Corvus Rising – Chapter 6

The Eyes Have It

 

The trail of footprints leads to the edge of a roaring river. A woman with black feathers for hair sings an unintelligible song as she pulls fish after fish out of the raging current. She removes the hooks from their mouths and drops them into a wooden box and throws the hook and line back into the water. She pulls another fish out of the river and throws it into the box. She stands up and takes a shiny object from her pocket and hands it to me. She disappears with the box of fish and I open my hand. A flock of crows emerge and fly noisily away.

 

Jade lay still for a few moments, watching the dream recede, its colors and sounds coalescing into a stream of multicolored layers before disappearing into the folds of her memory. But she could still hear the singing, a haunting voice, thin and far away, a maddeningly familiar melody she could not name.

She wondered if she was insane. Why else would her dreams be leaking into her waking hours? Go away! I know I’m awake. Go back into the night! She shivered; that was how it started, the descent. I couldn’t tell my life from dreaming.

Russ mumbled in his sleep, and the singing stopped. Jade got up quietly. After a trip to the bathroom, she went to her studio, closed the door, and flopped into the armchair.

Framed perfectly by the window, the full moon’s face stared coldly down on her. Like the face of the dead. She took the black medallion on the leather cord out from under her nightgown. Moonlight flowed over the worn carvings on its dark surface. She turned it over in her hand a few times, tracing the silvery lines with her finger. A hand intertwined with a crow wing.

She leaned back against the chair. The window frame slashed the moon’s face into two unequal pieces; one eye looked down upon her with a certain disdain, while the other hid behind the sash. Absentmindedly, she rubbed the medallion back and forth gently across her front teeth. A shadow passed over the moon.

She leaped up and turned the light on. She attached a canvas to her easel, picked up a brush and a palette. Black paint flowed onto the canvas in broad, sweeping strokes that gave way to thin, curling tendrils. A face appeared out of the darkness.

 

Russ woke up to any empty bed. He got up, showered and shaved, and started down the hall. A sliver of light shone under the door to Jade’s studio. He turned the doorknob and opened the door slowly, expecting to see her painting with enraptured attention.

Instead, he found her curled up asleep with Willow B in the overstuffed armchair. He almost bent down to wake her gently, but the painting on the easel arrested his attention.

A portrait, more or less, of a woman. Long black hair swayed in turbulent currents full of stardust and tiny creatures of the deep. But it was the eyes that took him. The full moon reflected in pale gray eyes as it bathed the woman’s face in silvery light. He felt as if she knew his every dream, every desire.

Jade materialized at his side and yawned, “Do you like it?”

“I love it,” Russ said. “Those eyes! They just suck me in! They’re like gateways into another dimension. I don’t know how you do that! I swear to God, I can see forests and rivers and mountains—all in her eyes!”

“Really?” she said, frowning at the canvas. “You see all that?”

He gazed intently at the painting, shifting his weight to one foot as he tipped his head to the side. “Oh, I don’t know if I actually see all that. But the way you painted it makes me imagine I did.” He turned and faced her. “You’re extremely talented, Jade. I don’t know anyone else that can make me see a whole landscape in someone’s eyes.”

“I didn’t mean to paint a landscape,” she said. “I finally got an image of her. It’s my mother.”

“Oh,” Russ said. “I see. You dreamed her, finally?”

“No,” she said. “I wasn’t dreaming.”

“Really!” Russ said. Oh God. Please don’t go there again. “Let’s talk about it over breakfast, shall we? I’ll go start the coffee.” He planted a kiss on his wife’s cheek as he went to the kitchen, relieved that he had escaped her morning madness.

 

Henry Braun frowned as he looked out his office window at his large estate. Over the years, he had spent a fortune on landscaping, a swimming pool, three gazebos, and his own private fishing hole. But it wasn’t enough. Henry wanted more. More money and more fame. He loved being rich, and he wanted to be revered for the successful businessman he obviously was.

“Those damn Jesuits,” he growled to his attorney, Jules Sackman. “It’s just stall, stall, stall with them, and then without even the courtesy of a conversation, they turn me down. Worthless bunch of freeloaders never worked an honest day in their lives.”

Henry the First’s portrait stared disapprovingly down at him. I’m sorry, Great-Grandfather! They just wouldn’t listen to reason!

He went to his desk, opened a rosewood humidor, and removed two cigars. After handing one to Jules, he peeled the wrapper of the other and licked it all over. He cut off the end with an ivory-handled cutter and lit it.

“Stop worrying about minutiae, Henry,” Jules said, sitting up in the red leather chair and sucking on his cigar as Henry held the lighter to the other end. “We’ll just bypass the Jesuits. Make them irrelevant. We’ll go around them.”

“How?” Henry said as he sat down in the armchair next to Jules. “They own the dang island, for God’s sake. How do we get around that?”

“Eminent domain,” Jules said, blowing a series of smoke rings toward the ceiling. “That’s how.” He crossed one leg over the other, revealing milk-white legs devoid of hair.

“Eminent what?” Henry said, turning away from the sight.

“Eminent domain,” Jules said. “That’s when the government—let’s say the city of Ledford—condemns a property. That is, they take it, and in this case, sell it to someone who will develop it. Someone like you for instance. Someone who can promise what all politicians love to hear. Tax revenue and jobs.”

“Are you serious?” Henry said, flabbergasted. “The city can do that? Just take over someone’s private property like that? And sell it?” He didn’t like the idea that the government could take a man’s property, but if it would make Wilder Island his … He licked his lips and glanced up at the portraits. Henry the First nodded.

“Yes,” Jules said. He took a long drag from his cigar. “We just have to show the city government that developing the island with your casinos, hotels, restaurants, shopping mall, and amusement park will bring in some major cash and a significant number of jobs, without raising taxes on the citizenry. Whereas, the Jesuits pay no taxes on the island, provide no jobs, and are now shutting the island off to anyone but this Father Manzi and his birds. The politicians, who will be making the decision, will fall all over themselves to condemn Wilder Island.”

Henry stared at Jules. “And these Jesus people are just going to roll over and let us do this? What about the chapel? Won’t they claim it’s a church and get out of this eminent domain thing?”

“The Jesuits will fight us perhaps, as other churches have fought condemnation suits,” Jules said, flicking a cigar ash into a carved serpentine ashtray on Henry’s desk. “But they will lose. They have no legal grounds; churches are not immune from eminent domain. Nothing is. We have a Supreme Court ruling on our side. But first you have to convince the city to condemn the property.”

“Oh, I can do that,” Henry said gleefully. He sucked on his cigar. “I have the city in my back pocket.”

“Yes, Henry,” Jules said, exhaling a long plume of blue smoke. “That’s what you said about the Catholics, after you uselessly bribed the monsignor’s know-nothing flunky at St. Sophia’s. Do I need to inform you, as your attorney, that bribery is illegal?”

“Who said anything about bribery?” Henry asked innocently. “I’m not going to bribe anyone.” He glanced up at the portraits. Henry the First frowned down at Jules. I’m not!

“I am glad to hear that, Henry,” Jules said, smiling as he puffed on his cigar. “Bribery is illegal, you know.” He blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling.

Henry wanted to smack the sanctimonious face that sucked on one of his expensive cigars. How many cops and judges have you bought off to keep your wife out of jail? Henry knew all about Mrs. Sackman’s gambling addiction—and how much Jules needed the money Henry paid him to keep her ass out of jail. One of these days, you’ll outlive your usefulness to me.

“Once the city condemns the island,” Jules said, the end of his cigar glowed as he paused to inhale, “they’ll have it appraised for fair market value. Mind you, that’ll probably mean a bit more than we offered the Jesuits, maybe twice. But you’ll be happy to pony up ten million, won’t you, Henry?” Jules exhaled a voluminous billow of smoke.

“Whatever it takes, Jules,” Henry said. You’re mighty free with my money, lawyer. But he was nervous. He hardly ever had to wait this long to get what he wanted.

The clock over the fireplace chimed the hour. Three o’clock. The big hand on the twelve, the little hand on the three. Like an L. For loser. He scowled at the clock and leaned toward Jules.

“Make no mistake, Jules. I’m going to have that island. Nothing is going to stop me. Not priests, not money, nothing.” He ashed his cigar and leaned back in his leather chair. “And once it’s mine, I’m going to blow that so-called chapel into the river. And then I’ll scrape it clean of that overgrown, vermin-infested forest.”

Henry Braun the First stared down from his gilded frame on the wall and whispered, “You have the advantage. Go for it!”

“What did you call this thing?” Henry asked Jules. “Imminent something?”

“Eminent domain,” Jules said. “We didn’t have a chance with the Jesuits, Henry, but with eminent domain, we do. Now, here’s what you’ll have to do while I file the appropriate papers. You will prepare a formal presentation to the city, with a fantastically beautiful, miniature Ravenwood Resort. Spare no expense, Henry. Never underestimate the power of eyewash, you know? Really glitz it up.”

Henry had envisioned Ravenwood Resort many times, complete with two famous steam paddleboats from the last century. And a choo-choo! He had loved model trains when he was a kid and had spent many an hour building the little towns and landscapes for his trains to chug through. Who can resist a choo-choo!

“You’ll also have to hammer home how much money Ravenwood Resort will bring to the city, Henry. And jobs. Don’t forget the jobs. Emphasize how the chapel and the Jesuits have contributed neither money nor jobs, but don’t bash the church. Do you catch my drift, Henry?”

“Yes,” Henry said. “I know exactly what to say. And I’ll build a model that’ll knock their teeth out.”

Jules stood up, straightened his sweater, and said, “Good, that is good, Henry. Now I’m afraid I need to head home. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

After Jules left, Henry finished his cigar alone in his office, enjoying a glass of Pinot Noir. Silly priests. Shrewd businessmen they are not.

He swiveled his chair around to face the portraits on the wall. Henry II and III gazed down at him with glassy stares. But Henry the First’s eyes sparkled. “You get it, don’t you?” He raised his glass to his ancestor. “To us, Great-Grandfather!” Henry the First winked and nodded as Henry swallowed the last of his wine.

 

A black bird picks me up out of bed. I hold on to his tail feathers as he flies into the horizon, his feathers and my hair streaming together like iridescent ribbons of light. Above a great rushing river, the bird’s tail feathers come out in my hand, and I drop like a rock to the roaring waters below. Falling, falling, I finally splash down, down, down into a deep pool of water, cool and clear. Concentric ripples move outward from my point of entry, bubbling upward as I sink into a dark abyss.

Jade’s eyes snapped open, and she gulped air as if she had been underwater too long. Feeling the solid bed underneath and hearing Russ’s gentle snoring beside her, she tried to relax and breathe normally. But the images from the dream persisted, the feeling of falling made her dizzy, and she was unable to go back to sleep.

She rolled over and stared out the big bay window of their bedroom. She liked the curtains open at night, when all the house lights were off. The moon illuminated the woods beyond their yard with veiled light, and the shadows took shape, whispering seductively, beckoning her to enter. Wordless, insistent, breezy voices sought her out, hooked their tangled currents through the very fabric of her being, tantalizing her, tickling her with tales of wonder.

Russ snorted and flung an arm across her. The voices suddenly stopped, and the dark green and black shapes of the nighttime forest beyond the window disappeared. She patted Russ’s hand, and soon he was snoring again.

She unwound herself carefully from his embrace and arose quietly. She made a cup of coffee in the kitchen, and Willow B followed her into the studio. She closed the door quietly behind him and sat at her easel for a few minutes, sipping coffee. Willow B jumped up to the armchair he liked to sleep in while she painted. Away off in the distance, she heard a siren.

The night sky was more gray than black, and she couldn’t see any stars. Empty. Like a canvas. She turned on the lights. A blank canvas stared back at her from the easel to which it was attached, its flat white face momentarily blinding her with its brilliance. The dream that had awakened her cast an image upon the emptiness. She uncovered her paints and picked up a brush.

The underwater world of the dream flowed down her arm to the paintbrush in her hand, and onto the canvas in front of her. She applied layer after layer of paint, color upon color as she worked to evoke a sense of being tugged down into the underworld realm of memory and dream, where sunshine, flowers, and birds recede into the upper-world of awakening.

Through a watery primeval forest stuffed with trees and leaves, sprinkled with occasional patches of flowery color, bubbles sprang merrily up and away to the interface of sky and pond, sparkling in the sun briefly before bursting. The painting’s voice came from the vast darkness of underwater currents, filled with strange creatures that do not walk Earth’s surface.

They dragged at her, those voices, pulling her deeper and deeper into the mysteries of her solitary universe. The canvas seemed but a thin, permeable membrane, pulling her into the underworld of her imagination. This painting told the story of the descent. It was breathtaking, exhilarating. And it scared her.

She put her brush down and turned her back on the painting. The sky beyond the window had turned pale gray; dawn was imminent. She picked Willow B up out of the armchair and sat down in the warm spot where he had been sleeping. He arranged himself on her lap, and she held fast to his solid warmth, trying to keep connected to the present.

Willow B had kept her from disappearing completely into her dreams once before. A vision of herself in her apartment during her last year in college leaped out of her memory, beckoning her into the past.

She saw herself painting, frantically painting. The madness in her younger self’s eyes brought it all back—the entire descent, from the very first day she had given in to the irresistible harmonies of her imagination, to the very last, when they found her completely spent on the kitchen floor in her apartment.

She had shut everything out but the voices that told her to paint. The entire contents of her psyche begged for life, and she painted to its relentless pleas. For days, she had no memory of anything but painting, endlessly painting. One canvas would fall away, and another would appear, haunting her for its face. Irresistible, insistent, she was powerless against its demand.

It ate her alive.

Russ opened the door, poked his head into the studio and said, “You’ve been painting all night again?”

“Uh, no,” Jade said, his voice shaking her out of the past. “Just part of it. Good morning, honey! I didn’t hear you get up. What time is it?” She squinted at the clock on the wall.

“Time for coffee,” he said as he bent down and kissed her good morning. “Want to keep painting? I can get my own breakfast.”

“No,” she said, getting up from the chair. “I was just daydreaming.” She frowned at the painting on the easel.

“Looking good, babe,” Russ said, putting his arm across her shoulders. “What will you call it? Will it be in the art show?”

“Falling Backward,” Jade said. Icy tongues of anxiety licked away at her sense of worthiness. “But I’m not sure it will be ready for prime time by then. It’s so rough still, so crude. In a bourgeois sort of way.”

The opening reception for her upcoming art show at Jena McCrae’s gallery was less than a week away—her first show since she had started painting again. She wasn’t worried about having enough paintings; her concern was how they would be received.

Russ made coffee while she scrambled eggs and made toast. “What if people hate my work?” she said after they sat down. “What if they think my paintings are bourgeois?”

Russ stared at her. “Are you serious?” he asked. “Bourgeois?” He shook his head. “Hardly, hon. Bourgeois means ‘middle-class values.’” He made little quote marks in the air. “Really, hon, your paintings aren’t about class values, so I wouldn’t fret about it.”

Jade blew across her coffee, watching the little bubbles roll along the surface and crash into the other side of the cup.

“But to regular people,” she said, “bourgeois means ‘tasteless’ or ‘boring.’” She made little quote marks in the air. “Like white bread—you know, the icon of the consumer. Or refrigerator magnets. Sofa-sized paintings.”

She wondered why people who bought paintings or sofas were called consumers. It’s not like they eat this stuff.

“Jade,” Russ said, putting his coffee down. “Listen to me. Your paintings are weird maybe, strange, enchanted, dark, disturbing, playful, mysterious. All that. Bourgeois, no. Where’d this bourgeois fetish come from, anyway?”

She remembered the moment, right down to the smallest detail. “Oh, a painting professor I had in college—Bill Williams—he used that word to describe my paintings at a final critique. I know it was a long time ago and in a different life. But it was such a stinging insult. It’s clung to me like a tick ever since.”

“Well, pull it out, hon,” Russ said. “He was a jerk, probably jealous of your enormous talent and intricate imagination. Don’t let it suck the life out of you. Let it go, okay? It wasn’t about you or your paintings.”

He got up from the table and put his plate and cup in the sink. “I’ve got to get to school,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “I’ll be in MacKenzie most of the day. The state science fair is down there this year, and I’m judging all the juniors and seniors. I won’t be home till late tonight, so don’t wait up.”

 

Jade watched Russ back out of the driveway through her studio window and peel out, leaving behind a smoking layer of rubber on the road. She shook her head. “What is it with boys and hot rods?” she asked Willow B, who had taken up residence in the armchair.

The new painting on the easel called out to her, wanting completion. But it needed some time to dry before she could continue. “I don’t know if I have enough time to finish you before my show,” she said.

Not that she needed any more. She had completed ten new paintings, but Jena McCrae, the art gallery owner, wanted more. “I want you to bring some of your earlier work too,” Jena had said. “Think of your show as a retrospective from today. Where you were then, where you are now.”

Where I was then. Which then?

She stood before the closet where her older paintings were stored and said, “Well, then. Enough procrastinating. I am quite out of time.”

She put her hand on the doorknob and hesitated. They were all there inside, the paintings that chronicled the details of her breakdown. Fear crawled up to her throat and squeezed. The memory of that time bore down on her with all its dread intact. What if they suck me back down?

Her hand closed around the doorknob, and she gasped for air. Anxiety threatened her resolve, and she almost let go. Get a grip. They’re just paintings. They can’t kill you. She jerked open the closet door. Before allowing her fear to stop her, she reached in and pulled out a painting and ripped the brown paper off.

Her face broke into a smile. “It’s Queen of the Night, Willow B!” she cried. She set the painting on the arms of the chair above Willow B and stood back, savoring the memory of painting it in those early days of her romance with Russ. “I fell in love with him under this flower. God, who wouldn’t have? A gorgeous flower that blooms but once, at night, under a full moon in the desert …”

Pale and luminous, the white flower took the entire canvas. Spear-shaped petals of opalescent white enclosed dozens of delicate, pale yellow stamens swayed and undulated around the solitary pistil. Layer upon layer of sinuous shapes of translucent hues awakened memories of love lost and found.

“I love this painting,” she murmured.

A sudden clap of thunder ended her reverie, and she frowned out the window. “Where did that come from?” she said. In reply, big fat raindrops pelted the window and streaked down the slippery glass. Lightning flashed as she reached for another painting.

Frowning at her own handwriting, “12:01” scrawled across the paper wrapper, she tore it open and propped the painting across the arms of Willow B’s chair.

Black birds clung to the brittle branches of bare winter trees against a cold, gray sky. A distant clock tower haunted the scene, its hands frozen at 12:01. “Remember that clock, Mr. B?” Jade said to the cat sleeping on the cushion underneath the painting. “It haunted me for weeks. Always stuck on the same time. One minute after twelve. Pretty well says it all.”

Time runs through your life like water to the sea.

The memory of her apartment when she was in college enveloped her, with the clock centered in the window where she couldn’t miss its reproachful face. Day after day, it had rebuked her, “You’re late! You’re late!” mocking her every moment. She had tried closing the blinds to shut it out, but it haunted her dreams every night, taunting her with the eternally missed deadline. Always running, forever late, never arriving.

Night after the night, the same dream had played over and over again: millions of clocks in many colors, all showing the same time—12:01. The clocks started out randomly and then each slowed or quickened their minute hands until they all ticked and tocked in unison. Tick, the clocks scolded her. Tock, they upbraided her. But the time never changed. 12:01. She buried her head in pillows, but the relentless tick-tock only grew louder.

 

“You did hear it, didn’t you?” Jade whispered. “It drove me insane, the tick-tock-tick-tock.” Willow B turned an ear sideways. “Remember how I opened the blinds, and the ticking and tocking stopped? And when I closed them, it began again?” She glanced nervously at the window as the tempo and rhythm of the rain changed. Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock…

 

“Damn you!” she had screamed as the clock smirked coldly at her across the treetops, its face split in two by the hands stuck at 12:01.

She dragged her easel across the room and positioned it in front of the window. She attached a canvas to it, just large enough to block out that hateful face. “Ha!” she had said and stuck her tongue out at the clock she could no longer see.

But the white canvass tortured her with its blankness and commanded her to pick up a brush. She painted feverishly all day and all night. Exhausted, she flung herself on the couch and slept. When she awoke, the sun had gone down, and she flicked on a light. Winged shadows swirled around the room until one by one, they dove into the painting in front of the window, flying around the clock tower until at last they found places to roost in the gray branches of the winter trees. The clock condemned her with lidless eyes, its hands pointing to her doom. 12:01.

Thunder rumbled across the sky and the rain picked up its tempo as it beat upon the window. She dropped to the floor on her knees and stroked Willow B, asleep in the armchair. “That clock started it all. Like a big eye that never blinked and never stopped staring at me.” She felt a distant purr deep within his sleeping bulk. “I’m sorry I neglected you.”

 

In a frenzy, she had painted every waking moment and dreamed about painting when she slept. The imaginary boundary frayed between physical reality and the realm from which her paintings sprang. The completed canvasses morphed to life around her, and painted images became companions and critics that paced the room with her, argued with her, cried with her, laughed at her, comforted her.

The entire population of her psyche clamored for immediate voice and she gave in to the irresistible siren song. For days she had done nothing but paint, stopping only to stuff her mouth with crackers and wash them down with honeyed tea. When she slept, the beings that populated her paintings lived again in her dreams. There was no escaping them. Waking or sleeping, the voices owned her life.

“And then I crashed,” Jade murmured. Willow B woke up and yawned. She scratched him under his chin. “You were there, Willow B. You saw it all. I lost track of everything—when to eat, when to sleep, when to go to class, my friends, time. I was alone in another world until the real one finally banged its way in.”

God, it was loud.

When they found her in her apartment, she was thin, malnourished and speaking to no one but Willow B and the voices in her paintings. Her foster mother, Chloe, took her home and nursed her back to health. “It’s as important to eat as it is to paint,” Chloe had said as she poked another spoonful of food into Jade’s mouth.

She wanted to paint sometimes but couldn’t bring herself to actually pick up a brush. Fear stopped her; painting had opened the door to a terrifying descent. Just after Thanksgiving had passed that year, she took a brush in her hand and stared at a blank canvas. Nothing. Deader than a doornail, that place inside her that once demanded her to paint. Half dismayed, half relieved, she worried. What if it never comes back … what if it does?

She shook the memory out of her head. “But it did come back, didn’t it, Willow B?” She stood up and stuffed 12:01 into its quilted pocket.

The late afternoon sun broke through the clouds and illuminated the cat, sleeping in the chair.

 

Henry Braun sat back in his leather chair, his feet on his desk. “Eminent domain.” He rolled the words around in his mouth again and again. He savored those majestic, beautiful words, caressing the sound with his lips. “Eminent domain.”

They became his mantra, his obsession. They defined him, his life, his mission. He thought even the dictionary definition of “eminent” described him, Henry Braun, to a tee.

 

em·i·nent

1. High in station, rank, or repute; prominent; distinguished.

2. Conspicuous, signal, or noteworthy.

3. Lofty; high.

4. Prominent; projecting; protruding.

 

“That’s me, eminent all the way down to the nose!” Henry chuckled, stroking the iconic family proboscis he had inherited from the ancestral Brauns.

He flipped the pages of the dictionary until he found the definition for domain: “a territory over which rule or control is exercised.” He reread it several more times, memorizing it, before snapping the dictionary shut.

“Eminent domain!” he toasted the Henry portraits. “Wilder Island is our due and proper domain,” he assured them.

He swiveled his chair around and faced the window. His own reflection stared back. The Braun Legacy shall be legendary because of me, Henry Braun IV. My fame and fortune shall be greater than Henry I, II, and III combined. He dared not say that out loud in front of their portraits. He didn’t believe in ghosts, per se, but he always felt the ancestral Henrys were watching him, listening to every word he said.

Henry the First’s trestle bridge disaster ruined him and darn near sank the family into the oblivion of poverty forever. It was an act of God, they said. Act of God! Henry smirked. I’ll show them all an act of God! He turned back to the portraits.

“I will redeem you, Great-Grandfather,” he whispered. “I will get Wilder Island back, make no mistake.”

Never had the slightest shred of doubt cast a shadow on his vision of one day owning Wilder Island for himself and for his family honor. At last he had a found a way to get it.

“My Savior. Eminent Domain.” Henry chuckled. The very act of saying the words pleasured him, tickling his tongue, his lips, his teeth. The words orchestrated his fate, trumpeted his desires. “Eminent Domain!” He sang it out like an opera singer, “E–e–e–e–e–e–min–ent Do–oh–oh–ohoh–main,” in a crescendo from the upper registers of his rich and mellow baritone voice that cascaded all the way down to bass tones almost undetectable to the human ear.

Henry sang his tune over and over again. He postured with one foot up on a chair, a wine glass raised up high, as if he were lord of his domain. He watched himself in the mirror, singing, “E–e–e–e–e–e–min–ent Do–oh–oh–ohoh–main. E–e–e–e–e–e–min–ent Do–oh–oh–ohoh–main. “E–e–e–e–e–e–min–ent Do–oh–oh–ohoh–main.”

When he tired of singing, he hummed the tune of his eminent domain soliloquy. With pencils and pens, he drummed out the rhythm. It became the background chatter in Henry’s brain. He fell asleep in his chair, smiling like a child on Christmas night.

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