I’m not thrilled with this idea. Besides, it’s confusing. I mean, why would 5,000 dead Indians be talking to me? The only answer I can come up with isn’t comforting, considering that my ancestors were responsible for their demise.
Anyway, I am sitting in the Wiz staring at a History book without seeing the words when someone sits down cross-table. It’s the old man Bags, and he’s looking at me like I’m an unreadable subway sign.
“History,” he says. “Good subject. Never figure out where you’re goin' if you don’t know where you been.”
I nod, feeling as if he’s saying more than he’s saying.
He taps his finger on the page I have not been reading. “Mount Diablo,” he says. “Big magic there. Very sacred ground to the Ohlone people. They say that’s where they met the first Spaniards.”
I nod again. “I read about it. The Spaniards met an Ohlone holy man and thought he was their Devil.”
“Yeah, well, I bet that old Indian shaman thought the same thing about the Spaniards.”
His eyes are twinkling at me and, for some reason, I smile.
“Yeah, well, I guess he’d’ve been right.”
“They were powerful, those shamans. And wise. Shamanry is a great calling.”
He nods at his own pronouncement, very solemn, then turns the other books I have collected so he can read the spines. What he sees is another book about the Ohlone and the first of the Books of Kingdom.
“Ah, you study the Classics.”
“Sure,” I say, and don’t add, “Doesn’t everybody?”
Fact is, I’ve probably read all the primary Books of Kingdom more than most folks I know except maybe the reigning monarch. I can almost recite them by heart.
“Who d’you read for?”
“Huh?” seems the only likely thing to say.
“Who d’you read the books for? Arthur? Guinevere? Frodo?”
“Oh. Merlin, I guess. And Gandalf.”
He reads me up and down and I fidget. “You’re about how old — twelve?”
“Thirteen,” I say quickly.
“Two years from choosing your Calling...thinking of going into merlinry, are you?”
His question strikes me both kinds of dumb. Only in the deepest recesses of my little chickpea heart had I ever dreamed of being a merlin, and I had hidden it so well that I didn’t even know it until the old guy spit it out.
“No way,” I answer. “I just like the books.”
“That so? Then what you planning to do?”
I shrug. “Dunno.”
He squints like the sun is in his eye, which it is not, ‘cause the Wiz is usually kept kind of dark except for the little reading lamps at the tables. This is more economical and does not waste resources. Regardless of this general dimness, Bags squints up one eye, then the other, then says, “Your friend Hoot said you got some magic.”
The mention of Hoot pushes me out of mopey into depression. There is now a big fat lump in my throat, and my stomach is wriggling, and my heart feels like someone is scrunching it into a little, tight ball.
“Sorry you lost him. He was a good kid.... So you think he’s right about the magic?”
“Beats me.”
“You still hear them voices?”
“Yeah. I get every third or fourth word. But I don’t get ‘em, y’know?”
“Yup. I know. It was like that with my plants at first. Only caught little itty bits of what they were sayin' to me.”
Now that tickles my Alice bone. “You hear whispers?”
“Surely.” He leans toward me across the table. “Green things, Taco,” he tells me. “Green things speak to the heart of any man — or woman — who’ll listen. You’ve seen Kaymart’s greenhouse. Green things talk to her, too. Of course, you’ll never hear her admit it.”
I recall the overgrown garden of the Mission Dolores.
“D’you think it’s green things talking to me?”
“Could be.”
“What would they be saying? Why would they call me their son?”
“Well, I don’t know that, Taco. Probably don’t mean it literal. Whispers are pretty individual; they say different things to different folks.”
“What do yours say?”
“Oh, they tell me when to plant and when to harvest, and they tell me how much food there’ll be for market and how much to put up for me and Kaymart. They tell me when it’s gonna rain and whether the rain’ll be a gentle shower or a hell-bent-for-wet thunderstorm. They talk to me about cold snaps and hot spells. The maples tell me when the syrup is up and if there’ll be an early fall. The pines tell me how the water table’s doin. They tell me other stuff too. Secret stuff.”
I am impressed. I had no idea plants could be so vocal. I say as much.
Bags cocks his head sidewise in a way that reminds me of Hoot.
“You want to find out more about your Whisperers? You want to find a Calling?” he asks.
“In a big way,” I answer.
“Why don’t you come on out to the Farm? Maybe the answers are out there. I know mine were. Come on, boy,” he adds, when I don’t speak up right away. “Explore the possibilities. What’ve you got to lose?”
Truth is — nothing. I got no Calling in heart or mind other than merlinry — a striving for which I have no suit. I could, I think, be a farmer like Bags. It would be a most useful Calling, after all.
“Maybe I’ll do that,” I say. “I do thank you for the kind invitation.”
“Most welcome.” He gets up and winks at me. “‘Sides, Kaymart’s all set she’s gonna feed you up. Put some meat on your bones. Anyway, son, you’re welcome there any time you care to show up.”
I show up the next morning, early. Suddenly, my cozy doesn’t seem so cozy. Seems damn hard to sleep in. ‘Specially as I have not heard anybody call me ‘son’ lo these many years except for the Whisperers. On the lips of Mr. Bags, it is awesomely sweet.
Another reason I hit the Farm early is to try to do some green listening. I hear wind in the boughs of the pines and firs and sequoias. I hear insects and birds waking to talk amongst themselves.
And that’s nothing compared to what I smell. I smell the green. I swear.
Then, when I’ve almost given up listening for smelling, I hear, in my inner ear, “Tsiaiaruk ka ruk.”
“Huh?” I say.
“I said ‘welcome home,’ son,” says Bags from suddenly in front of me. He has a very large fork in his hand and grass in his hair. “Let me introduce you around.”
Green things did not talk to me that day. In fact, they never talked to me — at least not in the way they talk to Bags. Which is not to say they didn’t communicate stuff. I learned to tell in other ways about harvests and frosts and heat waves.
I’m talking about ordinary, general green things now. There’s green things and there’s Doug, which is entirely different.
I have what Kaymart calls an Affinity for Conifers — which means that trees that make cones and have needles like me. I notice it right away.
Conifers are just different from other trees. They have this smell that just about makes me float away. My bed in my room (my very own room) in the Farm House is a pile of fragrant boughs. I could sit and stroke the shiny needles for hours, and would, if Bags and Kaymart didn’t keep me moving.
It was my special job to collect dropped cones, for which I thank the trees most humbly as Bags taught me.
One day I’m trekking through the Farm dogging Bags’s tracks and picking up cones, incidentally sucking up attar of evergreen and Bags’s lore, when I see Doug for the first time. He’s just a little guy, growing cupped between two roots of this great big sequoia gramma (or maybe grampa — you can never be real sure with trees).
“Bags,” I say, “isn’t it hard for a little guy like that to grow all hunkered on top of those big old roots?”
Bags snorts so loud, a flock of quail takes off twenty yards downhill.
“Hard? S’damn near impossible. Can’t p
ut down his taproot. Won’t last the winter, most likely.”
“Then, why’d God put him here?”
“It's a legit mystery, son.”
I look down at the little tree and feel my guts start to quiver. It was the first time I’d ever felt that. I hear the Whisperers say that familiar word, Cattaus, and the next thing I know my eyes go all wonky and I see that little, tiny seedling in a clay pot, and the clay pot is in my arms.
“What’d happen, Bags,” I ask, “if I dug that little tree up and put it in a nice pot and took care of it all year round?”
Bags’s funny no-color eyes glint at me. “Well, I s’pose it’d stand a whole lot better chance of survival.”
“Can we? Dig it up, I mean?”
Bags makes every last one of his nine hundred ninety-nine thoughtful faces. He knows how bad I want him to say, "yes." And he knows what having to stand there and watch all those nine hundred ninety-nine faces is doing to my twisty guts. No good, that’s what. Finally, he nods.
“Let’s get us a shovel and a pot,” he says.
We do, and dig Doug up and put him in a pot. (I don’t know he’s Doug yet, of course.) I insist I can carry him home on my own.
Bags watches me hug that big old pot in my arms.
“Well, now,” he says, “you still wondering why God let that little tree grow there?”
I’ve always been impressed with how well Bags understands God. Kaymart’s always been impressed, too.
“That’s one of the reasons I married him,” she tells me once. “You could go to the Wiz every day and never come home with even a smidgen of the wisdom in that old bean. I’d trade his savvy for my magna cum laude any day.”
I didn’t know what a magma-come-loud was and asked if it had anything to do with volcanoes, which I was studying in Videoschool at the Wiz. Kaymart just laughed. Much later I find out it has to do with going to a university, which we don’t have any of around here anymore. Unless, of course, you count the Wiz.
It’s as I’m carrying Doug back to the Farm House in his little clay pot that I come to a peculiar understanding: I have sort of just made a Green Thing my son. If Bags is right, may be Green Things are also calling me ‘son.’
I have gone from orphaned to lousy-with-family in short order. I find I like this.
oOo
Forgive me, I have meandered bigtime down memory lane. Wandering back, I am sitting at table with Bags and Kaymart, preparing to make only my second-ever foray into the darkness that is Potrero-Taraval, and my eyes are watering something fierce, for Doug and Hoot both.
“You rescued him afore, f’sure,” Bags reassures me. “You’ll do it again. You’ll see. No doubt about it.”
I shake my head. “Back then he was only being guarded by a giant redwood, and that old redwood wasn’t likely to pull her roots up out of the ground and come chasing after me for tree-napping.”
“Yeah,” Bags concedes, “but back then, you weren’t no merlin either.”
“I’m not sure I’m one now,” I admit. “Sometimes I think I’m just making it all up.”
Kaymart’s having none of this.
“Nonsense, Del,” she tells me, her eyes looking fierce under her frizz of gray hair. “You’re most certainly a merlin. I’ve seen you work. You’ve got some kind of special ability, that much I know. Your only problem is a lack of confidence. You just need to bolster your self-esteem.”
I almost understand what she’s saying before Bags butts in with a loud bray and exclaims, “She means you need to grow some cajones, boy!”
I have cajones, of course. Five seconds in close quarters with Firescape is enough to prove that. But I know what Bags and Kaymart mean. I don’t have a lot of confidence, but sometime between then and nightfall, I gotta get some.
Seventh: Potrero-Taraval
By dusk’s early dark, my cajones are no bigger than usual. I decide I’ll have to do without. There is a certain cowardly lion I remind me of. If I were the King of the Forest, I’d likely go hide in it someplace. But I got to do this, ‘cause it’s Doug who needs me.
Kaymart and Bags give me some drabs to wear; if I go over into Potrero in my merlin gear, I’ll have knighties all over me in no appreciable time. (There’s only one knightie I want all over me, thanks.)
I have brought along a tiny flask of the attar of Doug to help bolster my aforementioned cajones, to keep me focused and to ward off the bad smells I recall from my first trek into Potrero-Taraval.
Kaymart helps me tuck my yard or so of wild black hair under a burnoose and I take off for the Border, all green and brown, looking like a cross between Robinhood and Lawrence of Arabia.
This time before I dive into Potrero, I report to the Green border knighties that I’m on a mission from God. They respectfully let me pass. It’s a semi-foggy, moonless night — darker, even, than the first night I was here, if that's possible.
About a quarter mile from where I drop into the trench I spy Hoot’s chink between the trolley and the dumpster. I imagine it’s seen a lot of action lately. In notime, I’m in Potrero again, and Potrero is no less empty and godforsaken than it was the first time I was here.
A wind frisks up and papers and other light crap blow around on the asphalt and dance in little tornadoes. It makes a crying sound and I think of the Ohlone dolores lying in the graveyard my ancestors made for them. As I think of them, I also hear them, whispering encouragement at me — at least, I think that’s what they’re whispering. They are most assuredly urging me on.
Being a merlin (if not much of one) I know a few incantations for protection. I choose one called Chouyan, which means smoke. It’s a very ancient incantation, so I have some confidence in it. In fact, it’s about the only incantation I can do well — which means it actually gets results. I mumble it now and squeeze out onto the street. It really is empty — so empty the buildings whistle to keep from being lonely.
I recall The Fish’s map. A few blocks west of here there is a long, wooded avenue. It runs just about straight to Lord E’s Palace. I suspect it will be well-guarded, so I go west only one block and begin to work my way south through the haunted streets.
As I get further from the Border, I don’t see a whole lot of difference in the scenery. I smell a difference, though. Bu hao! There is a stink like a red tide. It could be the garbage, which seems to be everywhere, or it could be something else I don’t want to know about. Either way, I don’t go look, but just keep heading south, sniffing attar of Doug and dipping in and out of shadows, my feet making soft scratches in the grit.
The attar does better than ward off the smells — it makes me feel more and more like I can do this thing.
I count blocks as I go, and when I think I’ve gone far enough, I cut west again. Then, there are people. I don’t see them. But I hear them. First, I think it’s the wind, blowing through the empty alleys and crumbling eaves. Then I realize it’s voices I hear as I pass by the tired buildings.
Whispers and moans in front of this one; I hurry. Laughter here; I relax a little. Rage rolls out of an upstairs window; I hurry again.
I hear a child crying, a mother trying to shush it, a man swearing and demanding quiet. As I pass by, the woman begins to sing. I almost stop to listen, but I remember Doug and move on.
My math’s a little off, ‘cause I end up a block off from where I think I should be and see that I’m still short of Lord E’s compound. Not only that, but now I see fires deep in the alleys and winking from windows and between the cracks of bad-fitting doorjambs. Out on the wooded avenue, people hang on corners and stuff, warming their hands around barrels full of fire.
I look toward the Palace and see a bunch of folks at the gates just kind of milling around. I think of joining in when I realize they’re not getting inside. They’re just milling and yelling and dodging stuff coming at them over the fence. Inside the fence are torches and I think I see who's doing the throwing — the first knighties I’ve seen since I came here.
I don�
��t understand this. I duck back into the side street and jog, beneath whispers and shouts, to the next southbound road. The smell is worse here, where the people are, and I think Deadend must be right about no running water. It makes me homesick for the perfumes of the Gee Gah. Hell, even the fishmart smells better than this.
Three more blocks and I cut west again, sneaking up on the back of Lord E’s place. There’re trees and bushes inside the tall chain fence and I think this might be easier than I thought.
I find a place in the fence where the razorbarb across the top has fallen away and start climbing. I climb the fence okay. Up, over, and right into the branches of a giant oak. The tree has a big spread and I see I can make the roof on the other side of it. I’m a tree-climber from way back and I move like the wind through the branches.
I’m feeling pretty good about myself, merlin-wise, as I come down onto the roof of the nearest building. Looking down, I can see guards patrolling the grounds. My incantations hold; they don’t see me.
There is a stairwell leading down from this roof, but I ignore it. This isn't the main building of the Palace compound — that’s about four buildings further south, according to smeagols, and I can see the top floor from here, lit up like a party-boat with flickering lights. I head in that direction, skulking low to the roof.
The first two buildings are easy — real close together. I make the jump with no trouble. But the last one is different — a good two-and-a-half yards if it’s an inch. And the leap won’t take me to the roof, just to a ledge...a very narrow ledge. A ledge with windows.
I think about going to ground, but I’m afraid someone might see me. So, I back way off and take a running jump. I make the jump okay, except one of the windows opens up right in my face.
The fall is long, but doesn’t feel like it. Feels real short. Fortunately, there is some tall dead grass between the two buildings, so I don’t get hurt. Talk about wonky, though — my whole body is wonky. It takes me a moment to get up, a bit longer for my eyes to straighten out.
When they do, I do not see what I expect to see — the walls of two buildings and a badly lit sidewalk twenty feet away. I see the walls of two buildings and four badly lit people about eight feet away and closing. They are just big, dark outlines of people — no faces. This is creepy, so I turn to run.
Taco Del and the Fabled Tree of Destiny Page 7