Thu, 19 May 2005

Echo
When I was eight, David(2)’s sister fell into a well, out in the section of North Playground set up with fairy-tale concrete structures, giant pumpkins and mushrooms and gingerbread houses. The well was not deep and the snowfall made the landing even softer than usual, but she couldn’t get out of the well alone. David(2) ran from house to house, gathering up all his friends, assembling a tactical strike team to solve the problem at hand. We ransacked garages for ropes and flashlights and tools (for some inexplicable purpose; I remember grabbing a pair of hammers in case we had to dismantle the well) and we returned to the park, an incredibly conspicuous mob of prepubescent handymen, where we circled the well and schemed. David(2)’s sister, whose name was (still is, actually) Rose, called up to us, not so much scared as delighted to be the focus of so much attention. We attempted to rig a pulley-system with ropes and branches we found on the other side of the park and a three-boy anchor team but ended up knotting the rope around the frame of the well-covering. This led to a series of arguments which, in turn, led to the breakdown of the rescue party over cries of sabotage and willful incompetence. After boy after boy stormed off in a melodramatic huff, we eventually paired down to Rose, David(2) and myself, who had been telling Rose a series of raunchy jokes (which I will not sully this story by repeating here) to keep her already fairly buoyant spirits up. David(2) ran off to tell his elder brother Stephen of their sister’s predicament while Rose and I talked at length, her voice filled with an echo from the concrete and the cold-clear winter air, and for the first time ever her and I talked in a different way than before, Rose no longer being David(2)’s sister to me but something stranger, The Girl In The Well.

I saw David(2) not long ago. I asked him about Rose and he smiled some, knowing (as everyone did, I discovered after the fact) of my half-baked hopes for what he’d refer to as “thingieness”. Rose still lives in town; she’s getting an interdisciplinary bachelors in folklore, she’s sharing a duplex with two girls I vaguely know across the street from the yellow ghetto. And sometimes, apparently, she goes to North Playground and climbs down into the well, now tall and experienced enough to extricate herself at her leisure, and there she stares up into the sky and sings to herself.

At least that’s how David(2) explains it.
(12:07.05.19.2005) [/alpha] #