Catch a Leaf in the Autumn Breeze

…And in the air were silent voices, soft summer sighs, few, there and here and there, from the scattered short flowers lost among the towering weeds. And they dared not shout, or certainly they would be strangled by the creeping vines for their hopes and their longings which were also their despairs. And so they stayed still and silent, pretending to be anything but flowers, until one day from the bitter North they heard a whisper, too low for the tall weeds, too soft for the hard seeds, a whisper that was adventure and magic and breath and life.1

“Catch a leaf in the autumn breeze.”… 2

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On Sunday afternoon, the air shifted from the musk and dry September heat to the sharp, chilled North wind. In a frozen second that whispered and echoed, suddenly, and suddenly gone. It cascaded down from the top of the world like an avalanche, rushed through the houses and the forests, dove into the waters and told them all to breathe; to rustle and speak and to sparkle like jewels, to reveal their biting colors before they died and became silent as ghosts.5

It was the first of October and autumn arrived, joyful and sad.6

In this autumn, in October, in her favorite pair of fading overalls, Laura opened her eyes and found that she was also in a tree. She sat straddling a high branch like some sort of silly bird and twittered in surprise because, unsurprisingly, Laura knew that she wasn’t a bird at all! Through fireplace leaves rustling around her, she heard the wind chuckle in her ear as it chilled her reddening cheeks with a mischievous grin. 7

“Oh, it’s you again,” she whispered back.8

The wind replied by ruffling its hands through her ginger-brown hair and diving up her nose along with a parade of smells. Dirt and spice and sweet rot, the smells of migrating birds and tired critters nestling down for a sleep, orange smells and brown smells and warm and cool and cold all mingled in to one scent that made up the smell of autumn. Breathe it in, breathe it out; it is change. Taste it and Feel it! That is the autumn breeze.9

She tasted and felt it, and it was rising smoke and ash that filled the forest from some grated fire miles away. She closed and opened her eyes. The view from the treetops was different than that of the ground, expected of course, but Laura had never imagined this vast meadow spreading out for miles, free from the snags of that viney, weedy, muck and water place that was the forest floor, forever holding her stuck in one place pleading, frustratingly again, for help. It was a wonderful change, but how?10

Maybe someone had played a joke on her, like the jokes they were always playing at school, except that someone would have had to have been thirty feet tall and even big Brian Benson wasn’t thirty feet tall. And they were always making fun of him too. If Brian wasn’t so mean, he and I might’ve been friends, Laura thought. But when he took her mouse and fed it to that awful snake of his, well, Mouse had been better company than Brian anyhow. She would’ve loved to believe that she had climbed, but, she frowned, her dead, stupid legs couldn’t even dance on the ground, much less in the trees. Mother or Father even had to lift her into bed each night.11

But just wait until Mother and Father see this! 12

She let go of the branch above her and slowly let loose her right fist, which had been clenched tight all this time. In it, she was surprised to see, was a crushed leaf, brown and dead. She did not remember picking up any leaf. It crumbled out of her hand like squeezed-dry dirt. 13

Somewhere, a bird opened its wings and flew.14

Whisper and breathe, shiver, blow. Open eyes and a sleeping sky.15

“Laura, I’m give’n up!” 16

A light-haired boy of three or three-and-a-half feet stood exactly below her, kicking stones and sticks and everything in exasperation. He huffed his breaths to keep back tears, but, such a little boy, they escaped anyway and made watery channels down his muddy face. Quietly blubbering, he sat in the middle of the forest path and made himself a curled up stone, scared. Oh yes, they had been playing hide and seek, Laura remembered, and she sighed at her brother’s youngness. 17

“I’m here!” she called to the boy.18

Her brother looked around wildly at all the millions of leaves up and down and around, but the forest thickly hid Laura until she hollered again. “Here!” And suddenly he was a scurrying squirrel to the base of the tree and then an atomic hound barking frantically up it. 19

“How’d you get up there!” He yapped, spying her. “It’sa million feet! It ain’t no fair to be hiding in trees anyways! Get on down; it’s my turn to hide!” His sentences all ended with a punch, high like an overexcited puppy dog. The forest ducked its head into logs and holes as the boy-storm raced around the tree, jumping and laughing and shouting:20

“Found you!”21

Over and over and then pausing to dive into a pile of painted leaves. 22

The boy brought laughter to Laura’s lips as he always did, and she bombed him playfully with broken branches as he sprawled himself in the dirt. Lucky he had worn his jeans with the holes in them today, or mother would be furious!23

Mother. That reminded her.24

“Sam, I’m stuck!” Laura called to him. “I can’t get down.”25

“Samuel sat and gazed up at her, electric shots firing through his brain, pondering as best he could. “Well how’dija get up there then?” he yelled.26

The wind tittered amusedly and tossed her hair around her face again. “I don’t know!”27

Sam sprang up on his rabbit’s feet, “I’ll go get daddy!” and then flew through the trees, arms outstretched like an airplane sending an exhaust of leaves and needles churning up behind him, flying to get Daddy.28

Yes, you’ll get him, thought Laura. And Daddy will come and put me down, no struggle for him and his brawny farmer’s arms. He’ll set me back on the ground, and there I’ll be again, getting pushed around to places I’ve been thousands of times before, forever. Laura sat and waited thirty feet up in the crafty old oak while clouds from the east crawled in to cover up the sun. Rain, the first autumn rain with its chill that sticks everything together in a dirty stew, that freezes colder than snow and pushes the goose pimples back into the skin, was coming. It started to drizzle. Laura waited.29

Sometimes, Laura dreamed of flying. And other times she stayed awake during long nights and dreamed of simply walking. Running. To be like the others, even like her brother though she could not be jealous of him and his wild and boyish spirit; to splash down the creek on summer afternoons; to climb the playground slides to the top and feel a waterfall rush as she cascaded down; to chase the sillyheaded boys across the schoolyard and give them innocent kisses. And then run screaming away, giggles and laughter!30

Or to even just go beyond where the path ended, where her wheels could not turn any longer. Laura loved her parents, but they were always there. She could not trust this dangerous world, they said. The world, outside, where everyone wanted to hurt her. She could not go alone, not without legs to run away from those awful monsters, in the cities, in the forests. But Laura did not want to run away from anything. She simply wanted to run.31

Presently, there was a commotion down a ways where Laura couldn’t see. The running, impatient report of a boy on a leash, and the slower, serious steps of the grown-ups. Mother and Father. First, of course, she caught a glimpse of little Samuel pressing his hands at the base of her tree and sending his hurried report up: “Daddy’s a-comin’!” Then gone for a moment before appearing again with another. It was her father, pushing her prison along with him, that awful ball and chain that went wherever she went, always.32

“Laura?”33

As she had suspected, her father climbed the tree easily to where she sat, shivering and ready for an end to this adventure at least, and, giving her the sort of inscrutable look that was his characteristic, brought her down slung over his broad shoulder. Despite herself, Laura was thankful for the rescue and held back unexpected tears of relief as she neared the steady, familiar ground. Maybe I don’t deserve to be free, she thought. Maybe I really would be hurt. Mother and Father are right; it really is too dangerous for someone like me.34

It was raining, and the rain made her sad. 35

Supper was boiled sausage and cabbage that night, soggy and limp like wet maple leaves. Laura didn’t mind it much, but little Samuel, of course, fought and kicked his short legs up and around and generally put up such an argument that he was sent stomping away to his room. Then it was quieter and mother said, hopefully, that it was just a phase and father said that he certainly didn’t siren-wail about cabbage leaves when he was younger. Laura ate, and hid a few cuts of sausage in her hand for the boy down the hall. 36

Sam was grateful enough as he ate the five slivers of meat while the two of them lay still in their beds. Their bedroom was dark as the storms that had come around about at midnight during the summer, but was now just the beginning of a night that would come earlier and earlier each day. It made it seem strange to still be wide awake. The sound of rain splattering against the single-pane window mixed with the sloppy smacking of small teeth and lips and sausage. “Haven’t you got any more?” The boy asked as his hand moved in the darkness to wipe his face.37

“It’s all I could get.” Laura told him.38

Rather than complaining, Sam immediately flipped off his bed and rolled across the floor like a beetle, over next to Laura. A secret teller in the dark. 39

He whispered a tickle in her ear, “I got something to tell you.”40

“What is it?”41

“Remember when you was all high up in that tree?” he breathed, as serious as he could ever be.42

Of course Laura remembered, she had been remembering all day. Sam didn’t wait for her to answer. “Well I can’t figger how you done it, you know with them legs of yours all stiff an’ all. I shure couldn’t do it an’ daddy said he don’t even know how it happened. Boy!”43

Laura couldn’t help laughing at her brother’s speech, learned from her father and uncles yet faster and ten times higher, a piping bluejay, whereas she, from the encouragement of her mother, had begun to speak more proper-like. And Sam’s irreverence to her lameness, well, he was still so young not to know that it could be any different. Laura put on a false twang and spoke Sam’s language back to him.44

“I can’t figger it neither,” she giggled, “It ain’t makin’ sense to me. I don’t remember none of it.” 45

Her attempt at boyish talk was met by a twisted-up face. “Why’d you sound so funny?” Then he pondered about as hard as his six-year-old brain could ponder and told the secret he couldn’t keep to himself one second longer. “Well I been thinkin’,” he said to her, “Maybe you flied.”46

“That’s just the sort of thing you’d think.” Laura replied.47

“Well!”48

Laura felt gravity holding her firmly upon her bed and felt her two legs, heavy as bricks. She sighed. “You have still got an imagination.”49

Then it was Monday and school, and the morning filled itself with new jackets zip-zipping as children ran against the cold wind, their breath trailing behind them like young smoke. The schoolyard was still green and soaked into shoes and the cuffs of jeans, damping everything and clinging onto a hundred stomping feet, and the boys and girls bought their frosty ears and red noses running into the classrooms with the rain on their boots, carrying the earth smell along. It was a cold day. 50

Mrs. Jones had a map plastered across the blackboard that displayed the whole world in pinks and greens and yellows split by thin, black borders with expanses of light blue in between. Mrs. Jones was young and pretty and, some of the students said, had just born a baby but she was teaching anyways, and wasn’t that something! Today the subject would be mountain ranges of the world, she said, and pointed somewhere among the big mass of color to the left of the map, and then towards the middle, making her way towards the right, south and then north near the big gold star that was home. She spoke of hills and cliffs and rocks, trees and pines covered in snow up until that brown-white line cut them off, and stuck its nose right into the sky. Magnificence and quiet power, she said. Silent and wild.51

Mountains, now, thought Laura. That would be something to see.52

She dreamed about mountains and ranges with peaks and valleys through the rest of that hour and into the next which in which Mrs. Jones began asking the children what they wanted to be when they grew up. Everyone got quite excited about this; Lily Richards wanted to be a veterinarian and William Boyle wanted to be a news reporter and there were doctors and ball players and teachers, but when Mrs. Jones finally came around to Laura, she still wasn’t sure.53

“I want to be a mountain climber.” She blurted without realizing.54

The whole class snickered and whispered like angry grass in an angry wind and suddenly Brian Benson called out “Who ever heard of a mountain climber with wheels, anyways!” which brought about even more laughter until Mrs. Jones silenced them quickly with a snap and a round-the-room teacher’s glare. She gave Brian Benson a detention for “being a perfect little beast, picking on someone like that!”, and Laura tried to disappear in her chair, hating herself for answering so stupidly. She soon forgot about the mountains.55

But later, Laura couldn’t help but dream. On the playground, where children should be allowed to run ahead of the wind, and climb and play and imagine whatever they like and even fight sometimes but not too often, Laura sat near the bricks in the old wall and watched. The wolf pack, cubs scurrying all over and running around the three or four tormented ladies who hated kids too much to be teachers and were quarantined to the monkey house every afternoon, raced around in joyful chaos, leaving Laura by herself. Recess was always the loneliest time of the day, only because everyone else got to have so much fun! Sure, some of the kids were nice enough to her, Mary-Claire and Ellie and a few of the others, but of course sitting was only entertaining for as long as your hands had something to do. The other kids couldn’t be blamed, really, for being more interested in flying in the swings, their bottoms all soaked from the sitting water, or, more and more often, taking off to chase the boys. Laura tried to look as forlorn as she could; today, even a friend for pity would be fine.56

But her only friend this day was a scruffy ball of mud. The mudball tuned out to be Sam, hiking up his trousers every few steps as he squelched across the blacktop. He was a seaweed monster dredged up from a river bottom that sat down conspicuously next to Laura and the wall. The monster’s face was stretched wide in a proud, childish grin.57

“Fell down into the ravine,” he proudly proclaimed. 58

The ravine! That was where everyone, by the time they were in their third year at school, had gone at least once. It was against the rules, naturally, but one only needed a good split moment’s time to slip out the gap in the fence, skitter down a path, and then bound across three backyards until you were out behind the old Winkler place. Then scamper back into the woods and you’d be in a heaven of skipping rocks and clear water rushing and mud pies and frogs and well! Just be sure not to get dirty sliding down the steep sides, and no one would be the wiser!59

To Laura though, the ravine was some far-distant kingdom, a fairytale or a mountain range on a map. The backyards as impassable as the far distant reaches of space. And everything. The world was like the ravine: a beautiful story because it fills the heart and mind with freedom, adventure; an awful dream because it is only a dream.60

Sam sprinted off to run in the grass, in the wind. He and the other children scampered through the leaves and the breeze without feeling it, shadows thrusting themselves about with no bodies to connect to. And Laura pressed her hands onto her colonnade legs, watching. Watching, just as she always did, the movement of feet and legs, knees and ankles. Feet jumping over rotten logs and sidewalk cracks and tombstones in the cemetery, late at night when the doors were supposed to have locked them all in. Legs running through the fog and the mist and feeling it on faces like an autumn river hung there in the air. Knees crawling between bushes to spy on that old couple who’ve never done nothing but sit on that porch drinking mugs full of who-knows-what! Ankles scampering away down the trail that none of the grown-ups knew, through the stickers and nettles, to the hiding place where nobody could tell you to come home until you were good and ready. Running, jumping, crawling, scampering!61

Laura could only watch.62

Come! She cried suddenly to anybody, nobody, her cries as inaudible as a rose’s bloom. Somebody, something come! Be my company, my adventure, my mountain to climb, my stream to ford, a path that ends when my feet do not, a wind that catches me and thrusts me wherever it might like! Come, you pirates of the tossing seas, you blustering winter storms. Come, you nighttime noises that frighten even the dark; you white angels harmonizing in joyful chorus. Come triumph, come disaster! Come, anything that might shake my icebox world of can nots and turn it over upon itself! Come and set me free.63

Laura closed her eyes.64

There was a murmur in the distance – over there. Somewhere.65

Whispers and voices made of breath itself.66

Laura breathed.67

Legless footsteps, closer, closer, frozen autumn hushes in the grass and the trees. Arctic currents that have seen the world and more. Trailing upon the ground, flitting, flying between blades of grass and trees and stomping children’s feet. Dodging under, over, around. Her ears could hear it coming.68

Closer and closer. 69

Here I am, Laura said.70

Then a smell: ice flowers and burning wheat. Pine forests and oceans, deserts, cities! The whole world in a smell. A smell of every season, every place. War and peace smells, earth and stone. A smell that lived and moved and took everything it met along with it. It added Laura to its smell.71

Now the murmur was at the edge of the playground. Louder. Over the decaying blacktop. Louder. Past the school doors with a rattle. Louder. The murmur was almost a scream.72

The autumn breeze!73

With her eyes still closed, Laura felt a tickle on her cheek and a whispered laughter in her ear. Light and giddy, mischievous wind. 74

She opened her eyes.75

And suddenly, a storm! Winter’s waking breath, cold as morning, bright as the sun on a stainless snow. It blew her hair about her face and surrounded her in a tornado of leaves. Brown, red, yellow, orange, green! They flew around her like a flock of birds, flimsy and soft, yet terribly, terribly fast! She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear the yells of the other children, hollering in terrified excitement. The cyclone enveloped her, and Laura shielded her face in fear, opening her fists and grabbing at the flying leaves.76

Then everything changed. The whirlwind still blew, but it was not frightening. It was as comforting as secure bedsheets on a cold, frosty night, and Laura’s bricks turned to feathers. She felt as if she was dancing gracefully along with the hurricane: dip and spin! The wind screamed laughter into her ears and pulled her along, to show her the forest and the world and everything. Do you see? It cried. Do you see? It pulled her, it asked her. It caressed and held her as its own. Do you see? And then as the wind gave its most powerful gust yet, the leaves dropped away and Laura saw.77

Sam watched with the others as the storm died and left a pile of autumn leaves scattered around the base of an empty chair. He stood silent for one, two seconds, and gazed into the sky along with everyone else. Then he saw, and immediately took off like a gazelle, after her, shouting:78

“I knew it! I knew it! I told you I did! It’s just like I said, ain’t it?” He ran and ran until he couldn’t run any longer, and then breathed heavy the remnants of breeze whisking around him as his sister disappeared over the trees, her face wonderfully alive and hands clenched tight. 79

Whisper and breathe, shiver, blow. Open eyes and a sleeping sky.80

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…And so they opened their petals and grabbed at the leaves fluttering blissfully by. And though the leaves were dead, they lifted the little flowers from the ground, tearing them from restraining roots. And somehow the flowers flew with the leaves in the autumn wind, higher and higher to the very places they had dreamed about but had never spoken of, where adventure and mystery and the magic of the unordinary waited patiently. And nothing at all was easy, but everything was alive. And they were alive. And they were happy. And they were free… 82