Cannonball (27 page)

My scrap of papyrus, fingered and rubbed curiously by my sister, had become a necessity today. The translation, so strangely delayed by me, I needed now and wouldn't get for free. My visit was for its own sake, though, like old times. A drab two-story wood and stucco house where, if I hadn't already heard of that briefly historic pool, I had been advised by The Inventor to show up for its opening. Not the first time told to go do what I'm probably going to anyway. But I forgot promptly that I'd heard it here. (I was doing it.) Yet later didn't wonder why. Because The Inventor, with his envelopes that made Milt mad, knew things—
Be a passerby
, his contrarian view of the disliked Samaritan story, in my birthday envelope the day I had taken Umo to East Lake—and was interested in my chest wound and how it came there—and in my roundabout humor; knew Umo before I did, and in some way that I accepted without expecting to have explained, had been expecting Umo before he had arrived in this part of the world. Perhaps a time had come when I would naturally have asked about these things, as I would have asked this black Indian treasure-house collector and poor sorcerer who his people were and what he thought he was doing here in this war-torn country, but that moment was when, against my suspicion of my father and his part in this, I had enlisted accepting a Specialist deal not even Umo knew of, much less this night-faced, genteel but life-and-death-eyed India Indian with a sharpness or kindness he could seem to save for two eleven-year-year-olds who over their formative years would blow some cash they almost didn't have in his store by the time one of them had a bad pool accident soon after which an extraordinary or fugitive diver materialized first on a high board and then in my acquaintance and my disturbed loyalties who could at once promote
me
to my
father
who never took advantage as I had hoped of my introducing Umo to East Hill as a prodigy who could help him nor would grasp the real job I stumbled on because some foresight not all mine had planned to.

Yet what came back to me now in this deserted noontime street, inspecting The Inventor's colorless, sandblasted or epoxy-patched Bel Air parked two feet from the curb and hearing his front door, was Umo's
We need you
, that day. Said once across a corner of a grandly opened pool, what did it mean?—distant and personal like the lock tumbler and weathered bronze handle right here of this freshly painted front door which now sticks a little as it gives:

—untrusting as Umo, who hid his distrust in humor, or was it
of
(Stom's “secret weapon you better get to know”—well, what or who was that? my sister lite? ) and gifts of friendship—that palpable drive south, or a snapshot: yet hid his untrustingness also in true trust asking who was meant by “brother,” and telling
me
his grandfather's plan to come and work in the mineral mines, sign up with Plutarco Calles. Calles? The revolutionary leader (though I have learned now always to ask exactly what revolution) who wanted to keep church and the government from teaming up, and became a somewhat ill-fated President of Mexico; “while” Umo busily sought a place for himself, U.S. citizenship in fact from authorities who now presumed him dead. The day of the explosion, he had by quite some minutes, twenty or thirty, preceded me like a shot, a condemned in unfree fall, the aftershock-shifting plates like trap or shutters parting for him miraculously. And I hadn't known where I was going—up, down, a third way, delaying the plunge, taping the scroll scrap into my ear hearing steps and the waters almost beside me. And a difference now in the steps of three people, one pair softer, like a voice not to miss. And chaotically thinking I would ask my oracle about Umo's “secret weapon you better get to know” if I made it out of here, why I let myself down into the well-stream current dragging the body of my new friend over the brink so it came down on top of me and took what from me? Above and at once behind us the people by now arriving downstairs searching for the photographer, the waters' rush and wish, density and stench too great for us to hear them calling.

For
us
, I say.

For The Inventor's door opening had twisted my own story round to see instead of a stretcher for a medevac carried out of the stairwell like a companionway into the still heaving wreckage of that lower floor below the palace pool, a surveillance monitor totaled, two or three of them—shredded—down by where the blast had detonated and the Chaplain had been crushed, and the need of somebody's eyes to see for themselves if not finish the job.

The pitted door gashed, gnawed-looking, but so freshly painted in half, saffron above, purple below, the soft oak itself in an instant had shown me how the door would be opened. Swiftly by The Inventor or not at all. Dead bolt snapped open-and-shut first as a test by Milt. A little kid in there might look up at the door and call out or fling it open; a bigger one would have yanked without first turning the knob—all people are different sometimes for their own sake at best (the
war
said—though like History, it could be made to say anything, or nothing, which was harder perhaps in truth.) And my sister, it occurred to me, would sometimes peer out the far corner of our living room window slantwise. All these openers, upon opening, would take a good look at you. But the ravaged one who opens to me now already talking a flood of hope that I had come because I was expected, and recollecting “
last
time,” and having begun talking already, it seems, a few minutes ago, like an experienced poor tramp on a moving train who jumps off sideways and hits the ground running, was Cheeky, her old brown forehead spotted more than ever and now scabbed as if she might change her skin or might be stuck with it.

“Vera
Cruz
remember—I didn't get to tell you, because Umo had to swing Milt around my ceiling. They were upset with you, and you have the snapshot I took of him coming down the gangway because he told me you did, such a big roly-poly boy, such a small suitcase over his shoulder, what shoulders—and that was the last I saw of him for two months. Some welcome. And I got sick in Vera Cruz but not a bad place to be sick and I went bass fishing with this.” Cheeky touched her forehead and her bare arm. “Made the best of it before I took the train home, went fishing with a former Miss Costa Rica who was on vacation from her job at the national park studying the mantled howler monkeys and their strange family turnovers—”

“I tould harr not to go,” called The Inventor from the far room.

“He had no papers!” Cheeky screamed like I didn't know what, meaning Umo, I assumed.

“You knew that?” I said.

“And here they broke in,” said The Inventor, changing to the current subject, “took my envelopes—forrteen shoe
box
esful.” His laughter unseen, edgy, Cheeky's by contrast agreed, transmitting with her brown fingers on my arm all but family memory extending me hither and yon. “Fourteen!” I said to a man who believed in words coming out of nowhere—that could be a good thing. “He had no papers,” Cheeky calls back.

“And now you have brought me something from the War,” the voice continues learned in the blinds-drawn shadows. “To translate,” I called out. “And he's wounded, you know,” said Cheeky—“his shoulder—” “He knows.” “We need you. What's this?” Through my sleeve she felt my hard, gristly scar like a sinew growth. Were they mad at me? you had to wonder. Hard times (“We need you”), news of The Inventor's green card to be reapplied for unexpectedly, Cheeky's lease, her runaways moved on, and
Umo
—

But the man, nearer now, still unseen, interrupts. Hearings have begun? Can something be done, about the War, the terrorist governments in the driver's seat, the people being nickel-anddimed, the Cabinet, the money, when what are they about?

“He dreamt you were there,” Cheeky confided to me. (Where? I thought.) She a starved little horse of an extreme Southern California human. Beyond her, the long tables empty now, the glassed-in display cases of this nomad imagination-for-sale-orbrowsing (“no problem”) crammed even fuller and anchored-down-looking, my God, a shadowy light as from water waiting for company and sound. And in the other direction, from which I'd come, beyond the boarded-up window an outdoor whirring sound, a sidewalk, a car door somewhere, a footfall, someone passing in the brightness, and I had to show what I came for. The Ziploc out, Syriac characters rippling with the page and almond-dye letters (or were they just ancient black-ink-faded) with angular arms like minute megaphones, backward
r
's, an authority instinct with care, beauty, faint water stain as if, now that I'm about to hand it over, I had never really looked at it.

Why am I speaking about Umo to this couple who I know are reluctant to comment (the woman touching me, the man as yet unseen—who are they to me)? What am I up to? Is it the Scrolls, my part in them, which even if bizarre, as I sometimes guess, won't matter? Consulting another oracle, a childhood sanctuary of the miscellaneous? Is it friendship? Umo's résumé?

For he had divided his time between Baja and here and every point between, a catalogue of jobs if you wanted to know about jobs not for illegal kids but an infinitely resourceful soul who came in handy anywhere from here south able to turn always Between into a possible home. No end to it. Though his music job in the war zone I leave out, partnering an enemy combatant. The Inventor at last—he stands in the inner doorway, his face of a dye darkly material and fierce.

Cheeky is so upset, “He said he's glad to be thought dead,” she says.

“How does he know he is?” I said, so religiously almost relieved to be learning it for the first time for certain, hearing the front door sticking. I knew someone, I was telling these vivid people, who was dead but thought not to be, I said; whereas Umo … Umo was pretty noticeable, wasn't he? Was it he who'd painted the front door? I asked, holding out the Ziploc yet turning from The Inventor to find, standing inside the front door having pushed it shut, my sister, who took my breath away.

A stranger to this house I was certain.

But not to the Ziploc she saw our irritated host take from my hand. She was dressed for her job, her dark hair tied back, her eyes bluer even than her shirt, her collar white, her black slacks tailored to her hips, cell phone at her waist, and some new partnership prophetically between us like a mysterious ultimatum quite beyond your control.

“I saw him dive twice, I never met him,” said my sister, “and somewhere in between I saw him hop into a truck on the interchange with cars streaming by, and he was glad to be alive,” said E-m. “And so were we. He acted out, sort of…for us, for my brother…he acted
for
us (?).” “No, no,” I said—how could she speak? “He met
you
,” said Cheeky. “It's always possible,” said my sister.

“—spek lak he did. Lak he knew you and Zach…ye'fathuh.”

“We knew of you, Sister,” said The Inventor. He had a lamp turned on with a green-glass shade, he was staring at the piece of Scroll and would not quite be able to give her the once-over. “I have read your envelopes, some of them, and seen how they affect those close to me. I have seen your car drive up in the middle of the night,” my sister said, “and heard it.”

“‘I have no life but this,'” said The Inventor, “I have harrd your brother say the seeme.” “It's so,” said E-m, The Inventor's theme uncanny or was it familiar through my sister? “Bottom lines I re
cog
nize but not just before,” said The Inventor. “I will be back in a matter of minutes.” He flapped the scrap of thin, stiff paper. “You don't know how some fool might use your words, your ideas, your thought, your cut-up memory, philosophy, family, your gift, your shit,” said The Inventor, leaving the room. My sister looked about her and at me. Cheeky limped over to open a sliding glass display-case front.

“What are you doing
here
?” I said. She had a job, and looked like it. And she'd never been invited in the days of my friendship with Milt, and had had a previous engagement, Dad's birthday, the night of The Inventor's party (though held at Cheeky's) celebrating my enlistment from all appearances. Why would she come here? She was uninclined to, she wasn't much of a collector and would have had no reason to visit The Inventor while I was gone and none now—she was so intelligent, it occurred to me. This so obvious a reason it was disturbing. She'd had to come here.

“The girl has her own reasons for visiting,” Cheeky said. “Have I told you how that big boy took me in his arms when we met at the dock and thanked me for coming and gave me a book, but not a book book,…this—” she took out of the display case a catalogue big as a phone book, and slid the glass front out and down again, she was moved. “His own person,” she said. She wasn't about to hold forth. She seemed to embrace what was coming. An old person listening. What for?

“Your place”—E-m nodded quickly (so unlike her). For the story E-m told now wasn't as she and I ever ever would speak to each other, like a clock telling time, boring almost, chitchat, going through the motions, and something was up to me: what was it like, a controlling person, which my sister did not know how to be, yet we were used to being surrounded by them.

“Mom phoned my cell, she thought I was at work. There's a break-in at your place. Stud called her. He dropped you off at the bus, she thought it would be the 41, but I figured out why—you were coming here and caught a ride with Stud in the middle of traffic (?)—He said, How's it going? Ask me tonight, you said, tomorrow, next month if I'm here, Mom said, you were in a rush. And Bea phoned.”

And, and,
but when did she phone
? I said mouthing the words—this was all jumbled, not even at our typical slant—it was up to me to calculate, and Cheeky, understanding that it was between the two of us which is not what you do when you invite yourself into someone else's place, said “Break-ins” so softly that she seemed to want to speak only to us and it had its effect—“and phone calls. Only way to stop what's going on is not to live anywhere. I'm going to have a pyre in the back yard here when I die; and I'm easy I don't care if it's quite soon.” My sister said she would like to see that. “What took you to my place?” I said, strangely for I was OK with it, more than OK. “Bea briefed you on the Hearings?” I seemed to change the subject. My sister looked at me, she put everything into it. “She sort of went on about it, how you handled those people. ‘Nice work,' she said.” “Storm Nosworthy's words,” I said changing the subject for she was jealous. “Him again?” said my sister—my father's daughter, I understood—“didn't we have enough of him? What did he mean?” “Us. The old Sinatra song.
You
, really. ‘Nice work if you can get it's all I remember. He's got a…” “He came clear across the country for this?” “No. But we'll find out this afternoon.”