Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: And Other Prose Writings by Sylvia Plath
‘Sure, sure,’ he says. The canoe glides into the dock, and the man is there waiting. You can’t look at him. Head averted you get out on the dock, hardly realizing that Buck has helped you up, has paid the man. You start away, ashamed, hating yourself. He calls to you. Linda and Don have just come up together. You walk beside her and the boys follow along the wooded road in the green shade and the long cool shadows. You talk in low tones. What can you do now, you wonder. How to make up for being so mean? You walk faster. ‘Don’t try to get away,’ Buck says quietly behind you. Your legs wobble with unreasoning panic. ‘I’m going to tell them,’ Linda whispers to you.
‘No,’ you hiss back vehemently. How can you explain to her how things are … how Buck trusts you? Everything will be spoiled … ruined. But Linda has turned to them. You all stop. The afternoon is heavy with waiting. You want to scream, to drown out her repentant voice as she says to Buck and Don, ‘We were only kidding. We had the money all along, but just to prove we’re not mean clear through we’ll pay you now.’ The silence is sickening. There’s no looking at Buck now, no telling Linda what she has done. How can she go on? But she does. ‘If we give you the money will you leave us alone?’ Buck’s voice is dangerously even. He says to you, to you alone, ‘So that was all an act in the canoe then?’ Your eyes stare down at the road. There is a strange high singing in your ears. You nod, wordlessly. The afternoon shatters around you into a million glassy fragments. Malicious, dancing slivers of green and blue and yellow light rise and whirl about you … suffocating, smothering flakes of color. You are aware that the boys have taken the money, have turned and are getting smaller and smaller down the road. You and Linda stand there a while, watching. There is something so final about someone disappearing down a road, not turning, not looking back. Linda sighs with satisfaction. She has done that which was necessary, and she dismisses the incident accordingly. But you, you walk slowly beside her, not talking. How can you ever explain how it was? How can you ever explain that you betrayed with more than just money? There’s something so desolate, so final about an empty road. You walk on, not talking.
The Green Rock
The yellow bus rattled and bounced over the cobbled streets, and the suitcase banged against David’s legs.
‘Are you sure you know the right stop?’ he asked Susan anxiously.
‘Of course,’ Susan replied, and then, forgetting her attitude of cool superiority toward her younger brother, she burst out, ‘I can smell the salt in the air. Look, between the houses!’ She pointed through the mudspattered window, and David’s eyes followed her gaze.
Sure enough! There was a gleam of blue between the crowded city tenements. The dingy buildings with their identical fronts were like stage scenery, but behind them the ocean sparkled in the warm June sunlight, and that brief glimpse was a promise—a preview of what was to come. For David and Susan were traveling back to their childhood. This would be their first visit to their home town since they moved away five years ago.
David wrinkled his sunburnt nose enthusiastically. Along with the fresh salt breeze, memories came crowding back.
He laughed. ‘Remember the time we dug to China?’
Susan’s eyes misted. Remember? Of course she did.
*
There was a grassy back yard with a flower bed where they used to play together. And there were the long mornings they had spent, digging in a corner of the garden with a small spade and shovel. She recalled the feeling of moist earth on her hands, drying and clinging.
Some grownup had come by and asked, ‘Where are you digging to? China?’ and then had laughed and gone away.
‘We could if we digged hard enough, you know,’ David had observed wisely.
‘No, not unless we did for ever and ever so long,’ replied Susan.
‘Let’s see how far down we can get before lunch, then.’
‘They’d be upside down,’ Susan mused aloud. The prospect of digging through to another land intrigued her.
‘Something will be there if we dig,’ David said confidently. He tossed up a shovelful of earth. ‘See, the dirt’s turning yellow.’
After Susan had scooped up a great deal of sand, she exclaimed, ‘Wait a minute, I’ve hit something!’ She scratched away the earth with her fingers and triumphantly produced a white, six-sided tile.
‘Let me see,’ David cried. ‘Why, it’s just like the ones in our bathroom floor. It’s part of some old house.’
‘If we dig deeper we might come up into the cellar.’
But in a little while the shovels began to move more slowly. Susan squatted back on her heels, and her eyes grew dreamy. David listened to her words as reverently as if she were an oracle.
‘Perhaps …’ she began slowly, ‘perhaps if we could find a white rabbit hole we wouldn’t have to dig any more, and we could just fall … and fall … and fall.’
David understood. It would be just like Alice in Wonderland, only Susan would be Alice and he … well, he would still be David.
Susan heaved a sudden sigh. ‘We couldn’t dig far enough anyway,’ she said, standing up and wiping her soiled hands on her yellow pinafore.
‘I s’pose not,’ David agreed resignedly, his dream shattered. He rose, too. ‘Let’s go out front,’ he said.
The two children raced over the side lawn into the front yard. The street was lazy with the drugged quiet of the summer afternoon, and the heat rose in waves from the pavement.
‘I bet I can walk touching just the lines,’ Susan challenged her brother. She began to step carefully, treading only upon the cracks in the sidewalk.
‘So can I.’ David tried to imitate her, but his legs were not long enough to span the large, flat cement squares, so he gave up and concentrated on something else. A small bug ran across the stones.
‘I squashed an ant,’ David chanted proudly, moving his foot to reveal the tiny insect mutilated on the walk.
Susan would not praise him. ‘That’s mean,’ she reproached. ‘How would you like to be stepped on? Poor little ant,’ she murmured to the spot on the path.
David said nothing.
‘Poor little ant,’ Susan crooned sadly.
David’s lower lip began to quiver. ‘I’m sorry,’ he blurted contritely. ‘I won’t ever do it again.’
Susan’s heart softened. ‘It’s all right,’ she said magnanimously. Then her face lighted. ‘I know! Let’s go down to the beach!’
There was a lonely little cove at the end of the street, too small for public bathing. It was here that the children liked to play in the summertime. Susan ran along with David close behind. Their bare feet thudded on the pavement, and their long, thin legs moved with a swift grace. The road dipped to the beach, and the sand had drifted up over the tarred surface.
It was good to dig your toes down in the warm sand to the cooler layer beneath, Susan thought. Something within her soared at the sight of the cloudless sky and the waves washing on the shore with a scalloped fringe of foam. The land behind her was a ledge, a narrow shelf from which she could fling herself into the vast blue space.
The children were silent as they moved down the beach, searching for shells in the line of the last high tide. The sound of the water rushing in and then withdrawing with a sigh filled their ears.
‘Ouch!’ David exclaimed suddenly.
‘What’s the matter?’ questioned Susan.
‘Something bit me.’ He lifted one foot in both hands to examine his toe. A dry piece of brittle seaweed still clung to his skin.
‘That’s all it was! Just seaweed!’ She brushed it off scornfully.
‘It might have been a crab,’ David retorted, wishing that it had been.
Picking up a piece of water-smooth glass, Susan squinted through it into the sun. ‘Look,’ she held it out to David. ‘Everything’s so much nicer all blue.’
‘I wish I lived inside a glass bottle like the old woman in the story,’ he said. ‘We could have a little ladder up the side.’
The sun shone down on the two figures wandering along the water’s edge. Susan thoughtfully chewed the end of one pigtail; she gazed across the stony beach to where the tide was beginning to go out, revealing the oozing slime of the mud flats. Near the shore, the retreating waves foamed about a large, flat rock. As she stared at the noisy, receding waters, a delightful idea came to her.
‘Let’s go over by the green rock,’ she said.
David followed her, ankle-deep through the cold, sloshing waves. The mud was soft and cool between his toes, but he walked gingerly, hoping there weren’t any jagged clam shells beneath the surface. Susan climbed up on the slippery rock and stood triumphant, her pinafore flapping about her bare legs, her hair blowing in the wind that sang across the bay.
‘Come on!’ she shouted above the roar of the tide. David grabbed her firm, outstretched hand and sprang up beside her. They stood there, motionless, like two sturdy figureheads, until the rock was left dry by the ebb tide.
It was a large boulder, deeply imbedded in the sand so that only the upper part was visible. Above the slimy, black stones, it raised a smooth green surface, like the shell of some giant turtle. There was a flat place on top where one could sit, and a few graded planes on one side formed a row of shallow steps. Indeed, the rock was like some docile animal, lost in sleep.
The children loved to climb up the friendly, irregular surface and play all sorts of magic games. Sometimes the rock would be a sailboat in stormy seas, and sometimes it became a lofty mountain. But today it was a castle.
‘You dig a moat so no one can cross,’ commanded Susan, ‘and I’ll sweep out the rooms.’ She began to brush off all the sand while David dug a little trench around the rock itself.
There were bits of colored glass to arrange for windows, and all the periwinkles that clung to the moist side of the rock had to be flicked from their comfortable habitat onto the sharp pebbles.
David and Susan were giants in a world of minute miracles. They laid out broken shells for plates and fancied themselves a part of the miniature universe. The faintest stir of spotted crab or mud-colored sea worm could not escape their quick eyes. But they saw even more than this, for they beheld the golden turrets of the castle rising above their heads.
The sun was sinking when they stopped their play. Susan had been resting on the rock while David was searching for more colored glass. Her feet were cold and sore, but she had curled them under the skirt of her pinafore, which rested like a soft caress on her skin. As she stared out at the ocean, she wondered if she could ever explain to anyone how she felt about the sea. It was part of her, and she wanted to reach out, out, until she encompassed the horizon within the circle of her arms.
When David returned, Susan arose to meet him. She felt the mud, wet and clammy beneath her feet, and a disagreeable consciousness of the late hour passed over her. Brushing back her sticky, salt-caked hair with one hand, she said, ‘C’mon, Davy. Time for supper.’
‘Aw, just a little longer,’ her brother pleaded. Yet he knew it was no use, so he followed his sister’s retreating back up the beach, limping a bit as he bruised his tender feet on the sharp stones.
*
In her mind’s eye Susan saw the two small figures moving out of sight up the beach. David nudged her, and the picture faded. Slowly she returned to the present.
‘We’re almost there,’ she said, the excitement rising like tingling bubbles of ginger ale through her veins. David sat beside her, erect and proud, very conscious of his new polished brown shoes. His eyes shone.
‘Let’s go down to the beach when we get there,’ he suggested.
‘Maybe we can see our old house.’
Susan felt a twinge of sadness. It would be hard to go past the familiar lawns and not stop to play as they had before. It would be hard to remember the places where they had had such good times … and pass them by. But there was the beach. Nothing could change that. There they could pretend they were little again, and no one would see.
She smiled at her reflection in the window and adjusted her wide-brimmed straw hat. Ever since she had cut her hair short, she had looked more grown-up. She might even pass for fourteen … well, almost.
David pointed. ‘There’s the roof of our old school! See, between the trees.’ Susan saw. The houses became more familiar, and she felt a warmth in her heart. The streets came faster now, and the children could recall old landmarks.
‘That’s where the carnival was.’
‘We used to coast down that street.’
‘Remember the oak tree we used to climb!’
It was as if they were riding an immense wave of recollection, rushing swiftly backward toward the past, toward their early childhood. They would not have been surprised to find themselves shrinking back into the David and Susan that used to be.
‘Quick!’ hissed Susan. ‘Pull the buzzer!’
David obliged, and the bus swung to a stop. Suitcase in hand, Susan bounded eagerly down the steps, forgetting her resolution to be prim and ladylike. David followed her out on to the sidewalk. They stood for a moment, sniffing the salty air. The familiarity of the street tugged painfully at their hearts. They started walking. The sea twinkled blue far ahead of them.
‘There’s the Johnsons’ house, and Andersons’,’ Susan announced as they progressed.
‘I see Aunt Jane’s,’ David exclaimed.
As they mounted the creaking wooden steps to the shady porch, Susan recalled the countless rainy afternoons that she and David had played on this very same front piazza while mother visited their elderly aunt.
The door opened suddenly, and the beaming face of Aunt Jane confronted them. After the preliminary greetings were over and their suitcase had been tucked into the old-fashioned guest room, which smelled of lavender, Aunt Jane proposed, ‘Why don’t you take a little walk before dinner. You might like to visit your old house. It looks so nice with all the new paint.’
Welcoming her suggestion, Susan and David ran eagerly to the end of the street, turned the corner, and there, gleaming with a fresh coat of paint, stood the house. Susan stopped abruptly, and David tightened his grip on her hand. A hurt resentment filled them both. The new curtains in the windows, the fresh paint, the strange, shiny car in the driveway—all these things were an affront.
‘I liked it a lot better without the paint,’ said Susan bitterly.
‘Me too,’ agreed David.
Soberly they walked on toward the beach. There, at least, things would be the same—the ocean, the sand, and the green rock.
‘Come on!’ Susan rallied.
She raced David down to the shore. Her hair blew back in the wind, and the salt tasted good on her lips. The tide was out, and the smell of the seaweed was strong in the sun. The two children halted a moment, bewildered.
The beach looked smaller than they had remembered it, and there was something strange and alien concealed beneath the smooth sand and the calm, unruffled surface of the water. There was an emptiness that rose to meet them and a queer silence above the lapping of the waves. It was like entering a familiar room after a long absence and finding it vacant, desolate.
Susan made a last attempt. ‘Let’s go down to the green rock,’ she said to David. It had to work, she thought. The magic must still remain by the green rock.
The boulder, too, seemed to have diminished in size. It lay among the pebbles, a heavy, inert shape; a green rock … nothing more. Where were the castles, the sailboats, the mountains that once had been? Only the rock remained, stark and bare.
The two children stood there for a while, mute, uncomprehending. At last Susan said wearily, ‘Come on, David, let’s go back.’ They sadly turned and trudged slowly up the beach, out of sight.
The tide came in gradually, creeping up over the slimy black stones; the wind died down and whispered idly through the sand. Inward, inward rolled the waves until they closed at last over the summit of the green rock. Only a thin line of foam remained ab
Among the Bumblebees
In the beginning there was Alice Denway’s father, tossing her up in the air until the breath caught in her throat, and catching her and holding her in a huge bear hug. With her ear against his chest, young Alice could hear the thunder of his heart and the pulse of blood in his veins, like the sound of wild horses galloping.
For Alice Denway’s father had been a giant of a man. In the blue blaze of his eyes was concentrated the color of the whole overhead dome of sky, and when he laughed, it sounded as if all the waves of the ocean were breaking and roaring up the beach together. Alice worshipped her father because he was so powerful, and everybody did what he commanded because he knew best and never gave mistaken judgment.
Alice Denway was her father’s pet. Ever since Alice was very little, people had told her that she favored her father’s side of the family and that he was very proud of her. Her baby brother Warren favored mother’s side of the family, and he was blond and gentle and always sickly. Alice liked to tease Warren, because it made her feel strong and superior when he began to fuss and cry. Warren cried a lot, but he never tattled on her.
There had been that spring evening at the supper table when Alice was sitting across from her brother Warren, who was eating his chocolate pudding. Chocolate pudding was Warren’s favorite dessert, and he ate it very quietly, scooping it up carefully with his little silver spoon. Alice did not like Warren that night because he had been good as gold all day, and mother had said so to father when he came home from town. Warren’s hair was gold and soft too, the color of dandelions, and his skin was the color of his glass of milk.
Alice glanced to the head of the table to see if her father was watching her, but he was bent over his pudding, spooning it up, dripping with cream, into his mouth. Alice slid down in her chair a little, staring innocently at her plate, and stretched her leg out under the table. Drawing her leg back, she straightened it in a sharp, swift kick. The toe of her shoe struck one of Warren’s frail shins.