer day in July. Faintly, she heard explosions, firecrackers going off. She heard laughter and distant voices. Rockets burst in the warm air, softly, red, white, and blue, fading.

She slammed the window and stood reeling. «William!»

Wintry November light glowed up through the trap in the attic floor behind her. Bent to it, she saw the snow whispering against the cold clear panes down in that November world where she would spend the next thirty years.

She did not go near the window again. She sat alone in the black attic, smelling the one smell that did not seem to fade. It lingered like a gentle sigh of satisfaction, on the air. She took a deep, long breath.

The old, the familiar, the unforgettable scent of drugstore sarsaparilla.