An Orphanage of Dreams Read online

  Sometimes, when a page strikes me as exceptionally poignant or amusing, I mark it very lightly with an X, just enough to show that the author, to wit myself, regards it as finished, and then I place it in such a way that someone, meaning some stranger, not Molly anymore, is likely to come across it. I place it, for example, on a park bench and, if the day is breezy, anchor it with a little stone, and then I hop off a ways and hide. Most of the ones who come to sit on the bench don’t seem to notice the paper, or they sweep it to the ground with a careless gesture in order to sit in the place where it was, or they carry it over to a trash bin. But now and then it has happened that one of them takes it up and reads, and even turns the page over to see the other side, and on those occasions I have waited until he or she, more often she, gets up to leave, and then I run ahead for a little ways and turn and walk back to meet her, and I peer into her face as we cross, looking, I suppose, for a lingering trace of what she might have felt while she was reading, some small mark of sympathy, a tiny flutter of lips or eyes expressive of a fellow feeling that I like to think of as the faint dawning of love. But the result is always the same, her expression is inscrutable, and after we pass, I going one way and she the other, I feel more dejected than ever, and I regret having let my hopes get the best of me. I sometimes can’t stop myself from imagining a young woman, someone of the age Molly was, finding the page and being moved to tears, and then I want to kick myself for a fool. A few times, from my hiding place in the bushes or behind a tree, I have watched people carry a page away, in a pocket once, and at another time in a purse, but whether it was because of the things I had written on it or because of a reluctance to litter I couldn’t tell.

  I have tried many times to throw away the notebook and the pencil and the sharpener with them, to be free of them for good, but I have never been able to carry it through. I have tossed them into bushes, hurled them over a wall, buried them in leaves, and walked away, and kept on walking for miles before turning back, strolling back slowly at first, then running, overcome with panic, terrified that someone has made off with them in my absence. But they are always there, just where I threw them, of interest to no one. I pick them up and put them back in their places, notebook and pencil in the left shirt pocket, sharpener in the right, and I make a promise to myself never to be parted from them again.

  The Adventures of Kiffler Wainscott

  1. Kiffler Fails to Fly

  Today Kiffler is learning to fly.

  He has developed a technique.

  He does it in the kitchen first for his family.

  Fists in armpits,

  he flaps the mighty stubs.

  Wugh wugh wugh

  The sound of wingbeats

  strums the air.

  Once around the room,

  he soars above the refrigerator.

  Kiffler is flying the Hump.

  He is sailing above it all.

  The kitchen,

  his family,

  his life

  shrink.

  They are the size of fleas.

  Now he is going to do a barrel roll.

  (Impressive, but irrelevant.)

  He is just fluttering up there to avoid his

  responsibilities.

  He crumples once more upon a chair.

  “You don’t have anything it takes,”

  observes Thelma.

  Does she mean wings?

  From Molly’s box of Jungle Crunch

  a tiger recommends that Kiffler crunch life.

  He would, he would.

  “I leap up to my God, who pulls me down?”

  said Dr. Faustus in that play.

  And who is Dr. Kiffler leaping up to?

  Nobody.

  Then what drags him down?

  His heavy heart.

  2. Kiffler Sets to Work

  Six long weeks he strove to cut it.

  Thirty mornings at the awful hour

  Kiffler stood panting at the door.

  “Climb aboard,” they said.

  He climbed aboard. He hauled,

  he hammered.

  They called him Kiff.

  His heart warmed.

  Six weeks he did it.

  At the end of each

  lay money. Kiffler

  was bringing home the bacon.

  That was on the surface.

  Elsewhere,

  upon a barren piece of windblown prairie,

  Kiffler was recoiling.

  From ladder tops he surveyed

  the passages of clouds.

  Under houses in the cool

  he contemplated joists.

  He was happy there.

  The word deadbeat fluttered in the air.

  It lit on Kiffler’s head,

  and stayed.

  He let his mind drift.

  Day by day the name Kiffler

  grew synonymous with slacker.

  Six weeks he strove to cut it.

  To what avail?

  Down the street by Jimmy’s Bar and Grill

  lies the answer.

  That rakish figure of springing step

  is Kiffler fired.

  Home again, he creeps

  into the warm, familiar lair.

  He wags.

  With Thelma, though, that does not cut it.

  “I put up with shit,” she says.

  “Why can’t you put up with shit?”

  Why can’t Kiffler put up with shit?

  A flaw within.

  3. Kiffler Takes a Walk

  The young ones are everywhere. They are

  falling from the trees. They are leaping

  from rooftops.

  They are not doing anything. They do it

  passionately.

  The park is full of them.

  Overhead the vastness reverberates.

  A huge orb is loose in space.

  Someone has let Spring out

  and the dogs are at it.

  Alarmed, Kiffler roams.

  Tiny leaves on the willows.

  Tulips and daffodils.

  Gnats vibrate in columns.

  A mallard, green aglitter,

  pursues a drab wife,

  all dignity undone by the waddle.

  See Kiffler smile.

  His teeth are quite yellow now.

  At the lake’s rim he sits,

  knees drawn up to his chin.

  (The body hinges,

  the mind unhinges.)

  He read this morning,

  “Poet Allen Ginsberg Dead.”

  That news is now writ large

  in Kiffler’s head.

  Once, hunkered in Asia

  Kiffler heard a temple

  gong so loud the whiskey

  frolicked in his glass.

  Now he looks to windward.

  From across the lake

  toward him and toward him

  tiny ripples race.

  If tomorrow Kiffler

  woke up as a duck

  that would be all right with him.

  4. Kiffler Takes a Sort of Stand

  Beached upon a sofa, mighty Kiffler rests.

  His eyes are shuttered against a sea of troubles

  even as trouble creeps upon him.

  Into a quiet-breathing nostril

  Molly jabs a note from school.

  Kiffler unfolds, and reads.

  Molly has (it is written there)

  refused to pledge allegiance to the flag.

  She has alleged “parental strictures.”

  She has quoted Kiffler to the class:

  “You will not kiss their fucking rag.”

  Here Kiffler beams.

  She has his vent verbatim.

  Though he knows it’s a skirmish only

  (a footnote merely)

  in the Kiffler Wars,

  he swells with pride.

  Propelled by wrath

  he hauls himself erect.

  Up from the well of resentment
/>   he lifts a bucketful

  and spews a bilious stream

  down on Molly’s hapless dome:

  the misery of his schooldays.

  the shame of his nation.

  the stupidity of power.

  the fragility of justice …

  thoughtless thoughtless

  Here Molly weeps

  and Kiffler tumbles back.

  —

  Time tumbles forward,

  carves Kiffler a narrow space

  in which to rue and mend.

  With ice cream in cones

  and her small hand in his,

  father and daughter amble now

  beneath the flowering trees.

  Cunning Kiffler

  has made his escape again.

  He bears the cone before him like a torch.

  —

  He’s back where he belongs at last.

  He never should have left.

  He has his feet on the dog again.

  His eyes are closed.

  He is waiting for Armageddon

  to be announced on the news.

  He can hear Thelma singing in the kitchen.

  The days are very long.

  After a while, he rolls a joint

  and wanders out to the yard.

  He stands among the things of April,

  the tiny leaves that swarm the ash,

  sudsy clouds bouncing in the sky,

  daffodils, of course.

  He takes a long toke,

  coughs once, and pledges.

  5. Kiffler’s Nice Day

  A nice day again.

  Sun-speckled sidewalks,

  flowers, and so forth.

  Kiffler can’t get over it.

  An amazing coincidence

  himself and the world

  here together.

  Amazing just to shirk. If he had anything

  to shirk from. Or off.

  There’s an itchy buzzing

  sort of bounce to the atmosphere.

  Kiffler takes Vachel to scope it out.

  A slow turn around the neighborhood

  and then amble on to the park,

  and the lake, and ducks probably.

  People have planted all sorts of flowers

  between the house fronts and the sidewalk.

  Thelma does that. Kiffler himself would not,

  though he is grateful.

  He doesn’t know even the names of many.

  Zinnias, roses. But what are those

  yellow spotted ones

  like tiny shoes hanging from strings?

  Vachel meets others of his kind

  on the way. He wags and means it.

  And Kiffler meets others of his.

  Does he wag? He does.

  The doggy virtues do not elude him.

  He bobs and nods.

  He flashes a ragged grin.

  That is just Kiffler being devious.

  The sign says

  NO DOGS ALLOWED IN THIS PARK.

  But there goes Kiffler.

  He’s walking Vachel right past it.

  At the leafy shore, eager

  paddlers gather round.

  They know their man.

  Deliberately adjacent a sign that says, in effect,

  DON’T FEED THE FUCKING DUCKS, KIFFLER,

  scofflaw Kiffler tosses bread.

  Minor crime is Kiffler’s crutch.

  Leaning on it he hobbles home

  with head held high, high-domed

  forehead slicing the soft air,

  a man of backbone and gall,

  unlulled by weather.

  6. A Laborious Story

  This is Kiffler as a large, fat beaver.

  Fat, flat tail. Nice sturdy teeth. Incredible house.

  Underwater entrance and other defenses.

  Nice airy rooms. Roof deck with retractable awning.

  Never a wasted moment, that’s Kiffler.

  Works hard. Strong as a mule. Never touches sugar.

  Here he is singing “Down at the Pond”

  while stripping off some fresh bark for the winter.

  “There’s no such thing as too soon,”

  he likes to say. “And the busy bee has no sorrow.”

  Naturally, the other good-for-nothing beavers don’t like him much.

  They spend a lot of time just lying around chewing twigs and sunning themselves

  and they don’t feel good about it.

  So they organize a meeting to throw Kiffler out.

  They accuse him of being an Eager Beaver.

  “Yeah, I’d call him that.”

  “Some kind of militant self-starter probably.”

  “Well, I did peek inside his lodge once, and lemme tell ya, it was neat as a pin.”

  “With him it’s always go go go. I say, when’s it gonna stop?”

  He hasn’t a chance. The case

  is stacked against him from the outset.

  They are out for Kiffler’s pelt.

  When his turn comes, he stands to speak.

  He invokes the Beaver Way.

  Industry. Self-reliance. The ideals

  of the bluff plain dealer.

  The sturdy yeomanry of yore.

  He goes on, and on. His speech is extremely boring.

  They drive him out with sticks.

  Now here he is out in the big world.

  It is a thinner, sadder Kiffler,

  scrounging nickels in the street.

  He is selling little wooden carvings of beavers

  and singing “Down at the Pond.”

  He is in constant danger from dogs.

  He has certainly traveled a long way from the old oomph and pizzazz days.

  At night he drags himself home

  to a hovel of planks and tar paper.

  The only light is from a flickering screen.

  Hunched over the keyboard,

  he is composing the story of his life

  and an indictment of his times.

  (Beaver or no beaver, it’s the same old Kiffler.)

  7. Kiffler Has Mechanical Problems

  Here is Kiffler hard at work.

  Today he is an automatic high-velocity envelope-stuffing machine with bulk feeder.

  He is amazingly efficient.

  He is making up for gazillions of hours he has twiddled away.

  He likes being a machine.

  Effortless labor. Respect.

  Buoyed by the warm chatter of office girls

  he is humming along.

  Envelopes are piling up.

  Thanks to Kiffler thousands of deserving Americans

  will have a shot at a free lawn tractor.

  Just mail back the coupon.

  Who does he think he’s kidding?

  Already he is losing his concentration,

  he is drifting into orbit.

  He is orbiting 1978.

  Uh oh. Something’s not right.

  Looks like a paper jam.

  Here comes Janine to the rescue.

  What a babe. She is fooling around inside

  his very delicate mechanism

  (long red nails like talons).

  Hey, girl, not so rough.

  Kiffler grabs, holds on.

  Her shrieks merely excite him.

  Oops! There goes the fabric.

  “You’ve done it this time.

  Out you go, buddy.”

  Here is Kiffler being unceremoniously tossed.

  He lies in the alley on his side.

  He breathes. He hears the unpleasant

  clatter of some loose parts.

  He rolls over, studies how blue the sky.

  Soon the bars will open.

  Hands in pockets, he strolls to one.

  “Hey, Kiffy, what’s up, man?”

  Sly Mona Lisa smile.

  He must be hatching another goofy idea.

  When Kiffler was younger

  he was troubled by the meaning of li
fe.

  He felt there ought to be one.

  He has gotten used to things as they are.

  If one day they start to make sense

  he will be completely bewildered.

  8. Kiffler Tries to Sleep It Off

  Kiffler is back on the sofa.

  What a deadbeat.

  Kiffler Bonaparte

  is retreating from something bigger than Russia.

  He does it with his eyes closed.

  Outside lurks the work world.

  (One more thing to be baffled by.)

  It’s a busy business out there,

  he thinks, even the birds sound busy,

  and Kiffler Doolittle hears it all.

  He does not want to.

  He turns, snuffling, to snout the pillow.

  Deep in feathered folds he grubs for sleep.

  Eyes shut tight, it is dark in Kiffler’s head,

  but sounds leak in.

  From high in some leafy top

  a small bright bird is shouting

   phoo-ee phoo-ee phoo-ee.

  He wishes he had earlids.

  It’s a busy, busy world

  and Kiffler Bumstead is tired of listening to it.

  He is tired of traffic and the busy buzz of people going places

  in cars,

  subways,

  buses,

  planes.

  He hates business

  and business people

  and the phrase travel allowance.

  He hates the words busy and buzz.

  He hates the reliable, industrious

  steps of the mailman

  and the racket made by the painters across the street

  ratcheting their eternal ladders up and down.

  Their names are Ken and Laura.

  Kiffler knows.

  When they first started

  he strolled over to find out.

  Ken, Laura, and yellow.

  Ken, thin and balding,

  Laura, short and pudgy.

  Laura does not actually paint.

  She works as ballast. When Ken

  is up high on the ladder

  Laura sits on the bottom rung

  and keeps him from falling.

  All day she sits, eating potato chips

  and smoking. That’s her job

  and she’s good at it.

  Kiffler thinks of slim Thelma

  sitting on the bottom rung of his ladder.

  She has kept him from falling

  all these years.

  But what is he doing up there anyway?

  He ponders. His shield is down.

  Wormish thoughts, tentacled and fanged,