Read Online The Chrome Suite by Sandra Birdsell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sandra Birdsell
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But Amy doesn’t think about this now, the idea of possessing the power to unleash a storm. She thinks only about what happened in the cemetery. That she had been inoculated by a streak of lightning and become immune to gravity and to the violence of any kind of storm. Immune to what normally struck other people down.
Margaret’s inference that their behaviour can somehow influence the weather doesn’t occur to Mel or Jill either as they lie beside their mother on the floor in the living room, damp with heat and the weight of her arms, heavy protective wings stretched across their sweating bodies. But, as they listen to the growing force of the storm beating against the walls of the house, they become infused with her fear and vow silently to try and be better children.
“Requests?” Mel asks, and wonders if he’ll find enough spit to play the mouth organ he’s brought with him.
Amy listens to the music as she drifts into sleep, the song Jill’s request, she realizes vaguely by the wavering Hallowe’en tune about witches and goblins. The eerie melody doesn’t keep her awake to worry about who or what might creep up on her just as she is about to fall asleep. She sleeps and dreams of rising up from the bed, up through the roof of the house, floating in the clear night sky, while below her lies the town of Carona, still, dark, asleep.
Hours later when she awakens, the storm has passed, but she can still hear something outside in the yard. The swing. She recognizes the squealing and groaning sound. Someone must be out there, she thinks. She climbs down from the bunk bed and crosses the hallway into her parents’ empty bedroom. The clouds have thinned and themoon casts its light into the room. Through the wet glass Amy watches the stirring of the shade tree’s branches, uncertain arms flinging about this way and that. An erratic dance, an attempt to ward off the wind and the sound of the rope swing as it moves back and forth with its invisible rider.
3
he following day Margaret stands in front of her brother Reginald’s hardware store and watches as her children prepare to leave for the Lutheran Sunday School picnic in the city. Her children, Elsa Miller, and the oldest Miller woman, Esther, cluster about waiting for old Josh to finish packing the trunk of his car. Josh Miller agreed to drive them the forty-five miles to the city and then to return later on in the day to pick them up. He gestures to Mel to hand him the school bag but Mel declines, indicating that he wants to keep the bag with him. A sign above their heads reads MILLER ’ S TELEVISION AND RADIO . The sign is hand-painted with blue and white letters and streaming across it is a trail of egg yolk, hardened now to a glossy shine.
Josh had inspected the vandalized sign earlier and then shrugged in resignation. “Will have to chisel the darn stuff off,” Josh told the older woman. He’s related to the two women and Elsa. A cousin or second cousin, it was rumoured, and that he was responsible for their immigration to Canada. Recently he’d purchased the property across from the hardware store. An investment, he said, for thefuture of his new family. Carona was a better place to raise a family than most, he said, and so he bought the boarded-up wood-frame building which had once been a cafe. The remains of the previous business can still be seen in the counter and stools, which Josh prefers to leave intact because he says he wants people to take their time when they shop at his place, take a load off, and have a cup of something and a chat before they shop. He opened up the front of the building, installed two display windows, and lined up in front of them are television consoles, picture-tubes flickering night and day. The children of Carona whose parents are less fortunate, whose rooftops don’t sprout the required spire, park their bicycles in front of Miller’s Television and Radio and watch. Taped to Josh’s window is a faded newspaper
Margaret’s inference that their behaviour can somehow influence the weather doesn’t occur to Mel or Jill either as they lie beside their mother on the floor in the living room, damp with heat and the weight of her arms, heavy protective wings stretched across their sweating bodies. But, as they listen to the growing force of the storm beating against the walls of the house, they become infused with her fear and vow silently to try and be better children.
“Requests?” Mel asks, and wonders if he’ll find enough spit to play the mouth organ he’s brought with him.
Amy listens to the music as she drifts into sleep, the song Jill’s request, she realizes vaguely by the wavering Hallowe’en tune about witches and goblins. The eerie melody doesn’t keep her awake to worry about who or what might creep up on her just as she is about to fall asleep. She sleeps and dreams of rising up from the bed, up through the roof of the house, floating in the clear night sky, while below her lies the town of Carona, still, dark, asleep.
Hours later when she awakens, the storm has passed, but she can still hear something outside in the yard. The swing. She recognizes the squealing and groaning sound. Someone must be out there, she thinks. She climbs down from the bunk bed and crosses the hallway into her parents’ empty bedroom. The clouds have thinned and themoon casts its light into the room. Through the wet glass Amy watches the stirring of the shade tree’s branches, uncertain arms flinging about this way and that. An erratic dance, an attempt to ward off the wind and the sound of the rope swing as it moves back and forth with its invisible rider.
3
he following day Margaret stands in front of her brother Reginald’s hardware store and watches as her children prepare to leave for the Lutheran Sunday School picnic in the city. Her children, Elsa Miller, and the oldest Miller woman, Esther, cluster about waiting for old Josh to finish packing the trunk of his car. Josh Miller agreed to drive them the forty-five miles to the city and then to return later on in the day to pick them up. He gestures to Mel to hand him the school bag but Mel declines, indicating that he wants to keep the bag with him. A sign above their heads reads MILLER ’ S TELEVISION AND RADIO . The sign is hand-painted with blue and white letters and streaming across it is a trail of egg yolk, hardened now to a glossy shine.
Josh had inspected the vandalized sign earlier and then shrugged in resignation. “Will have to chisel the darn stuff off,” Josh told the older woman. He’s related to the two women and Elsa. A cousin or second cousin, it was rumoured, and that he was responsible for their immigration to Canada. Recently he’d purchased the property across from the hardware store. An investment, he said, for thefuture of his new family. Carona was a better place to raise a family than most, he said, and so he bought the boarded-up wood-frame building which had once been a cafe. The remains of the previous business can still be seen in the counter and stools, which Josh prefers to leave intact because he says he wants people to take their time when they shop at his place, take a load off, and have a cup of something and a chat before they shop. He opened up the front of the building, installed two display windows, and lined up in front of them are television consoles, picture-tubes flickering night and day. The children of Carona whose parents are less fortunate, whose rooftops don’t sprout the required spire, park their bicycles in front of Miller’s Television and Radio and watch. Taped to Josh’s window is a faded newspaper
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