On Helena Hill

Mother and Father stop once they've reached the top of the hill. They are dead-centre in the middle of a farmer's field, gone to weeds. Father looks in all directions. To the south, some three hundred yards distant, a thousand trees cluster in the vicinity of a creek that runs through the middle of them, and to the west the scene is pretty much the same, even though that arm of the creek as it winds round is much further away. Off to the east, at the same distance, a road runs north and south, with the south ending at the lake and the north ending who-knows-where. (If you squint, you can see there the town limit sign.) Meanwhile, to the north, there is nothing as far as the eye can see.

Mother sets down the basket in which I am lying. I bite my fat fist but decide against making a baby's fuss. Little things are flying around my face distractingly, which amuses me and holds my attention. So small they are! Dots and dots, and I know they are living things such as me. I try to imagine how small something can be. They have wings, so they have bodies, and those bodies are made up of many, many individual parts: but how many? I don't know how to count, but I know that counting has to exist.

"What a spectacular spot," Father says as he smooths down the old cotton sheet they've brought as a picnic-cloth. "Wouldn't this, right here, be a fine place for a house?"

Mother, sarcastic as always, says: "Oh, yeah. And so accessible."

"Oh, there'd be a road here: a long straight road with elm trees or those trees you see in France and Italy, the ones that line the roads in risqué movies."

"Well, it could work; but by the looks of this field, it was once a farm, and the farmer's gone, and soon it will be a new sub-division. But, yeah, sure, it would be totally affordable for us to buy a giant field. Just because the bills are rolling in‑"

"Okay, okay, I get it." This is said good-heartily. "Just dreamin'. In any case, until it gets all chopped up, we can come here as often as we like."

Mother opens up the picnic basket and produces a plastic baby-bottle. She leans over me, and I look up into the face of the person I love most in the whole wide world. I even get a tiny erection. She says, sing-song-i-ly: "Hungry baby, hungry baby, who's a hungry baby?" I take the rubber nipple into my fat mouth, disappointed all in all but hungry nonetheless.

Meanwhile, Father takes out a cheap bottle of rotgut, two empty jelly jars, and some sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. "Maybe I could convince some of my rich art school friends to buy all this and set up an artist's colony."

"Sure; chump change to them, I'm sure."

I doze off for a while, so happy am I with my bottle, while they eat their sandwiches and talk quietly and down a couple glasses of vino apiece. I come to again; I re-surface into consciousness; Mother is saying: "Isn't that a good baby we got?"

Father replies: "Yeah, he's great, just great. He could use a little sister, though."

"I ... suppose," says Mother slowly.

Father looks to the four directions. "We must look like ants to the people over there on the road."

Mother covers her eyes with her hand to look. "I suppose so."

Father starts caressing Mother's legs. "No-one can see a thing."

"Let's re-locate to the west side of the hill."

They leave me alone there, but I don't mind. I'm pretty good alone. I contemplate the insects; I can hear them living their lives.

Unseen by me, Mother takes off her underwear and puts it in her pocket. She lays back in the grass, tilted uphill, and spreads her legs. She says: "I'm very ready."

Father's pants are already lowered. He is very ready, too. He puts his knees on the bristly ground between his wife's opened legs.

"I don't know how quiet I can be," says Mother.

I doze again.

They come back, holding hands. Something has happened. They gather up the picnic stuff and me, too, and we walk a long time until we are at our little rented home again. Mother sets me down in my crib. I look up, into her face, and I know I will have a little sister in a bit over nine months. So, naturally, I mewl.

 

Late of an August afternoon, with clear skies and the thermometer over ninety, Frank and George, two eight-year-old boys, trekked across a farmer's field, heading for a hill at the centre of it all, as Frank told George again how it was the place where his sister was conceived. Frank noticed they passed by a great number of wooden sticks stuck into the ground, all with orange paint at their tips, before they got to their destination. The boys ascended the hill‑a rather small one, it should be noted‑perhaps 'hillock' would be the better term‑and looked out in the directions. The only signs of life came from the east, where a major road was.

Frank said: "See! Told you it existed. And I was here when it happened!"

George replied: "Yeah, maybe it happened here, when they thought of her, but you can't've remembered anything. You were just a little bay-bee."

"'Thought of her'? That's not what 'conceived' means!"

"Sure it does! I looked it up last night."

"There's other meanings to the word."

"Yeah, but that's the best one. It comes first!"

Frank changed tack. "I was here, and I remember it."

They sat down on the stubble and dirt and started pulling up yellow-grey stalks.

Frank pointed west. "They went over there, so no-one could see."

"See them ... fuck!"

"You don't even know what that means."

"Neither do you."

"I saw some dogs do it once. They stand up and they put their paws together and then get really close till their bellies touch." (This was a lie; it had only been described to him as such.)

"That's crazy."

"Well, maybe it didn't happen. Doesn't mean it couldn't."

Having exhausted their knowledge, they looked down at the rolling field below. The sticks with the orange paint on them looked intriguing. George got up, walked about fifteen yards, and pulled one out from the dirt.

"I don't think you should do that," said Frank.

"Why not? On guard!" George cried as he thrust out the stick.

"I think they have something to do with building stuff."

"Well then, go get one, so no-one can build here."

This sounded reasonable, so Frank went to the nearest stick and pulled it out. The boys clashed and clattered their little swords for some minutes on end till they got bored.

They decided they could build a boat with the sticks, if they wanted to. They went in separate routes to north and south of the hillock, pulling out the sticks in a clean mowing. They stopped when they couldn't carry more, with each haul counting some twenty apiece.

George looked them over and said: "We can put it together in my shed."

"Sure, sounds good! We'll need string though."

"I think there's some in the shed."

"Bravo!"

They spent some time sitting, facing south, and sorting out their sticks by length. Two-thirds were of the same length, and the remainder were a little bit shorter. A cloud appeared ahead of them. Maybe it was over the lake. How far away are the clouds? thought Frank.

He said: "We've been here for about an hour, right?"

"About an hour, yeah."

Frank turned on his side to look at George's face. "Do you know we've travelled a thousand miles, just by sitting here?"

"Naw. We're still on this hill."

"Yeah, but, the earth under us has been moving through space."

"That's nuts."

"The planet‑we're on a planet‑and it's twenty-five thousand miles around, and there's twenty-four hours in a day, so we're moving at like a thousand miles an hour."

George thought about this, and finally agreed. "Okay, yeah."

"So, really, you can go really really far if you stay in one place."

George thought some more. "Sure, but ... everyone else is doing the same thing, right?"

A girl's voice shouting, annoyed, from down near the creek: "Frank! Frank!"

Frank looked over. It was his sister, who shouted: "You get home right now! You're so late for dinner! You're so in trouble!"

Frank looked at George. "Hoo-boy, am I gonna get it."

"Don't whine."

They got up, and ran towards her. The potential boat's wood was forgotten for many days.

 

She can't see me trembling, yet I am trembling. She can feel how sweaty my hand is, I just know it. And, on top of all that, she must know why. She must want it as badly as I want it, if she's not disgusted by how wet I am. Maybe she's wet too; stop!; think of something else!

"Aren't we trespassing?" she asks. We're walking across the field. Houses under construction are to the east, toward the road, and also to the north, toward the north. Wooden surveyor's spikes are here-and-there, just as they had been when George and I had pulled them out the ground so long ago, before he moved away.

"It's Sunday afternoon, so the rules are different," I plause.

She laughs. "Yeah, right. It's just 'cause there's no-one here, isn't it?"

"The two go hand-in-hand ... like us." I give her hand a couple squeezes.

"It's a nice day for it."

What does that mean? A good day for what?

I nod my head at the hillock ahead of us. "There's the hill," I say. "That's where my sister was created."

"So, this is Helena Hill," she replies. "Your sister doesn't like me much, does she?"

"I don't know about that," I lie: "I think she just likes finding things to be annoyed about."

"I don't know about that."

I don't tell her that, yes, Helena told my mother that this girl was not fit for decency, that she called herself a witch, and probably other matters she never found out about; I don't tell her that my parents think I'm out this Sunday afternoon with someone else entirely; and I don't tell her that it would be quite a job to make my parents accept her.

"So anyway," I say, getting back to an earlier topic: "It's very strange that these tiny things appear to be waves and particles at the same time, or actually they're waves when you want them to be waves and particles when you want them to be particles."

She lies down on the slope, and shields her eyes to look in all available directions. A surveyor's stake nearby attracts her attention. She leans over to seize it. She runs her hand up and down it for a moment, then returns to looking around.

"But there's another gang of scientists, see, that say that that's simply impossible, that there has to be something causing it. Some deeper cause." I'm staring at the trees as I try to formulate. "There's some experiments planned‑"

"Frank, look."

I look to her. She's pulled her skirt up to her belly, her white panties are in her hand, and her legs are apart. "How's this physics?" she asks.

This is my first time seeing something like this, outside of Playboy and Penthouse. It's in at least four dimensions. The gentle summer breeze moves the blonde hairs like wheat in a field. I say: "Oh."

"I think you should kiss me."

I kiss her.

"I think you should touch me."

I touch her, and I'm surprised. There seems to be a bone down there. I didn't expect to find a bone down there.

She gives me instructions, finger by finger. Eventually, she arches her back, and cries out.

"Okay then," she says, pushing my hand away. "You did that well." She pushes down her skirt. "I hope you enjoyed this lesson."

She gets up, and I get up. I have a strange pain, like an ache, in my private parts. I don't know what it is at all, but it really hurts.

She laughs. "I hope you can walk."

"I'm okay," I tell her.

We walk back, towards the road, past the houses being built, and as we're walking, she tells me about her boyfriend. "He's not in high school any more," she tells me. "He's training to be a plumber."

All the time I'm trying not to cry from the pain. I'm wondering about my sister's opinion, and if she was right after all. There was something of a curse laid upon me that day, and by the time I can no longer remember her name, the pain can be barely remember too.

 

"It's an awful cute house," said the realtor and she opened the front door and beckoned for Frank and Martha to follow. "You can do a lot with this entrance-hall. The previous owners had simply the cutest umbrella stand right over here."

George looked up the stairs the were to his right. "Are all four bedrooms up there?"

"Yes, there's four; the basement could handle a room too. It's quite a big basement with nothing in it."

The three walked into a large open space. "This is where the dining room was, though you could choose to put it in that room," with a gesture.

Martha spoke. "Why isn't there any furniture?"

The realtor said: "They had to leave in quite a hurry. The husband had to move to Tokyo on a moment's notice."

"Tokyo, huh?" said Frank. "I worked on ships in Tokyo."

"Oh, you build ships?"

"Army work. I designed all the venting for a couple battleships, plus a submarine." He opened a door. "Basement. Easy to get to in an emergency."

The realtor laughed. "Oh, I don't expect anything ... emergency-ish to happen here, here on Touchstone Crescent. Have you retired from the, ah, service?"

Martha spoke. "Yes, now he's just a regular engineer, one of the best, in fact."

"Now, now," was Frank's moan. He slid open the glass door to the back yard and stepped out onto the wooden porch. The back yard was wild with healthy grass, growing straight and strong in the summer breeze. Martha came up behind him and said: "Wow, someone was a gardener." The realtor joined them and said: "It's got nothing to do with gardening. It's the soil. This house was built on the land of a razed hill."

Frank turned. "This was a hill?"

"Yes, a pretty substantial one at that. The soil‑"

She got no farther before Frank darted inside and went upstairs. He went from room to room, looking out the windows. To the south and west: trees marking a couple creeks. To the east, between the neighbouring trees, a major road that used to be a minor road. And, to the north ... nothing in particular.

He shouted: "I can't believe it!" He ran downstairs. "I knew that hill. I knew it well. You may find it hard to believe, but my sister started her existence on this very spot."

"This very spot?" asked the realtor.

"I suppose not this very spot‑" he stomped the floor "‑but very close to it!"

"Well, that's astonishing, I must say." She thought he'd gone a little mad, but any incentive is welcome in real estate.

Frank grabbed Martha. "This is it. We have to buy this house. It's ... the house on Helena Hill. We're going to call it Helena Hill. Could you be happy here?"

"I think so, soldier; I think the kids will like it too."

They'd made it out to the driveway. "Your kids will like it here. There's a couple creeks nearby, perfectly designed for the amateur naturalist."

Martha asked: "Is it safe?"

"Mostly, yes."

"Who are you people?" came a voice from the street; they all turned. A very old man was standing there. Frank was surprised to see such an old man in such a young suburb.

The realtor said: "Ah, hello, Jim. This couple plans on buying this house."

Jim came up to Frank. "You should beware of this house."

"Why?" replied Frank.

"Something terrible is going to happen in it; that's why it's un-lived-in now."

The realtor tried to interrupt, but couldn't.

Frank: "How can anyone know something is going to happen?"

"Read your science, read your particle physics. The past and the future influence one another, though we can never know it. Why else flee? The house should have a revolving door, so many have been through it. And yet, it's a perfect house, and a sane house. Mark my words, something will happen there! Something terrible!"

The realtor said: "Okay, Jim, that's enough. They'll take your sagacity into consideration, I'm sure. Now, if you'll excuse us."

The realtor and Frank and Martha got into the realtor's car. Once the doors were closed, Frank asked: "Who was that?"

"He owned this entire field, back in the day. We had to give him a house. Don't worry, though: he lives two whole blocks away, on Rosalind Road."

 

It's a garden party out in the back-yard; it's my son's thirtieth birthday. This is a family party, so everyone here is related to everyone else, if not by blood, then by marriage. Quite by co-incidence, I've just had a book published, and the few reviews it's received have been mostly positive. In the TLS, it found its way into the Books in Brief, which I take as a compliment. I mean, all the way over in England, someone's read my bloody book.

Martha's inside at the moment, in the kitchen, fixing up something-or-other; I'm hoping it's some of them pigs-in-blankets: crescent rolls, Viennese sausages. I'll kiss her squarely if she comes to me with a tray of those things.

There's a summer breeze blowing, and I'm leaning against the fence, talking to my nephew. He knew I'd published a book, and he was asking about it.

"It's kind of an explainer about sub-atomic physics," I'm saying. "You know the theories. But I'm taking it from a design viewpoint. Designing the Universe. It's an engineer's book, really, so if you're an engineer, you'll find a bunch of stuff you already know." I kick some beer back. "You're not an engineer, are you?"

"No, I'm not," says this nephew of mine. His name's Peter, right.

There's a commotion at the sliding door. My sister Helena has arrived, along with her new boyfriend. I say to Peter: "Here's your mom."

"Oh, yeah. Here she is."

I don't think he's that fold of his mother.

A bit later, sitting in one of the lawn chairs arranged in a circle, I look across to my sister, sitting there with her wine glass. My eyes brighten up, and I'm about to say something I think is just fascinating.

Helena speaks first: "Oh, no, Frank, not again!"

I stomp my foot playfully. "On this very land, or not too far away from it, our deceased parents‑"

"Why do you have to bring this up every goddam time?"

"‑made whoopie while I dozed, baby-like, in a carrier not too far away from them‑"

"People: you're hearing a false memory, for obvious reasons."

"‑and from the union was created my dear sister, Helena. And that's why, now‑"

"What a fool this mortal be!"

"‑this domicile is known ... as Helena Hill."

"There's just no stopping him."

"The world may turn, Gibraltar may crumble, but here, and always, for all times past and all times to come, we are on Helena Hill."

Her new boyfriend says: "It's not much of a hill."

I tell him, with a drunken swing of my head: "Actually ... we're under the hill right now. Can't you taste the dirt?"

He laughs nervously. "I don't taste anything."

I pat him on the shoulder, smile, and walk away as if I'm dismissing him, when in fact it's because I have to pee.

Later, coming up the stairs from the basement, who should I run into but Alice, coming down the stairs from the ground floor. Since there's absolutely no-one around, we embrace and we kiss.

She says: "I've been looking for you."

"This is a good place to meet. There's a bed down here."

She laughs mischievously. "Tempting, yes. But no, it's too dangerous. Besides, I have to piss."

"Yes. I think we can hold off till tomorrow."

She bends down a little, like weak-at-the-knees little, and says: "I'm so looking forward to it."

Alice lives over on Orlando Avenue, right on the edge of the subdivision. Her back window looks out onto the creek, and a dense wood. We've been down there, oh, some two dozen times. It's exciting in there.

"We can go for a 'walk in the woods'."

"That would be nice."

"Yes."

"I'll send you a text."

"Send me a text."

We kiss again, then, with my own knees-at-the-weak, I return to the garden party.

As I step off the back porch, I realize I'm at my height, and it's all downhill from here.

 

Frank was sitting in his special chair, watching the ball game. However, it was more like he was sitting in the stands, almost right behind home plate. The crowds were cheering all around him, and they were very loud. He turned down the volume a little, and watched the teams play. He was no longer sure who played whom on any given day. In fact, most of the teams he once knew were long gone. He took off his headset, and he was back in his living-room. The game continued, on a flat screen in front of him, but he was no longer experiencing it immersively.

Martha came up the stairs with a couple sandwiches. Frank decided to not try to stand up, so he made the gesture of getting-up, and Martha said: "Oh, stay seated, Sir Man. It's just me." She put the sandwiches down within his easy reach.

Not for the first time, he gestured at the headset. "Huh? Huh?" he said.

"Yes, Frank, you invented them, sure."

"Not altogether‑I can hear your tone‑but they couldn't exist without the contribution I made to the sciences of quantum computing, you know."

"Yes, I know. Don't I know it? How else could we afford next week's round-the-world cruise? Huh. It's so true, we're set."

"More than set; we're loaded, my dear."

"True. You know, we could move."

Frank shook his head strongly. "Never. I'm never leaving Helena Hill."eleH

Martha shook her head. "You've lived other places, you know."

Frank thought about this for a moment. "Not really."

They watched a bit more of the ballgame. It was the first game of a Sunday afternoon double-header. One team was slightly ahead; the other was slightly behind.

The old land-line in the kitchen rang. Martha went to answer it. Frank turned the tv down to hear what she was saying to whomever.

"Kate, how nice to hear from you!... That sounds all right, we'll be here.... This morning?... I must've been out in the garden.... Oh, dear.... Must have been a momentary thing.... Oh, no, not bothered. You did what you had to do, no sense in confusing things, getting into an awkward situation and all.... So, yes, we're here, just watching the baseball game.... Okay, then.... Bye."

Martha came back into the room. "That was Kate."

"Yes, I gathered that!" Why was he so irritable?

"She called this morning."

"Guess we didn't hear it."

"No; you answered."

Frank pretended to remember. "Oh, yes, of course. Something about her coming over some time ... soon. Today?"

"Yes, but...." Here she tread carefully. "You thought she was Helena."

"What? That ridiculous! Helena's gone now these ... five years."

"Ten, actually."

"Ten years." He thought. "That doesn't make any sense. Why didn't she say anything?"

"I don't know. Maybe it was the memory of her mother that held her back."

Frank then tried to remember. He tried very hard. He said: "Oh, yes, I remember. Yes, she called."

After dinner, while Martha did the dishes, she watched out the window into the back yard. Frank was standing there, near the west fence, getting a good view of the trees beyond the houses. Perhaps he was thinking about the creek that was down there. Martha looked down, then back up. Frank was now fifty yards across the yard, at the east fence, lying on his back. Martha ran out.

"Frank, are you all right?" she said, kneeling to him.

He said: "Yeah, I'm, I'm okay. Didn't you feel it?"

"Feel what?"

"The earth. For just the slightest moment, it stopped turning; and I got thrown across the yard."

"What?"

"It simply stopped. How could you have missed it?"

"It didn't stop."

"So how did I get way over here?"

Martha couldn't think of an answer. "In any case, are you injured?"

Frank got up to sit. "No, I'm all right, at least externally. I never thought it would actually happen, that's all."

"The earth did not stop turning."

"Yes, it did." He was standing up now. "Damnedest thing I ever experienced. I'll have to write something about it tonight."

They went into the house, watched a movie, and went to bed.

 

I'm standing on a wooden deck, of someone's house. I'm looking over the tops of a bunch of houses, at a forest of some sort. It looks like a forest, just a forest. I have the feeling there's some water down there. My geography teacher‑funny I can't remember her name‑taught us about where trees grew, and it always had to do with water. We built snow-tunnels down there, once. A very snowy winter. Eight feet deep. Oh, and my home is over there, isn't it? On the other side of the trees? They must be wondering where I am. The street-lights are going to come on soon.

Someone calls my name. "Frank." I turn, and it's a woman like my grandmother. Yes, that's right, that's why she's got the plate, though it doesn't look like the same kind of food. It's that spongy white stuff.

"Are we out of chocolate?" I ask.

The woman says: "Yes, Frank. But I can go get more from the store, in a while. Would you like that, Frank?"

"Yes, I would; thank you."

She sits down in a chair. I'm leaning against a rail. She's looking at me curiously. Who is this woman, and what does she want from me?

"Nice day," she says.

I look around me. The only thing I really notice is the smells in the air, which make me realize that it's getting late. I wonder where I put those stakes to build that boat, then, oh, yes, they're over at George's house, I think in his shed. I look out, at the trees, knowing he lives somewhere over there.

I say: "You know, I really should be getting home now."

The old woman says: "This is your home, Frank. You should take it easy. Would you like some wine, Frank?"

"Wine? I really don't think I should. 'Lips that touch wine shall never touch mine.'"

"It would be all right, I'm sure of it. Here, I'll go get us some wine, Frank. Just a little."

She goes inside. I wonder how I can get back home. Helena may be looking for me, to see if I'm with that girl again. She pulled up her skirt, and showed me her pussy. I hope I can find her, because I want to see it again.

I look around the yard I'm in. There's a gate. I think I could get out that way. I know the direction I want to go; it wouldn't be that hard to get to the creek and cross.

She's back again. How did she do it so fast? Or: is it the same woman? She has glasses of wine in her hands. "Come and sit down, Frank."

I sat down and took the glass of wine from my wife. I looked out at the grass, which was a deep Summer Saturday green. I said: "You remembered to pay Bill for all this yard-work?"

Martha smiles. "Yes, Frank, I paid him. I paid him this morning."

"That's good. 'Helena Hill always pays her debts.'"

"Helena Hill always pays her debts."

I look out at the giant trees poking over the tops of the houses. "Have those always been there?"

"What, Frank?"

"Those green things. Have they always been there?"

"Longer than you and me, I'm afraid. Frank."

I nod. How silly, I know those trees. Or I at least used to know them. Youthful shenanigans and so on. That was a very long time ago.

Some time has passed, and it's gotten darker. I'm certainly gonna geddit. The old woman looks to be asleep. Yes, she looks to be asleep. Maybe she's dead; but I know I have to get going, but quietly. I get up silently, and go into the house. After a while, I find the front door. I look outside at the strange landscape. However, I know the general direction; I'm a cub scout, I know orientation. There has to be a way to cross the creek, to the east. If I get to the town limit sign, I'll know where to go; once I'm across and past the trees, everything will be familiar to me, once again. I go down the concrete steps to the sidewalk and turn right. It's Saturday, July 20th, 2052, and I'm leaving Helena Hill.