Theo

by Ed Taylor

  Now down the stairs and at the first floor, his mother’s hugging smell still in his nose, Theo hears clacking and buzzing, with a regular rhythmic beat, and some high whirring notes also, and beeps. He turns and follows the noise to what used to be a library, floor to ceiling shelves like ladders, built into the walls in dark wood. Some shelves still hold books but too high for Theo to see titles. The letters are dull gold, on fire when the sun’s right. At the room’s center on an altar of overturned metal buckets, to amplify sound, sits a fax machine, linked by a long taut beige cord and a new orange extension cord to a brass outlet across the room. The cord hangs in midair and has flags and rags and police tape ribboning from it. The machine trembles on the bucket tower. Something is slowly being printed into its tray. Incoming, Colin usually yells, when he hears the machine begin to tremble and whine.

  CONFIDENTIAL

  TO: COLIN

  FROM:ADRIAN

  THROUGH: CREATIVE ARTISTS AGENCY

  SUBJECT: ‘THE GATHERING STORM’

  Reef the mainsail.

  gs: ar

  The paper warm and smelling like chemicals. Theo lifts the slick paper and runs with it back out and down the hall, toward the rear of the house. Because it’s from his dad, and Colin’s disappeared somewhere, Theo decides to bring it to his grandfather.

  Theo runs: he’s a fast runner, and he’s dodging things, feet slapping on cool marble, tile, wood, each a different feeling. Then he’s on the terrace stone and bursting into the full sun now lighting the back lawn all the way downslope to the tree line. Gus’s chair is empty.

  Theo stops. He runs his hand through his hair, rubs his head hard, his fingers catching in his hair. It started hurting to comb so he stopped. Colin says they are shipwrecked, like Robinson Crusoe: no need to fret over personal hygiene, must survive, Colin says. Gus frowns when Colin says things like that. Gus is neat, he even lines his belt buckle up with his shirt buttons, which bulge over his big stomach; even when he’s wearing shorts, which he wears with regular leather shoes and black socks. Gus tries to get Theo to wash and comb his hair, but Theo knows that if he waits long enough Gus stops talking about it.

  Theo is brown everywhere except where his shorts are, the skin across his nose pink and peeling. His palms are much paler than the backs of his hands.

  Mingus once said Theo was black, held out his own huge hands, pink-palmed, and Theo’s next to them. We look the same. You and me.

  Then once when Mingus was wearing one of his costumes that had a visor over his face, he said, from inside, boy, you got so much you don’t even know how much you got.

  How much what.

  What I mean is, I want to be on your planet. Help me get this fastened in back.

  What do I do.

  See the loops. Put the wooden toggles into the loops.

  On one side were small brown wood football-shaped buttons, and Theo threaded them into loops strung down the other side. Mingus grunted, and began making sounds.

  Mingus sometimes appeared in costume talking only in his made-up language. Theo sort of understood, sometimes, but generally didn’t. When he was in a costume or talking his own language, he was not Mingus anymore, and people around him acted like he was someone else and they didn’t laugh or make fun of him. After a few times Theo did too. He thought about how his parents were different people at different times and that surprised him. He saw new expressions on their faces, like strangers’ faces: maybe everyone is like that. But he felt pretty much the same all the time. He wondered if that was normal.

  Okay: Mingus was talking English again. I need to collect some artifacts – you want to help me.

  Usually once he appeared in costume you couldn’t talk to him, you had to wait until Mingus reappeared. But he flipped up the visor, which was a curved piece of gray plastic attached to ear pieces taken from a pair of sunglasses and glued to a bicycle helmet like an apricot pit or a brain or an insect head.

  Okay.

  The thready carpet at Mingus’s room door reminded Theo of birds, how if you looked closely in the trees you could spot nests because of the red, blue, green they’d pulled from the old garden furniture. Theo felt calm when he watched birds, reminded of something he had forgotten, but something he didn’t need to think about. He could just watch. There wasn’t much like that.

  Theo hummed, started whispering a story to himself, as Mingus fussed with his clothes and a plastic bucket.

  Okay so the path goes through that swamp and we know there are monsters in there. Yeah but how can we get the treasure. We can try the magic salt again, it helped the last time. But.

  We’re not telling Colin about this, I just want to make a clean getaway.

  Theo spent a lot of his time figuring out which of the directions given to him by adults to follow, as he frequently found himself told two things that couldn’t both be true or both be done at the same time. He had learned to base his decisions on consequences: which adult would be most unhappy if Theo followed the other adult’s instructions, and how would that unhappiness be expressed. Here Theo figured Colin was the bigger problem, although Theo was, as usual, uncomfortable making the decision.

  I have to tell him. He’ll be upset.

  Mingus shrugged, a massive movement, and stared with his goggle eyes. It’s your world, baby. I’m gonna keep walking, though. I need to get out there before the good shit’s gone. Sorry, I mean stuff. Mingus shuffled toward the front hall.

  Theo wanted to know what the good stuff was but that would have to wait. He followed the noise, toward the ballroom. He stopped in the dark back of the house. He waited for a gap in the gonging sounds coming from Colin’s room, and yelled Colin, I’m going to the beach with Mingus come and find us. Then he ran.

  See, words have power, and if you control words you can control the world.

  As they walked the beach, Mingus kept his plastic cartoon eyes fixed on the sand and his head not moving while the rest of his body jiggled and staggered, kicked up grains: he looked the way the dogs looked when they scented something. The only other time Theo saw similar expressions, not exactly the same but the same in the way it felt watching them, was when Theo watched people playing music. Some musicians managed to look goofy at the same time they looked like they were following a strong scent, as their faces twitched or tightened and loosened and tongues went in and out, or they chewed or made mouth shapes, the mouths disconnected from bodies and even from the music sometimes. Getting something out musically meant squeezing something big through a small hole, it seemed. It looked painful, but Theo knew that couldn’t be true.

  Mingus jabbed down quick as a bird and plucked up something raining sand. It was a faded plastic green V, with little black magnets on the long parts of the V. Every morning in his class at the school in the city, one student was picked to spell out the day’s weather and a quote from a famous writer on a white magnetic board that sat on an easel, using letters like this one, except smaller: the teacher seemed to think they were little kids. Mingus grinned, sweating.

  Certain letters are the most powerful of all, and one day they’re going to rise up and liberate themselves from the European languages. The ones that go back to Greece and Egypt are just biding their time, waiting for people who understand to free them. Then their power can be unleashed for real, and they can change the world.

  The letters – Theo asked, peering up at Mingus, who’d plunked the letter into the bucket and now shuffled off, his massive calves crusted with sand looking like the Snack Shack’s breaded chicken drumsticks in the village. Colin ate them two at a time, one in each hand.

  Yeah, the letters. I have to be careful – the government knows I know about this, and they’d like to steal what I’m doing. They want to turn these letters into weapons. They might just try to turn me into a weapon, or force me to work for them – Mingus wiped at his nose, churning forward – the beach is good because you got things let loose by the water that could be from anywhere, could have traveled thousan
ds of miles, could have been floating for centuries, or just risen up from something sunk, just seeing the light again for the first time. But you have to get out early, cause there are lots of eyes on this stuff. Mingus pointed up.

  Theo looked up –

  No man, don’t look. Satellites right now can see us. The eye follows everything. Then they swoop in.

  Who does. Theo was half-running to keep up with Mingus, the sun hot on his back, his stomach growling, the low-tide ocean curling and hurling itself against the sand about thirty yards away. A couple of striped beach tents rippled nearer the water, and a stream of walkers moved there, all old.

  Can we walk closer to the water, I’m hot, Theo said.

  Mingus stopped and scanned things, big as a lighthouse. Okay.

  They headed straight for the water. Is Mingus your real name, Theo asked.

  No, it’s a nickname because I look like a famous musician named Mingus. My real name is the same name as a line of kings of Egypt. My people. My dad wanted a powerful name for me.

  You’re from Egypt.

  No. But, real Egyptians, the first Egyptians, were black. The Greeks stole everything from us – all the shit they’re famous for. The science and philosophy. Stole it from the first kingdom, my kingdom. Later white people came along and called the place Egypt but that’s not the real name.

  What’s the real name.

  Can’t tell you, little man. Names are really powerful, and that name’s too powerful still, even after five thousand years, still radioactive. It could blow up in your face.

  How come I never heard of this in school.

  Mingus started laughing, then coughing, still kicking toward the ocean, getting further away rather than closer: We don’t have enough time for me to tell you why that is. Let’s just see what’s to see on this damn beach.

  Theo now walked in Mingus’s shadow, easier and cooler than trying to navigate beside him. Talking up at the giant.

  How tall are you.

  Six feet six and three-quarter inches.

  How much do you weigh.

  A billion pounds. I am the heaviest cat on this beach, baby.

  I weigh ninety-six pounds.

  Well, damn, you are the second-heaviest cat on the beach. Congratulations.

  Mingus was huffing as he trolled through the sand, gleaming. Theo thought of whales and the fact that they breathe, just like people, and sometimes you can hear them, in a boat; sailors that hunted them said you could hear them breathing, and Theo realized right then: if you held them underwater long enough, they’d drown. He’d heard the dogs breathing, but he hadn’t ever heard any other animal breathing. Did birds breathe. Squirrels. What does a snake sound like. He hadn’t ever heard his mother breathe.

  Are you an artist, Theo asked Mingus, standing now next to Mingus’s bucket and staring down at the dry faded V.

  Yeah. I make stuff. I play music.

  That’s not art.

  The hell it’s not. Why do you say that.

  Art’s pictures.

  No, man. Art is ideas – everything else is just details, which tool you choose to use. And the ideas, they’re monsters stalking us, drooling on us when we think it’s raining. You have to pay attention. It’s some crazy sh – stuff.

  It’s okay. You can say the bad words. I know them.

  So you’re dad ain’t an artist.

  No. He says he’s just a guitar player.

  Mingus snorted. More like the man with the golden gun.

  What does that mean.

  It means every artist is a deadly dude. Some get rich off it, some get killed by it.

  Theo collapsed onto the sand and rolled over onto his back, tilting his head up at the hill of Mingus.

  Are you rich.

  I sure don’t live on the beach. Let’s go for a swim. Get some ocean on before I have to go back to the rats.

  The air filled with the rough breathing of the water, in and out.

  Were you a good student when you were in school, Theo asked.

  Mingus laughed: I liked it cause I got a meal out of it. I liked math class.

  I don’t like it.

  Math class or school.

  School.

  Hey, it’s like dying, we all gotta go sometime.

  Mingus smiled at Theo, but Theo stared at the sand, seeing the sleeping people on the sidewalk he had to pass to get to school, concrete wet at their heads and sometimes at their pants.

  Bad joke: sorry – Mingus paused and stared at something, then grinned. For sure, most of what I learned in school didn’t have much to do with school. But school’s okay. I was valedictorian of my class in high school, and I got a scholarship to Yale.

  What’s a valditorean.

  It’s a person who has to make a speech at graduation.

  Why.

  It’s supposed to be an honor to be asked.

  Making a speech sounds more like a punishment.

  Most of the time, far as I know, it is supposed to be an honor. It’s crazy, man, people are more afraid of public speaking than death. You can read surveys about it.

  Are you famous.

  The thump of waves made Theo talk louder. Mingus always talked loud. People all around turned and looked at him all the time even when he wasn’t talking to them. Out here, the wind carried his voice away like sand. Theo wondered if words could blow away and still sound the same.

  Not like your dad.

  How famous is my dad.

  He’s famouser than all git-out. Mingus was talking in a fake voice. When Mingus got mad or wanted to make fun of something, he talked like that.

  Why are you mad.

  I ain’t mad, man, I’m just angry that people like me, we have to scream to be heard. Plus he stole every good idea he had from black people.

  My dad doesn’t steal things.

  Mingus began stripping off, first his hat, then his cape, then his shirt, then his shorts, flinging them all away on the sand, leaving him in ragged, saggy olive-green boxers that made him look like a baby in a dark diaper, eyes still hidden behind plastic shades.

  Ask him about that: Mingus with a shiver began running toward the water.

  Glancing up Theo saw a group of grownups spilling out onto the sand from the dunes, directly behind Mingus: from the house.

  Theo watched as pale people in black pants and T-shirts and boots and chains stumbled toward the water: people who’d arrived in a van with his mother.

  They began flopping, sand flying, kicking off boots, stripping off shirts to expose white ribby torsos and nipple rings, snakes and black bands and totem-pole designs tattooed on their arms and backs. One walked toward the water, then stopped to hop and yank off boots and then the man in his black pants ran toward the water and dove forward headfirst, arms at his sides.

  Theo pushed out into the water. Then he lowered himself and kicked once, face down, drifting without paddling, away, the water suddenly cold.

  So running back into the house now with the fax, Theo carries the secret code, warm on the slick paper and he must bring it to the commander, but he can’t find Gus or Colin and runs with the fax flapping in his hand, down halls and around rooms, bare feet muffled on musty carpet then slapping on slate, tile, wood. He runs.

  He likes to run. He’s good at running. He runs up and down any stairs, and adults always walk, sometimes even more slowly, when they go up stairs. But it takes too long if you don’t run.

  Noises come from more parts of the house now. Music starts to seep from different areas, different musics. Someone’s screaming. Theo weaves among rooms, dodging and feinting, and hits a carpet and slips, feet pulled toward the ceiling and slams against the slate floor, his head bouncing. Dark.

  Now stars. Lights. He sees butterflies of light, lying on his back, and is nauseous. He rolls onto his side and gags up silver strings of spit. Nothing to throw up, he hasn’t even had water. He shivers back down. He’s trembling, he’s underwater, everything fuzzy, blurred. Theo can’t remember what
he was doing before. He just woke up and now he’s figuring out what he is, and where. It’s coming back, drifting in. And he’s drifting, the room moving, shifting. He closes his eyes but instantly opens them again: everything spins if he doesn’t.

  Staring at a point on the opposite wall, a target spray-painted in white that’s the only sign the room is in use, besides the old rug on the floor, Theo slowly folds himself together and squats for a minute, arms around his knees, the fax crushed in his hand. The air sparks. He turns his head slowly, shakes it a little. Doesn’t help.

  What are you doing my love.

  His mom, behind him, now downstairs, apparently.

  I fell down. I feel funny.

  Oh my god.

  He hears her, feels the air shift, and then she’s wrapping herself around him, touching his head, the back of his head, looking at her fingers, trying to hug him, but this just tips him over and he’s on all fours.

  I’m dizzy.

  Oh my god. David Bowie. You’ve got the pupils. I’m going to find a doctor. Lie down, baby, and don’t move.

  She swirls from the room. Theo gets back to his feet, crouching. Then slowly he rises. There’s mist in the light, and edges blur. He’s goofy, loose. He walks, to the open door on the other side. The air pulses when his heart beats.

  He wonders if this is what being high is like. Or drunk. Some parts of it are okay, some are scary, and hurt. He’s starting to feel a dull ache. He walks, for a while.

  He walks. He sees Colin and a woman standing up, face to face, right up against each other. They don’t have clothes on.

  He walks past them and they don’t notice. Their eyes are closed. Colin is brown. The woman is very white, and her hair is purple. He neck is banded with what looks like a dog collar; Theo glides past them. He’s gliding, not touching the floor. It’s cool.

  He glides and glides, touching the wall to keep from drifting too far off track. He glides through two more rooms and into a third one that’s full of cushions and old newspapers and magazines. The seraglio, Colin calls this room, the cushions shiny and embroidered, scattered. People lie down in here. There is his mother, lying down, with the other woman from upstairs and two other people, one holding a tape recorder. They all look tired, sleepy. His mother sees him, and he sees her face change. My god. I’m so sorry honey. Are you feeling better now, baby.