Farewell Summer

It was as if half a dozen sledgehammers had slammed into half a dozen stomachs.

"Don't look like babies!"

"Things from another world, maybe." Another world, thought Douglas. In those jars, drowned. Another world.

"Jellyfish," Charlie said. "Squids. You know."

I know, thought Douglas. Undersea.

"It's got blue eyes," Will whispered. "It's looking at

"No, it's not," said Doug. "It's drowned."

"C'mon, Doug," Tom whispered. "I got the willies."

"Willies, heck," Charlie said. "I got the heebie-jeebies. Where'd all this stuff come from?"

"I don't know," Douglas said, chafing his elbows.

"The wax museum last year. That was sort of like this."

"These aren't wax," said Tom. "Oh, gosh, Doug, that's a real baby there, used to be alive. I never seen a dead baby before. I'm gonna be sick."

"Run outside. Go on!"

Tom turned and ran. In a moment, Charlie backed off and followed, his eyes darting from the baby to the jellyfish or whatever it was and then to the seahorse or what might be someone's earlobes, tympanum and all.

"How come there's no one here to tell us what all this stuff is?" Will wondered.

"Maybe," said Doug slowly, "maybe they're afraid to tell, or can't tell, or won't."

"Lord," said Will. "I'm froze."

From outside the tent's canvas walls came the sounds of Tom being sick.

"Hey!" Will cried suddenly. "It moved!"

Doug reached his hand out to the glass. "No, it didn't."

"It moved, darn it. It doesn't like us staring at it! Moved, I'm telling you! That's enough for me. So long, Doug."

And Doug was left alone in the dark tent with the cold glass jars holding the blind things that stared out with eyes that seemed to say how awful it was to be dead.

There's nobody to ask, thought Douglas, no one here. No one to ash and no one to tell. How do we find out? Will we ever

From the far end of the tent museum came the sound of high-pitched laughter. Six girls ran into the tent, giggling, letting in a bright wedge of sunlight.

Once the tent flap closed they stopped laughing, enveloped suddenly in darkness.

Doug turned blindly and walked out into the light.

He took a deep breath of the hot summer-like air, and squeezed his eyes shut. He could still see the platforms and the tables and the glass jars filled with thick fluid, and in the fluid, suspended, strange bits of tissue, alien forms from far unknown territories. What could be a swamp water creature with half an eye and half a limb, he knew, was not. What could be a fragment of ghost, of a spiritual upchuck come out of a fogbound book in a night library, was not. What could be the stillborn discharge of a favorite dog was not. In his mind's eye the things in the jars seemed to melt, from fluid to fluid, light to light. If you flicked your eyes from jar to jar, you could almost snap them to life, as if you were running bits of film over your eyeballs so that the tiny things became large and then larger, shaping themselves into fingers, hands, palms, wrists, elbows, until finally, asleep, the last shape opened wide its dull, blue, lashless eyes and fixed you with its gaze that cried, Look! See! lam trapped here forever! What am I? What is the question, what, what? Could it be, you there, below, outside looking in, could it be that I am… you ?

Beside him, rooted to the grass, stood Charlie and Will and Tom.

"What was that all about?" Will whispered.

"I almost-" Doug started but Tom interrupted, tears running down his cheeks.

"How come I'm crying?"

"Why would anyone be crying?" said Will, but his eyes were wet, too. "Darn," he whispered.

They heard a creaking sound. From the corner of his eye, Douglas saw a woman go by pushing a carriage in which something struggled and cried.

Beyond in the afternoon crowd, a pretty woman walked arm in arm with a sailor. Down by the lake a mob of girls played tag, hair flying, leaping, bounding, measuring the sand with swift feet. The girls ran away down the shore and Douglas, hearing their laughter, turned his gaze back to the tent, the entry, and the large strange question mark.

Douglas started to move back toward the tent, like a sleepwalker.

"Doug?" said Tom. "Where you going? You going back in to look at all that junk again?"

"Maybe."

"Why?" exploded Will. "Creepy-looking stuff that

someone stuck in old pickle jars. I'm going home. C'mon."

"You go on," said Doug.

"Besides," said Will, passing a hand across his forehead, "I don't feel so good. Maybe I'm scared. How about you?"

"What's to be scared of?" said Tom. "Like you said, it's just some creepy old stuff."

"See you later, guys." Doug walked slowly to the entryway and stopped in the shadows. "Tom, wait for me." Doug vanished.