Free The Invention of Flight by Susan Neville Page A

needed ablanket. I tried to ignore his incantations. They started low.
    Johnny Johnny Johnny Johnny whoops Johnny whoops Johnny Johnny Johnny Johnny
    I placed a piece of chocolate on his pillow.
    whoops Johnny whoops Johnny Johnny Johnny Johnny Johnny
    Sweet cream in a pitcher beside the bed.
    Johnny whoops Johnny whoops Johnny Johnny Johnny
    I left him in the garage. I locked the door. The bed had looked nice, like a movie set looks—complete where the light reached, but framed by dark and oil and hard metal beaks of machinery. I tried to imagine him sleeping in it.
    I went into the house, opened doors and windows for air, locked screens, stopped by a window and touched the screen with my tongue. It was bitter and the taste lasted. I thought about the song I would probably go upstairs to write about a woman whose only sense was taste. About all the things she could touch with her tongue before she died a tragic death from rare infectious germs.
    But when I opened the door to my room, Johnny Appleseed was there waiting, the hat with the gunmetal stars slid halfway under the bed. I asked him how he’d found his way past me. He told me that I hadn’t really locked anything, that I’d allowed him to come in. I picked up the hat and put it on the dresser. He flipped open a pocketknife and took out a block of wood from between the sheets. Soon he had wood shavings all over the bed. He said the block of wood had once been a whole tree, that he made tiny smooth rings from thewood, that I would find them useful. I said if you’re really Johnny Appleseed, shouldn’t you have a bag of seeds? He motioned to the empty side of the bed with the blade of his knife.
    I said, if you’re really a magician, Johnny Appleseed, show me some tricks. He sat on a moonlit tree limb in the cemetery, carving faces in the bark, chips falling on a stone by my feet. Leaping to the ground, he moved the pocketknife toward my eyes, brandished it in the air. See the lights on the blade, he said. I’m carving chips from the moon. Catch one. I touched a reflection of the moon, buried in the hair on his chest.
Now watch the blade, Johnny Johnny Johnny. See the blade bend, Johnny, stroke it, stroke the blade.
I stroked it. The blade didn’t bend.
Stroke it, Johnny Johnny
, he said. He moved my hand along the metal,
stroke the blade, watch it bend.
It’s flat, I told him. His face moved closer to mine, the hard edge of his hat brushed my ear, he winked. Isn’t it amazing that the blade is bending? he said. Bending to match the contour of the earth, he said. The earth is flat here, I said. It looks flat, he said, but it’s really bending; it has to, you know, it has to bend everywhere. Not around here, I said. A circle bends everywhere, he said; it appears flat like the earth, but it’s really bending. It’s flat, I said. Very very flat.
    He tossed the knife at the tree. It folded in half and fell to the ground. He turned his wrist and a wooden ring appeared in his hand, rough-hewn. I’m sure I saw it slide down your sleeve, I said. The satin shirt had rippled, I’d seen it ripple. Sit, he said. I sat on the stone amid the shavings. He slipped the ring over my foot,around my left ankle. Another turn of the wrist and another ring appeared, this one smooth sanded, varnished. He slid it over my right hand. A larger one appeared. He slid it up my right leg, around my thigh. That’s enough of that, Johnny Appleseed, I said, I feel very unbalanced. He slid one up my left thigh and asked me to stand. I clacked when I tried to walk toward him. Now where’s the trick, Johnny Appleseed? I said. Try to take them off, he said. I tried and they wouldn’t come off, they were stuck, and I said they must have shrunk from my sitting on the ground. I said at least-clack clack-help-clack-me remove-clack clack clack-one from one thigh-clack. One of the rings slid from my leg as if it were greased. I’ll