I knelt and looked up at Bub, crumpled in the air, higher than my head, higher than my reach, and swallowed painfully as I realized that I had no idea how to get him down. He wasn’t a stick of wood to be snapped to the ground. He wasn’t me, to dive down through the air. I hadn’t the remotest idea how to get a human down.
Half dazed, I crawled over to a shaft of sunlight that slit the cottonwood branches overhead and felt it rush through my fingers like something to be lifted-and twisted-and fashioned and used! Used on Bub! But how? How? I clenched my fist in the flood of light, my mind beating against another door that needed only a word or look or gesture to open, but I couldn’t say it, or look it, or make it.
I stood up and took a deep breath. I jumped, batting at Bub’s heels that dangled a little lower than the rest of him. I missed. Again I jumped and the tip of one finger flicked his heel and he moved sluggishly in the air. Then I swiped the back of my hand across my sweaty forehead and laughed-laughed at my stupid self.
Cautiously, because I hadn’t done much hovering, mostly just up and down, I lifted myself up level with Bub. I put my hands on him and pushed down hard. He didn’t move.
I tugged him up and he rose with me. I drifted slowly and deliberately away from him and pondered. Then I got on the other side of him and pushed him toward the branches of the cottonwood. His head was beginning to toss and his lips moved with returning consciousness. He drifted through the air like a waterlogged stump, but he moved and I draped him carefully over a big limb near the top of the tree, anchoring his arms and legs as securely as I could. By the time his eyes opened and he clutched frenziedly for support I was standing down at the foot of the tree, yelling up at him.
“Hang on, Bub! I’ll go get someone to help you down!”
So for the next week or so people forgot me, and Bub squirmed under “Who treed you, feller?” and “How’s the weather up there?” and “Get a ladder, Bub, get a ladder!”
Even with worries like that it was mostly fun for me. Why couldn’t it be like that for Bethie? Why couldn’t I give her part of my fun and take part of her pain?
Then Dad died, swept out of life by our Rio Gordo as he tried to rescue a fool Easterner who had camped on the bone-dry white sands of the river bottom in cloudburst weather. Somehow it seemed impossible to think of Mother by herself. It had always been Mother and Dad. Not just two parents but Mother-and-Dad, a single entity. And now our thoughts must limp to Mother-and, Mother-and. And Mother-well, half of her was gone.
After the funeral Mother and Bethie and I sat in our front room, looking at the floor. Bethie was clenching her teeth against the stabbing pain of Mother’s fingernails gouging Mother’s palms.
I unfolded the clenched hands gently and Bethie relaxed.
“Mother,” I said softly, “I can take care of us. I have my part-time job at the plant. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of us.”
I knew what a trivial thing I was offering to her anguish, but I had to do something to break through to her.
“Thank you, Peter,” Mother said, rousing a little. “I know you will-” She bowed her head and pressed both hands to her dry eyes with restrained desperation. “Oh, Peter, Peter! I’m enough of this world now to find death a despair and desolation instead of the solemnly sweet calling it is. Help me, help me!” Her breath labored in her throat and she groped blindly for my hand.
“If I can, Mother,” I said, taking one hand as Bethie took the other. “Then help me remember. Remember with me.”
And behind my closed eyes I remembered. Unhampered flight through a starry night, a flight of a thousand happy people like birds in the sky, rushing to meet the dawn-the dawn of the Festival. I could smell the flowers that garlanded the women and feel the quiet exultation that went with the Festival dawn. Then the leader sounded the magnificent opening notes of the Festival song as he caught the first glimpse of the rising sun over the heavily wooded hills. A thousand voices took up the song. A thousand hands lifted in the Sign ….
I opened my eyes to find my own fingers lifted to trace a sign I did not know. My own throat throbbed to a note I had never sung. I took a deep breath and glanced over at Bethie. She met my eyes and shook her head sadly. She hadn’t seen. Mother sat quietly, eyes closed, her face cleared and calmed.
“What was it, Mother?” I whispered.
“The Festival,” she said softly. “‘For an those who had been called during the year. For your father, Peter and Bethie. We remembered it for your father.”
“Where was it?” I asked. “Where in the world-?”
“Not in this-” Mother’s eyes flicked open. “It doesn’t matter, Peter. You are of this world. There is no other for you.”
“Mother,” Bethie’s voice was a hesitant murmur, “what do you mean, ‘remember’?”
Mother looked at her and tears swelled into her dry burned-out eyes.
“Oh, Bethie, Bethie, all the burdens and none of the blessings! I’m sorry, Bethie, I’m sorry.” And she fled down the hall to her room.
Bethie stood close against my side as we looked after Mother.
“Peter,” she murmured, “what did Mother mean, ‘none of the blessings’?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I’ll bet it’s because I can’t fly like you.”
“Fly!” My startled eyes went to hers. “How do you know?”
“‘I know lots of things,” she whispered. “But mostly I know we’re different. Other people aren’t like us. Peter, what made us different?”
“Mother?” I whispered. “Mother?”
“I guess so,” Bethie murmured. “But how come?”
