We were all preparing for a presentation about how artists capture and represent the soul. They had tried to get someone very famous – I think it was Seamus Heaney – but the soul he'd captured (his mother) was too big and hard to show. So instead, we were using illustrative examples rather than real samples.
They decided that more of us needed to participate in the presentation, so instead of just a few of us going, they asked everyone in the school to come. We queued up, and loaded into three giant school buses. I kept moving from seat to seat, trying to find an open spot.
While we were on the bus, though, something happened. At first we all thought it was a hurricane or a tornado – wind was blowing, bushes were flying through the air – but then someone shouted, "Look! There she is!" and there was a colossal woman stomping through the countryside. She looked like a little old granny, like the one who owns Tweety Bird, except for being more than forty feet tall. I suddenly understood that it was Seamus Heaney's soul released. Our presentation was, needless to say, cancelled.
We all piled off the bus. There was a man there herding his goats back behind a gate, and I stopped to talk to him. He seemed unfazed by the giant lady who had crashed through his meadow; he was very calm about helping his goats back into the field. A young man (who looked like a young Daniel Radcliffe, so I'll call him Harry) was with me, and he casually plucked a leaf off a bush that the goats were nibbling at. We walked with the goat-herd towards a large, ornate building and Harry popped the leaf into his mouth and ate it. Before we got to the door, Harry's lips started to turn blue and he said, "I can't breathe! What's going on?" The goat-herd said, "I figured this would happen, though I didn't know it would go so quickly. It's because of the leaf you ate. It has traces of arsenic in it." Harry collapsed to the ground, and died.
We pulled his body into the building, which turned out to be a library. The room was filled with burgundy leather chairs and heavy, antique books and black and golden velvet couches. Someone approached and took Harry's body away. I sat on the plush couch, taken aback by the turn of events.
The person who'd taken away Harry's body returned quickly and handed me a clear plastic form, molded into the shape of a head. Inside the head container was a hard object rattling around. When I peered at it more closely, I realized that it was Harry's jaw that they'd cut out of the corpse, and tucked into this container for me. I found it grisly, but knew it would be rude to refuse it. I said, "Thank you. I'm sure his family will be grateful for this."
I asked out loud if anyone expected his soul to be around, and it was explained to me that it was too soon. One of the teachers idly picked up a book he'd been looking at – not one of the heavy antique books, but a small bedraggled paperback book. He flipped it open to where he'd dog-eared the page, and out popped a tiny Harry (just from the waist up, as though he was sitting at a desk). The teacher said, "A ha! Not too soon at all! I guess we will be taking this Calvin Trillin book with us!" He smiled and handed it to me.
Laden with the plastic head containing Harry's jaw and the beat-up novel containing Harry's soul, I left the library. I knew that I had enough now to bring Harry back.
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