Taco Del and the Fabled Tree of Destiny

by Bohnhoff, Maya Kaathryn

  “People already see them every day,” I argue.

  He chuckles. “Well, Taco, that’s just a handful of folks who don’t know what kind of treasure they’re sitting on. The people I want to bring here are people who will pay money to see these places, money that will keep them new for all time. These treasures will never get abandoned or forgotten or buried again. Gam Saan, you called it. Do you know what that means?”

  “Of course, I know what it means,” I say, getting a little testy under his condescending scrutiny. “It means Golden Mountain.”

  “That’s right.” He has the effrontery to look surprised that I know this. “And I’m going to put the gold back into the Golden Mountain. Now, you go tell your king to keep his knights and serfs out of the way of my work crews and everything will be just fine. There were some...problems when we arrived yesterday. I’d like to avoid that. Renovation, young man, is not a spectator sport.”

  He rises and panic goes up right alongside.

  “But this is a sacred place!” I cry. “There are spirits here — ”

  The look he gives me scares the words right back down into my throat. He moves his eyes to the other man and I breathe again and realize that the unease I taste now is not purely mine.

  John Makepeace smiles at me, but it is not a real smile, and he is not looking at me, but at the dark brown man. “There are no spirits here or any place else in this city. It’s a heap of decaying buildings populated by indigents.” He laughs, but it’s not a real laugh. “Jesus Lord, what rampant superstition!”

  I am comforted that he seems to be on friendly terms with Jesus, but this seems at odds with his disbelief in spirits. I protest: “But they’re here. The Dolores are here. They speak to me.”

  “I don’t hear them, do you, Ty?”

  The very dark brown man shakes his head and reaches up to adjust his shades. “Nope. Nary a whisper.”

  “But that’s just it!” I plead, desperate. “Since you been here, they’re silent. I gotta know why. Please, let me go into the graveyard and try to-to reach them.”

  The look passes between them again and Ty glances over his shoulder as if to make sure no one’s dropping.

  “Who are these...Dolores?” he asks.

  “They’re nothing,” says John Makepeace, as if he knew diddly about the Dolores.

  “They’re the spirits of the five thousand Ohlone Indians buried around here. That rock pile over there is their memorial.” I point across the courtyard toward the gardens.

  The sun chooses this auspicious moment to breach the clouds. A shaft of light falls onto the garden splashing color everywhere.

  “Don’t you know the history of the Mission?” I ask.

  This time Ty tries to pass a look to John, but John declines to take it.

  “You could come to the Wiz and learn the history,” I suggest.

  “I know the history,” says John, then, “Get him out of here, Ty. We have work to do. Can’t spend all day making friendly with the locals.”

  The door of the winnebago shuts in my face.

  On the way back to the front gate, Ty watches me. At the gate, he says, “What you said about the Indians, is that true?”

  I nod forlornly. All I can think about is this big silence in my head. I want to cry.

  “Five thousand?”

  “The diseases the Spaniards brought and the heavy work and bad food wiped them out. Having the spirit squeezed out of them didn’t help, either. There were survivors, though. Some of them ran away.”

  “Yeah, but the ones who didn’t....” He glances back at the Mission church.

  His unease tickles my nose.

  “Are buried all over the place here,” I finish for him.

  “And they talk to you,” he says.

  A smile is trying to crawl out onto his face. This man is scared. I can see it, feel it, smell it. I store the knowledge for the future: some aliens are afraid of spirits. Maybe the reverse is also true; maybe some spirits are afraid of aliens.

  “Not any more,” I say, turning to go. “Not since you got here.”

  Across the street from the Mission, I park Doug and try to think orderly thoughts. I see that Ty is still watching me. He does this for a moment then says something to the guards and hustles off toward John’s winnebago. The sun breaches again just then and turns the walls of the old church white-gold and the broken tile roof almost red.

  I think about salvation. John Makepeace and I both want to save the Mission from each other. A paradox. My ancestors wanted to redeem what they thought was a wasted land populated by wasted souls. Another paradox.

  I don’t think either needed redemption — the people, or the land — not like that, anyway. Which I think is why my ancestors failed. They didn’t have the say-so over either the souls or the land, but their arrogance made them believe they did and the pay-off was disaster, death and generally bad karma.

  The hugeness of this suddenly plops square on my shoulders and I sink down next to Doug in his wagon. I am staggered by the idea that history is repeating on itself and that I am at what they call the crux of the situation. I am also staggered by what I don’t know. I don’t know how much of our Golden Mountain John Makepeace wants, and I don’t know what he’ll do to get it. I don’t know what’ll happen if he wants something that’s important to more than this little Chickpea, and I don’t know if we got the wherewithal to do diddly about it.

  But the biggest I-don’t-know is this: I don’t know how many people there are where John Makepeace came from. I gotta believe there’re lots — thousands, millions, maybe.

  I remember that the population of the City before The Getting Out was in the hundreds of thousands. I try to imagine thousands of people coming back to Embarcadero, even just to gander, with all their stuff — cars, trucks, winnebagoes — and my little mind tilts bigtime.

  What will we do among those hundreds of thousands? Where will we go? What will become of the world we built?

  I decide I have to ask John Makepeace these questions. I also decide I am spitting mad. John Makepeace’s people had this Golden Mountain — this Gam Saan Francisco — and left it to rot. We stopped the rot and put the broken bits back together. Okay, so maybe our glue is lo-tech, but it works. Everybody in Embarcadero got a place to call home and food to eat and folks to check up on them. What happens to all that if the aliens take over the world? I think I already know the answer ‘cause I’ve read it in the Books of History.

  I got this horrible feeling we’re doing a sort of historical instant replay. They say a year is a day in the sight of God. If that’s so, then He’s just seen this. I know He can’t want to see it again. Somehow, we gotta make things different this time.

  I feel a soft, firry something touch my ear.

  “What d’you think, Doug?” I ask. A quick breeze stirs and Doug’s limbs flutter wildly in a sort of conifer war dance.

  I get up and pull the Radio Flyer out of sight of the Mission. The guards watch us go, laughing.

  This is gonna be one strange war.

  oOo

  Firescape meets me at the corner of Church and 18th. Cinderblock is with.

  “What were you doing, sitting there like that?” Firescape asks. “Incanting?”

  “Meditating on salvation and symmetry,” I say. “We’re off to Lord E’s.”

  We are, and pronto. Lubejob meets us and escorts us in, asking all sorts of questions about my visit to the alien camp. I don’t tell much.

  Lord E is in rare form. In fact, I haven’t seen him in such manic spirits since the Great Embarrassment. This is not the humbler, more sober Elvis I have come to know and tolerate, this is a smug Elvis, an I-know-something-you-don’t Elvis, a possibly on-heavy-pharmaceuticals Elvis (though where he could’ve gotten heavy pharmaceuticals, I sure couldn’t say.)

  He side-steps all talk of unified efforts and executive summit meetings. When I remind him that so far the aliens have only invaded his turf and how much he stands to gain from
a strong alliance, he giggles like a three year old and casts sideways looks at his new merlin, a shadowy personage who affects a cloak and cowl, an old monk’s get-up.

  All during the audience, he speaks only when spoken to, and then in monotone monosyllables. It occurs to me to wonder if this jake has gone napoleon — or Rasputin, as the case may be — and if he’s responsible for Lord E’s new smugness.

  Not liking any of this much, we take our leave. Elvis makes us pick our own way out of his palace — a diplomatic slap in the face. We are making our way silently down a long hallway that seems to be heading streetward when I sense my two-knightie escort tighten up.

  A nanosecond later someone calls out, “Merlin!”

  I stop and turn. Firescape and Cinderblock already have their weapons aimed at the heart of the Alcaldé’s new merlin. He stands atop a flight of stairs to an upper hallway, sunlight cascading all over his cowled shoulders. This has a stunning effect in that it makes him hard to look at, so I don’t try very hard, just sort of look in his general direction.

  “You want?” I ask.

  He makes a funny little gesture with his hand as if pushing something aside.

  “Don’t matter,” he says. “Watch yer back.”

  “‘Cause why?”

  “‘Cause th’ Alcaldé’s got his own agenda, besides being a ditz. It’s not the same as yours. You know Lord E, he don’t change.”

  “He was changing,” I say accusingly. “He was finding out how much he didn’t know. The first step to learning. The first step to wisdom.”

  The merlin shakes his cowled head. “Damn, but you’re a naive little shit. You can throw all the learning you want at old Elvis. The only stuff that sticks to him is what he can use in the next five seconds.”

  He sticks his hands into his sleeves, monk-like. “Watch yer back,” he says again and turns to go.

  “Hey!” calls Firescape before I can twitch. “Why’re you giving us advice? You’re th’ Alcaldé’s man.”

  “I’m nobody’s man, General. I’m my man.”

  “Then you got an agenda, too,” my wife persists. “Care to share it with us?”

  He’s moving away from us down the upper hall, but pauses.

  “You been east of the Mission on 16th?”

  “No,” Firescape answers.

  “Go home that way,” he says and disappears.

  Accordingly, once we find our way out of Lord E’s palace, we angle east on our way back into Embar. Firescape and Cinderblock are joined by a handful of other knighties. At least all I see is a handful. They’re from all different neighborhoods and wearing diverse uniforms. The two in yellow are from the Richmond, one is in the green of the Presidio Guard, another in Tenderloin teal, a couple more in the black and burgundy of Russian Hill’s crack troops.

  They are wary as we bypass the Mission a block away and make our way up to Guerrero where we turn north again and head up toward 16th. They suspect a trap of some sort, given that a Potreran merlin has sent us here.

  There’s no trap. What there is, is a war zone. On Guerrero, before we even reach 16th, buildings are blasted, eaves fallen, walls caved in or out. Charred spots pock what’s left standing.

  “Shit,” breathes Cinderblock, “This must be where the aliens came through.”

  Once we turn onto 16th, it gets worse — smashed houses and storefronts, scorched masonry, debris everywhere. I am wondering how far up John Makepeace’s backtrail this sort of thing goes, when I hear Firescape cry out.

  I stop, realizing that every knightie around me has frozen. When they unfreeze they dash toward where Firescape stands near a blasted out pile of rubble that was once someone’s front steps. I dash too, though Doug slows me a bit, because now I can see that there is more than rubble here. There is a body.

  I draw close against my will, and find there are two bodies, both horribly broken. One is a woman — or was — in her twenties or thirties maybe. The other is a little boy — about four, I guess. They lie close together, almost embracing, the woman’s body partly covering the boy’s. Mother and son, I think. Even broken and torn there’s a strong resemblance.

  One of Doug’s boughs brushes my neck and I see it in a flash: the street, a battle zone, Potreros pelting the invading vehicles from sidewalk and rooftop with bricks and bottles. An occasional shot is fired from a handgun. The little boy and his mother are in the street. They have frozen there, terrified by the other-worldly vehicles moving toward them. A rock strikes one of the winnebagoes’ satellite dishes and the invaders begin to shoot back.

  The mother and son flee, the mother trying to shield her little boy from the stuff flying around. They head for this building, where they live, where they will be safe, but they’ve waited too long to move. An alien weapon strikes the staircase as they step onto it and shatters it and them beyond repair.

  The vision passes, and I stand in the broken street weeping.

  Firescape’s hand falls gently on my shoulder.

  “They left together,” she says, and I see that she is crying too, thinking of Flannigans as yet unborn.

  There is a silence in which I can hear the distant sounds of renovation from the Mission to the west. Then Cinderblock says, “We should bury them.”

  “All of them?”

  This comes from one of the Tenderloin knighties. Her eyes are turned ahead, up the block.

  There are over a dozen more — fourteen, to be exact — mostly men and boys, but not all. In the end, we use the rubble to make neat cairns over them and mark them with strips torn from the bright scarves and headbands of our knightie escort, which has inexplicably grown.

  As we work, I think again about history. I guess we’re not repeating it exactly, after all; at first, the monks smiled and held out gifts. The dying didn’t come until later. I give a moment’s thought to Treasure Island. There was a whole kingdom there, once. I wonder what’s left after the aliens came through. Maybe there hasn’t been anybody scoping the Bridge at that end ‘cause there’s no one left to do the scoping — or at least, no one who cares to try.

  We head home, gray as the day. After a while, my mouth just sort of runs off without me, and I talk to Firescape about salvation and the symmetry of history. She listens and doesn’t say a lot, just looks sort of grim and sad. Cinderblock looks angry and doesn’t say anything at all.

  “Tell me something, Del,” my wife says, when I have run down a little. “When you were up at the Tin Hau, chasing your mysterious message man...how’d Creepy Lou know about the Whisperers?”

  Whatever I might’ve expected her to ask, it wasn’t that. I’m caught off guard both by the question and the answer.

  “I dunno. I never told him.... You’re sure he — ”

  “He called the Mission ‘Whisperville.’ I just wondered how he knew.”

  And now, so do I. I silently thank Jade Berengaria Firescape for giving me something besides death to think about.

  Sixteenth: Chen

  What with one thing and another, I don’t get to ask Creepy Lou about Whisperers or anything else for awhile. First, I have to give my disturbing report to Hismajesty. It is both scary and gratifying to see him look so grim when I’m done. Sometimes he gets cocky — a dangerous condition for a king.

  After this, I make sure our perimeters are well-guarded. As much as I hate to do it, I recommend that we break out our heaviest weaponry. Firescape concurs and calls a war council with her officers. Our smeagols go out in force.

  Knowing Embar is in good hands, I take off to the Farm on a twofold mission. One is to warn Bags and Kaymart about the activity to the southeast. The other is to call upon Kaymart’s expertise.

  Her eyes get big when I take the thing the old monk gave me out of my pocket and lay it on the kitchen table. She picks it up and turns it over and over in her hands, touching it the way she touches her flowers.

  Behind me, Bags looks over one shoulder; Doug looks over the other.

  “Egyptian, right?” I ask.


  Kaymart looks up at me, eyes bright. “Very good, Del. You remember your archaeology. Yes, it’s Egyptian. Do you remember what this symbol is?”

  She taps the carving with her finger. It’s a funny not-quite-circle with a cross attacked to it.

  I shake my head. “Sorry. Chickpea brain.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your brain, Del,” Kaymart assures me. “This is an ankh. It’s a symbol of eternal life. Amulets like this were often placed at the feet of the dead to assure their eternal progress in the next world. They were thought to keep the soul out of the hands of Suti, the Lord of the Underworld. They’re called shen.”

  My brain does this little woggle and I feel Doug’s branches quivering against my back and Kaymart’s eyes on my face.

  “What’s the matter, dear?” she asks and puts a hand over mine. “Why is this amulet so significant?”

  “I’m not real sure,” I say, and I tell her about the runes and the dreams, the Peach Pit and the Nails. I tell her about the first time felt the cold, dark yank on my immortal soul the night I saved Hismajesty from the fireball everybody figured had been set by Lord E Lordy’s goons. I tell her about my trek up to the Tin Hau and the Watcher who calls himself Master Chen and feeling the same cold, dark yank there. I tell her about the young monk with black holes for eyes and the old monk who gave me this, and how he came to give it to me. I tell her, too, about the weird runes I been casting.

  “Then this is a message about Master Chen, don’t you suppose? The words are certainly similar. Chen,” Kaymart says thoughtfully. “Great and Vast and Shen, an Egyptian death ward."

  "Which is also Chinese for divine," I murmur.

  "Not a coincidence, I’ll bet. Is this a word game?”

  If it is, I don’t feel like playing.

  “Question is, what was the old monk trying to tell me? And why? Is this a warning or a clue? Or is it just a good luck charm? And what the hell is this Chen up to?”

  “If he’s your cold, dark yanker, it sounds like he doesn’t like Hismajesty much,” says Bags, who has a flair for understatement. “Maybe he’s in cahoots with Lord E.”