Cloud of Sparrows (20 page)

“What about the Diet? What is it?”

“I have not seen it in my visions. It may be what will replace the Shogun’s Council when we have been reduced to servitude. The outrageous conduct of those present could only be possible once all order and discipline have been lost. Can you imagine a single voice raised to a disrespectful volume, much less an entire unruly crowd in the Shogun’s presence?”

“No, Uncle, I admit I cannot.”

“Your assassin? You don’t recognize him?”

“No. Nor anyone else. There isn’t one familiar face there.”

“Then your retainers have all been killed, for I would not permit you to enter such a place unprotected. Nor would Saiki, Kudo, or Sohaku.”

“Who are the men with the concealed pistols, then? They seem to be extremely solicitous of my welfare.”

“Guards, perhaps. You may be in someone’s custody.” Shigeru closed his eyes. He breathed deeply in silence for several moments. When he opened his eyes again, he bowed to the floor. “Forgive me for failing you so miserably, my lord.”

Genji laughed. “You haven’t failed me yet, Uncle. Perhaps we may find our way to an alternate result.”

“We can do nothing to prevent it. We can protect our loved ones from suffering such a fate. But we cannot stop the future from coming and devouring us and all who remain.”

“Is that why you did it?” Genji’s voice was very gentle.

Shigeru stiffened. He began to tremble, slightly at first, then more and more violently, until he appeared to be in the throes of a monstrous convulsion. At last, a strangled cry came from his throat and he collapsed in a sobbing heap.

Genji sat quietly. He neither said nor did anything. After several minutes passed, Shigeru managed to restore himself to a semblance of normality. Genji poured tea. Shigeru accepted it.

“This is painful, Uncle, but it cannot be avoided. I must learn as much as I can of your visions. It is the only way I will gain insight into the meaning of mine.”

“I understand, my lord.” Shigeru’s behavior was once again highly formal. He was relying on protocol to hold himself together. “From time to time, as you require, I will answer as many of your questions as I can.”

“Thank you, Shigeru,” Genji said. “For now, I think we have both had enough of visions. Let us address another matter. When I turned to leave the armory, you were going to kill me. Why didn’t you?”

“The silence stopped me,” Shigeru said. “The sights and sounds that had assailed me without pause for so long, ceased in your presence. I remembered my father’s words from long ago. He said it would happen as it did, and when it did, he said I must not act on that impulse.”

“Lord Kiyori was wise,” Genji said. And, he thought, a true visionary as well. Yet he had not prevented his own death at the hands of this his madman son. Why? Perhaps it was as Shigeru said. We are powerless to prevent what must be.

Shigeru waited as long as he could. But when Genji did not continue, he had to ask. “What did you see? What sparkled at the woman’s throat?”

“That is one memory I can never bring with me from the vision,” Genji said. It filled his eyes as vividly now as it had the first time, but he thought it wise not to burden his uncle further. It was enough to deal with what he had already shared.

“Too bad. It could be an important guiding omen.”

“Yes,” Genji said, “it could be.”

Shigeru didn’t pay much attention while Genji addressed the assembly. Instead, he thought about Genji’s vision. Many events must occur before the conditions he had foreseen could arise. No matter how degenerate the samurai or powerful the outsiders, surely it would take several years at least for Japan to fall to any conquerers. Some had not lost the ancient martial virtues and would fight to the death. Apparently, Genji was not one of them. In his vision, he was called a traitor. Shigeru hoped it was calumny and not an accurate description.

Despite this concern, Shigeru felt hope. For the first time in months, his visionary inundation had ceased. In the hours since Genji’s arrival, he had seen nothing but what others saw. Perhaps the maddening flood was being staunched by the same mystical mechanism that allowed Genji only three visions. He didn’t think he was permanently cured. That would be too much to expect. The visions would return. But if they ceased even briefly every few days or so, he was confident he could use that time, as he was using it now, to revive his self-control. He had trained in the martial arts for his entire life in order to defend himself against attack. What were these visions, after all, but an attack from within? They were no different from any other attack, except in their point of origin. He would not be defeated by them.

He heard Hidé’s name and saw him bowing deeply to Genji. The announcement of his appointment had been made. Shigeru noted which faces among the assembly revealed dissatisfaction. They were men who would have to be watched. He glanced at Sohaku. He expected to see shocked dismay on his face. But the abbot of Mushindo Monastery, who had been and would once again be commander of cavalry, listened to the announcement with complete equanimity. Shigeru knew from this that he would have to kill his old friend. The only reason Hidé’s appointment would not anger Sohaku was if he had already decided to betray the young lord. If only Sohaku knew what he knew: Until the outsiders conquered Japan, Genji was invulnerable.

And when the moment came, even then Genji would be fortunate. He would die without fear, drenched in his own heart’s blood, in the embrace of a beautiful woman, and she would weep for him.

What samurai could hope for more?

“No, my lord. Abbot Zengen saved my life during the cholera epidemic; the village children who nursed me afterward taught me how to hear and speak.”

“How unexpected. I doubt any of them can read a single character.”

“And I, too, cannot, my lord.”

“Then your linguistic accomplishment is all the more impressive. There is not a man among us who, spending a year in the American countryside among unlettered peasants, would learn your language half so well.”

“I thank you, my lord, on behalf of my teachers. They deserve all the credit.”

A momentary winter breeze briefly fluttered the fabric of the tent above them. Genji glanced at the pale winter sky. The sunlight was already fading. Before the hour of the ram was past, they could begin their return to Edo. They would reach the border after nightfall and traverse the hostile territory of Yoshino Domain in darkness. This conveyed one distinct advantage: They were far less likely to encounter hostile troops than during the day. One senseless slaughter per journey was more than enough.

Genji said, “When you arrived in Japan, you were a Christian missionary. Now you are a Zen monk. Then you called yourself James Bohannon. Now you say you are Jimbo. Tell me, what did you call yourself before you became James Bohannon?”

“Ethan Cruz,” Jimbo said.

“And before that?”

“Before that I was just Ethan.”

“I assume such name changes have nothing to do with the Christian religion.”

“That is correct, my lord.”

“Nor with Zen.”

“That, too, is correct, my lord.”

“Then, why?”

Before answering, Jimbo lowered his gaze and inhaled from his abdomen, taking the long slow breath deep into the
tanden
, the center of his being. With his exhalation, he let go of all fear, hatred, and desire.

“I was running away,” Jimbo said.

“From whom?”

“From myself.”

“A difficult endeavor,” Genji said. “Many have attempted it. None that I know of has succeeded. Did you?”

“Yes, my lord,” Jimbo said. “I did.”

Tom, Peck, and Haylow had ridden with him before. They were personable enough and had never caused any problems on any of the jobs, but Ethan didn’t like them because he didn’t trust them. It was a habit Ethan had learned from the old man. It was a good habit, especially in his trade, which was robbing, stealing and rustling.

Never like anybody you can’t trust, Cruz said. You might think you’re a smart boy, you can like somebody and still keep your eyes open. But there’s something about liking that dismays your attention, I don’t know what it is. You allow yourself to like somebody you don’t trust, and one night soon enough, you’ll wake up to find an ax cleaved in the back of your skull, and you’ll have your own foolish liking to thank for it.

Ethan supposed Cruz was speaking from exact experience, since he had an ax-shaped dent in the back of his own skull marked with a long white scar where the hair hadn’t grown back.

It’s bad enough liking the untrustworthy, Cruz said, try loving them. That’s women I’m talking about, boy. Don’t ever love a woman you can’t trust. No, don’t sit there nodding and agreeing. I know damn well you will. We all do. You know why? Because there is no woman ever you can trust. Every one of them, first to last, is a lying, cheating, treacherous whore.

The company Cruz kept surely influenced his viewpoint. A whoremaster spent most of his time with whores after all, and lying, cheating, and treachery were a whore’s stock in trade, aside from her parts, that is.

Ethan never knew whether a man or a woman was responsible for the axing Cruz had suffered. He supposed if a woman was involved, then a man was, too. It was usually that way. Cruz blamed his dizzy spells, fits of violent anger, memory lapses, and alcoholism on the head wound.

Can’t even remember how it happened, Cruz said. The bone healed pressing in, in the selfsame axly shape. It’s there prodding at the soft innards of my head, reminding me always and forever, never like much less love whomsoever you can’t trust. You hear me, boy? That’s women I’m mostly meaning, but you keep a close watch on men, too, especially where women and money are involved. And you know what? There’re always women and money involved. That’s why the world is a vale of larcenous mayhem. Women’s love of money.

It wasn’t women’s love of money or an ax that finally did Cruz in. It was a whore named Mary Anne. She was nothing special, older than the others, with two young girls to feed and clothe, girls too young to be in the trade themselves, since Cruz didn’t abide pederasts. Nobody fucks anybody under twelve years old in my establishment, he said, and meant it. He’d shot two men dead for trying the day Ethan met him. The two men had been trying to fuck Ethan at the time. They weren’t doing it in Cruz’s establishment, but Ethan was under twelve, under ten in fact, and Cruz happened to wander into the stable, his attention attracted by the sound of Ethan’s screams, saw what he saw, and extended the reach of his rule enough to disabide those two pederasts on a permanent basis.

Your parents aren’t doing such a wonderful job of upraising you, boy, Cruz said. You want a little more looking after than they’ve been giving you. Might be I should go have a talk with them about it.

Ethan told him to let him know who they were once he found them.

So you’re an orphan, are you?

What’s an orphan?

Cruz was an orphan, too. He took Ethan back to his whorehouse, had Betsy wash him up, and gave him a job cleaning rooms, mopping floors, pouring whiskey, and feeding the garbage to the pigs out back. There’s something about the smell of pigs that makes a man want to fuck and keep on fucking, Cruz said. Pigs are good for business. Ethan said he didn’t like the smell of pigs. You’ll change your mind once you’re here for a while, boy. What kind of a world is it where a child is safer working in a whorehouse than in a stable? But here we are, aren’t we?

What’s your name, boy?

Ethan.

Ethan what?

Just Ethan. What’s yours?

Manual Cruz.

Manuel Cruz.

No, goddammit. Manual, like manual labor. Not Manuel, like a fucking starving Mexican dirt scratcher. Do I look like a fucking dirt scratcher? He gestured at his immaculate clothing. Do I look like I’m starving? He patted his prominent belly. Do I look like a fucking Mexican?

That was a harder question to figure the right answer to, since Cruz was Mexican. Sticking with what had been working so far, Ethan shook his head no again.

Cruz laughed and cheerfully slapped him on the back. I better look like a fucking Mexican because that’s exactly what I am. But I’m not starving and I’m not scratching dirt. My parents did enough of that, and died before their time.

Cruz died before his time, too, and that was the reason Ethan Cruz was sitting by a campfire in the hills north of Austin with Tom and Peck, waiting for Haylow to come back with word, which he presently did, and the word was that he’d found Matthew Stark’s hiding place.

“Small ranch, twenty, twenty-five miles north. He ain’t there, though.” Haylow got off his groaning horse. He’d need to steal himself a new one soon. Horses didn’t last long under the hard-riding three-hundred-pound man. “Word is, he’s off to Arizona Territory, get him a commission from the governor as a Arizona Ranger. What’s to eat?”

Tom said, “I thought the only rangers was Texas Rangers.”

“Me, too,” Haylow said, spooning beans into his mouth straight from the pot. “But that’s the word in town.”

“They hiring murderers for rangers over there in Arizona?” Peck said.

“That’s all they ever hiring for laws anywheres these days,” Haylow said, finishing the beans and digging in the pack for jerky. “They wanting experience for the job.”

“Well, then, let’s we go over there and get us commissions, too,” Tom said. “We murderers.”

“Only by incidence,” Haylow said. “They wanting purpose experience.”

“Who’s at the ranch?” Ethan said.

“Just the whore and her two little bitches,” Haylow said.

Ethan got up and threw his saddle on his horse. The three others caught up with him just before dawn, on the rise above Stark’s ranch.

“We gonna wait for him?” Peck said. “Ambush-like, when he gets back?”

“Word is, he’ll be back any day now,” Haylow said. “Could be a good idea.”

“Does he love the whore?” Ethan said.

“He came and took her,” Haylow said. “There must be a fondness.”

“Does he love her?” Ethan said.

“Who knows but him?” Haylow said.

A first puff of smoke came out of the ranch house chimney. Somebody was awake. Ethan put his heels to his horse and rode down the hill.

When they were finished, Ethan didn’t much feel like waiting for Stark. He didn’t feel much of anything but sick to his stomach. There was no point in going back to El Paso. The whorehouse was still there, but with Cruz dead, it was just a whorehouse, and Ethan never had gotten to like the smell of pigs.

They drove Stark’s small herd across the border and sold it in Juarez for half of what it was worth. They didn’t know for sure that Stark would come after them, but they all assumed he would.

“I would,” Peck said, “for damn sure.”

“Not me,” Tom said. “Not over a whore.”

“What about the two little bitches?” Haylow said. His appetite had gone up since they’d been to Stark’s ranch. He weighed close to four hundred pounds now. His horse, a new one he’d bought in Juarez, was already making those wind-broken groans.

Tom and Peck didn’t say anything, but they both looked over their shoulders, which was answer enough. Haylow looked over his shoulder, too.

Eventually, they knew Stark was looking for them because sometimes they’d go into a town just a day or two after he’d been there. Neither they nor he were traveling in a straight line. Meandering, they were bound to run into each other eventually.

“I’m done with this shit,” Haylow said. “I’m going home.”

“What the fuck for?” Peck said. “You think he won’t find you in El Paso?”

“Not El Paso. Hawaii.” Haylow’s real name began with He’eloa and kept on going and going.

“What you got there?” Tom said. “You told us your family, your town, your whole nation was about dead of the pox.”

“The mountains still there. The rivers still there. The ocean still there. Lately, been missing all that.”

They stayed together until they reached la Ciudad de los Angeles. Peck said, Fuck it, if he wants to find me, let him find me here. Tom stopped in Sacramento, where his uncle owned a bar, and offered Tom a job keeping watch over the whores. I didn’t really do nothing that bad, Tom said. Might be he let it pass with a sorry from me and a small beating from him. Haylow rode with Ethan to San Francisco, where he was going to catch a ship to Hawaii, but he changed his mind once he saw the ocean. The big man—closing in on five hundred pounds by now and using a two-horse carriage instead of a saddle—sat there and cried as the waves lapped against the pilings of the wharf. Too many graves back home, he said.

Ethan stayed in San Francisco, too. Until one day, on his way out of a bar, he heard a streetcorner preacher. I am not come to call the righteous, the preacher said, but the sinners to repentance. When someone standing nearby said amen, something clenched in Ethan’s heart let go, and he fell to his knees, weeping. That very night he was welcomed into the shelter of the Light of the True Word of the Prophets of Christ Our Lord. A month later, the new missionary, James Bohannon, was on his way to Japan.

Ethan took the new name because he felt himself reborn as a totally new man. But this didn’t really happen until he and the other dozen missionaries reached Kobayashi Village in Yamakawa Domain, the site of their new mission house. The day they arrived, a cholera epidemic broke out. Within a month, Ethan was the only one of his party left alive. The villagers, too, were dying, and they blamed it on the arrival of the missionaries. Ethan only survived because the abbot of nearby Mushindo Monastery, an old man named Zengen, took him in and nursed him. He must have been a person of some influence, because the villagers soon changed their attitude. They began bringing food to him, and changing his clothing, and bathing him. The children especially were numerous among his visitors, their curiosity aroused by his strange appearance. They had never seen an outsider before.

Somehow, in his delirium, barriers fell away. When his fever broke, he found he could understand much of the children’s vocabulary, and could speak a few words as well. By the time he was back on his feet, he was having conversations with Zengen.

One day, Zengen asked him, What was your face before your parents were born?

He was about to tell Zengen that he had never known his parents when up and down, inside and outside, disappeared.

Since then, Jimbo had worn the robes of Buddha instead of the suit of a Christian missionary. This was out of respect to Zengen more than anything else. Clothing was like names. There was no real meaning to them.