Blue Light (34 page)

Everyone turned to me. They seemed slightly surprised that I was there.

“I opened it up a few weeks ago, Chance,” Bones said. “When I heard him stirring in his desert cave.”

“Gray Man?” Winch Fargo’s eyes narrowed and his one fist rose.

“I’m not afraid of him,” Alacrity said. She was looking into Nesta’s eyes. The two young women had moved close together.

“Maybe he won’t find us,” Reggie said.

“He’s already on his way,” his sister replied.

“Death has clawed his way out of the grave,” Juan Thrombone said. “It is time for you, Chance, to leave.”

“Where?”

“Far away. In three months’ time you can return. Maybe we will be here. At any rate Death will be gone.”

It was an odd council of two madmen, a child, an amazon, and a beautiful egghead. There was the coyote pack too and Reggie, who was so well camouflaged that I almost forgot that he was there. All of them were of one mind.

Juan Thrombone turned from me and
communed
with the other Blues. There were no words spoken. I’m not sure if there was any sound at all. There might have been some grunting or humming. A coyote might have howled. Or maybe it was just the nature of my small brain trying to decipher their thoughts. Their congress was not painful to me. I didn’t experience the pressure that Bones’s attention usually caused. It was like a choir practicing pieces of songs that gave hints of great meaning only to break off midway.

It was the last moment of pure beauty in my life.

After a while things broke down. Nesta and Alacrity held hands and stared into each other’s eyes. Juan Thrombone took Winch for a walk through the woods. Coyote reclined and Wanita rested her head on the canine mother’s chest. The dog, Max, seemed to remember me from our evening together with Claudia Heart. He stayed near me while watching Coyote. Reggie began sharpening stone arrowheads. Then the rest of the coyotes came around me, playing like they had in my hospital room years before.

After a while I lay down with the beasts and slept.

I dreamed of scents. Sweet water wafting on the air and the musky odor of desert rams, the sharp, stinging smell of the bobcat and the stench of humanity. But those creatures could smell much more than their earthly brethren. They could smell the moon and stars and the spaces between the stars. Their howling song was an intricate equation honoring the placement of gravities they sensed.

A long crying note came into my dream. For a while I thought that it was the baying of my sleepmates. Then came a flat thumping, a deep rumble, and then a song.

I awoke to see Alacrity working a small hand-sized bow along the taut string of her longbow. The sound was a pure distillation of all the possibility of a violin in a varying note. Reggie followed her with a slow beat. And Juan Thrombone gave voice to a wordless song. The coyotes joined in, yipping and howling. Wanita slept on and Winch Fargo, who had gotten into Juan Thrombone’s honey wine, made toast after toast.

The music was too powerful for my halfwit senses, so I made my way out of the cathedral of War knowing that my time among the Blues was short.

“He’s coming close,” Juan Thrombone said to me a week later. “He’s almost here.” He had found me in the abandoned town of Treaty. I had gone there hoping that I’d go unnoticed, that I might be able to stay and help in the stand against Death.

Thrombone was accompanied by Winch Fargo. Fargo had made himself a giant two-bladed ax from a metal plate that had covered a broken generator Reggie had found. It had a rough hemlock haft and was more than three feet in diameter with blades that were perfect crescents as sharp as razors.

“Nigger come up here and he’s gonna lose some head,” the felon said.

I had always tried my best to stay away from Fargo. He was rude and insulting to everyone but Nesta.

“Let me have a little while with Chance,” Bones told the axman. “I have to send him off.”

Fargo hesitated a moment. He hated ever being alone. But he finally moved off.

Before going he said, “You tell that nigger that I’m waitin’ for ’im up here if you see ’im, Chance.”

When Fargo was gone Thrombone turned to me.

“It’s time for you to go,” he said.

“Tomorrow.”

“Now. There is no more time. You have to go.”

“You’re not making Addy leave,” I said.

“She will die if I do.”

“I don’t mind dying,” I said. “People die. They die all the time. But this is my home; it’s where I live.”

“It’s easy for you to die, Last Chance. As easy as the red leaf falls. But you have a job to be doing.”

“What job?”

“I cannot say except that you must leave now.”

The small man’s eyes turned blue. I blinked and found myself alone in the town.

My backpack had been ready for days. I retrieved it from Number Twelve and set out on the path for Eric Beauvais’s cabin in the woods. I didn’t say good-bye to anyone. I was angry and hurt that I had to leave. I blamed them for not running with me. No one had ever explained to me why they had to stay or why I had to go. We could have all run away and made our home elsewhere. Bones could have planted new trees.

I stomped away from our Eden without a friend or a future. All I had was another set of memories of people who were lost to me. I ignored the whispering secrets in the sun and sky. I hated what had been given to me because all it did was accent my loss.

I traveled hard for three days before reaching Eric’s cabin. It was a small fallen-down affair atop a bald hill. The walls were reminiscent of Juan Thrombone’s multifabricated suit, composed of plasterboard and wooden slats, tar paper and thatch. On one side there was an aborted foundation of stone, or maybe the house was built with a broken-down stone fence as one of its sides. The roof was rusted metal, and no smoke came from the black stovepipe at its center.

There was no porch, just a front door that opened to a yard. In that yard lay the wreckage of one man’s life. There was an old Dodge that couldn’t possibly have worked, a broken-down washing machine, an animal pen with no life in it, a half-tilled garden, and a dead goat flung in the path to the door.

I gazed upon the scene for a long time before acting. I tried to think of some reason why a dead goat would be left to rot outside one’s front door.

Eric wasn’t dead. Blinded by Death’s talons, hands and feet crushed by Death’s weight, but he wasn’t dead.

“Who is it?” he cried when I pushed the door open.

“Friend of Alacrity’s,” I said.

He was crouched down in a corner, ruined hands held up in front of his face.

Eric Beauvais was a large blond man in his late forties. He was powerful and handsome except for the red gashes he had for eyes. Gray Man had left him blinded and unable to flee or fight. I was sure that Eric had been a brave man before his encounter with Death. Maybe he had never known fear. But Gray Man left him cringing and broken. I could almost hear the death god’s laughter lingering in the room.

“Help me,” Eric begged.

He had soiled himself. The room smelled strongly of the man. I changed his clothes and washed him off with water from his rain barrel. I wiped the blood from his face and cleaned the wounds. All the while he cried and moaned.

“He just came in and and and and …,” Eric whined.

“Was it a black man?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah. I never did a thing. He was little and I wasn’t scared at first, but he was so strong.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“He said that it was a surprise. He said that it was a present for a friend. Why did he do this to me?” While Eric cried, I held him in my arms.

I got him into the bed and set his hands and feet as best as I could. Then I opened some canned beans and put them on a chair next to his bed. I put water there and set up the door so that he could push it open to go outside to piss and shit.

While he slept, I searched the cabin. I found a .22-caliber target pistol, a good-sized hunting knife, and a box of Hershey candy bars. These I took for myself.

Gray Man had passed Eric’s way a day before, maybe a few hours more than that. He must have passed me on his way toward Treaty. Either he didn’t see me or, more likely, he felt that I was beneath his notice. I was intent on making that his big mistake.

“Eric,” I said, shaking the ruined man.

“What?” He started awake, thrusting his hands out in fear. When the hands touched me, though, he recoiled in pain.

“I’ve got to go for a while,” I said. “You have food right here and I jammed the lock on the door for you to go outside if you’ve got to go.”

“How’m I gonna get back in?” he cried.

“There’s a big crack at the bottom,” I said. “It’ll hurt but you can get your foot under there and pull it open like that.”

“Don’t leave. Please.”

“I have to, Eric. Alacrity’s back there.”

“She has friends there. You said she did. Please take me with you.”

“The man who did this to you will be there. You don’t wanna get near him again, believe me.”

“Please,” he begged. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’ll be back.”

“He’ll kill you and then I’ll die here.” Eric tried to grab me, but his hands were useless.

I left him crying there on his bed. He was calling out to me like a lost child. I knew he was right, that I might not return and that he might die, but I had to go back to War.

I
THANKED JUAN THROMBONE
for all the years he had me working on his tree farm. Toward the later years we’d sometimes work through the night, pushing the growth rate of the trees until they were almost completely mature by the fourth day. The extra-large buckets we fashioned held fifty pounds of water at least. We carried a bucket in each hand, trotting from the lower field to the upper without a stop, for eighteen hours and longer. It was the tea we drank that gave us such strength, that’s what Juan told us.

“Brewed from the dead leaves of the blue sequoias. It is just weak enough not to hurt your delicate natures.”

I jogged for ten hours straight before having to rest. It was deep night and the moon was exactly half full. The candy bars were all gone, so all I could do was sleep. The sun was far into morning by the time I woke up.

My feet hurt as I went, but I kept thinking of Eric and his ruined and bloody feet.

By midday I could hear the trees screaming. It was the singing trees, not the bellowing ones. They were keening a solitary note of fear.

I ran harder. The pistol in my pocket had five shells in it. I kept thinking about stars going nova and stones breathing life. I hoped that I could create miracles with what little I had.

The woods went suddenly quiet when I was no more than a mile from the cathedral of War. It was an abrupt silence in my mind that came on so quickly, it disoriented me. I fell to the ground feeling the deep exhaustion of my day-and-a-half run. I lay there on the damp earth thinking about standing but nowhere near the act. Every muscle and cell in my body screamed for water, for oxygen, and for rest. My lungs couldn’t take a deep enough breath. My fingers and toes were numb. And even though I was thinking about rising, my head was hanging down. It came to me that I was dying, that the exertion of my supermarathon, coupled with the sudden extinction of the singing trees, had depleted me. My eyes were open but the midday light faded still.

Then came the rumbling. The Bellowing Trees in great anguish began their bass song. It wasn’t fear but disgust and anger. It was the outrage of the earth against the abomination of Gray Man. I saw him in my mind, and strength flowed back into me. I was called back to life by the trees.

It was not only me but bear and butterfly, bird and gnat. The life of the forest around the cathedral, which had been so silent, surged. A large copper-colored bear lumbered past me. I stood up under a current of broad-winged black-and-white and red monarchs.

We all raced for the grove of Bellowing Trees. Along the way I saw the corpses of two of the coyote brood. Bloody and broken, they lay like Eric Beauvais’s hands and feet.

When we came into the grove of singing trees, it was as if we had come into a wood after years of blight. Black fungus hung from their limbs, the once green needles were brown and fallen. As quickly as they had grown, Juan Thrombone’s trees died. Sickly and brittle, the whole grove was dead. Not one note of life or calling was left.

Death had taken their souls with him into the valley of the Bellowing Trees.

I took the lead in the headlong race toward Death. My longtime flirtation with suicide was now a reality. I had no illusions that anyone could stand up to Grey Redstar. But I would not let him frighten me; I would not let my friends die without help.

Before I noticed that the bears and butterflies had stopped, I was almost on top of him. Gray Man. The rush and chatter of animals around me, coupled with the rumbling of the blue sequoias, had masked his presence. I suppose that was a stroke of luck. I say this because the recognition and anticipation of Death’s approach is enough to shatter the bravest man or woman’s resolve. But to sense Death and approach it is contrary to the very notion of life. I do not know that I would have had the courage to go on if I had sensed Gray Man.

He was leaning over Coyote, bearing down on her throat as she clawed at his groin and chest. Max was on Death’s back, tearing viciously at his neck and head.

Blue light emanated from all three. A vibrant yellowish light came from Coyote. Max’s dull blue aura was almost erased by the indigo coming from Gray Man.

I moved deliberately from the wood and held Eric’s pistol to Gray Man’s head. I pulled the trigger many more times than there were bullets to fire. Every shot entered the dead man’s brain.

He stood from the now inert form of Coyote. He slapped Max from his back, sending the poor dog flying.

“Pity,” he said. Then he reached out, brushing my forehead with his fingertips.

I fell to the ground, nothing but mindless weight. From my side I could see Gray Man moving toward the grove of Bellowing Trees. He was naked and skinny, hunched over and stalking.

I took aim with the pistol and pulled the trigger. The chamber was empty but I would have missed anyway. The thought of my lying on my side, shooting at a man who was already dead made me laugh. My weakness, combined with impotent courage, seemed to be the funniest joke anyone could tell. And once I started laughing, I couldn’t stop. I laughed so hard that I convulsed and writhed, tittering like Horace LaFontaine and choking on my tongue. I rolled up on my knees, trying to get away from that black humor. I lurched to my feet, no longer dying, coughing on the ridiculous nature of my mind.