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5. WORDS
If I had words to make a day for you,
I'd sing you a morning golden and true,
I would make this day last for all time,
Then fill the night deep in moonshine.
Joe Dawson stumbled forward through the debris field where his bar (and board) had been. The combined combustions of liquor and wood and masonry filled the air with acrid accusations, taunting little tendrils of ghost smoke and bitterness. The old Watcher was not so easily undone. He had, after all, survived his own utter destruction in a jungle many worlds and years away from this place. Perhaps not in the way that the Immortals transcended death, but if not resurrected, then surely he was persistently, and stubbornly, not-dead.
It was all so patently absurd: the fluttering "Police Line--Keep Out" yellow banners just outside the door, the strafe and scorch that reached up in dark shadows all the way to the second floor walkway, the gemstone sparkles of all the colored bottles scattered over the floor as of they were waiting for a Master Glazier to come and set them in some monumental work of art.
For no earthly reason, the light over the bar still burned, though everywhere else, the wires were twisted and melted and split all to hell. The lift to the second level was tilted and settled in its well, the cage of its door warped and stuck halfway open. He wouldn't be upstairs anytime soon to see what was left of all he could call home.
The oddest thing was the silence. There had been so much noise. Not just the explosion--which he had felt more than heard--but all that came after: the sirens, the gibbering reporters, the barking FB of I, the howling rush of all those gallons, charging from the arm-wide hoses to make a sopping mess of all that could be saved from the fire. It had seemed the whole building screamed as the metal heated and cooled and torqued in its extremity. Still, he was glad to have escaped all that white, solicitous hospital bunch, happy to leave the watch over Broden to the others while he came back to whatever was left here.
The field after battle, like the town after the tornado, like the remains of this place, had a vast collection of tiny survivals--all unexpected--and a larger array of devastation, too enormous to be catalogued yet into their particular tragedies and meanings.
Joe Dawson knew the way of this. You just surrendered, just let it enter, unannounced, and sorted later, mourned later, cried later. He tried to think of himself somewhere in the future, a year or so down the road, looking back on this time with only a dim collection of regrets.
Not yet dawn, he thought, wondering if the sun would rise this morning, or whether it would repeat the 'Couver grey dull clouds of the past few days. And if the sun rose, would all this be only the worse for it?
Oh, this would never do, Joe thought. I'm so rattled by this, I'm hearing things.
No, there it was again. No doubt about it.
Dawson moved a shattered piece of chair out of his way with his cane and tottered towards the hole in the wall where the heavy steel door had blown off its hinges. He peered through the dark and the rising steam into the sloshy alleyway beyond the police barricade markers. He couldn't see anyone, but the humming was getting louder and there was no mistaking it.
Someone was humming Saint-Saens' Third Symphony in this godforsaken, fish-stinking alley. Something about it incensed the Watcher and brought burning tears to his pale eyes. His own songs had gone up in smoke and who knew when, or if, he would sing here again.
If I had words to make a day for you,
Wonderful, the baritone bastard knew the words. His voice wasn't bad either.
I'd sing you a morning golden and true,
Dawson squinted. Oh, there he was, at the end of the alley and coming this way. Jesus! Couldn't the looters even wait until the ashes were cold? Joe thought, feeling much like the captain of a beached vessel, daring the pirates to board and taste his steel.
I would make this day last for all time,
Wait a minute...
Then fill the night deep in moonshine.
As the man came into focus, Joe almost went out to meet him, but he held back as Adam went into a purely crazy dance, leaping higher and higher, tossing up a large, dark object, catching it again, and then repeating the whole process, all to the Third Symphony.
Odder than the dance, though, was how the Eldest Immortal sang the stirring, hopeful tune in a way that made it seem like a dirge, and the dance as if he were going several rounds with God Himself.
Finally, the whole thing wound down to stillness and silence, and Joe called out cautiously, "Adam?"
"Hullo, Watcha," Adam's slim frame wreathed round with wispy smoke. Three sheets to the proverbial wind, still he stood there solid as a steel pylon. "Here ya go." His long arm lifted toward the Watcher and handed over the dear tan bear.
"But I told Broden," Dawson protested, but he took Pooh back anyway, "I said that Pooh could go with her."
Adam bowed his head and strode past the Watcher into what was left of the bar, bending down to retrieve the Joe's neon sign, on his way in.
"Adam!" Joe didn't like his generosity to be short-circuited so heartlessly. Broden would be afraid in the hospital. He had left Pooh there to comfort her. She had seemed so small and hurt, all sooty and bandaged with the green plastic mask and the IV lines. "Adam!" he roared again, following the drunken Immortal into the strafed bar.
"You don't have to shout, Uncle," Adam found an undamaged chair in the wreckage and proceeded to pour his long, limber frame over it. "I heard you. I heard you.
"Master Pooh is a Bear of Great Abilities and many interesting expotitions, but he cannot go with Broken where she is bound, any more than he could follow Robin when he finally departed from Gil's Lap."
"Broken?"
"Her name," Adam answered, getting up and strolling around the bar top with its bubbled and crackled surface to search for a bottle that was still intact. "She just couldn't say k's very well."
It took a few more moments for Joe's heart to allow his understanding of the thing he already knew. "She's dead."
Adam swept the shards aside with his right arm and plopped a surviving bottle of Jameson's on the bar top. "Yeah," he said with uncharacteristic simplicity. "Can't find any glasses," he shrugged as Joe joined him at the bar.
They took turns emptying the bottle and wiping their lips on the sleeves of their coats.
The bottle was dry and Adam on his hands and knees behind the bar, looking for another, before Joe thought to ask about the Third Symphony.
"Pig," Adam mumbled, considering the creme de menthe and then rejecting it, no matter it was whole.
"Excuse me?" Joe started trying to estimate just how much he had consumed and how fast and what that worked out to in the exactly-how-drunk-am-I equation.
"At the hospital," Adam elbowed back up to the bar with an intact bottle with no label but a promising amber liquid within. He offered it to Joe. "They showed Babe in the peds ward last week and Broken asked me to sing her the song that Hogget sang to Babe, the one that made him feel all better. So I did.
"I surely did--," the Eldest Immortal grabbed the bottle back and took a very long drink. His mouth opened wide and it looked for a moment as if he might proceed to breathe fire. "Holy Zeus! What is this shit!"
"Does it matter?" the Watcher's tender blue eyes fixed so suddenly on the Immortal that Adam broke down in great, gulping sobs, his head over his arms, his elbows grinding into the glass pieces that littered the bar top.
Joe leaned over and laid the side of his face against Adam's shoulder, reaching his arms out over the deceptively muscular leaness of the Eldest Immortal's long back. "My fault," he confessed softly, "All my fault.
"Except for me," the Watcher paused, suddenly reminded of what they had said at Adam's funeral. "Except for me and my unpardonable pride, Broden would still be alive."
Adam took a deep breath and raised his head.
Dawson pulled back.
"You didn't tell the police this?" Adam peered at the Watcher as if he had never seen him before.
"I don't know," Joe shook his head, "I guess I just thought--well, that it would be easier--"
"To let them think this was a terrorist attack? My God, Joe, it's all over the news! They're looking for some poor semitic type to blame this on! You have to tell them the truth!" Adam paused. "By the way, what is the truth?"
"Help me clean this place up and I'll tell you," Dawson bartered. He reasoned they needed to work off all that booze, and besides, he just couldn't bear standing around doing nothing but feeling guilty and sad and just generally miserable.
So, with Adam's strong back and anxious energy and Joe's superb direction, they managed to move most of the mess out into the alley while the Watcher related the story about the shiny suits and his new longer legs.
"Well," Adam dusted his hands on his jeans and surveyed their work. It wasn't exactly ship shape--they'd stopped short of trotting out the bucket and warm suds and scrub brushes. The soot remained. The front door was only wired tentatively and the old pipe in the back had been blown clean in two and was pouring a fountain of god-knew-what all over the floor in front of where the bandstand used to be, before it was kindling.
They would have to call in a plumber. They would have to call a construction type in for an estimate--and an electrician--and a painter. They hadn't even been upstairs yet. The stair grates were unsafe and who knew what kind of person saw to ailing elevators?
"Sun's up," Adam commented. "Time to wake the clan chieftan."
"What," Joe looked up from stacking what was left of his Tinha collection--sadly, not much, and none of it in the original mint condition.
"You heard me," Adam retrieved a bar rag and started cleaning up the neon sign, wondering if they could just heat it again and bring it back to true, or whether a new sign should be added to the list. "We could at least send Hiz Honor out for breakfast. Least he could do, seeing he's slept through all this work."
Dawson took off his glasses and stared at the Immortal. "What are you going on about?"
"Duncan," Adam answered, "You know, that MacLeod fellow. Moody bloke, but on the whole, good-hearted."
"Huh?"
"No one would blame you, Watcher Dawson. I mean, two explosions in one evening. Enough to addle anyone's brain a bit."
"Adam!" Dawson dug his fingers into his tired eyes. "Two?"
"I knew you were knocked out," Adam smirked. "Mister oh-no-doc-I-never-lost-consciousness. You didn't even hear the second explosion. Come over to the light and let me check your pupil reflexes."
"I got your pupil reflexes right here," Joe growled. "What is your excuse for brain lapse?"
It was Adam's turn to go, "Huh?"
"Did you just forget you left Duncan at the hospital?" Dawson asked.
"He wasn't at the hospital," Adam said, diving for his coat.
"Well he didn't come back here," Joe countered.
Adam came up with his magnificent Ivanhoe and stalked towards the door to Joe's office. Despite its proximity to "ground zero," this simple wooden door was still sitting in its frame, hinges intact. Adam flattened against the wall and then kicked the door open, charging in with his sword above his right shoulder.
Joe had meanwhile found the hand piece he stashed behind the bar. The next thing he heard was Adam kicking open the outer door. Then he saw a wash of morning sunlight pouring through from the side alley. "All right," he heard the Eldest Immortal say, "I know you're in here someplace. Show yourself!"
Joe heard him repeat this out in the alley, but no fight ensued and the Immortal returned shaking his head. As soon as he reentered the bar, though, he lifted his sword. "Damnation! You cannot hide!"
"Adam, Adam," Dawson called out. "There is no one here but you and me."
The long frame slumped back against the old pipe and he hit it with the pommel of his sword, in frustration.
The pipe moaned.
Adam jumped away and Joe leveled his gun.
The Immortal leaned down to look under the pipe...nothing.
Then a hand spilled out of the gaping pipe end and a small voice whimpered, "Meefos?"
The Ivanhoe clattered to the floor, unheeded, as Adam dove around and reached deep into the foul pipe. "Angel," he called softly.
previous home to be continued...
The characters/images/text from various Winnie-the-Pooh books are copyright by one or more of the following: Dutton Children's Books, Disney, and Trustees of the Pooh Properties. The original characters were created/illustrated by A. A. Milne and Ernest H. Shepard. This site is not connected to, or endorsed by Dutton Children's Books, Disney, or Trustees of the Pooh Properties. This is a not-for-profit parody of these works.
