Free Eddie Signwriter by Adam Schwartzman Page A

cables.
    Then he came through the cover of the vegetation and was standing on the road.
    Why, he wondered, when he had most in the world to feel happy about, did he feel so alone? And why, when he was most alone, did he most want to be apart from people?
    For some minutes the sound of the bells of the valley churches had been coming through the mist.
    A bead of condensation trickled down his forehead, gathered pace in the concavity between eye socket and cheekbone, then curled around the jaw.
    He closed his eyes, breathed deeply. There was the smell of the grass, the smell of the soil.
    He buried his hands in his pockets and walked toward the town.
    The first structures, hugging the outskirts, were derelict, set awayfrom the road, but still they were inhabited, the owners moved downstairs, leaving the top floors to unfasten themselves, the roofs to thin like blankets, the bricks to melt like mud.
    Further on, neat, new houses were set out down the hills, with flat concrete roofs and green mesh window frames.
    The town itself was almost empty, the shops and houses closed for church. Only an old woman sweeping a doorway with twigs to observe him.
    No people
, he thought, but the buildings themselves, the buildings were alive—the paint on the old bungalows decomposing on the walls, breaking into elements, the pale olive and blue and yellow of oxidation. Damp grew through the plaster, that blistered as if with bacteria.
    Above some of the better-kept shopfronts, second stories had been built of wood, which resembled barns raised into the air. Their walls were packed tight with thin planks and their shutters, made of irregular slats, were fastened inwards or outwards or hung in the gentle breeze. He read the dates in plaster above the doorways. He read the names: “Hawkins Chambers,” “Methodist House.”
    Has anything here ever been painted more than once?
he wondered. Or was it the weather that turned everything into history instantly?
    There was nowhere to get food. A single taxi stood at the taxi rank. Its driver eyed him suspiciously, but made no attempt to tout for business.
    He passed through the other side of the town, heard music through the mist and singing. There were more people now on the road, families dressed in Sunday clothes, walking quietly against him back toward the town.
    The music brought him to a stone church set on the hill below the road. Its walls were made of rocks the shape and size of loaves of bread. Passersby had stopped on the road, some children in torn clothes, a man with a floral shirt and a Bible.
    He stood to one side and looked through the window.
    Inside there was a wedding. Closest to the window was a band and choir, the material of the cassocks catching with silver in the lightsfrom the bulbs strung across the roof. A surface of light glossed the walls. It covered the people and spilled out of the church into the somber morning.
    The people continued to pass him on the road. Families, groups of middle-aged women in hats, teachers leading rows of children, scrubbed and quiet, hand in hand.
    Inside the church there was hardly room to move. The tom-tom player, tucked between the organ and the wall, peered casually over his dark glasses as he set the rhythm, that started out in his jumping hands and spilled into the matter of everything. The choir and band swayed and jumped in small movements from side to side as they led the wedding song.
    The bridal couple danced in the middle of the room, pressed tightly by the congregation that flowed around them right to the back of the church. The congregation hopped and skipped, but the couple danced in half-time, one beat to every two, swaying together, hand to elbow.
    Observing the scene, he put his head against the window frame.
    He sensed the presence beside him before he heard the voice.
    “I’m sure you’re not where you should be,” Nana Oforiwaa said. She had a look on her face of mock reproach. Or possibly just reproach.
    He was