Forever the Road (A Rucksack Universe Fantasy Novel)

by Anthony St. Clair

  The white walls and brown dirt strip of the narrow alley glared with sun and shadows. The bright sun did not shine as fully here in the slum’s alley, but the contrast was stark enough to make it hard for Jigme’s eyes to adjust. Whenever he first went outside he always felt blind.

  But the sight was not nearly as overwhelming as the sounds. Inside the dim room, there was only his and Amma’s breathing. Outside, other children played and squealed. Men worked on projects and women cooked and cleaned. Everywhere was talk and songs, the sounds of dough being smacked and shaped, the smells of spices and frying. People spoke of the strange hot wind that had blustered up the alley earlier; Jigme had wondered what had rattled the door while he’d sat with his amma.

  Younger children and children his age went to school and came home from school, but Jigme couldn’t look them in the eye. Once Amma had fallen ill, he had left school to learn from the streets and the endless people who lived in Agamuskara and who came through here from all over the world. Leaving school allowed Jigme to make money to buy food and medicine for him and his mother. Not that Jigme had been able to look the other kids in the eye much anyway. The children of the alley didn’t want to be friends with Jigme, the child of Asha, the woman with no husband.

  The moment Jigme’s eyes adjusted, he ran. As long as he ran, as long as his feet smacked the pavement of the streets and the dirt of the alleys, as long as his legs throbbed, his breath rushed, his skin tingled with the sharp sun, and his heart pounded like a bomb, he felt alive. Lately, as soon as he went back to the little room, he felt as if he had died.

  He only ran toward the mouth of the alley. He never ran the other way. No one ever walked any farther than their door, though the alley’s white walls seemed to go on forever. Past their door, the strip of dirt continued down a shaded part of the block to a bend and then, as far as Jigme understood, onward to the very heart and center of the city.

  Back when she still talked with him, Jigme had asked Amma what was at the other end of the alley, but she had no answer.

  “No one knows,” she had said, “which can only mean that what is there is not for us to know. It must be a place of the gods and only for the gods.”

  Then she had smiled, patted his hand, and asked him what he had seen in the city that day. He had told her of the tomato cart, the monkey taking the camera out of the tourist’s backpack, the tourist chasing the monkey then slipping on crushed tomatoes and falling into a pile of cow dung. He and Amma had laughed so hard. Just when he thought he couldn’t laugh harder, she had said, “I hope the monkey took a picture of such a soft landing!”

  But Amma did not laugh anymore. She no longer shared her funny way of seeing the world. The absence of her laughter was like the absence of breath.

  Jigme ran faster toward the city, where he could lose himself in the endless people and boundless sounds. Past the small statue at the corner, from the mouth of the alley, the world opened up.

  People filled the side street. Jigme smiled, remembering what someone once told him: “You could run from one end of Agamuskara to the other in an hour,” the woman had said, “but because of the crowds it would take a hundred years.”

  It had taken Jigme a day. At least then, Amma was still well enough to be worried when he came back late. Now he wondered if she would notice at all. His eyes stung, but crying was the one thing that he could not allow when he was feeling alive. To cry was to stumble and to stumble was to fall and to fall was to stop. He would not stop.

  From the alley, he turned right, toward the main street, where all the world’s inhabitants seemed to live. He ran past the skinny men on the stoop in their doorway, begging bowls out to support their seemingly never-ending fast. As far as Jigme could tell, they were always perched there. Even sitting, their bare bellies hardly bulged over the dirty lungis that covered their loins and thighs. They alternated between chanting and waving people over to talk and put money in their bowls. They nodded at Jigme, but he didn’t stop. They never asked about his mother.

  He never understood why the fasting men held their vigil so close to The Mystery Chickpea. He didn’t understand the ancient wheeled cart either, for that matter. Every day it was there from daybreak till sunset, steam rising from the two large, dented, shiny, bubbling pots beneath a sign suspended from two posts at either end of the cart. No one ever seemed to eat there, yet there was always a crowd. And there was always the silent old man, his face partially shrouded by the endless clouds of steam.

  “He says nothing,” Jigme had once heard someone say, “yet I know no one else who I would rather talk to.”

  Jigme smiled as he blurred past the cart. He had the feeling that the silent old man always asked him how Amma was doing.

  Then he left the side street, came onto the main road, and was in the city.

  Jigme’s heart beat faster and he started to smile. Tourists would be wandering, their absurdly large packs like cows on their backs. People would be buying snacks and vegetables, jewelry and cloth. The smells from the bhel puri vendors already tugged him by the nose and the stomach. The clean smell of hot puffed rice washed away his worry. The raw red onion cracked its pungent knuckles at him, and the tang of tamarind sauce scrubbed him like a bath.

  Jigme’s belly groaned, but he ignored it. Maybe I should consider it a fast, he thought. I won’t eat till Amma is well enough for both of us to eat together again.

  Nice idea, but we’d starve to death first.

  He ran faster.

  Jigme focused on the crowd, on the movements of what was both a mass of individuals and a single being of person, animal, street, machine, and city. Only a few people looked wide-eyed and panicked toward the crazy skinny boy, his ragged white shirt flying, his brown arms pumping. He knew their thoughts. He was heading straight for them, and in the press of people they had no escape. He’d crash into them. There would be falling and pain as they hit the ground, but all breath would be gone. When collisions happened, you could hardly breathe, much less shout.

  But none of that would happen. Jigme understood now. You just have to find the cracks in the crowds, he thought as he barreled toward the throng, looking left and right for the tiniest opening where he could dash in and keep going.

  Once you find the cracks, you can go anywhere.

  The mass of people shuffled, going only as fast as the person lingering longest over the stalls that lined the street as solid as walls. Not even Agamuskara’s stray dogs wandered in and out of people’s legs here; too many of them had been kicked and trampled.

  In the back of Jigme’s mind, a flame of doubt flickered behind a shadow fear. No room, he thought. Too fast to stop, too fast to change direction. The woman and man in front of him would fall, and what if they shouted for the police? Jigme tried to swerve and dodge, but there was nowhere to dash in, nowhere to slip out.

  And then there was.

  The woman in front had kept going, her red and blue sari brilliant in the light, but the man behind her had stopped to look at something and tap his large mustache. The gap between them widened to at least a foot. Jigme adjusted his course slightly. The man’s eyes widened as he saw Jigme sprinting toward him. “No, no!” the man began to say, waving his arms, but Jigme slipped past his frantic arms, through the next layer of meandering people and into the relieving heat and press of the city’s throngs.

  Jigme slowed to his usual crowd-jogging speed. A heartbeat before his feet got there, a space opened for him. He did not think. He did not analyze. He moved.

  Whether it was his instincts or the gods, capricious luck or the sometimes-gentle hand of the harsh city, Jigme didn’t care. He ran through the crowd again, dodging surprised gasps, feet in mid-step, pointing fingers, and overflowing baskets. Some people saw him and had no reaction; they recognized the running boy of the alley. Some people jumped back in fright, nearly knocking over the people behind them. That always made Jigme grin.

  Through the crowds, down the street, and through other streets he ra
n. The heat of the day and the mass of the people pressed at Jigme like a flame approaching a dung patty. Sometimes he wondered if you could catch fire from being in the crowd too long.

  As long as I move, I’ll be okay, he thought. As long as I run, I can see the city.

  Jigme thought about searching for food. Then he could seek out the man who yesterday had sold him strange medicines in strange bottles, all the while looking around and around. He only looked at Jigme once the gleam of coins was in the boy’s hand. But that didn’t matter. Jigme had the medicine.

  As long as I run, Jigme thought, Amma is asleep and not dying.

  “This I only have just gotten for the first time,” the man had said. “It will help her immediately. She will seem as if she were twenty years younger. Her sickness will be but as the memory of a bad storm.”

  Such relief also cost every coin and note they had left, plus a few trinkets Jigme had put in his pocket while Asha slept. He hoped she would be so relieved at her new good health that she would forgive him—or even better, not notice the absence of the objects. Jigme doubted he would be so lucky.

  The incense pot, she had once said, had been a gift from his father. Other than Jigme, it was all she had left of him, wherever he was now.

  The medicine man took everything and gave only a crooked smile and a small bottle of pills in return.

  That night, Jigme had given Asha the two pills as the man had instructed. All night she had thrashed, saying nothing, making no sounds except those of her limbs flailing over her small pallet. All Jigme could do was stay awake and keep her from throwing herself onto the dirt floor. The next morning, Asha’s glassy eyes burned like the embers of a dying fire. Jigme had been too afraid to give her another dose.

  The memory nearly tripped him, and an elbow knocked into his ribs. Jigme stumbled. A shin caught his foot. A swinging hand bashed his nose, followed quickly by a thin trickle of blood out of his left nostril. The people continued on their way. A boot’s heavy weight crushed into Jigme’s ankle.

  Jigme cried out but no one spared any room for the skinny boy with tears in his eyes. A body bashed him sideways. Jigme’s balance wavered.

  I’m going to fall.

  Through his blurred vision, something seemed different about the space between the people in front of him.

  Stumbling and doubling over, he lunged forward.

  He landed outside of the throng, on the quieter, wider main street that led in and out of Agamuskara. No crowd jostled. A small boy stared at him as Jigme stood bent over, his hands on his knees, trying to get his breath back as burning drops of sweat, tears, and blood fell onto the dusty street.

  Jigme looked up and glared. The boy ran away.

  Sometimes, Jigme thought, I hate this city, this world, everything. I hate that it made my mother sick. I hate that it took my father from me. I hate that it just tried to kill me.

  Hunger growled but worry for Asha sliced through his heart. They had no money; they would not eat today. The pills were more poison than medicine, Jigme had decided. They would not help Amma. Nothing would.

  Unless…

  A few meters away, a yellow-and-black rickshaw pulled up to the curb. Jigme did not hear the words exchanged between the driver and the dusty-skinned foreign tourist in the back seat. The tourist was angry as he got out of the rickshaw, Jigme saw. Angry meant distracted.

  The man pulled out a massive backpack. Those backpacks must contain such wonders, Jigme thought as he stared harder.

  The men spoke loudly and angrily to one another, not seeing Jigme move forward. He no longer noticed the sore parts of his body where the crowd had nearly smashed him to the ground. His breath came back. His heartbeat was calm, slow, and even. Rich tourists, he thought. What does it matter? He must have so much money he can get everything back in a heartbeat. Maybe there even is some money…

  While the men argued, Jigme clenched the backpack’s endless straps. By the time the driver saw him and shouted, Jigme was already out of reach and gaining speed.

  The pack was heavy, but Jigme’s heart was light. We will eat today after all, he thought. I will find real medicine for Amma. I will not deal with the medicine man anymore. Things will be different. Amma will get better, and she will be as she was before.

  Around the corner and away from the main throng, Jigme ran faster. I just have to lose the tourist, he thought. Then everything will be all right.

  THE UNEVEN STREETS AND SIDEWALKS buckled, wavered, and corrugated in the exact sequence needed to constantly trip him. Jay panted, continuing to chase the backpack with heavy-booted, tired steps, despite his wish to collapse. He rounded another corner and again nearly knocked against a wall of people. He tottered back a moment, regained his balance, tried a different way.

  The crowd was thinnest against the buildings. When you can’t go through, he thought, go around. Jay stuck close to the white walls and ran forward again, dodging people and dogs, stalls and tables. Ahead, the backpack bobbed, its dusty blackness a fleeing shadow among a rainbow of women’s saris.

  The crowd always seemed to part for the boy, only to wall off as Jay tried to pass. His rushing body knocked bags out of hands and made people stumble. Jay kept his balance, but his pace slowed. His ragged breathing stabbed his side. And no matter how he dodged, no matter what last few drops of adrenaline he squeezed into his body, the backpack always seemed smaller and smaller.

  He turned one more corner. I have to catch him, Jay thought. I have to get my pack back. The thing came to me. I have to get it back.

  Reality caught up.

  There’s no way I can catch him.

  Jay tripped.

  My pack, everything inside it, it’ll be lost. Even the thing…

  He got up, kept chasing, but his pace faltered. A heat, a flush, hit his face.

  It’s all gone.

  The boy kept running, now approaching the next corner, almost beneath a large sign with the outline of a mountain on it.

  I can catch him, Jay thought.

  His legs buckled.

  WAS IT THE BOUNCING of the running or the awkward weight that made the backpack seem like it was fighting him? Jigme shifted his arms again, trying to keep the pack still. If he could lose the tourist, he could stop and put the pack on properly, even though it was nearly as tall as he was.

  Jigme chanced a quick look over his shoulder. The pack saw the distraction and thrashed back and forth, left and right. But Jigme held on tighter, running toward his hope: Amma sitting up in bed, a smile on her face as the sickness fled her eyes.

  Looking ahead again, Jigme smiled. I’ll lose the tourist for sure now.

  Ahead, the two widest, most populous streets in the city connected. I’ll duck left, cross, and be gone before the tourist can make out which way to go, Jigme thought. Then Amma will get better.

  He swerved to dodge around a man in black sitting at a table.

  Jigme’s knees smacked the hard concrete as he fell.

  The backpack crumpled his folding body, knocking out his breath, and making a sound like, “There!”

  Jigme pressed his hand into a round bulge at the top of the pack. For a moment a light shone brighter than the sun, but it did not blind him. It shined into his eyes, his soul, his lives now and then and to come. He felt the singing nearness of a red-and-black fire, then the cooling like water of a pale, silver-and-gold light that could have been the child of the sun and the moon.

  His hand went to the dusty pavement, and the light and the fire were gone. Jigme tried to get up, tried to catch his breath, tried to get ready to run again. But his breath wouldn’t come back fast enough. He just sat there, wheezing and coughing.

  A lilting voice said, “Goodness me. Never could keep my feet straight.”

  Jigme coughed in reply.

  The voice continued. “Sorry, lad, but I can’t say it looked as if you were carrying that for your gran.” The fabric rustled on the concrete as the backpack was dragged away from him.

&nbs
p; “Please,” Jigme said.

  The sound of tired, dragging steps got louder. Jigme turned around.

  The tourist whose pack he had stolen stood over him.

  “Lawks,” the man in black said, grinning. “Such long faces. You look like you’re hardly fit to stand.” He kicked two chairs out from the table. “Sit down and have a stout. Both o’ you.“

  Jigme gawked. The tourist did too, but finally he shook his head and said, “This... this arse midget just stole my pack.”

  The man patted the black fabric with a hand that seemed both as brown as Jigme’s yet pale as the walls of the city. Puffs of dust leaped off the pack. “Aye, and more credit to him for lugging it this far. What’d you pack, all the dirt in India?” The man motioned to the chairs. “Besides, it’s hardly stolen now.”

  “But it was stolen,” the tourist said, “and he stole it. I thank you for stopping him, but all the same I’d like to talk to the police.”

  “Do you, now,” the man in black said, sitting up. “I hadn’t figured you for some tourist who only just learned which way his passport opens. But then, you’re clearly tired after coming a long way.” The man breathed in deeply. “Aye, quite a journey. Tibet. And Mount Everest. You can always tell the place just by the smell o’ the grit.”

  The tourist smirked.

  “It’s all that sun and cold, you see,” the man in black continued. “It tastes like life and death smacking into one other, and it smells like the beginning and the end o’ the world.”

  He breathed in again. “Lots o’ places.” A pained look crossed the man’s face. “Right back to jolly ole Ireland and then some. A man who’s seen this much o’ the world, I’d figure he’d know things are always a fair sight more complicated than a boy legging it down the street. But it’s clearly your first time here. No matter where you’ve been, nothing prepares you for India. Nowhere else on Earth does the fire o’ life burn so bright as it burns here. And I think that now that you’ve collected your thoughts a wee bit, you’re remembering not to expect India to be like home.”