Cloud of Sparrows (50 page)

Hidé and Taro continued to ignore her. Hidé said, “Did you see her fling herself beneath the sword?”

“Magnificent,” Taro said. “I have seen such actions in kabuki plays, never in real life.”

“Whenever I see her empty sleeve,” Hidé said, “I will remember with deep gratitude what it cost her to save my life.”

“I cannot hold a tray,” Hanako said, “nor properly hold a teapot or sake flask. Who can stand to be served by a cripple with only one arm?”

“Fortunately, she still has her sword arm,” Taro said. “Who knows when you will once again need her at your side?”

“True,” Hidé said. “And one arm is more than sufficient to hold an infant to her breast, or the hand of a child as it learns how to walk.”

Hanako could restrain herself no longer. She trembled with emotion. Hot tears of love and gratitude spilled from her eyes in great profusion. She wanted to thank Hidé for his steadfastness, but words could not find their way past her sobs.

Taro excused himself with a bow and rode to the rear. There among Mukai’s former vassals, he, too, gave way to uncontrolled tears.

For once, Hidé remained dry-eyed. With the steely self-control he had learned in combat, he allowed no tears to fall, no cries to rack his body. His sorrow for Hanako’s injury was profound, but it was nothing compared to the respect he had for her samurai-like courage and the ever-growing love he felt.

The rigor of war and the joy of love. Truly they were one, not two.

Hidé sat erect in the saddle and rode toward Edo.

Unimpeded by words, silence, knowledge, or ignorance, a fluent blade cuts cleanly. This is the wisdom of warriors.

There were two certainties. Stark would come, and Stark would try to kill him. He wasn’t concerned about his own life. That had stopped mattering to him a long time ago. Or maybe not so long. It only seemed that way. Stark’s life was what interested him. If he killed Jimbo, his anguish would not decrease. A hunger for revenge drove him from past murders to his next. Jimbo’s death at his hands would only increase his suffering and his burden of evil karma. What was to be done? If he showed Stark the new man that he himself had become, a man of true inner peace, liberated from the pain and suffering of hatred, would he, too, see the way? Jimbo would present himself without fear and ask forgiveness. If it was not given, he was ready to die.

He would not fight.

He would not kill.

Never again would he raise his hand in violence.

A small movement on the mustard leaf caught his eye. He carefully removed the tiny beetle and released it on the ground. It scurried rapidly away on six busy legs, its two antennae flicking in every direction. The beetle didn’t see him. Its life, as vivid and as fragile as his own, was on a different scale. He bowed respectfully to his fellow sentient creature and continued collecting his supper.

The brush behind him rustled. He recognized the small, quick movements. It was Kimi, the smart little girl from the village.

“Oh, Jimbo,” Kimi said. “You’re so quiet I didn’t know you were there. I almost stepped on you.”

“Thank you for not doing so.”

Kimi giggled. “You’re so funny. Have you seen Goro? He went looking for you an hour ago. I’m afraid he got lost again.”

Jimbo and Kimi both were still. They listened.

“I don’t hear him calling your name,” Kimi said. “Maybe he wandered into the next valley.”

“Please find him. When he gets lost, he gets excited. When he gets excited, he gets careless.”

“And then he gets hurt,” Kimi said. “If I find him before it’s time for your evening meditation, I’ll bring him to see you.”

“That will be fine.”

“’Bye, Jimbo.” She bowed with her hands together in
gassho,
the Buddhist gesture of peace and respect. She had been the first of the village children to imitate Jimbo in this way, and now all the rest did, too, following Kimi’s lead as they usually did.

“’Bye, Kimi.” Jimbo returned her bow and her gassho.

Jimbo arrived back at the gates of Mushindo just as two galloping horses approached from the west. He recognized the former monk Yoshi as the rider in the lead. The second man, slumped forward and barely keeping his saddle, was the Reverend Abbot Sohaku.

Both men were badly wounded, Sohaku more seriously than Yoshi.

“Help me bind him,” Yoshi said. “Quickly, lest he bleed to death.”

“I will do it,” Jimbo said. “Look to yourself. You’ve been stabbed and cut as well as shot.”

“These?” Yoshi gestured at his wounds and laughed. “Superficial.”

A large-caliber bullet had entered Sohaku’s chest on the left side, penetrated the lung, and blown open a fist-sized hole in his back. It was a wonder he was still alive, but alive he was.

“So, Jimbo,” Sohaku said, “what words of wisdom do you have for the dying?”

“Nothing special. We are all dying, are we not?”

Sohaku laughed, briefly. A dribble of blood from his mouth put a stop to that. He said, “You sound more and more like old Zengen every day.”

“Reverend Abbot, you must lie down.”

“No time. Bind me.” He turned to Yoshi. “Go to the armory. Get me another set of armor.”

“Yes, Reverend Abbot.”

Jimbo said, “You will not need armor where you are going.”

“You are mistaken. I am going to battle. I will need the armor to hold me together, or I will never get there.”

“Abbot Sohaku, you will fight no more battles.”

Sohaku smiled. “I refuse to be killed by a bullet.”

Jimbo sealed the wound as best he could with a poultice of medicinal herbs, then wrapped a length of silk tightly around Sohaku’s torso. The external bleeding had stopped. Nothing would end the bleeding within except death.

Yoshi helped Sohaku into the new armor and tied the laces securely. His torso, loins, and thighs were now covered by plates of iron, lacquered wood, and leather. He took the helmet but declined the steel collar that would protect his throat and neck, and the lacquer mask for his face.

“Reverend Abbot,” Yoshi said, “you risk decapitation.”

“Who do you think is coming after us?”

“Lord Shigeru, without a doubt,” Yoshi said.

“At my best, with the wind and light in my favor, and every god smiling on me, could I defeat him?”

“Under those conditions, perhaps.”

“And wounded as I am, what are my chances?”

“None, Reverend Abbot.”

“Exactly. So I prefer to give him the opportunity for a clean strike.”

Jimbo said, “Go or stay, death is the result. So stay and die in peace.”

“At the end, all my debts have come down to a single one. What I owe Lord Genji, what I owe my ancestors, what I owe myself are the same. Death in battle.”

Sohaku bent his leg into the angle it would take when he sat in the saddle. Yoshi tied it in that shape with leather straps. He helped Sohaku to his horse and boosted him into the saddle.

“How is it that you are fighting against Lord Genji?” Jimbo said.

“His supposed prophecies are leading the clan to ruin. I thought to save it by overthrowing him. I failed. Now I must apologize.”

Jimbo said nothing.

Sohaku smiled. “You are thinking ritual suicide is the usual form. That is correct. This particular case calls for combat. It is always far more satisfying to slay a rebel than to find him already self-slain. The sincerity of my apology requires that I do what best suits those to whom I am apologizing.”

“I understand,” Jimbo said, “though I do not agree. If you must die, then it is far better to do so without again raising your own hand in violence. Your karma would be less burdensome.”

“You are mistaken, Jimbo. It is my karma that requires combat.” Sohaku bowed. The effort made him grimace in pain. “Remember me to your God or Buddha when you go to him. If he’s there.”

“Why are you going to the mountains to meditate?” Kimi asked. “I thought that was why you have a meditation hall.”

“Jimbo,” Goro said, smiling happily.

“For a time, I must be away from everyone and everything,” Jimbo said.

“Will you be gone long?”

“Jimbo, Jimbo, Jimbo.”

“No, not long.”

“We’ll wait for you here.”

“Your parents will miss you.”

Kimi laughed. “My parents have eleven children, silly.”

“Then I will see you when I return,” Jimbo said. He bowed, his hands in gassho. Kimi did the same.

“Jimbo, Jimbo, Jimbo,” Goro said.

The mountain hut Jimbo used for solitary meditation was less a structure than the suggestion of one. It was made of old branches loosely tied together. There was more of sky above him than roof, the walls barely obscured his view of the surrounding trees, and neither seriously impeded wind or weather. Old Abbot Zengen had built the hut. It was very much like his single–brush-stroke renderings of mountains, animals, and people. What was not there more vividly described the subject than what was.

Sohaku’s words weighed heavily on Jimbo.

It is my karma that requires combat, he had said.

Was this also Jimbo’s karma?

He was not the man he had been. Of this he was certain. Less clear was whether he had completely liberated himself from the past. Had he abandoned all sense of self as he believed, and was he thus acting solely to guide Stark toward his own liberation from anguish? Or were the deceptions of a most subtle and insidious pride binding him yet more tightly in delusion?

Jimbo’s breathing deepened, and deepened yet more. Inhalations and exhalations grew imperceptible. The contents of his mind and the contents of the world were not to be distinguished. He entered the vast emptiness at the same moment it entered him.

Mary Anne came out of the cabin with a bright smile on her face, expecting to see Stark. When she saw Cruz, she turned and ran back inside.

Cruz grabbed her before she could turn the shotgun on him and hit her in the temple with the barrel of his pistol. The two little girls screamed and held each other.

By the time Tom, Peck, and Haylow came in, Cruz had already stripped Mary Anne naked.

“What about the little bitches?” Tom said.

“Better take them outside,” Haylow said. “They don’t need to see this.”

“Strip them, too,” Cruz said. Mary Anne wasn’t quite conscious. He stood her up against the wall, raised her hands together above her head, and drove his knife through both palms, pinning her there. She woke up screaming.

“Jesus, Mary, Joseph,” Peck said, “all the blessed saints, Mother of God, and the Holy Trinity.”

“Ethan,” Tom said.

Haylow shielded the little girls and held them against his big body.

“I said strip them,” Cruz said.

“Not them,” Tom said. “They ain’t done nothing.”

“They were born,” Cruz said. “Are you doing what I said or not?”

Tom and Peck looked at each other. They looked at Cruz. His shoulders were loose and his hand was close to his pistol.

Peck said, “We always do what you say, Ethan, you know that.”

“I don’t see you doing it.”

Haylow’s face was wet with tears. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t make a sound. He punched the older girl hard in the jaw, then he punched the younger one. Both girls were lifted off the floor by the force of the huge man’s blows, and landed hard. They might have been alive. They were as still as the dead. He undressed the younger one very gently, while Tom and Peck, following his example, did the same for the older one.

“No, no, no!” Mary Anne screamed hopelessly.

Cruz picked the older one up by her hair and held her face an inch away from Mary Anne’s.

“What’s her name?”

Mary Anne screamed and wept.

Cruz said to Peck, “Give me your knife.” Peck gave it to him. Cruz held it against the girl’s throat. “I said, what’s her name?”

“Becky,” Mary Anne said, “Becky. Please, please—”

Cruz drove the knife into the girl’s belly and slit her open to her heart. He dropped the small corpse at the screaming woman’s feet and went for the younger girl.

Tom ran out of the cabin.

Peck fell to the floor and backed away on the seat of his pants. When he hit the wall and couldn’t back away anymore, he turned and vomited, and kept vomiting even after his stomach was empty.

Haylow just stood there, crying.

“What’s her name?” Cruz said.

“Oh, God, oh, God,” Mary Anne said.

Cruz put the child on the table and got the ax from beside the stove.

“Louise!” Mary Anne screamed, as if the name would save the life. “Louise!”

Cruz struck so hard, he cleaved the table under the girl in two. The severed head bounced on the floor and rolled to the foot of the bed. He stared at Mary Anne and said very quietly, “Now it’s your turn.”

She couldn’t have heard his voice over the sound of her own screams.

Jimbo didn’t know how long he’d stayed in meditation. When he opened his eyes, the light was the same as when he’d closed them. A moment had passed, or days. When he moved, the moisture frozen in his clothing crackled. His knees, tight from being bent, ached as he took his legs out of the lotus posture. More than a moment. Two or three days, at least.

He left the hut and went to the pile of rocks near the streambed. During the floods that came every ten years or so, these rocks were streambed, too. Now they were dry. Jimbo removed several of them until he saw the oilcloth. He reached in and pulled out the package. Where should he unwrap it? Here in the open? Back at Mushindo? No, he knew the perfect place. He went back into the hut.

In a structure that was more not-hut than hut, the man who was more not–Ethan Cruz than Ethan Cruz took on the appearance of what he had once been.

Here was his hat, crumpled and crushed out of shape. He made a hat block out of twigs and wet the hat with snow melted in his hands. By tomorrow morning, it would look right. Right enough, anyway.

Here were his shirt, trousers, jacket, and boots. They smelled of old sweat and mold. He put them on.

Here were the barrels and stock of his double-barreled double-ought shotgun. He reassembled it. In a separate oilcloth were six shells. He loaded the shotgun and discarded the spares. He wouldn’t need to reload.

Here was his holster, and in it, the .36 Colt Manual Cruz had given him a lifetime ago.