* * *
Sunday morning began long before the sun came up. It started the second that the hands of tía Clarinda’s old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock ticked one beat past midnight. Jorge lay on his back, staring up into the leaves he couldn’t possibly see in the dark, and tried to stay awake, tried to imagine that Papi was just as restless and eager as he was for the real start of Sunday morning to come. Where was Papi now, what was he doing? Loading up his car, starting it rough in the chill just-past-midnight darkness, turning down the same county road that Jorge still remembered from October? What did it look like now, that road? No more splashes of red and yellow and bronze, no lingering touch of green. The trees must be bare, branches like black craze-marks across a dropped china plate. Jorge dreamed he could see the narrow path that Papi’s headlights traced as the car flew down the road to the distant city, and then Jorge simply dreamed.
Through the fog of slumber he thought he heard a distant ringing. He knew he heard a scream. He sat straight up in his bed just as the door banged open and Ramõn ran in, his eyes wide and crazy-looking in the watery dawnlight seeping in through the window.
“He’s dead, Jorge, he’s dead! Papi’s dead!”
Dead and dead and dead, over and over, merciless and unrelenting. The words struck Jorge hard in heart and belly and brain. The blows fell, and his sobbing soul clamored no-no-no until at last it broke into a shrill wail that scaled the icy heavens to oblivion.
While Ramõn babbled on about phone calls from the police, narrow roads, freezing rain, a car gone out of control, crushed like an empty beer can against the mountainside, while tía Clarinda shook and shrieked and brought everyone on their floor running to see what had happened, Jorge got out of bed. He went into the kitchen and very calmly, very coldly took a hammer from the junk drawer and smashed every single one of the glassed-in candles that tía Clarinda used to beseech the Blessed Virgin for her brother’s punishment.
Then he went back into his room and methodically tore the trees from his walls, scattering their crumpled images from his window. He watched them drift down into the street like giant flakes of snow until a sudden gust of wind came up and blew them all away. He saw them climb the sky, race past his open window so close that he could have reached out and grabbed back a handful of them from the abyss. He scowled and slammed the window shut, never realizing that the November wind blew summer-warm, or that it carried on its wings the scent of green.
* * *
At the funeral, everyone told him that he was the man of the house now. They had a good day for the burial—everyone said that, too. The weather was cold but clear, the sunlight keen as razors. Jorge watched as they lowered the sharp-edged box into the sharpedged hole. Someone gave him a clod of dirt to throw onto the coffin. He dropped it in like a soiled tissue.
Ramõn wouldn’t even do that much. He threw the earth as far away from him as he could, and then he ran off, sprinting through the forest of tombstones.
Some of the cousins tried to catch him, but he was too fast and they gave up. He didn’t come home until well after dark, smelling of smoke and sourness, looking as if he’d walked all the way back to Manhattan from Queens.
Tía Clarinda was in hysterics. She was being attended to by friends and neighbors and familia who were all more than ready to tell Ramõn what a sinvergüenza he was for putting his aunt through such an ordeal on such a day. Ramõn never said a word. Jorge watched as his little brother turned his back on all of them and went into his room. He didn’t bother to slam the door; his silence shut them all out better than any big, melodramatic gesture. Jorge watched, and Jorge felt as through Ramõn had become a handful of graveyard earth that turned to sand when he tried to grasp it, sand that fled through his fingers like water, like air.
Days trickled past, became Christmas, which the brothers refused to celebrate despite tía Clarinda’s shrill insistence that Papi would have wanted it that way. He was Papi to her again now. She called him that whenever she spoke about him, which was frequently, the way some people invoked a saint’s name or how Ramõn’s friends used “that word” all the time.
She couldn’t get enough of saying, “Jorge, you look more like your Papi every day” or “Ramõn, don’t give me that dirty look; what would Papi say?” It was as if their father had been born without any other name and that the letters carved on the blunt, gray tombstone were runes, an alien language, something belonging to a stranger.
Jorge and Ramõn wandered through the days like children lost in an autumn forest with all the dead leaves tumbling down around them, burying them alive. Each went his own way, and when they happened to run into one another in the apartment or on the street, it was like a pair of billiard balls clicking together by chance, then rolling apart. The winter deepened, the cold lost the soft touch of snow and became ice, diamond-bright, diamond-hard. Jorge felt like the days and the streets and the blunt, gray tombstone, all cold to the core.
One night, he dreamed of the birch grove. At first he thought that he was only drowsing, that the golden glow of his bedside lamp was deceiving him. Then he remembered, in the furry-minded way that dreamers do, that he’d thrown that lamp down the incinerator chute the day before his father’s funeral and replaced it with a shiny black gooseneck light, a serviceable desktop clone like a thousand others. Then the memory of lamplight flew out of his head, a cluster of warm yellow leaves brushed across his face, and he stood suddenly alone in a place of wonders.
The trees surrounded him, circled him like dancers, embraced him with tall, white trunks and gold-leafed branches. He had traveled back to the place but also to the time, the first time he’d stepped into the birch grove. On that vanished October morning he’d joined Papi for breakfast while Ramõn still hugged his pillows.
His father suggested they go for a little walk, to give Ramõn time to wake up. No sense in making pancakes that were only going to get cold.
Jorge went along because . . . well, because why not? At first he thought his father was just taking him for a random stroll, leaf-peeping along the autumn paths that led into the hills. But there was something in Papi’s purposeful stride that soon made him realize they were heading for a particular destination.
I knew you’d like this place, Papi whispered in his ear, in his dream. His voice was the wind blowing through river reeds. As soon as I found it, I knew I had to bring you here.
What about Ramõn? Jorge heard his own voice hiss inside his head as he laid one hand on the cool, moonbright bark of a birch tree.
Ah, Ramõn . . . Papi’s voice drifted to the melancholy edge of silence. This place would mean nothing to him. He’s too young, yet; he doesn’t see. His eyes are on other things. Flash. Bling. Glare. He’d come here for my sake, if I asked him, but he doesn’t know that he must come here for his own.
Why, Papi? The phantom voice inside Jorge’s head was lonely and small. For his own sake how?
A great rustling shook the birch leaves, like a lion sending a shiver through his tawny pelt to cast off flies. Jorge saw that the black and gray marks on the birch bark had begun to move under his hands. They writhed like inchworms, humping up, stretching out, touching and twining and running together until a face emerged from the curve of the living tree.
He thought that it was Papi’s face because it had to be. Who else would speak to him out of the heart of the birch grove that they alone had shared on that lost October day? But the eyes that opened were too wide, too fiery, the nose too broad, the hair too thick and tightly curled. The lips were full-fleshed as mushroom caps, and when they parted to speak, Jorge knew he stood before the power he’d pursued for so long from within his fragile paper shrine. Here was the heart of the woodland, every woodland, palm and pin˜ on, poplar and pine. The forest in its absolute lifegiving, life-taking sovereignty smoldered behind the almost-human mask burgeoning from the birch trunk.
Jorge was too rapt to be afraid.
The cool bite of autumn air wafted away. A rich, thick mo
isture enveloped Jorge’s body. It smelled of torrid sun and healing rain. Jungle vines heavy with red trumpet flowers tumbled down its cheeks, feathery emerald ferns sprouted from its eyebrows. Birds and bats, lizards without number, clear-eyed lemurs, jewelskinned snakes, spiders like puffs of eiderdown and all the countless sparks of life that sheltered in the rainforests peered out at Jorge from its hair.
But it was still his Papi’s voice he heard when the lips, wet with sap and rain and dew, spoke: Life, it said. To bring your brother life, he must be brought to me.
And then he was awake. He sat up and shook his head. The glowing red numbers on his bedside clock let him know it was only a little after three in the morning, so he cursed the clock for telling him something he didn’t want to know and went back to sleep.
On the day Jorge finally bought two cans of thick, white paint to blot out the canopy of leaves on his bedroom ceiling, his little brother Ramõn was caught stealing from the Korean grocer on the next block.
Tía Clarinda’s cry of despair hit Jorge’s ears while he was trying to pry the lid off the first paint can. When he heard her, he was kneeling on the newspapers he’d spread out on the floor, so it took him a little longer than usual to clamber to his feet. By the time he ran into the kitchen, tía Clarinda was hanging up the phone. Her hands were trembling as she threw on her coat, and she wept and babbled while fumbling with the buttons. Jorge had to ask her to repeat the story at least three times before he understood what was going on. Then she was out the door, heading for the police station.
Alone in the apartment, he wandered back into his room feeling hollow and cold. This is how it starts, a voice whispered. This is how everything changes, with a very small beginning. The ground doesn’t drop out from under your feet all at once. It slips away softly, pebble by pebble. At first you hardly notice it, and by the time you do, the pebbles have turned to sand.
There’s nothing you can do to stop it, then, because to hold back sand you need strength, power, magic. And you have none.
Even though he was alone in the apartment, he closed the door to his room behind him, shutting out the world, even the world that held his familia. He squatted beside the stubborn paint can, slipped a screwdriver under the edge of the lid, and pushed down.
The lid flew clear across the room, spattering the furniture with driblets of white paint like pigeon droppings.
Tía Clarinda would have a fit when she saw what he’d done, but Jorge was too deeply sunk in air like ice, like deep water, to feel anything about it at all.
He stirred the paint thoroughly and poured it into the roller tray. He ran the fluffy yellow roller through his hand, feeling the spring of the fleecy head against his palm, before moving it slowly back and forth, back and forth through the puddled paint in the slanted tray. Three times up, three times back, a little ritual.
He picked it up and looked at the ceiling, deciding where to begin.
A lizard looked back. Red eyes in a green face, it stared at him unblinking, then vanished, the whisk of its tail stirring the painted leaves. They moved slowly, with an underwater grace, a movement subtle enough to belong to dreams, sure enough so that there was no way Jorge could lie to himself that it had not happened.
“My eyes,” he muttered, bowing his head and covering them with one hand. “Man, I must be tired.”
But when he opened them again and looked down into the white paint eddying back and forth in the tray, the forest face looked back. Skin dark as polished teakwood rose out of the white, white sea, trailing tendrils of hair that were the perfect black of moonless midnight. Full lips parted, tiny rivulets of smothering whiteness trickling away. The eyes opened last of all.
They drew him in, into their depths, into the heart of the forest. Jorge’s chest filled with a last gasp of earthly breath, and he tumbled in.
The forest was all around him, speaking life, throbbing life, singing life and using all its power to shout No! to dead stone, cold concrete, the city’s icy prison.
Jorge sank willingly into the endless embrace of the trees, thick with vines and flowers. Small frogs like slivers of gemstone clung to the shimmering bark with tiny suckered feet, peeping their song, coquí, coquí!
Butterflies with iridescent wings of blue and gold, heart’s-blood red and velvet black stirred the dense, moist sweetness of the air.
Jorge looked down. His jeans were gone, his shorts, his shoes and socks. Barefoot, he could feel the soil beneath his toes, the uncounted layers of dead and dying green that gave back fresh life to the eternal forest. A twist of beaten barkcloth covered him, a necklace of bone and stone and gold chinked at his neck, and in his hands he held a warrior’s shield bright as the evening star, a warrior’s spear with a serpent of hammered gold twining around the shaft.
Oxossi . . . The whisper was no more than a breeze, no less than his father’s voice. Oxossi, forest-lord, warrior, hear my prayer. Lord Oxossi, walk the paths of life, bring my son back from the way of death. Strength of the forest, power of life, protector, bring him back, bring him home.
Oxossi . . .
Jorge stood in the heart of the forest wearing bark and bone and his one true name. He stood in the skin of the forest god, brown and strong as the trees themselves, as the warm soil that fed them, as the arms of a father who could not leave his sons even now, not even from beneath the brown lid of a coffin and the brown earth of a grave.
Oxossi, Jorge, mijito, hear your father’s voice! My son, my master, know what you must do.
His feet pounded out a strong and steady rhythm as he ran down the forest path. Vines and branches whipped themselves across his face and chest, tried to hold him. He spoke a word in the forest lord’s tongue and they shrank back, fell aside to let him pass unhindered.
The air grew keen with the stink of predators, a biting smell that filled the forest lord’s eyes with rage red as embers, as flowers, as blood. Have they dared to come here without my permission? Here, into my land, my kingdom? Have they dared?
His nostrils flared; he followed the sharp and bitter stench that cut through the living scents of his world like the passage of a bullet tearing flesh. He ran on and it grew stronger, ranker, until he broke from the green shadows into a grove of alien gold.
Ramõn was waiting. Ramõn, his brother, stood in the center of the golden grove that had somehow been lifted whole from the hills of Vermont and settled here, in the midst of pure jungle. The stippled white trunks of the birch trees looked frail as wheat stalks beside the massive boles of the forest giants, but Oxossi was lord of all forests, even this one, even here, and when he laid his dark hand on the pallid bark, he drew the same strength from it, the same worship.
A harsh sound tore the air. Leaves rustled softly, then loud and louder, branches swished and snapped, tree trunks groaned before they broke. The beasts shouldered their way into the sacred grove to reach their prey. Jorge stared out at them through Oxossi’s eyes. He could not name them or say what manner of monsters they were, not even if his soul depended on the answer. Their eyes shone with copper light, their fangs were black at the roots and as bloodstained as their talons, the colors of their ragged pelts shifted before his eyes from the parched yellow of desert sand to the scarlet blaze of sunset.
But they had the faces of men. Jorge saw the bullies from school, the dealers who didn’t care how many lives they gobbled up, the sneering bosses who doled out dead-end jobs, and treated you like dirt, and told you to be grateful, the gang-bangers whose smiles offered the promise of belonging but whose eyes were dead. Every one of them was thirsting for his brother’s blood.
“Ramõn!” Jorge cried, and his voice, at least, was still his own. “Ramõn, come to me!” He held out his spear and the beasts cringed away from its shadow.
But Ramõn did not come. Ramõn stood stiffly in the center of the sacred grove, frozen with more than fear. His eyes flickered with the same cold, coppery light as the beasts that stalked him, and his mouth was a thin, hard line.
“I’m tired of being the one who’s afraid,” Ramõn went on. “There’s only one way to be on top, and I’m going to be there. Try and stop me if you dare!”
“On top?” Jorge echoed, lowering his spear. “On top of what?”
“The world,” Ramõn answered, grinning. His face grew thinner, his nose and mouth elongating into an animal’s snout. His fangs were pure white, still free of any stain. The others crowded closer still, and one of them reared onto its hind legs, tottering like a dancing dog. A feather of flame burned on its brow, but the flame crackled black and gray, a fire that was already ashes.
The forest lord, the master of the trees and every life that dwelled in the gentle shelter of their shadows, Oxossi who was Jorge who was dreaming, saw his little brother stretch out one hand. It was still a child’s hand, but it was reaching for things no child should touch, for heartlessness and hate and willful ignorance, for a pit that was deeper than any grave. Ramõn’s hand reached for the black flame that leaped and hissed like a cobra on the monster’s brow, and if he touched it, Jorge knew he would be lost forever.
Oxossi’s battle cry shook the birch leaves from their fragile branches, made the earth crack and shift underfoot in the holy place where his father’s spirit dwelled.
Oxossi’s spear flew like thought, like love, and struck Ramõn’s hand clean through the palm. The circling creatures threw back their heads and howled, smelling blood, but Oxossi was among them before they could draw another breath. He called his spear back to his hand with a single word and he used it valiantly. He struck the beasts back, down, away from his little brother. Wherever one of them fell dying, a tree erupted from the earth, swallowing up darkness with living light. Soon only one monster remained.
Something Magic This Way Comes Page 4