The Gray House

“Empty skins,” he answers, busily unspooling his hook on a rope. “They are looking for someone who they think would fill them.”

“I don’t understand!” I cry after him, but he’s already up on the porch, hotly arguing with Red.

He doesn’t hear me.

BLIND

Blind crosses the yard that’s been imbibing the heat all day. The asphalt is warm under his bare soles, and the stubble of the lawn prickles them gently. The grass is thicker under the oak, thicker and softer. He comes up to the tree and allows his hands to enter it. The bark leaves wrinkled indentations on his palms. He climbs slowly, even though he could fly up like a cat. But it’s not his tree. Today he is merely a guest. To the right of the entrance extends a wide corridor, leading to the place where the swing was once attached, until Elephant tore it off with the yelp of “I’m flying!”—and to the left, a narrow passageway that only the thin and small-bodied could use. That branch is cooler to the touch than the others, because they all keep the traces of every ascent and descent, and Blind likes it best. He whistles as he climbs, sending up a warning.

Humpback says hi and rustles the twigs. The greeting is not welcoming, but Blind didn’t expect it to be. Humpback settled up here in the hopes of being left alone, not to entertain guests. But Nanette, rushing through the leafy thickets to meet Blind, is ecstatic. The wings brush his cheek and his shoulder is bestowed with a blob of gelatinous guano. She’s become heavier, and she smells of a fully adult bird now, that is, not exactly nice. While he and Nanette exchange pleasantries, Humpback asks what Blind is doing up in the tree.

“Nothing much, really,” Blind says. “Would you play for me?”

Humpback doesn’t answer.

Nanette flies a little way off, attacks the canopy, sings with abandon, dances above their heads, making noise and pretending she’s three birds at once. Blind wipes off his shirt. His hand becomes sticky.

“Why?” Humpback says.

His voice is different here than in the room. A confident voice, even when he’s speaking softly.

Blind takes a step forward. His face is a frozen mask, his hands bear the traces of the tree’s undulations.

“No reason,” he says, and sits down in the goblet-like junction, the only place here that’s suitable for comfortable sitting.

He always chose that place, preferring it to all others. Anyone sitting here cannot be seen either from the ground or from the windows. This is the very heart of the tree.

Blind sees that Humpback’s seclusion is a burden to him. Being alone is hard when you’re accustomed to living among many, and that which he thought would bring him peace is not helping. The moon shines brightly through the night, and the air is full of tension. Humpback is part of that tension he tried to flee, he brought it with him and placed it in the branches, hoping that the silence and the tree’s vitality could do something to it. Something that he himself couldn’t. Everybody’s the same. Running around trying to hide everything deeper inside, then hiding themselves and their birds. Stepping back, always stepping back and smelling of fear, but keeping up appearances, smiling, joking, quarreling, eating, and procreating. And Humpback is not like them, he’s bad at it, he only gets as far as the very first, overt part of any action, and that makes him even more unhappy.

The mingling aromas of vanilla and unwashed hair. The first of those he carries in a pouch of smoking tobacco around his neck.

They are silent. Humpback searches for the words to say to Blind, Blind waits for him to find them, and then Humpback walks away on a shaky branch, returns, sits down across from Blind, and starts playing. Very softly. It’s almost a lullaby, but the wrong kind, there is no calm in it, no caress. Through its ostentatious tenderness Blind feels the cold breath of Humpback’s loneliness. Blind waits for it to subside, to dissolve as Humpback gets carried away and forgets about his presence, but he never does.

“Happy?”

Blind reaches out.

“May I? I would like you to remember something.”

His hand accepts the flute. It’s not merely warm—it’s hot, like the places on the walls where someone has just written something important. The handprints are always hot, visible to the touch. The flute trembles and meanders in Blind’s hand, the dead wood follows the traces left by the live wood. Blind plays the song he had heard once, the one with the wind, the spiraling leaves, and the boy in the middle of the whirlwind, protected and vulnerable at the same time. Blind plays well, this is not the first time he has played this song. He re-creates all the nuances faithfully, and he can be proud of his performance.

“What was that?” Humpback says.