The Toynbee Convector

And here were the four cousins, come to visit.

And along about sunset of the first day, each of them said, in effect: “Well?”

They were lined up by Cecy’s bed in the great house, where she lay for long hours, both night and noon, because her talents were in such demand by both family and friends.

“Well,” said Cecy, her eyes shut, a smile playing about her lovely mouth. “What would your pleasure be?”

“I—” said Tom.

“Maybe—” said William and Philip.

“Could you—” said John.

“Take you on a visit to the local insane asylum,” guessed Cecy, “to peek in people’s very strange heads?”

“Yes!”

“Said and done!” said Cecy. “Go lie on your cots in the barn.” They ran. They lay. “That’s it. Over, up, and—out!” she cried.

Like corks, their souls popped. Like birds, they flew. Like bright unseen needles they shot into various and assorted ears in the asylum just down the hill and across the valley.

“Ah!” they cried in delight at what they found and saw.

While they were gone, the barn burned down.

In all the shouting and confusion, the running for water, the general ramshackle hysteria, everyone forgot what was in the barn or where the high-flying cousins might be going, or what Cecy, asleep, was up to. So deep in her rushing sleep was this favorite daughter, that she heard not the flames, nor the dread moment when the walls fell in and four human-shaped torches self-destroyed. The cousins themselves did not feel the repercussions of their own bodies being snuffed for some few moments. Then a clap of silent thunder banged across country, shook the skies, knocked the wind-blown essences of lost cousin through mill-fans to lodge in trees, while Cecy, with a gasp, sat straight up in bed.

Running to the window, she looked out and gave one shriek that shot the cousins home. All four, at the moment of concussion, had been in various parts of the county asylum, opening trapdoors in wild people’s heads and peeking in at maelstroms of confetti and wondering at the colors of madness, and the dark rainbow hues of nightmare.

All the Family stood by the collapsed barn, stunned. Hearing Cecy’s cry, they turned.

“What happened?” cried John from her mouth.

“Yes, what!” said Philip, moving her lips.

“My God,” gasped William, staring from her eyes.

“The barn burned,” said Tom. “We’re dead!”

The Family, soot-faced in the smoking yard, turned like a traveling minstrel’s funeral and stared up at Cecy in shock.

“Cecy?” asked Mother, wildly. “Is there someone, I mean, with you?”

“Yes, me, Tom!” shouted Tom from her lips.

“And me, John.”

“Philip!”

“William!”

The souls counted off from the young woman’s mouth.

The family waited.

Then, as one, the four young men’s voices asked the final, most dreadful question:

“Didn’t you save just one body?”

The Family sank an inch into the earth, burdened with a reply they could not give.

“But—” Cecy held on to her own elbows, touched her own chin, her mouth, her brow, inside which four live ghosts knocked elbows for room. “But—what’ll I do with them?” Her eyes searched over all those faces below in the yard. “My boy cousins can’t stay here. They simply can’t stand around in my head!”

What she cried after that, or what the cousins babbled, crammed like pebbles under her tongue, or what the Family said, running like burned chickens in the yard, was lost.

Like Judgment Day thunders, the rest of the barn fell.

With a hollow roar the fire went up the kitchen chimney. An October wind leaned this way and that on the roof, listening to all the Family talk in the dining room below.

“It seems to me,” said Father.

“Not seems, but is!” said Cecy, her eyes now blue, now yellow, now hazel, now brown.

“We must farm the young cousins out. Find temporary hospices for them, until such time as we can cull new bodies—”

“The quicker the better,” said a voice from Cecy’s mouth now high, now low, now two gradations between.

“Joseph might be loaned out to Bion, Tom given to Leonard, William to Sam, Philip to—”

All the uncles, so named, snapped their hackles and stirred their boots.

Leonard summed up for all. “Busy. Overworked. Bion with his shop, Sam with his arm.”

“Gah—.” Misery sprang from Cecy’s mouth in four-part harmony.

Father sat down in darkness. “Good grief, there must be some one of us with plenty of time to waste, a small room to let in the backside of their subconscious or the topside of their trapdoor Id! Volunteers! Stand!”

The Family sucked an icy breath, for suddenly Grandma was on her feet, but pointing her witch-broom cane.

“That man right there’s got all the time in the world. I hereby solicit, name, and nominate him!”

As if their heads were on a single string, everyone turned to blink at Grandpa.

Grandpa leaped up as if shot. “No!”

“Hush.” Grandma shut her eyes on the question, folded her arms, purring, over her bosom. “You got all the time in the world.”

“No, by Joshua and Jesus!”