Dusty was his aged cocker spaniel, and the nearest thing I had to the longed-for dog of my own. I went home after tending to her, and sat down at the desk in my bedroom to write the poem I’d promised to the centaur mother. I still remember the first lines:
If I were a hawk,
I would write you letters—
featherheaded jokes,
scribbled on the air.
If I were a dog
I would do your shopping.
If I were a cat
I would brush your hair.
If I were a bear,
I would build your fires,
bringing in the wood,
breaking logs in two.
If I were a camel
I’d take out the garbage.
If I were a fox
I would talk to you….
There was more and sillier, but never mind. I was very romantic at thirteen, on very short notice, and I had never seen beauty like hers.
Okay, a little bit extra, because I do like the way it ended:
If I were a tiger,
I would dance for you.
If I were a mouse,
I would dance for you.
If I were a whale,
I would dance for you….
When I came back in the evening to walk Dusty again, Phil was working in his bedroom with the door closed, and an unattended dinner plate cooling on the sill. His parents were more or less inured to his habits by now, but it fretted at them constantly, just as my unsociability worried my mother, who would literally bribe Phil and Jake to get me out of the house. I reassured them, as I always did, that he was working on a really demanding, really challenging project, then grabbed up dog and leash and was gone. It was dark when I brought her back, but Phil’s door was still shut.
As it was the next morning, and remained until mid-afternoon, when he called me to say, “Done. Get over here.”
He sounded awful.
He looked worse. His eyes were smudgy red pits in a face so white that his own small freckles stood out, and he moved like an old man, as though no part of his body could be trusted not to hurt. He said, “Let’s go.”
“You’re kidding. You wouldn’t make it to Lapin’s.” That was the candy-and-newspaper store across the street. “Take a nap, for God’s sake, we’ll go when you wake up.”
“Now.” When he cleared his throat, it sounded exactly like my father’s car trying to start on a cold morning.
He was holding a metal tube that I recognized as a tennis-ball can. I reached for it, but he snatched it away. “You’ll see it when they see it.” Just then, he didn’t look like anyone I’d ever known.
So we trudged to Van Cortlandt Park, which seemed to take the rest of the afternoon, as slowly as Phil was walking. He had clearly been sitting in more or less the same position for hours and hours on end, and the cramps weren’t turning loose without a fight. Now and then he paused to shake his arms and legs violently, and by the time we reached the Park, he was moving a little less stiffly. But he still hardly spoke, and he clung to that tennis-ball can as though it were a cherished trophy, or a life raft.
The centaurs were waiting at the Rock. The boy, a little way up the forest slope from his parents, saw us first, and called out, “They’re here!” as he galloped to meet us. But he turned shy midway, as children will, and ran back to the others as we approached. I remember that the man had his arms folded across his chest, and that there were a couple of dew-damp patches on the centauride’s coat, the weather having turned cloudy. They said nothing.
Phil said, “I brought it. What I promised. Here, I’ll show you.”
They moved close, plainly careful not to crowd him with their bodies, as he opened the air-tight can and took out a roll of light, flexible drawing paper. He handed the free end to the man, saying, “See? There you are, all three of you. And there’s your road to Mexico.”
Craning my neck, I could see a perfectly rendered watercolor of the oak forest, so detailed that I saw not only our Rock with its long groove along the top surface, but also such things as the bird’s nest in the upper branches of the tallest sycamore and its family of occupants. I couldn’t tell what sort of birds they were, but I knew past doubt that Phil knew. The centaurs in the painting, on the other hand, were not done in any detail beyond the generic, except for relative size, the boy being obviously smaller than the other two. They might have been pieces in a board game.
The man said slowly, not trying to conceal his puzzlement, “This is very pretty, I can see that it is pretty. But it is not our road.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Phil answered him. “Look, take both ends, so.” He handed the whole roll to the centaur. “Now… hold it up so you can watch it, and walk straight ahead. Just walk.”
The man moved slowly forward, his eyes fixed on the image of the very place where he stood. He had not gone more than a few paces when he cried out, “But it moves! It moves!”
His wife and son—and I—pressed close now, and never mind who stepped on whose feet. The watercolor had changed, though not by much; only a few paces’ worth. Now it showed a distinctly marked path in front of the centaur’s feet: the path we ourselves took, coming and going in the oak forest. He said again, this time in a near-whisper, “It moves….”
“And we too,” the woman said. “The little figures—as we move, so do they.”
“Not always.” Phil’s voice was sounding distinctly fuller and stronger. “Go left now, walk off the path—see what happens.”
The man did as directed—but the figures remained motionless in the watercolor, reproving him with their stillness. When he returned to the path and stepped along it, they moved with him again, sliding like the magnet-based toys we had then. I noticed for the first time that each one’s painted tail had a long, coarse hair embedded in the pigment: chestnut, gray, dark-bay.
Almost speechless, the man turned to Phil, holding up the roll to stare at it. “And all our journey is in this picture, truly? And all we need do is follow these… poppets of ourselves?”
Phil nodded. “Just pay attention, and they won’t let you go wrong. I fixed it so they’ll guide you all the way to Nogales, Texas—that’s right on the Mexican border. You’ll know the way from there.” He looked up with weary seriousness at the proud, bearded face above him. “It’s a very long way—almost two thousand miles. I’m sorry.”
“We have made longer journeys, and with no such guide.” The man was still moving forward and back, watching in fascination as the little images mimicked his pacing. “Nothing to compare,” he murmured, “not in all my life….” He halted and faced Phil again. “One with the wisdom to create this for us is also wise enough to know that there is no point in even trying to show our gratitude properly. Thank you.”
Phil reached up to take the proffered hand. “Just go carefully, that’s all. Stay off the main roads—the way I drew it, you shouldn’t ever have to set foot on a highway. And don’t ever let that picture out of your sight. Definitely a one-shot deal.”
He climbed up onto the Rock and instantly fell asleep. The man seemed to doze on his feet, as horses do, while the boy embarked on one last roundup of every last acorn in the area. For myself, I spent the time saying my poem over and over to the centauride, until she had it perfectly memorized, and could repeat it back to me, line for line. “Now I will never forget it,” she told me. “The last time anyone wrote a poem for me, it was in the Greek, the oldest Greek that none speak today.” She recited it to me, and while I understood not one word, I would know it if I heard it again.
Phil was still asleep when the centaurs left at twilight. I did try to wake him to bid them farewell, but he only blinked and mumbled, and was gone again. I watched them out of sight among the oaks: the man in the lead, intently following the little moving images on Phil’s painting; the boy trotting close behind, exuberant with adventure, for good or ill. The woman turned once to look back at us, and then went on.
; I don’t remember how I finally got Phil on his feet and home; only that it was late, and that both sets of parents were mad at us. The next day was school, and after that I had a doctor’s appointment, and Phil had flute lessons, and what with one family thing or another, we had almost no time together until close to the end of the week. We didn’t go to the Rock—the weather had turned too grim even for us—rather we sat shivering on the front stoop of my apartment building, like winter birds on a telephone line, and didn’t say much of anything. I asked if Phil thought they’d make it all the way to Mexico, and he shrugged and answered, “We’ll never know.” After a moment, he added, “All I know, I got a roomful of stupid maps, and my whole body hurts. Never again, boy. You and your damn hallucinations.”
I said, “I didn’t know you could do stuff like that. Like what you made for them.”
He turned to stare intently into my face. “You saw those hairs in those little figures? I saw you seeing them.” I nodded. “Well, each was from one of their tails—Mom, Pop or the Kid. And I plucked a few more hairs, wove those into my brushes. That was the magic part: centaurs may have a lousy sense of direction, but they’re still magic. Wouldn’t have worked for a minute without that.” I stared, and he sighed. “I keep telling you, the artist isn’t the magic. The artist is the sight, the artist is someone who knows magic when he sees it. The magic doesn’t care whether it’s seen or not—that’s the artist’s business. My business.”
I tried earnestly, stumblingly, to absorb what he was telling me. “So all that—I mean, the painting moving and guiding them, and all….”
Phil gave me that crooked, deceptively candid grin he’s had since we were five years old. “I’m a good artist. I’m really good. But I ain’t that good.”
We sat in silence for a while, while the leaves blew and tumbled past us, and a few sharp, tiny raindrops stung our faces. By and by Phil spoke again, quietly enough that I had to lean closer to hear him. “But we were magic too, in our way. You rounding up every single map between here and Yonkers, and me….” He hunched over, arms folded on his knees, the way he still does without realizing it. “Me at that damn easel, brush in one hand, gas-station map in the other, trying to make art out of the New Jersey Turnpike. Trying to make all those highways and freeways and Interstates and Tennessee and Georgia come alive for a family of mythological, nonexistent… hour after goddam miserable, backbreaking, cockamamie hour, and that San Juan candle dropping wax everywhere….”
His voice trailed off into the familiar disgusted mumble. “I don’t know how I did it, Beagle. Don’t ask me. All I knew for sure was, you can’t let centaurs wander around lost in the Bronx—you can’t, it’s all wrong—and there I was.”
“It’ll get them to Mexico,” I said. “I know it will.”
“Yeah, well.” The grin became a slow, rueful smile, less usual. “The weird thing, it’s made me… I don’t know better, but just different, some way. I’m never going to have to do anything like that again, thank God—and I bet I couldn’t. But there’s other stuff, things I never thought about trying before, and now it’s all I’m doing in my head, right now—my head’s full of stuff I have to do, even if I can’t ever get it right. Even though.” The smile faded, and he shrugged and looked away. “That’s them. They did that.”
I turned my coat collar up around my face. I said, “I read a story about a boy who draws cats so well that they come to life and fight off demons for him.”
“Japanese,” Phil said. “Good story. Listen, don’t tell anybody, not even Jake and Marty. It gets out, they’ll want me to do all kinds of stuff, all the time. And magic’s not an all-the-time thing, you’re not ever entitled to magic—not ever, no matter how good you are. Best you can do—all you can do—is make sure you’re ready when it happens. If.”
His voice had grown somber again, his eyes distant, focusing on nothing that I could recognize. Then he brightened abruptly, saying, “Still got the brushes, anyway. There’s that. Whatever comes next, there’s the brushes.”
WE NEVER TALK ABOUT MY BROTHER
Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
—A. E. Housman
Nobody does anymore, haven’t for years—well, that’s why you’re here, ain’t it, one of those “Where Are They Now” pieces of yours?—but it’s funny, when you think about it. I mean, even after what happened, and all this time, you’d think Willa and I—Willa’s my sister—you’d think we’d say at least Word One about him now and then. To each other, maybe not to anyone else. But we don’t, not ever, even now. Hell, my wife won’t talk about Esau, and she’d have more reason than most. Lucky you found me first—she’d have run you right on out of the house, and she could do it, too. Tell the truth, shame the devil, the only reason I’m sitting here talking to you at all is you having the mother wit to bring along that bottle of Blanton’s Single Barrel. Lord, I swear I cannot remember the last time I had any of that in the house.
Mind if you record me? No, no, you go ahead on, get your little tape thing going, okay by me. Doesn’t make a bit of difference. You’re like to think I’m pretty crazy before we’re through, one way or another, but that don’t make any difference either.
Well, okay then. Let’s get started.
Last of the great TV anchormen, my brother, just as big as newsmen ever used to get. Not like today—too many of them in the game, too much competition, all sort of, I don’t know, interchangeable. More and more folks getting the news on their computers, those little earphone gadgets, I don’t know what-all. It’s just different than it was. Way different. Confess I kind of like it.
But back then, back then, Esau was just a little way south of a movie star. Couldn’t walk down the street, go out grocery shopping, he’d get jumped by a whole mob of his fans, his groupies. Couldn’t turn on the TV and not see him on half a dozen channels, broadcasting, or being interviewed, or being a special guest on some show or other. I mean everything from big political stuff to cooking shows, for heaven’s sake. My friend Buddy Andreason, we go fishing weekends, us and Kirby Rich, Buddy used to always tease me about it. Point to those little girls on the news, screaming and running after Esau for autographs, and he’d say, “Man, you could get yourself some of that so easy! Just tell them you’re his brother, you’ll introduce them—man, they’d be all over you! All over you!”
No, it’s not a nickname, that was real. Esau Robbins. Right out of the Bible, the Old Testament, the guy who sold his birthright to his brother for a mess of pottage. Pottage is like soup or stew, something like that. Our Papa was a big Bible reader, and there was… I don’t know, there was stuff that was funny to him that wasn’t real funny to anyone else. Like naming me and Esau like he did.
A lot easier to live with Jacob than a funny name like Esau, I guess—you know, when you’re a kid. But I wasn’t all that crazy about my name either, tell you the truth, which is why I went with Jake first time anybody ever called me that in school, never looked back. I mean, you think about it now. The Bible Esau’s the hunter, the fisherman, the outdoor guy—okay, maybe not the brightest fellow, not the most mannerly, maybe he cusses too much and spits his tobacco where he shouldn’t, but still. And Jacob’s the sneaky one, you know? Esau’s come home beat and hungry and thirsty, and Jacob tricks him—face it, Jacob tricks him right out of his inheritance, his whole future, and their mama helps him do it, and God thinks that’s righteous, a righteous act. Makes you wonder about some things, don’t it?
Did he have a bad time of it growing up, account of his name? ’Bout like you’d expect. I had to fight his battles time to time, if some big fellow was bullyragging him, and my sister Willa did the same, because we were the older ones, and that’s just what you do, right? But we didn’t see him
, you know what I mean? Didn’t have any idea who he was, except a nuisance we had to take care of, watch after, keep out of traffic. He’s seven years younger than Willa, five years younger than me. Doesn’t sound like much now, but when you’re a kid it’s a lot. He might have been growing up in China, for all we knew about him.
I’m embarrassed to say it flat out, but there’s not a lot I really recall about him as a kid, before the whole thing with Donnie Schmidt. I remember Esau loved tomatoes ripe off the vine—got into trouble every summer, stealing them out of the neighbors’ yards—and he was scared of squirrels, can you believe that? Squirrels, for God’s sake. Said they chased him. Oh, and he used to hurt himself a lot, jumping down from higher and higher places—ladders, trees, sheds and all such. Practicing landing, that was the idea. Practicing landing.
But I surely remember the first time I ever really looked at Esau and thought, wow, what’s going on here? Not at school—in the old Pott Street playground, it was. Donnie Schmidt—mean kid with red hair and a squinty eye—Donnie had Esau down on his back, and was just beating him like a rug. Bloody nose, big purple shiner already coming up… I came running all the way across the playground, Willa too, and I got Donnie by the neck and hauled him right off my brother. Whopped him a couple of times too, I don’t mind telling you. He was a nasty one, Donnie Schmidt.
Esau had quit fighting, but he didn’t bounce up right away, and I wouldn’t have neither, the whupping he’d taken. He was just staring at Donnie, and his eyes had gone really pale, both of them, and he pointed straight at Donnie—looked funny, I’m bound to say, with him still lying flat down in that red-clay mud—and he kind of whispered, “You got run over.” Hadn’t been as close as I was, I’d never have heard him.
“You got run over.” Like that—like it had already happened, you see? Exactly—like he was reading the news. You got it.
Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle Page 54