by Steve Cash
When Solomon began to recover and get his strength back, he came and woke me from one of my dreams. I was sweating and shaking and gripping Papa’s baseball so hard my fingernails had broken through the hide. He held me gently by the shoulders. He said, “Zianno, we go find that boy. You hear me? You must do zis. Tomorrow, we find that boy.”
But we didn’t have to find anything. He found us.
At breakfast, Mrs. Bennings asked why I had been up so early wandering the neighborhood. I told her I hadn’t been anywhere and Solomon and I exchanged glances.
“When did you last see him—or me, Mrs. Bennings?”
“Why, not ten minutes ago, child. And what do you mean ‘him’?”
I got up from the table and went to the door. I looked at Solomon. He wore an expression as serious as I’d seen since the train wreck.
He said, “Go with caution, Zianno. Remember what those others did.”
I walked out of the boardinghouse and down the hill to the nearest corner. It wasn’t more than a hundred yards. For some reason I knew he’d be there, and he was, leaning against a stone post. When I was no more than ten feet away, I could see how much we looked alike, but up close, in better light than there was in the alley, I could also see our differences. He had green eyes, where mine were almost black, and his lips were fuller, rounder than mine. He had no scars or blemishes that I could see, but neither did I.
I said, “How did you find us?”
He just shrugged and looked out over the houses around us. Then I thought how easy it would be to find us. I’d told him Solomon’s name. All he had to do was ask around.
He looked down at his feet. He kicked a loose rock and we both watched it arc and tumble down the hill. I waited for him to speak.
“You’re the first one I seen in a long time,” he said. “That’s all. And you got the power of the Stones. I thought that was somethin’ my old lady made up.”
“Look,” I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I know is that those boys hurt my friend bad and that one boy was asking you if he should do more.”
“Yeah, well, they’re Giza, that’s what I’m tellin’ you.”
“Giza?” I said and then I remembered. When my mama was trying to tell me something on the train, she said we were not like the Giza, the other people.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“Ray, Ray Ytuarte. Yours?”
“Zianno Zezen. My mama and papa called me Z.”
“Called?” he said. Then he bent down and picked up another loose rock and threw it down the hill. He had a good arm. “Where are they now?”
“They’re dead. So what?”
“No what. I was just askin’.”
I wasn’t sure if I liked him or not, but I was curious. So was he.
“How long have you been twelve?” he said.
“How long have I been twelve? How do you know I’m twelve?”
“Because we all are.”
I got a sudden chill. I thought it was the wind, which was still coming out of the north and bitterly cold. I turned my back to it and said, “Listen, why don’t you follow me. We can go in the boardinghouse. I’ve got my own room.” I didn’t know why I was saying this, maybe it was dangerous, but I had to know more. “It’s too cold out here, anyway,” I said.
He looked around and up at the sky nonchalantly. “Yeah, maybe, but it’ll be nice tomorrow and almost hot in three days.”
“How do you know?”
He just shrugged and laughed that same, strange laugh.
We came in the same way I had left, through the kitchen door. Solomon and Mrs. Bennings were still sitting at the big table. Solomon looked the boy over, knowing he was seeing something he’d only been told about as a child, something he thought was a tall tale told by a crazy old German rabbi. Mrs. Bennings’s mouth had dropped open and she was speechless.
If someone, anyone, had looked in my room for the next half hour, they would have thought they were just seeing two boys, maybe two brothers, talking. But it was more than that, much more.
The first thing Ray Ytuarte did was ask to see Papa’s baseball. I took it out of my pocket and tossed it to him. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him. He walked around the simple room and over to the only window. He turned the baseball over and over in his hands inspecting every stitch and the gouges my own fingernails had made. The window was completely frosted over. He blew on it and rubbed a clear circle with his fist. He stared down through the cold glass, then looked at me.
“You really don’t know anything, do you?” he said.
“No, I don’t. Why don’t you tell me. The first thing you said to me was ‘You are Meq.’ What does it mean?”
“I can only tell you what my old lady told me and she didn’t know much. It’s the word we use for ourselves, the old word. She said the Giza have called us other things, in other times; the Children, the Flock, the Enigma. I don’t know that much about that part. It’s all lost.”
“But what does it mean?” I said. My mind was racing with questions.
“Well, it means you ain’t gonna get sick. It’s in your blood. And you’re gonna heal fast if you get cut or broken. And you’ll stay twelve. You won’t get any older, at least not your body.” He blew on the glass again and this time traced a circle with his fingertip, then another circle inside that one. “It’s called Itxaron,” he said, “the Wait.”
“Can you die?”
“Yeah, you can die. If you get your head cut off or stomped beyond recognition by somethin’.”
“How old are you?”
“Older than that old man downstairs.”
“You mean Solomon?”
“Yeah, Solomon. Solomon J. Birnbaum. I seen him around years ago, but he didn’t see me.”
“You are actually older than Solomon?”
He laughed that hard laugh and blew more of his breath on the glass. He wiped the sleeve of his jacket across the circles he had made. He answered in a low monotone.
“I was born in 1783, in Vera Cruz. That’s Mexico. I turned twelve in New Orleans. Spent a lot of years there. It was easy for a kid, but not so good for my old lady. My old man was killed in a zipota match for money. Had his brains kicked in. My sister didn’t know how to stay twelve too good. She took to the brothels and slipped out somewhere. I ain’t heard a word of her since. I learned how to run gangs and that’s what I did. They called me the ‘Weatherman.’ But you gotta keep movin’ when everybody’s gettin’ older and you ain’t. You’ll learn that quick. My old lady tried to live like the Giza and got her throat cut in a fancy hotel. They never found the guy. I just made my way upriver, town to town, city to city, until I got to St. Louis. I been here to this day. In all that time I only seen a few of us and none could do what you did in that alley. My old lady told me only an Egizahar could do that. She said they’re the only ones with the Stones. I thought it was just another one of her crazy stories about us.”
He stopped talking and tossed me the baseball. I caught it and sat there in a daze.
“Where’d you get that?” he said.
“My papa made it.”
“Well, if my hunch is right and it usually is, that ain’t just a baseball. Did he tell you what to do with it?”
I looked down at the baseball, remembering Papa. “He said ‘never lose it.’ ”
“That’s because you’re Egizahar. You gotta protect the Stones.”
“What does it mean,” I said, “ ‘Egizahar’?”
“It kinda means ‘old truth.’ According to my old lady, there’s two bloodlines: the Egizahar and the Egipurdiko. ‘Diko’ for short, which kinda means ‘half-assed truth.’ The ones who Waited and the ones who didn’t. I don’t really know what it means. She was crazy, but I don’t know; I ain’t so sure now that I seen you and what you did.”
“What did I do?” I said.
“You stopped the Giza. You made them all forget, turn around, and leave. They wouldn’t—couldn’
t have done that on their own. That’s old magic, old power, and for us, there ain’t nobody that can do that without the Stones. We got other things we can do, but not that.”
I still sat on the edge of the bed. I hadn’t moved. I was lost . . . overwhelmed. It was like one of my dreams. I felt as if I had stepped into a shallow pool only to be dragged out to sea.
He stepped away from the window and took something out of his pocket.
“Look, kid,” he said, “I know what that baseball probably means to you, but . . .”
“Don’t call me kid,” I said. “It’s ridiculous. You look just like me. Why don’t you be Ray and I’ll be Z.”
He put his hand out to shake. “Deal,” he said.
I looked down at Papa’s baseball. “So, Ray, you think this baseball is magic?”
“I don’t think the baseball is magic, but I think what’s inside is.”
“Inside?”
“That’s right. I think your papa put the Stones in the middle of that ball. Why don’t you give it to me and let me cut the stitches. I got a penknife right here.”
“No,” I said, but I didn’t say it with much heart. I wanted to find out myself. I had to. I tossed him the ball.
He didn’t waste a second. Without a word, he sat down on the bed and put the baseball between us. He cut the stitches one at a time and carefully peeled back the flap of hide. He took out the coarse hair and fiber underneath and suddenly there it was. Like a single egg in a bird’s nest, there it was. In fact, it was shaped like an egg. A dark, pockmarked stone in the shape of an egg that would easily fit in the palm of your hand. And like the four points on a compass, there were four tiny gems embedded in the Stone. In the light, they all reflected a different, brilliant color. I lifted the Stone gently and it was heavier than I expected. The gems were a mystery, I had no idea what they were. But Ray did.
Ray said, “That one there at the top, that’s blue diamond. The one on the bottom is star sapphire. The other two are lapis lazuli and pearl.”
I turned it over and over in my hands. I touched the gems with my fingertips, then I put it in my palm and closed my hand over it. I shut my eyes and thought about Mama and Papa. I couldn’t touch them anymore. I couldn’t run up to them and ask them a thousand different questions. I opened my eyes and looked at the cold glass of the windowpane. The light coming through was low and faint. I turned and looked at Ray. He was putting his knife back in his pocket.
“What do I do now, Ray?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “but I got a hunch you’re gonna figure it out.”
Three days later it was almost hot, just like the “Weatherman” had predicted. Solomon was on his rounds again, doing more bartering than gambling, now that he was getting prepared for his annual trip west. I went with him and tried not to let him see what I was thinking and feeling. I should have realized he knew me better than that. He said, “You don’t go with me out west, kid. You stay and find zis thing, zis thing inside you.”
We had never discussed me going west with him, but I think we had both assumed I would.
“You know about me, don’t you?” I said.
He barked at his mules, then turned to me.
“I know what I know, Zianno. No more than that.”
I made him stop the wagon and I told him I had discovered something special, something I didn’t understand, something from my papa. I told him I had to find something else now. I had no choice. I had to find someone named Sailor; it was the last thing my mama had said and maybe Ray Ytuarte could help me do it. He said he understood and that he’d already made arrangements with Mrs. Bennings for me to stay with her. Of course, I’d have to earn my keep and maybe watch over her a little for him. He said he might go all the way west this time, maybe to California. I told him that sounded like good business.
In the next few weeks, Solomon and Mrs. Bennings made no more pretense about their relationship. She knew he would be away for at least six months and they spent most of their time together.
I spent a lot of that time with Ray. Every day we met somewhere and I asked him about the Meq. Ray still ran his gang, but I could tell he was drifting away from that. He was starting to need me as much as I needed him, for what I didn’t know. Some days he actually seemed like a twelve-year-old and some days he was just strange and distant. One day, for no reason, he told me his sister’s name. He said it was Zuriaa, a beautiful old Basque name, but she had changed it to something else.
I asked him about us, all of us. How could we even be born if our parents stayed twelve. I knew babies didn’t come from storks.
He said there was a ritual, something only the Meq did, called Zeharkatu. He didn’t know much about it because he’d never done it, but after the ritual the Meq became like the Giza, the other people. They could have babies, get sick, grow old and die, just like the Giza. But their babies would be Meq. He wasn’t sure when or how the ritual was done. He said it had something to do with the Itxaron, the Wait. He said there were all kinds of old stories and legends, but his old lady only knew a few and since he’d been on his own, he’d learned very little. He heard that some of us were old, older than you would believe, and some were not to be messed with. I asked him if he’d ever heard of one named Sailor and he said he had, but it was more like a ghost in one of his old lady’s stories. I asked if he’d ever heard the name Umla-Meq, but that name was unfamiliar. We both wondered about the Stones I carried—Ray a little more than I.
Finally, the day came for Solomon to leave. St. Louis was turning green with spring and it was a fine bright day. He and Mrs. Bennings said their good-byes inside, she acting as if it was just another day, but I knew better. Outside, after he’d hitched the mules and climbed in the wagon, he tossed me the little round cap off his head. “Here, kid,” he said, “zis will make you safe, smart, and rich.” He waved once and was gone.
Four days passed and I hadn’t seen or heard from Ray. Then, he burst into my room one morning and wanted to know which way Solomon had headed west. Had he taken a northern or southern route? I said I didn’t know, but probably northern, because he had mentioned a man in St. Joseph named James he wanted to see and if he went that way, following the railroad as was his custom, he would stop at the Missouri–Pacific Railroad in St. Joseph to check on new lines and track. Ray said this was bad because there was a big storm about to form and there would be tremendous rain and flooding in that part of the country. I almost laughed, but he was serious, so we told Mrs. Bennings that she ought to wire St. Joseph and warn him. She thought that was silly, but when it came to Solomon her feelings were clear—“better safe than sorry.”
She sent the telegram and we waited for a reply, but none came. One day later, news broke of a devastating storm that raged through the Great Plains and created hundreds of flash floods and destruction everywhere. Mrs. Bennings feared the worst. Two days after that, Ray disappeared without a word. I looked for him in the pool halls, outside the saloons, around the levees, and all his usual street corners. He was gone. We never heard from Solomon.
I felt lost again and I didn’t have the faintest idea what to do next. Solomon had asked me to “watch over” Mrs. Bennings and that’s what I would do, but somehow, I still had to find Sailor.
That night, my dreams were filled with driving rain and mules and baseballs and pistols and wind. Everything kept splitting apart and everyone was screaming and crying and running for dry ground and a safe place to hide. In the middle of it, calm as could be in a bowler hat, there was a boy waving to me and saying something I couldn’t quite understand. I woke up soaking wet from my own sweat and took a deep breath, then a thought crossed my mind . . . even if you can predict the weather, you can’t predict the “Weatherman.”
The next day was May 4, 1882. I would be twelve again.
3
ARMI-ARMA
(SPIDER)
Imagine a warm summer afternoon. You’re sitting on a porch swing or in the grass leaning against a tre
e. Caught in a ray of sunlight, out of the corner of your eye, you detect movement. Not sudden, yet quick and graceful. You turn toward it and see nothing at first, but you wait and watch. Then you catch a silver flash, then another, descending in the light. You follow it with your eye and there, dangling in space, she sits, stands, hangs, you can’t tell. She is the spider suspended in space. Alone, defying gravity, she spins her magic home and trap. You are mesmerized. You watch her in a silence filled with power. Her power of will and perseverance and the slow knowledge that what she weaves will work. The beauty is incidental. Or is it? You watch her until the light fades and she blends in with shadow and darkness. You rise and leave by ways familiar to you, but you know that behind you, back there, she has spun her web and, in darkness, waits.
I t was Independence Day before Mrs. Bennings and I really talked about it. Solomon’s absence in body and spirit, by wire and by letter, was absolute. We hadn’t heard a word from him or about him. Mrs. Bennings kept busy and never mentioned it. She might have had an extra nip or two in the evenings from her bottle of Old Bushmills, but that was the only outward sign I could see that she was worried. After chores, I spent most of my time combing the piers and levees looking for traces of Ray. He had vanished as completely as Solomon.
At breakfast that morning, Mrs. Bennings suggested I accompany her to Sportsman’s Park for the day. She had tickets to the baseball game between the St. Louis Browns and the Chicago White Sox and after the game there would be a fireworks display. I told her I’d be glad to go. I loved baseball and she loved fireworks.
There were several thousand people there and after she bought us both lemonades and we made our way through the shouting, sweating crowd, we sat next to each other in the grandstands. That was my first professional baseball game. I took in everything at once. I loved it. I still think the few minutes just before a game starts are the most exciting. Mrs. Bennings turned to face me, oblivious to the hoopla around us.
“I think it’s gettin’ to be downright rude of Mr. Birnbaum to not be tellin’ us whether he’s alive or dead.”