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Fires Eternal Morning :
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Chapter 2
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The memories
keep streaming past my eyes, and there’s no order in time. Some
of these scenes even must be coming from other people and even from
other times in history? Could there be something like “genetic memory”,
like memory buds from my parents and grandparents
? Still
with child eyes, I had been looking out through the bushes / over
silver-bird wing tips, off the edge of my yard, down through the stratosphere, over continuous
ripples of bright steel-blue ocean stretching out for miles, the green east-west edge of land, coast ports
far below me with jetties that extend out into water glimmering in the sun like tiny diamonds; towns
nestled deeper in the hills of Cantabria;
and other villages far off to the south... Assigned with a U2 reconnaissance
mission, on orders directly from General Simone, we are just slowly
floating, at near sixty-five thousand feet in non-hostile airspace,
where I have been monitoring the infrared sonar screen to search
for our B-52 that went down two days ago with live Hydrogen bomb
warheads, gone underwater with
all hands. Because of the danger, I had telegrammed Pamela to
delay her flight to meet me in So long
apart.. But her plane still hadn't come.
Lost : At the Now they had lost both the H-Bomb and
the plane she as on. Our
U2 motto "Videmus Omnia" keeps ringing in my head,
over and over, and I add to it, Nihil Autem Gnoscimus!
"But-- We Know Nothing!"
Why hadn't Pamela told me sooner she was coming? given me more notice to expect her arrival? This was now the inevitable (and irrevocable) waiting; -- Her
missing plane now with our bomber -- both on the bottom of the Waiting to explode into sunlight together......God,
Love, where are you? The fear
hits me like a sudden bomb that something else has happened, and
my plane suddenly bursts apart around me, the empty air pulling
me toward the distant ground, plunging me down in free fall from
sixty thousand feet -- tumbling down off the edge of the back-yard
hillock through leafy branches of bushes --without parachute or
goggles... In the
busy harbor of Istanbul, he remembered the bay waters of the Golden
Horn filled with ships and boats, horizon lined with domes and minarets,
glimmering the smooth surface with gold and morning sunlight from
the Eastern world; the aroma of strange spices and sea salt mixed
with the coarse smell of diesel that gave the city its exotic smell;
motor sounds and whistles, with a muzzin’s cries of prayer from a city parapet. Here,
the cavernous inside of the pier is crowded with tourists and travelers
of different nationalities, Eastern and Western, all standing in
roped-off queues which fill the rear section of the room... I notice that the berth for the
ferry itself is a U-shaped dock, similar to the terminus of a railroad
track, in the outer covered section of the pier, from which the
ferry, yet to arrive, can be boarded from gang-ways on
two sides. Presently, waves from the approaching ferry break up
the peaceful reflections in the water and lap against its inner
sides of the dock as in anticipation of the ripples of altered
history. Even with the crowds, I am fortunately
standing in a position in the line from which I have an unobstructed
view of the dock and the tiny streaks of gold and brown and silver
ripples of water which begin to hypnotize the fear in
me. I watch as the ferry-boat comes closer to make its landing approach,
and as it slides smoothly into its berth. As the people in the lines impatiently
begin to move by the ticket-takers and out onto the dock platform,
I walk along with them as masses of people are disembarking and
moving onboard, while I watch for the precise moment of a contact
at a spot at the corner of the cabin on the deck of the ferry.
Across the dock, I think that I see Hughes finally arriving. I am approached by three men, two of
whom are in Turkish police uniforms, who roughly order me to come
along with them, and take me onboard and quickly shuffle me toward
a companionway, as the ferry is beginning to leave the pier and
move out into the sunny harbor. Glancing back, I am unable to
glimpse my Hughes again on the dock as I am taken along a narrow
companionway to a tiny cabin. Not
stopping to tell me why I have been seized, they shove me into the
cabin, only leaving me grateful that they have not struck me. Climbing up from the floor, I find
that the door has been locked. Sometime later, another door to the right is unlocked
from the other side, and slightly opened… Waiting several minutes,
the door still left ajar, I cautiously open it, where I find the
crowded galley. The galley hand, walking back and forth
between his counters, is preparing various dishes, but as I come
in the door he looks over at me and says something to me casually
in Turkish, which I am unable to follow.
I continue to move around the end of the counter, making
a gesture of greeting to him, moving toward the door to the companionway.
But he looks up, pointing a small pistol and gesturing me to move
away from the door and just sit and watch him while he watches me
out of one eye. Eventually,
I playfully poke my head into the passage, but I turn back only
to find myself looking down the muzzle of his gun, so I sit myself
up on the counter across from him... The constant sideward roll
of the boat, and my uncertainty, gradually churn my stomach, and
I can only console myself that my partner is aware of my capture
and might negotiate for my release...
Fifteen hours later, after
making steadily eastward with no sight of land from my cabin porthole, I finally sense that the
ferry is slowing into a docking approach. I am by now completely mentally exhausted
with the fearful prospect of my capture, my thoughts having raced into the state of blankness--- Guards come at last to lead me out
onto deck, where four other male captives are also being brought
out. We are all quickly shackled together at the
ankles, as the ferry thumps against the sides of another U-shaped
dock to rest. After the passengers
disembark, we are marshaled to move through the gate, awkwardly
tripping over our chains as we go. But now I startlingly realize that
the pier is an exact mirror-opposite of the one from which we embarked;
and across the dock, through the crowd, I see my partner Hughes
casually walking to a waiting car and being driven off--- (Hope
has been removed, and today I cannot remember their grueling interrogation,
but only the name of someone in history named Xerxes, and a long
walk inland from the Crimean shores into a Ukraine landscape --
thinking: Well, here I am as in the poem :
with Tennyson's phrase echoing in my memory -- “Cannons to the right
of us/ Cannons to the left,” as I continued eastward over snowy
roads, a helicopter gunship circling high overhead in the blue to
my right, and another to my left...) "Cannons to the right of us...
Cannons to the left of us... We marched down into the Through
woods of grass-blade shadows, a memory reeled back from more than
twenty suns From this view on this mountain trail,
I can see over the distant hillsides of I’ll have to climb through this rough
terrain to get to the other side of a small ravine -- though I was
unlucky enough to twist my left ankle badly when I hit the ground,
not the proper landing I was trained for.
So I now have to worry about getting back to my unit alive,
without the fucking Germans seeing me!
General Simone, Grandma’s nephew, had
hand-picked me for this mission, since I spoke all the dialects, north and south. like a real paisan, with Pop from
Mussolini was loosing ground since
we invaded the Boot, and he’d soon be defeated, and then just the
Nazis left. But I’ve got to remember to think only in Italian, OK
Giani, only in Italian!
Still, if I could get to the other
side of the valley, walking where I would probably come close to
peasant houses I’d be safer -- I hadn’t been in this province alone
before and so I’ve got to watch out, not mistake anyone else to
be my contact, Fascisti instead of partisan.
I hoped no lookouts saw my chute come down, black silk in the black
sky? I would normally be thinking in Italian,
except being scared. I knew already what would happen if I forgot
to speak Italian right away, if I could stop thinking in English.
They might rattle off an English phrase to trip you up. --- Even
accidentally holding your knife and fork the American way in a cantina
would land you in a torture chamber and being stood up in front
of a wall. All I can think of about now was just
meeting up with my comrades to get back to the US lines to the south
tonight -- a long walk already but much longer with my aching ankle.
They would be specifically looking for me in two hours. Still was
no sign of my contact. Two peasants were walking further along
the path where I trod -- stocky tall men with dark hair and handlebar
moustaches. Both carried
beat-up looking War,
so I decided to just watch them until they moved beyond my area,
but not to completely lose sight of them. The two stopped and sat on some large
rocks near where I hid, their voices just within earshot, talking
about the new to the Germans, but the sound of their words
drifted partly to the other direction -- and I still couldn't make out their conversation clearly enough
to be sure of their loyalties -- I would just sit quietly until
they decided to continue along in the early morning light. Finally, after more than a quarter
of an hour, I was able to make my way deeper and deeper into the woods, careful not to break
branches where I moved, now beginning to try to locate my objective.-- The chart I had committed to memory seemed slightly
different from the actual lay of the land itself... But when I discovered my destination
some time later, and looked at my small timepiece, I realized how
much later I was now because it was necessary to stop to avoid these
two peasants.-- The bridge over a gorge in the mountainside
was wide enough and apparently strong enough to allow Panzer tanks
and high half-tracks to pass over. Another road
leading to By the time I had installed the explosives
under the second and third bridge supports I realized that the sun
was higher in the sky than I hope it would be by now. The timepiece
said 0810 hours -- I was just able to get the detonator
wire stretched to a safe distance away when I began to hear the
sounds of a mechanized unit approaching. They were ten minutes early!
Shit! Fucking stupid goose-steppers. Shit! They were now already coming out onto
the bridge -- This is not what I wanted to happen -- I could have
just done the damned bridge and gotten the fuck out, with no danger
to myself or having to kill anyone. -- But Simone’s
orders were precise. -- And I
was much more likely to get home than they
were now. Nazi infantry men were already at the
middle of the crossing, two tanks rumbling up in line behind them,
then a half-track already off the terra firma -- Why did they have to be so damned early ? What could I do now? This could only mean certain death
to all these men and disaster to their wives waiting for them back
home, as Phyllis waited for me. I would be damned for this by God...just
for touching the ends of these two wires to the poles of this little
battery -- But fuck Hitler and his death camps.
I knew the rumors were true after Simone showed But, Oh, God, how could I get out of
this? The rumbling of the engines vibrated the supports of
the bridge, but not enough for them to give way by themselves.-- I had to shut my eyes tighter and tighter,
wondering if I could do it with my eyes closed. Maybe not, as I
felt the hot spark snap between my fingers. I will pray for you
men about to pay the highest price -- Mother Maria, Forgive me my
Soul! Momma help me! Help me! He had to do his duty ! His mother
had died just when he turned 17 now four years ago, and he suddenly
remembered a dream she told him the first time she heard Hitler's
speech on Pa's short-wave radio: She turned to him and said, "I
dreamed last night that these black angels were flying all over
us in the sky, coming to murder people and destroy the world! This
Hitler has the same screaming voice as the leader of those horrible
angels!" and terrified cries.--
Just
a few hours later, many young people have gathered and are crowding
into the garage behind my parents' house, attempting to hide from
the menacing war and the outside air -- I am huddling everyone in,
squeezing myself inside among them, so that I can roll down the
overhead door, look out through its small panel windows, and again
pretend that the garage is a space-ship we can blast-off, and escape
the fallout clouds. But then Frederick Pageant, my friend since
kindergarten appears again outside the side window, trying to get
our attention before everything is closed out entirely to the exterior
world. He looks now more like I remembered him from before, still
the same refined looks but slightly buggy eyes, especially at this
moment when he surely has something to say. I cannot understand
from where he has arrived, although the same applies to all the
others crowding in here. He is smiling and starting to laugh when I
pull open the window: "Where
have you been!" I climb out of the window, nearly spilling
myself head over heels onto the hard ground, into the alley between
the four garages back to back. The armed lookout still on the other
roof glances down, rolling his eyes. "OK,
what?" "There's
something strange happening down at the pond," Fred tells me,
"Hundreds of people are walking around." "Yeah,
I don't know where any of these kids here came from either."
"Come on and take a look." We climb
over the barricade, cutting through into the drive-way of a rear
neighbor's house and out to the street on the opposite side of the
block -- From here we can see down to the end of the street of houses
and over the water of the wide pond.
When we reach the top of the stone
steps down into the park, we can see that there are hundreds of
people milling about, some picnicing in
the field to the right which is split by the brook that feeds the
pond. We descend the steps in slow motion, and walk along the people
rambling by the sidewalk edges of the water, surprised by this sudden
relaxed-looking re- population. On the opposite side, one child
drags a red wagon behind him, while a young girl pulls the line
of a toy sailboat making waves along the bank. At the far side by
the inlet of the brook, two boys in a blue polyetheline
play boat poke around the edges of a sandbar in the harsh sunlight. I remember that I have seen old colonial period
maps which show this land as virtually unchanged, with a narrow
falls of rocks at its lower end, built up by the W.P.A. into a brick
spillway topped with a small bridge path. Now Frederick and I walk
wordlessly around the bend of the high stone wall, coming to the
lower neck where the water falls into the lower park. Passing by
the stone steps down, we cross the little bridge and keep to the
ridge where it makes a wide circle behind the lower park, overlooking
its old walled-in swimming area of the widened stream which follows
a crescent shape to even lower waterfalls. Another
walled brook leads to a culvert and across a road into a lower open
park field, past the old rouge factory. The water in the brook still
leaches with yellow and red dyes flushed from rusty pipes. The next
street which is called Long Brook Avenue runs between the crests
of two hills to the right and left, the stream crossed by a decrepit
wooden bridge, though I distinctly remember another culvert here.
Going
further ahead through a swampy area, we follow over a hillock path
where We presently
come out to a pasture where a cow-path crosses east-west, where
I realize that Barnum Avenue should run down to Ferry Boulevard,
to the east towards the river, flanked by the GRAND-WAY, wide parking
lots, and a building tile manufacturing plant further down. But
now I feel I'm lost, as I can only see a few old houses,
and a thick grove of elm trees over the crest of the hill. "See?"
He points out one stone which reads the name of an army corporal
and the dates 1847 - "Dear Mama, I'll pin this letter to my
fold, My Comrades all have Fallen, This I hear my Lord a' callin'..." We
walk further southwest across the field in the direction of The sky, once partly sunny, has become completely
shaded with heavy clouds moving in, shading the daylight. By another
brook that joins Long Brook, we finally
come up to As we
begin southward down Main Street, somewhat confused, along the line
of oaks and beeches and large mansions, a sudden commotion of several
horses, galloping up the road from behind us, carrying riders in
long coated blue uniforms, passing by us and then turning right
up ahead at the Green at West Broadway --- Following
behind them, we also turn onto the small green, where we can see
the riders tying up their horses outside Benjamin's Tavern situated
at the opposite end, already engaged in a subdued conversation with
several men standing outside the place. Unheeded by the activity, Frederick and I
enter the door of the tavern and find seats at the end of a long
table, overhearing the semi-discreet talk going on. We do
not have to wonder long what is happening, as two of the soldiers
are relating the events of a skirmish from which they have come
in Ridgefield against a large force of British Regulars who were
marching back toward their landing point at Compo Beach by Norwalk
Town after burning down the Continental Army supply stores at Danbury
-- "Captain
Coe's been captured by the bloody Red Coats -- we bear sorry news,
men,” --they talk out of breath... "General
Wooster's been shot bad ---" "No,
by Jesus!" the innkeeper gasps. "How...What happened?" "We
split forces in The others
begin to speculate on what will become of morale at the loss of
a rallying leader, and the loss to strategic planning. But the
innkeeper, who had been noticing our curiosity since we arrived,
finally comes over to where we sit. "You two young masters
look strangers to this town -- Where do you hail from? And what
brings you to The question
takes us off our guard. "I'm Inspection Committee Officer,"
he goes on. "and I'll have a look
at your papers..." Frederick
and I look at each other blankly. "We live up at the Green,"
he blurts. "You are talking about the green above
the ox pasture? At whose house there are you staying??" "Paradise Green," I attempt to mend. He turns to call the others, "Men! I
think we have here those two Tory spies they saw in "Don't
let them escape us!" shouts the commander summoning the soldiers
over to them. "Wait a minute," chimes my companion.
"Were you talking about Benedict Arnold? -- We can give you
important information!" "It's
too soon, "He
calls him Frederick! He may be a Hessian!" "You
two will please move from that seat," orders the innkeeper.
"Search them for weapons..."
We are immediately questioned and at first accused of stupidity
for our uninformed answers then of diabolic deception regarding
our claims that we came from the twentieth century, and witchcraft
over the dated coins we produce from our pockets. On into the questions, the Inspection Officer
soon intervenes lest the other inquisitors reveal secret information.
Frederick and I are taken from the inn and told that we will
be brought to regimental headquarters at
We are walked along next to their horses through the parade
ground they call Broad Street, across Main Street, and down New
Lane, lined with large homes, by the cemetery to Elm Street with
the same salt-box house I've always known in that lot.
The questions that Frederick and I ask them at first cause
them to accuse us with more conviction that we are what they suspect
us to be, as if we were so confident of
rescue or escape that we would seek to ferret more intelligence.
Heading east, they bring us across the Tanner's Brook bridge
and up the long Ferry Bridge Road, toward the landing, where we
will be brought across the Housatonic River to go on the rest of
the way through the Milford Colony on the Boston Post-Road to get
up to New Haven. Walking
up the carriage trail that traverses a wide heath covered with birds
and sunshine, I begin to feel almost hypnotized with our predicament.
But "Yes,
you'll need good sparkproof brakes for
a carriage powered by a machine... hah, hah.
Will that be enough to stop it?"
"How can you have a factory in the middle of a field
where there is no stream for the water mill?"
"It runs on steam and electricity. Its
the same thing that Ben Franklin discovered when his kite was struck
by lightning." explains
"Where will you get all this asbestos stone?"
"Oh, I don't know... "Queen
"Queen who?"
"Over there is the baseball field where we used to go
to watch the Brakettes practice, a girl's team from the factory. Its like cricket --" I add.
"You mean 'wicket'?" "They
play a game called 'cricket' in "The
mill owners will make women play field games in public?!" "No,
its for fun, not wagering." "You
two boys would go to a Bedlam house, if we weren't going to shoot
you first!" "--Will
these mill owners control our independent nation?,"
the other asks, ponderously. "Hauberc, you Zarf, we had better shut up..." warns "Cease
these lies!" shouts the Inspection Officer in our faces, lest
we steal the sympathies of his men. "Hold your tongues and
your absurd tales!" Now we
all go along in silence, crossing the wide, scrub field. The same
path on which we walked would shortly bring us to the crest of a
small rise and down to the bank of the But now
wondering what will become of Frederick and I when we are interrogated
at Regimental Headquarters in New Haven, I suddenly, finally realize
that I am walking by myself, somehow, as though I always had been,
that there were no others, but that I have been led here. Coming over the rise, I could see no sign
of Moses Wheeler's Ferry Landing as I knew should be here, that
should have been here since the beginning of the Stratford Settlement.
In fact, the only sign of habitation were the campfires visible
deep in the woods on the Now,
fearfully, I recall the game that Frederick had concocted to imagine
the town in the past, and the game he has disappeared in the middle
of, just as he has always been prone to do when we played in the
woods, not to be late for supper at home... A gnawing
feeling of aloneness descends over me, as I tried to figure ways
of crossing the wide but calm river. Instead I choose going west
back over the trails behind me, consciously repeating the same journey
as my earlier return home to an abandoned 20th Century town. But mostly there were no trails leading anywhere,
much less where I wanted to go. Now I could cut through the scrub-brush
heath, making my way across a dry chalk bed, and eventually through
other maple groves, coming along a puddly
open meadow at the place which I knew would one day become football
and baseball playing fields of Long Brook Park.
One narrow path led slightly north up along
the edge of the hill into the area the innkeeper had called the
upper ox pasture, bringing in view the same long brook which Frederick
and I had followed downstream. To the right, I can see the same
undeveloped woods as would still be at the end of the street of
my parents' house, where I played and dug holes and tunnels as a
boy. The little path led up the sparsely treed
slope, bringing me closer to some tall conical objects located further
back in a clearing, which I momentarily recognize to be wigwams,
situated almost on the very site of my parents' and neighbor's car
garages.
Cautiously approaching, I attempt to hear or see whatever
inhabitants there might be about: At a spring closeby,
a handsome, middle-aged Indian woman was washing some clothes over
rocks where a tiny brook was formed, running away west towards the pond I knew would be
a quarter-mile away. At a small campfire some small game is being
cooked with its sour smoke drifting over me. Then
behind me there is a sudden crashing through the underbrush, and
I turn to see a young Indian man running at me. He grabs at me,
but is moving so fast that he only succeeds in throwing me over
to the ground. The woman, now alarmed, starts to run to her wigwam,
but her flight is interrupted by the sharp report of musket fire
in the air-- As she
topples down in pain, I realize that the rumbling noise I'd heard
as the young Indian was coming at me, was
the gallop of approaching horses. An arrow flashes through the air
striking one of the five white riders in the collar. Another
rider throws a torch upon the wigwam, sending flames immediately
billowing up and around its sides: The screams of young children
emit from inside it. I run through the open to the wigwam. "That's
one of them there, Capt'n Mason---"
points one of the riders at me. In the split-second, I see the musket swinging
around in my direction, hear the quick report of the hammer, and
the echo of gunpowder off into the sky -- see the impact of the
ball and the red mess in the center of my chest. |
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