THE CROSS OF FROWNS

Blindman smells smoke. It comes burrowing filament upon filament into his sleep-thickened brain. Straight up he shoots. Erect to danger. Hairs standing out on his scoliotic back. That sets the steel springs to vibrating and Lew, sandwiched between Adolph and Blindman, comes to life with a start. "Fire!" quakes Blindman.

Lew's nose is not designed to select out subtleties from a world so rotten with stinks, but due to Blindman' s panicky quavering and the whip of sirens right outside the window, she gives the world a look. A dirty black cloud blosoms on the otherside of the cobblestone court. Behind the winterberry bush, directly in Lew's line of sight, licks a single tongue of flame. It's coming from Adolph's subteranean cavern and all ready a crowd is gathering around a crew of dismounting firemen, pulling their flaccid hose up to the smouldering edifice, ready to send a jet of cool-blue city water into the smashed basement window. "Wake up! Your apartment's on fire!" she shouts.

Adolph doesn't budge. He's curled in a tight ball. The woman from St. Lionel pops into his dreams. And in the most unlikely place too. The bell tower. He's cleaning the dead birds out of the little slots that guide the ropes of the celestial chimes down to the box where the bell ringer stands. It won't do for such an exalted personage as old Paul, the bell ringer, to be showered with dead birds in the midst of this holy of holy tasks. The calling together of the community of Christ. The good brethren of the Church of St. Lionel, in their munificent wisdom, are poisoning the birds to prevent them from building nests in the bells. Now mottled corpses lie strewn in every crack and crevice of the belfry. And, as if these minute deaths do not care to go unnoticed, one Sunday when Paul pulls the thick hemp ropes, a dozen withered birds rain from above. Most embarrassing. The Diocese office, in order to prevent a reoccurrence of this debacle, sends Adolph to the tower with a broom and a box. He's bent over in the dark, jamming the handle of the broom into the rope-slots and watching the birds fall to earth on the floor of the sanctuary.

This time the woman from St. Lionel asks him what he wants. What does he want? Bars of light from the slots illumine her knees and feet and a dark shadow yawns from between them. What does he want? She perches on a great hewn beam, waiting for Adolph to choose. From further up in the belfry, through the newly installed grates, daylight streams like the wing-bones of a bird. A delicate pattern of tiny pin-points plays behind the woman in gentle waves. What does he want? "Would you like me naked?"

Yes, he thinks he would. He can hear the rustle of cloth. The clunk, clunk of shoes. The effort when the nylons are peeled from the legs. An arm --- then a breast catches in a bar of light. Again she rests against her beam-perch. The same bands of light from the rope-slots, the knees, the feet, the yawning shadow. "Now what?" she asks.

It's his choice. She has never given him a choice before. Usually, she sets the pace, dictates the terms. Not that he cares. It's enough that she melts the bars of his solitary cage. Looses him into the moment of careless flesh. Her pulse sounds almost cause the bell to ring with sympathetic vibrations. What does he want? Suddenly, he knows. To curl into the room of eternal sleep deeper and deeper. And, as he feels himself against the backwall, pressed tightly between her muscular thighs, the flow of him washing her insides clean and pure as that very first dawn before the madness of memory, Lew drags him from the bed onto the hardwood floor.

It's a horrible, mind-wrenching shock to be pulled back from sleeps slathery tomb just as his ego is about to explode into a million tiny glow worms. He has heard the chorus of angels. Now the hardwood floor and his distended scrotum, not to mention Lew's metallic shrieks, greet his return to the world of nails and cross.

Dressing with Chaplin-like stiffness, Adolph gets both feet in one trouser leg and hops about the room comically. Then he gets the legs right only to be fouled by his shoelaces. Lew slips a cotton housedress over her monkey-jade earrings. Blindman, who always sleeps fully clothed, is all ready waiting in the street. Adolph moans. "Everything's in there!"

He can hear the crackle of his dust-popped things' crying out their autumnal hiss. Not that Adolph is obsessed by material possessions. His is a simple, almost monastic life style. But objects, by the sheer persistence of their form over time, begin to take on an otherness, a symbolic deep-rootedness, held inextricably in place by the very human need for a safe anchorage against the ever shifting current.

Adolph's writing desk for instance. A raw loblolly pine with its otherwise pale surface stained in black shadows of human sediment. A coat of grease, darker where the elbow or naked forearm takes its repose, darker still where the head rests in its hurclean effort to keep unmuddled the train of thought. Deep brown to black cigarette burns. Scars of tan. Cup-rings. A washboard of fleshly gouges, ranging from grey-yellow to grey-blue. And carved artfully when time is too long, three queerly shaped butterflys with their names in tedious script, etched below as if copied from the encyclopedia. Painted Lady. Grey Hairstreak. Wood Nymph. A simple desk with its only ornamentation, two curiously deformed tau crosses set in wooden panels on either side of the rectangular space where you put your legs. It's not the normal horizontal bar resting on a vertical column like a T nor the upright oval of the cross of life, CRUX ANSATA, but instead the arms of the T dangle weary-winged as if the weight of continued makings and breakings have warped their eternal countenance. The Cross of Frowns. Now it burns with Adolph's papers, notes, letters and the poems that have been his plugs into the bipolar electric world, his rubbings of that juice of life, hoary now with weedy banality.

Blindman fidgets. His nerve-net is in need of extinguishing. As Lew and Adolph watch the dense black smoke curl out of the jagged angles of broken glass, Blindman circumnabulates the tiny throng jabbering hysterically like some hebed-out schizoid. All, including the firemen, are waiting for the limp canvas hose to get a bone-on for what seems like a medium eternity. Not a dribble. They work and they crank at the hydrant, first one, then two, with a third shouting directions from his position at the nozzle, but the hydrant is not about to give them what they want.

Everyone is getting real edgy. Especially the desiccoid trio. Lew is tap-city for a drugman to replace Hanrahan. She's reduced to buying loopers for top dollar and doing liberal doses of Valerian tea, they get from Gasperowitz the herbalist chiropractor. Blindman is getting a little scary. Lew can't get a grip on the slippery lizard critter. He's sluicing in and out of the nervous crowd who by now are giving him a very wide birth. Adolph is thinking. Maybe he isn't the guy that wrote poetry all those years. Maybe that guy is still in there, sitting at his desk with the flames leaping up.

Lots of times Adolph feels split. He thinks about writing until the flow of the pen starts wetting the sheets of paper and then it's like another self slips into his seat. A self with its own lingua, a strange self bereft of the need to sleep or eat, a self that can not penetrate the cloak of drugs or booze, a shy self who fears the world, who hides from even the most gentle company. There are moments when the pen is held in this shadowy other hand and it sings along the page without Adolph's consciousness giving it any kind of direction. It seems like this other self switches him off. And, instead of the big-bright-light-bulb charging his finger muscles with current, he is surrounded by seracious, capillary-like threads. They start in the grooves of space and web about the new world that this other self can conjure with such ease. It is an investiture of mysterious force. The pages fill and fill and after it's all over, he cries. The usurpation perhaps is painful. The ego unused to being covered over. Maybe right now while he watches the firemen trying to get the water to come out of the hose, this otherself is sitting at his desk, wrapped in a cocoon of thread. Adolph concentrates. He wants the writer to run. It's a fire fool! He tries to force his thoughts to travel like radio waves. It's not the sunrising. It's fire! Maybe the otherself doesn't know about fire.

Adolph suppresses his tears for fear, that undamned, he will be reduced to a seizure of uncontrollable sobbing. That's when he thinks about it. It blows him cold. An arrow of ice in the heart. His past is about to collapse. The thread is going to snap. "My baseball card collection's in there!" he screams as if screaming can secure the line. "Oh God! My Cards!"

In a useless, but dramatic gesture, Adolph grabs a fireman by his stiff yellow slicker. The big guy shakes him off and continues wrenching the hydrant. Balls pulled tightly in, Adolph snaps from the blocks, races by a couple of boys in blue, whisks around the otherside of the building and kicks in the laundry room window.

Lew's at her wits end. Not only has Adolph run off half-cocked, but now Blindman has disappeared too. Someone in the crowd is describing the events immediately preceding the fire. "Yes, I saw the man. No, I couldn't see his face. Tall big, tall man. Threw a chunk of concrete right through the window glass breaking, then this very big kerchunk. Saw it all from up there. Just breezed in about four a.m. Hot date ya know." It's Omar the caretaker doing the talking to a little bit of a lady officer. "Okay dokey," says the cop scribbling a few more notes. "And what was he wearing?" "Too dark to tell. Then he spurted this orange flame and poof!" "Okay dokey. Now --- the tenant's name?"

"He was here a minute ago. Adolph somebody or other. Evil there crouched in the dark. All that falling around in skull blown crapulence. He's on something. Can't even wake him up to collect the rent. Sleeps all day. Little clam of a man. Out all night, sleeps all day. What a way to live! Haven't been able to squeeze a red cent out of him. Falling flat-faced everywhere he goes. You pound his door to a pulp and not a word. Getting his just deserts, if you ask me. A man's got to take care of business, not sleep while the world works. Lazy bum says he's a poet. Girls work! Not work for a man. A man's got to work or he ain't no good. He was just here a minute ago."

Okay-Dokey keeps adjusting her stance while she listens to Omar. Shift change in an hour. Then it'll be home, soak her feet, a salad with hard-boiled eggs and Albert's strong hands. But back to business. "Okay dokey --- now, did this man, you saw, leave in a car? Or what?"

"No. Just ran thataway and disappeared. You should see this guy's apartment. How can a guy live like that? Bathtub full of dirty rags. Never takes his crap out to the cans. You know he's got a cardboard refrigerator crate full of dead soldiers?" Okay-Dokey looks puzzled. "You know, likker bottles. Whadda pit. You could grow mushrooms in his shit and he'd never know the difference." "Okay dokey. Do you see this Mr. Adolph now?"

"He was here a minute ago, screaming like a banshee. Probably took a leap in a sewer. Let'em snooze in a crock for all I care. A poet! A bum if you ask me!"

Okay-Dokey circulates around the crowd, making anecdotal notes to complete her report to the officer of the watch --- Omar on her tail like he's the welcome-wagon man --- New Hopes unofficial mayor. Okay-Dokey keeps shifting from hip to hip. Her dogs ache like crazy. Omar thinks she's wiggling her ass to get him hot. The gun bobbing up and down doesn't make any difference. "Whatcha doing when you get out of those blues?" asks Omar. "Wanna get a little coffee?"

Okay-Dokey's all business. Brushes Omar off with a polite, "move on!" Who needs this, she's thinking. Omar feels hurt. He's a caretaker with alot of responsibility. What's she think anyway. Eighty-two units he's got. A big responsibility. Lew's trying to get Okay-Dokey's attention to tell her that Adolph disappeared around the building, but Okay-Dokey's thinking about Albert and her dogs and how to get the earth to swallow up all these assholes, starting with Omar.

Suddenly a powerful whooshing sound makes everybody look around at the fireman holding the nozzle part of the hose. It looks like the water is a complete surprise. Nobody is expecting any water. Or maybe, they expected it to piss out in a little yellow thread. But no, the water, when it finally comes, almost knocks the fireman right off his feet. At the same time another fireman pokes his respirator-clad head out of the building. His mug looks like the monster from the Black Lagoon. He's signaling for two stretchers to be brought up for a couple of bozos overcome with smoke. "How'd they get in there, anyway?" hisses one fireman. "Got me!" the other fireman says, wearily shaking his head.

What with the fire and all, Blindman goes off his nut. The swollen, poisonous cul-de-sac at the end of his entrails, that catsclawed thing sour with ooz, pukes a little venom into Blindman's phagocyteless blood. He tries counter-clockwise circles, but the miasmic fester developes darkly into full blown clots of mind hungry cocci. They're after spinal suck, meaty brainstem, half-eaten head cheese.

It's in the sixth year of his life that (Blindman) Gregor Krivisky's sight is blotted out by the fiery vision of his mother's suicide. After tying young Krivisky to a stout tree in the backyard, she gathers up every flammable liquid she can find and gives her life a good soak. Bedding, furniture, rugs, the lot. She does this tenderly, straightening out a doily, brushing off the breakfast crumbs. After all, there are memories.

The couch is a little old, but when she and Burny, Blindman's father, first get hitched, it's brand new. Everything is brand new. The red ford convertible. Burny buys with his army severance pay. The sparkle on the windows. The anticipation she feels, waiting for Burny to come home from work. And he always does too, everyday at precisely 5:15. Dinner can wait. Burney coaxes her to the brand new couch and shags her in broad daylight. Just like they used to out at Peterboro Pond. Everything is brand new in those days. The little garden with those crazy patches of english daisies. The well kept lawn. The cozy neighborhood children coming home from school. Burny is always talking about how good he is at his job, about how much the bosses like him. "I'll be a boss. "Not too long now," he always says. You just wait and see."

Krivisky's ma laughs at this. Burny's so young to be a boss. That makes Burny gloomy so pretty soon she says. "Yup. Not too long now. You just wait and see." They both laugh at that. Big bellyfull laughs. It's easy to laugh with the crazy english daisies and the kissing-good middle-town sounds all around.

Sometimes there's trouble. A fight now and then. A bill that refuses to be paid. A dinner that gets burnt. But they can still laugh and as long as a person can laugh, nothing's too bad on them, even getting a baby. Krivisky's ma has alot of moxy. She never asks for nothing. It's a pride-thing to carry Burny's baby and not complain. Sometimes Burny parks down the block and sneaks into the garden to pick Krivisky's ma a bunch of daisies. Must be twenty different colors of daisies growing in the garden while Krivisky is getting ready to be born. Brandnew. Everything fresh with dew drops. Burny is all tucked up and proud, whistling and grinning like a young fool.

It's a hard birth to be sure. The longest labor on record at County General, but Krivisky's Ma never cries once. Not a squawk. The doctors say its a miracle. The eye of a needle and all. You'd think Burny did all the work himself. He's so proud. Hefting little Krivisky up like he's a football or a bowling trophy. Yup, brandspanking new that.

They make alittle room out of the old pantry off the kitchen so Krivisky's mom won't have to do too much climbing. The doctors cut her up something awful. It's a nice little room with a view of the garden and the celestial trees, all mauve and lavender, wall-papered like the crazy daisies, but that awful ache in the loins never seems to go away and now Krivisky's ma doesn't like it too much when Burny touches her there.

Burny's job is still O.K., but times are tough. His prospects of becoming a boss are diminishing. It's hard to get to be a boss. Real hard. He has to get educated. Maybe take a little night school. Get his G.E.D. He isn't giving up, not Burny, but it's a long-haul with a wife and a kid and no education. Alot of the new bosses are these wet-behind-the-ears college boys like the stupid first lewys in the army. It really bothers Burny to take guff off of these bone-headed rich boys, but still, he knows how to laugh. Him and his buddys at work get alot of mileage out of college boy jokes, like--- how many college boys does it take to change a light bulb? Three. Two to fix the martinis and one to call the electrician. They sure laugh themselves silly thinking about that one. Then there's this new program to pull up some negroes by their boot-straps. Not that Burny is one of those rabid nigger hater types, but it does make it harder for him to get to be a boss. Still, he knows how to laugh. The bosses always say, Burny is a good man what with his whistling and smiling all the time. And when the kid is asleep and Krivisky's mom rubs Burny's shoulders, he likes to say: "someday. You just wait and see. I'll have a big desk to put up my feet and no more back-breaking work either. And I won't smile no more for those assholes. Nosiree!"

Nothing really changes. Not Burny's job or Krivisky's ma's hurt. Things just keep pace, steady and sure like the wend of the river up by the ballpark. Burny can't hack nightschool. It takes all the energy he can muster just to bend his elbow and watch T.V. They live day by day while Krivisky shoots up between them. Some nights Burny doesn't come home at 5:15 like he used to. But that's all right. It simplifies things good. And oneday (nobody can really say why) Krivisky's mom just up and decides to cancel the rest of the program. After Burny leaves for work, she sprinkles the house with lighter fluid and gasoline, turns the oven on without lighting the pilot, climbs the stairs that make her ache so and with the T.V. booming and blinking, she throws a roll of flamming newspaper onto her favorite bent-wood chair. It takes awhile to really get going, but the house is old and dry, not new like it used to be.

Blindman is seeing his house being chewed up by the flames, his wrists sticky with blood from the ropes. He's running down a long tunnel toward the vision coming to life in his head with the candle-power of a thousand suns. It's Krivisky's Mother, half consumed by the fiery plasma, urging him on down the tunnel to where she stands, hovering, motionless, her mouth an open yawn.

When Adolph regains consciousness, he can't believe that he has risked his life for a box of baseball cards. How could he? The echoing regret resounds in his mind. Lewlyn is furious. As soon as Adolph is fully recovered, she is going to strangle him with her bare hands. "Both of you! I'm going to strangle both of you," she says to the two desultory lives lying before her on the emergency room gurneys.

Blindman and Adolph look fine, despite the fact that they smell worse than burnt toast. Blindman's wrists are neatly bandaged. Lew is holding a black garbage bag full of wet baseball cards. There is a kind of new comraderie detectable in the way Adolph and Blindman are interacting. They are the victims, the survivors, of a mutually shared disaster. The battlefield and the enemy are behind them. Foul memories. Their wounds, though not serious, imbue them with a sense of proportional importance in a world that has always given them only reasons to feel small. For both of them, things are resolved, clearer somehow than ever before. The missing parts to the puzzle of their experience, that only Blindman and Adolph are capable of providing, are held tenderly by the two dear comrades as reminders of their alchemical mix. Blindman is a hero. In Adolph's eyes, he stands ten feet tall.

"Why when ole Krivisky there busted through the firedoor at the end of the steam tunnel, I was a goner forsure. The smoke had me in its grips like the jaws of scylla. When I opened the door to my apartment to get my cards, the hall filled up with smoke so

fast I couldn't get it together to retreat. My old buddy there came just in the nick of time. I don't know how you did it' old buddy, but I sure am grateful."

Blindman doesn't know either. He remembers the dream, his mother, the ropes, but finding his way through the old Edison tunnel under the cobblestone court and rescuing Adolph, of this he remembers nothing. Maybe, he can see, he thinks, but vision for him does not register on the conscious level. That's what the doctors said when he was a kid. After his mother's death, he closed his eyes and refused to ever open them again. Hysterical blindness, they called it. Later in artschool, he's something of a wonder, painting the sun in every possible configuration and as blind as a bat too. Krivisky's heroism is a fact of which he is extremely proud and while he is not cognizant of any of the glorious details, he is a hero never the less. He asks Adolph over and over to tell him the story and while Adolph recounts Krivisky's mad dash from the tunnel to pull Adolph to safety, Krivisky virtually glows with pride. The story can not be told to him enough. Better than drugs, he thinks. Better than painting the sun. Better than anything he's ever done in his whole life.

"Tell me one more time Adolph. Please," he begs as he lies back and smiles the serene, heartfelt smile of a man whose destiny is about to unlynch him from the cross of frowns.