Reincarnation Blues

by Michael Poore

  Milo added a sixth. Then a seventh. The bags whirled higher, now circling a crescent moon.

  “I’ve seen worse,” said Akram. “Of course, it’s been a month—”

  Milo added more bags, reaching into his robe for one more, two more, ten more. While one hand was busy fetching new bags, he kept the rest of them going with the other.

  Akram’s jaw dropped open. He put down his pen.

  Milo caught each of the beanbags, one by one, and stowed them away in his robe.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well, indeed!” said the master, wide-eyed as a child.

  “What were you writing about in your book?” Milo asked. “What’s it called?”

  “It’s called The Day Milo and Akram the Remarkable Started Working Together as Partners.”

  Milo offered a grateful bow.

  “God is good,” said Akram.

  “Fuckin’ A,” said Milo.

  —

  They practiced juggling together, passing things back and forth. And Akram spent some time teaching, finally.

  “There’s a secret,” he told Milo, as they passed seven beanbags back and forth, “to juggling anything the crowd throws at you.”

  “Like the snake that one day?”

  “Precisely.”

  “What is it?”

  “In the air, an object tends to spin on three axes—three separate directions—and you need to get it to hold still and just go up and down.”

  And this is exactly where Milo’s training took a complicated, technical turn. His days became a montage of science and repetition. Throw this, throw that. Learn how objects move in the air. Some of it Milo already knew; in his many lives, he had been a scientist. He had flown the trapeze in the circus. He had pitched baseballs and swung swords.

  Time passed. He practiced, survived injuries, and practiced more.

  Akram worked on his book. Sometimes he showed Milo an interesting passage or two.

  “I juggled an elephant one time,” he said, handing Milo the book. “Read.”

  “It says here,” said Milo, “you juggled only one elephant. Is that really juggling?”

  “It is when it’s an elephant.”

  “Akram, Jesus! How strong are you?”

  “As strong as I need to be. Go do your push-ups.”

  Milo did a thousand push-ups, and Satan stood over him and drooled something like a dumpling all over his back.

  Time passed. Nomads came to the oasis and went away again. Milo dreamed dreams. Heaven and Earth turned. Desert winds blew, wearing things away and burying things, as desert winds do.

  —

  The first time they performed together in the bazaar, it was Milo who began the show.

  First he grabbed three I’M HOT FOR THE DESERT T-shirts from a young shopkeeper’s stall.

  “Hey!” cried the shopkeeper, leaping after him.

  Within seconds, Milo got the T-shirts spinning up and down in the air, flying like swans.

  “Ooh!” said the crowd, circling around.

  “Good morning!” Milo called out. “Friends, you will now be treated to a demonstration of highly scientific juggling feats. I heartily recommend that, afterward, you visit this fine gentleman’s stall—what’s your name? Moudi? Visit Moudi’s stall.”

  Moudi backed off.

  It was a routine show, up to a point. Milo asked the crowd to throw him some things, and they threw him their sandals. Threw him a Frisbee. He juggled these things backward and forward. He juggled three turkeys and a dozen eggs.

  “Come on, folks,” he said. “We can do better than this.”

  And that’s when someone threw him a baby.

  It cried as it came whirling toward him over the front row of spectators.

  Milo nearly froze. Like everyone in the crowd, he gasped. But he caught the thing, just as one should always catch a baby, neatly across his forearm, supporting its head with his palm.

  But then another baby sailed his way, and another.

  Milo had no choice. Reflexively, he caught them all, and before he knew it, he was juggling three wailing infants.

  The crowd raised helpless hands in the air, surging forward, then surging back, not wanting to get in his way. The crowd grew then, as the noise drew attention, and people farther down the bazaar came running, saw, and stayed, hardly daring to breathe.

  It wasn’t long before Milo—having been a father and a mother and a baby countless times—realized that something was amiss. Something about the babies was too stiff, their cries too much the same…

  Dolls.

  Some bastard had grabbed a whole display of baby dolls from a stall, and—well, here came the shopkeepers now, gesturing.

  One, two, three—Milo tossed them their merchandise.

  One, two, three—the crowd caught on.

  A moment of disturbed, uncertain silence. And then a blast of relieved applause that went on and on and on.

  There was Akram, amazed and relieved like the rest of them.

  “Bow out, and let’s go,” Akram said, drawing close.

  “But!” Milo protested. “We haven’t even done our tandem act, with the swords and—”

  “You can’t do better than what you just did,” Akram said. “Finish at the top of your act, whenever that comes. Now let’s go!”

  Milo bowed and collected his pile of coins, and they went and got some tacos, and that was Milo’s debut as a professional juggler.

  That night he had a wonderful, awful dream.

  Someone in the crowd threw him a woman. It was Suzie.

  “Suzie!” he cried, tossing her up in the air and catching her with expert grace.

  “It’s no use,” she said to him, and before he could answer, she was pulled from him, just like before. Stretching away. Her hand trailed along his face as she left him.

  “No!”

  Her fingers grew long, soft and warm on his face, as she vanished across dimensions—

  Milo awakened. He could still feel softness and warmth on his cheek. Up above him, in the dark, hot breath and wet chewing noises. A long, damp shadow thrust through the tent flap—

  “Aw, Jesus on a stick, Satan!” Milo screamed, shoving the camel’s head aside, nearly uprooting the tent as he staggered out into the night. Wiping at his face, feeling for the water bucket by starlight, washing away strings of camel drool.

  “Milo!” called Akram, emerging from his own tent. “Milo, what’s amiss? Are you sick? Are we besieged?”

  Milo, sputtering, explained.

  Akram laughed.

  “It’s not funny,” said Milo. “He’s making my life hell in his nasty little ways.”

  “What’s funny,” said Akram, “is that, one: Yes, he’s nasty. He’s a camel. But, two: You do not see why he pays you all this attention? It is his way of showing that he loves you.”

  Milo sat down in the sand. He said nothing. Akram went to buy them some cinnamon rolls.

  It was true. He felt the truth of it. He even felt his own heart softening a bit. But…

  “Why?” he finally asked, when Akram returned.

  Akram shrugged. He handed Milo a roll, and they ate in silence.

  “Because you are kind and good to him, despite his faults? Because you were a female camel in some distant life? Who knows these things?”

  Satan emerged from the tent. He found Milo and came near, breathing on him.

  Milo reached up and patted the beast on his gross, sweaty neck.

  Satan made a horrible noise and bit him tenderly on the arm.

  —

  The next day, Milo and Akram managed to perform together. They threw pretty girls back and forth. They threw apples back and forth and ate them as they threw. They juggled knives and fire, china plates and glass figurines. In a sort of slo-mo dance, they juggled bubbles and balloons.

  They hauled coins by the sackful back to their tents.

  Time passed.

  They juggled buckets full of water one day, a feat o
f strength and timing. That was Milo’s idea and design. Another time, he figured out how they could juggle rubber balls and let some of the balls bounce on the ground, as if the two of them were a human popcorn machine.

  Quickly enough, it became obvious that the student had surpassed his teacher.

  Akram did not seem to be the jealous kind. More and more, his book started to be about Milo.

  The time Milo juggled three sleeping girls without waking them up.

  The time Milo juggled a pile of sunbaked bricks, so that it went from being a pile over here and became a pile over there.

  The time—the many times—Milo howled, “Suzie!” in his sleep, but wouldn’t talk about it, and acted like a child if you asked too many questions, and was obviously in denial, and was hiding something…

  One evening, Akram came out and stood over Milo, who sat staring at the moon and flexing his fingers in the sand. Satan knelt nearby, sleeping, snoring like a steam engine full of puke.

  “Friend,” said Akram, “you need to get out from time to time. Let’s go into town and find some trouble.”

  “I’m good,” answered Milo, his voice barely audible.

  Akram heaved a sigh. “You can’t just disappear into your work,” he insisted.

  Milo roused himself a little.

  “It’s not disappearing,” he said. “It’s concentration. It’s how you become great at something. Others think you’re obsessed, and you’re the only one who understands what you’re looking for.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Perfection.”

  “Bullshit, respectfully, my friend. You’re running from something.”

  “So are you. So are half the people out here. We’re circling the drain as slowly, as far out, as we can get.”

  “That’s true. Fine. Very true. But I’ve never seen anyone do what you do. You practice. You perform. You sleep. You sit here with your evil camel. That’s neither life nor afterlife.”

  “It’s my business.”

  He stopped flexing his fingers in the sand.

  Akram went into town by himself.

  —

  The next day, some newcomers came riding into town, making their way through the bazaar on elephants.

  “Elephants,” said Milo to Akram.

  “Elephants, indeed!” said Akram. “Magnificent creatures! Have you ever been an elephant? I have. Once, back when—”

  Milo had a certain look in his eye.

  “Milo,” said Akram. “No.”

  But Milo was already approaching the first and largest of the new arrivals. A wonderful animal, draped in jeweled cloth, with painted tusks and a howdah full of well-dressed nomads on its back.

  He began talking pleasantly to the people up in the howdah, and they seemed to be amused by what he was saying.

  “Milo!” barked Akram, stepping up beside him. “No!”

  “You did it.”

  Akram twiddled his thumbs.

  “I may have, and I may not have,” he said.

  “It’s in your book.”

  “Lots of things are in my book. It’s just a book.”

  The nomads climbed down, and Milo stepped under the elephant.

  “God is good,” said Akram, “and protective of fools.”

  It didn’t work.

  Milo trembled, pushing up against the elephant’s belly. Every muscle in his body—and these had grown to be considerable—vibrated visibly, but the trouble seemed to be that there was nothing, really, to push against. The elephant grunted. It didn’t seem put out; if anything, it seemed to want to help, if it could only discern what this strange, eerily focused two-legs wanted.

  But some things are impossible. There are limits and absolutes.

  Akram drew a circle in the dust with one sandal. Maybe this was the sort of lesson his friend needed. Maybe afterward they’d ride out of town, go someplace else for a while.

  Then the back end of the elephant rose into the air, just a little.

  “Ooh!” gasped the crowd.

  The elephant made a slight trumpeting noise.

  A long second later, the front feet left the ground, as well.

  Complete, stunned silence.

  It didn’t last long, and the elephant didn’t go very high. Maybe a couple of inches. But it was an undeniable, visible fact that, for an instant, there was a man holding an elephant in the air.

  With an exhausted “whuff!” Milo fell to his knees, the elephant landed daintily, and the crowd shouted and hurled money.

  Akram bolted into the street, nudged the elephant aside, and helped Milo to his feet.

  Milo wouldn’t stay on his feet, though. He got about halfway up and then sank like a ship.

  “I think I broke myself,” he whispered.

  “What did you expect?”

  “I expected to lift the elephant. And I did.”

  Akram lifted Milo over one shoulder, fireman-style, and carried him out of town.

  “It’s hardly juggling,” he said.

  “Save it for your book,” said Milo, and passed out.

  —

  Milo slept.

  Akram laid him out in his tent and checked on him now and then, stepping over Satan to do so.

  The sleep became a coma. Maybe a half coma, because he woke now and then to drink water and even eat a little. But then he’d slip away again.

  Time passed. Specifically, a week.

  Then, in the middle of a cool, breezy night, the flap of Akram’s tent lifted, and Milo stood there in the dark.

  Akram lit a candle.

  Yes, it was Milo. Awake finally, and looking pretty good. A little slimmer, maybe, but overall good. At least that’s what Akram thought until he saw his friend’s eyes.

  The eyes had already developed a strange, inward glow before the elephant. That glow had somehow intensified, as if stoked by a week’s worth of constant dreaming.

  “I came in to say goodbye,” said Milo. “And to tell you I’m grateful.”

  “Goodbye? Where—God is good, Milo!—where in hell do you think you’re going? You’re in no condition—”

  “I am going off alone somewhere,” Milo interrupted, “to learn to juggle water.”

  Outside, a breeze kicked up. Satan belched.

  “Milo,” said Akram, “please listen. Water cannot be juggled. No, listen: The elephant was just a question of degree. It was heavy, but at least it had substance, something to hold and move…”

  Akram fell into a helpless silence.

  Milo said, “God is good,” and slipped out.

  —

  He spent a solid week riding Satan across the desert. Milo let the beast go where he liked. What difference did it make? He flexed his hands as they went. He juggled stones.

  After a time, entirely by accident, Milo found himself at the same spring where he had first met Akram. The source of the clear river that led who knew where.

  And there he stopped, and pitched his tent, and dipped his hands in the water.

  —

  Travelers who found him at his oasis called him the Juggling Hermit or the Staring Hermit or the Splashing Hermit or the Hermit with the Unholy Camel, depending.

  If they were lucky, nomads discovered him in a relatively expansive mood, juggling nuts or rocks or mudballs. He might even put on a show for them, juggling anything they tossed his way. Other times, they might find him sitting at the very edge of the water, staring down without blinking. Not at his reflection, it seemed, but at something deep and invisible.

  Sometimes they found him splashing in the water like a child, although he seemed not the slightest bit embarrassed to be caught out. In any event, he was always gracious and welcoming, if somewhat withdrawn. His camel, unfortunately, was off-putting, but you didn’t fault a man for that. Especially a holy man, which this specimen obviously was.

  The stars circled, and the moon and sun passed overhead, and the desert rolled and changed.

  One day, Milo was staring down into the wate
r, trying not to see Suzie’s face, trying to see the secret thing in the water that would give it form, when a large traveler in a bright-green robe appeared from downriver. Masked in a tightly wound headdress. Leaning on a tall walking stick.

  “Ah!” said this apparition, drawing near. “There you are!”

  Milo looked up and blinked. Sometimes out here he saw things that proved not to be real.

  The traveler was real. She unwound her headdress, knelt, and reached for him with big, fat, wonderful arms.

  “Mama,” he rasped, and let her hold him.

  —

  He found food, and fetched her a cup from his tent, and warned his camel not to vomit at her. They sat and ate quietly, until the sun finished going down and she asked him, “Milo, what in the scarlet goddamn hell do you think you’re doing?”

  He mumbled about juggling water.

  “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. You can’t.”

  “If I could, though,” he argued, “it would be an act of Perfection.”

  Mama unwound her travel robes and waded into the water.

  “Is that what this is about?” she asked, floating amid reflected stars. “Because it doesn’t count in the afterlife, you know. You know?”

  Milo said he supposed he knew that.

  “You know what it’s about,” he said.

  She swam out just far enough to become featureless. Just a shadow. Just a voice.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

  Silence.

  Milo was good at silence. He let this one go a long, long time.

  “If she’s been smooshed into the big cosmic soul,” he finally said, “then what’s the point?”

  Mama swam closer. One great warm hand reached up out of the water and grasped his ankle.

  “I can’t answer that for you,” she said. “I know you have to decide whether to sit here pouting like a child or go do something about it. Maybe you won’t get what you want. But is this it? You’re going to just quit?”

  Milo started to say something.

  “Look at yourself,” Mama said.

  Milo did what she said. It took a while, but eventually his eyes adjusted in the starlight, and he saw his own reflection for the first time in a long time.

  He was a skeleton, pretty much. Drawn flesh, hollow eyes. His desert garb hung on him like a shroud.

  “Go back,” said Mama. “Go back and at least try.”