The League of Berries & Laurels - Ch. 6 (Pt.III)
** To Be Decommissioned on 7/1/24**
Continued from:
Ulie joins his brother and the twins by the train. Eugene eyes him suspiciously, but he does not know, nor can he confirm, that the popper, the product of Ulie’s absence, is stored up the sleeve of his bulky sweater. Eugene knows that there must be a reason Ulie was nowhere to be found while the other three of the four youngest investigated their piled presents for any clue as to their contents.
Unity is everywhere evident in the decor. Winter motifs have been painted in the removes of the from windows by an expert hand. Their art produces clues, appraising toys in the lofty panes, while a sleigh is drawn in the moony distance through the middle panels, and evergreen vegetation runs along the bottom-most glass, all carried off in wisps a stroke of brush provided. Francis’ absence brings a disunity amongst the people to the fore. To be in this house impresses more than the sights through the department store’s displays. It is also more fraught. For a family whose bouts and lapses have been the stuff of legend, a lack of unity in the winter, can bring in the chill, whereupon a bottled unity is sought.
“All right, everyone, the lids all clap in rhythm, and the pans have produced from the oven. All has been apportioned for serving and waits expectantly for our musical clanking of glasswares.” With the design documents left open on the runner in the foyer, where Mr. Kerrigan and Mr. Kerrigan the father had been, they finally gather in unity. Alcohol is had, and old-timey Christmas music plays from the cabinet radio and record player combo in the dining room.
With the first taste of the ginger and carrot medley, the same that Eugene beside him pushes about his plate in disgust, Ulie’s sinuses clear, and the whole cascading story of the League of Berries and Laurels, down to J.J. and his attentive curiosity, can be seen in the frost and wood grain that were previously nothing. Just then, Ulie can see a figure offering a popper to a resplendent and druidic figure in the woodwork of the portal between the dining room and the hall. Resolving then to do as is right, while the family’s chaos obscures his absence, Ulie dresses in the foyer where none, not even a twin, can observe him, and he exits into the snow, across the lawn, and through the front gate. Along the trail, Ulie is amazed to see a train still run, populated by none but the odd weary traveller, outnumbered entirely by porters. The spooky instant when the cabins were observed in the rapid passing of the train between the station ahead and that behind Ulie’s progress through the snow makes Ulie wonder if his parents are right about Francis, and that he should not be venturing through bitter cold and night to bring the unspent popper, but a sound interrupts his thoughtfulness. It stops when Ulie stops. It starts again, but, as Ulie turns his head slowly, studying the bark where foliage waits its winter’s term, no hint can be seen of the noise’s origin down the long-running trail. Drifts kicked up by the train’s passage verge and diverge lower and run wider apart. Continuing until he knows there to be a place in the trail where the pouring forth of ice across the otherwise laden trail allows a shorter means of getting to he home, should he scamper up the structure of tree and pipework, Ulie stops. It also offers the readiest means of discovering if the noise of the trail is a matter to be concerned with, or if it will leave him where the trail no longer bears witness to the every step taken thereupon. No force save that of his own power brings Ulie to a lane near the house that dead ends at the trail, down which dead end runs drainage, up which drainage Ulie has just finished scampering, and that is also the end of the noise that he thought hounded him, so far as he can tell.