by James Kahn
Ninety minutes later, in the gray hour of the wolf, they stood once more in their own front yard, staring mutely, uncertainly, at the big family house on Grover Lane.
The haunted house.
They sat on the front lawn as the sun came up and for another hour besides as Taylor went through the house, room by room—to explore, to sense, to fathom.
The living room felt safe at its core, though its closets twisted back into bottomless unknowns. The kitchen was warm, the dining room neutral. Upstairs he was drawn to Jess’s room: clear, untroubled. He closed his eyes and envisioned the spirit who had resided here: it was the woman he’d seen beyond the Canyon of Shadows, the woman who’d gone into the Light—the one who’d wanted to protect the young girl. Taylor instantly understood that this woman’s presence, in life, had protected the young girl. Now, with her spirit gone Beyond, the girl was in danger. This was the reason the Beast had been able to enter the house.
He checked out the bathroom—a dangerous place, full of omens. He walked into the master bedroom: a trace of evil lingered here, as if the Thing had recently been by and left its scent.
He almost lost his balance on entering the children’s room—it reeked that much.
The children’s room was obviously where the Evil One had made its lair.
Finally he walked around the back yard, around the garden. This was the center of harmony of the house, the place where the patterns were unmarred. He walked under an arbor of grapes and let its serene beauty give him sustenance. Here he would make his camp.
When he returned to the front yard again, to the Freelings, he was smiling—this house wasn’t clean, but it was defensible.
E. Buzz barked happily at him, wagging his tail.
“It’s okay?” said Diane, standing up. “You’re sure?”
“E. Buzz agrees.” Taylor smiled. “It’s okay for now.”
Everyone entered the house except Steve and Taylor. Steve was skeptical.
“Great.” He nodded. “The dog agrees. That’s terrific.”
Taylor understood that Steve had to feel superior in some way, and he didn’t mind being a laughingstock for a while. It was good to laugh. The man did well to keep in practice.
Still, Taylor could see he would have to do much to help this man in spite of himself, until the man’s spirit awoke.
“Your car . . .” said Taylor tentatively.
“Yeah?” said Steve.
“It’s very angry.”
“Uh-huh,” said Steve.
“I’ll fix it,” Taylor volunteered.
“Make it happy?” Steve goaded.
“Uh-huh.” Taylor smiled.
They were humoring each other.
After about an hour of phone calls, Diane finally succeeded in tracking down Tangina Barrons at a boardinghouse in Hollywood.
She had let the phone ring about ten times, actually, and was about to hang up when a man’s voice answered, speaking Spanish.
“Oh . . . I’m sorry . . .” said Diane. “I must have the wrong number.” Then, on a second thought: “Is . . . Tangina Barrons there?”
“Momento,” said the voice, followed by a rhythmic scrape-and-silence for a minute—Diane could almost see the receiver dangling from a wall phone in a dark corridor, swinging slowly back and forth, brushing the wall at the end of each pass.
At last another voice came on the line. A familiar voice. “This is Tangina.”
“Tangina!” Diane breathed, at once relieved and concerned. “Are you . . . all right?”
The smile in Tangina’s voice was audible. “I’m fine, Diane. That was just the . . . concierge.”
Diane laughed. “You recognized me.”
“Well—I kind of expected you’d be callin’.”
“Then you did send Taylor.” Diane relaxed.
“Well . . . I directed him to where you’re livin’. Nobody sends Taylor anywhere. He just follows his dreams.”
“Well, he just showed up on our doorstep last night as we were on our way . . .” She paused. “They’re back, Tangina.”
“I know, child. I’ve been havin’ dreams, too. I’d have come to you myself, but I’m . . . not up to par, you might say.”
“What is it?” Diane’s concern filled her voice. “Is there something I can—”
“You just tend to your own, child. The Beast knows what scares you, but you’ve got strengths it can’t understand. And Taylor’s a good man. Trust him.”
“Yes, I do . . . I think. And you may deny it, but he says you sent him, and if he values you as a reference, I’m sure he can’t be all bad . . .”
“Just don’t get upset if he wants to put pieces of bark or shells or such all around your pretty carpets.”
Diane laughed lightly. “Yes, well, he seems very different . . .”
Steve, overhearing this as he fixed himself a beer, looked through the kitchen window to the back yard, where Taylor was playing with Robbie and Carol Anne beside the tent he’d erected. A tent marked with strange designs, hung with claws and feathers. Steve dead panned to Diane: “Oh, he’s very different. I’d say.”
Diane tried to ignore him as she finished up on the phone. “Right, Tangina. Well, I can’t say Steve really trusts him fully just yet . . . but I can’t really blame him, I guess . . .”
“Steve has to learn to trust himself fast,” said Tangina. “But I’m in no position to give him instruction in that little trick.” Her voice had suddenly become sardonic, almost self-abusive. “Well, I gotta go, honey. Good luck to you. If anyone can help you, Taylor can.”
“Good-bye,” said Diane, but before she could say more, Tangina hung up. Diane wondered if she’d ever see her again—she’d sounded so lost.
She walked over to Steve. “Let’s give him a chance, Steve.”
He looked put-upon. “Diane, I’ve read a lot of Indian books. I feel as bad as the next guy about Wounded Knee. I mean, I like Indians . . . but we don’t know anything about this guy. What if he’s just escaped from the reservation, or jail, or the hospital, or—”
Diane interrupted his tirade by putting her hand on his arm and pointing out the window.
There, beside the tent, stood Taylor, alone. But not alone. For covering his body were hundreds of butterflies—delicately lighting, panting, fluttering. Conversing with him, it almost seemed. And he, in turn, stretched out his arms and moved in slow, regal circles around the arbor, as if he were dancing with a swarm of sprites.
Robbie and Carol Anne stared, enthralled, from the patio.
And then the butterflies dispersed and were gone.
As soon as Carol Anne lay down for her nap Robbie went out to Taylor’s tent to talk man to man.
Taylor was sitting inside, cross-legged, encircled by his fetishes, when Robbie approached.
“Can I . . . come in?” Robbie asked uncertainly. This was about the coolest thing that had ever happened to him, and he didn’t want to blow it. This guy was a real Indian, camping out in Robbie’s backyard, making powerful medicine. Who could ever have believed it?
Taylor motioned him in, and they sat facing each other. A curved row of objects separated them in a line along the ground: a bobcat claw, a tiny doll woven out of buffalo grass, a shiny quartz crystal, an eagle feather, a piece of mountain sheep horn, a shard from an old obsidian lance tip, an uncut garnet, an armadillo scale.
Neither spoke for a moment, until Robbie figured he had to make the first move. “I was just wondering,” he said, looking at Taylor straight on. “How’d you do that? With the butterflies, I mean.”
Taylor smiled warmly. “There’s no magic to it—except the magic of the universe, of course. It is hot in August, and butterflies need salt and water, like all creatures. They came to drink the sweat on my skin.”
Robbie nodded, then shook his head. “They never landed on Dad like that, and sometimes he sweats a lot.”
“They can sense fear, and quick uncertainties make them shy.”
“Aren’t you
ever afraid?”
“Yes, I have fear. Fear is in the pattern of all things, part of the Great Harmony. The secret of riding fear is never to shut your eyes to it”
“Usually makes my eyes open wider,” said Robbie.
“The lonely often say so,” remarked Taylor.
“I ain’t lonely,” Robbie protested defensively.
“You are quick to renounce praise,” said Taylor. “I mark loneliness an honor.”
“You do?” Robbie hardly believed him.
“All Navajos do. The Navajo seeks loneliness in all the corners of the Fifth World, which we now inhabit. Loneliness is a mantle of power and knowledge. The eagle is lonely, and there is no animal more beautiful or sacred or powerful.”
Robbie was becoming entranced by this wise man’s quiet, sure ways. “Well . . . maybe I am a little lonely.”
“Then perhaps you are a little Navajo. This is good. The Navajo are strong warriors. You must use your strength to help your family,” Taylor cautioned, “as will I.”
“Sure is lucky for us you came along when you did,” Robbie marveled.
“There is no luck.” Taylor smiled benevolently. “There is only the Pattern—the harmonious order of things—and the Kachina spirits that help us to see this order, and Evil, which is a disruption of this order, and Ceremony, which helps us restore the pattern.”
“Right,” said Robbie. Then: “What’s Kachina?”
“Kachinas are our Ancestor Spirits. They live in the clouds.”
“Mom says I’m off in the clouds a lot.”
“Then you have been close to the Kachinas—perhaps you are brother to the Hopi as well as to the Navajo.”
“Really?”
“I am blood kin to both tribes. This has made me special, though some scorn me for my specialness. You, too, are these things: special and scorned. I feel this.”
Robbie nodded. He felt it, too.
Taylor continued. “So you are brother to me in spirit—and, as brothers, we must share each other’s battles. Who offends you offends me. Perhaps it was because of this that the Evil One came to my attention.”
“The Evil One?”
“He who would steal your sister from this world. It is he you must struggle against—but you are not alone in this, and I am confident we will win.”
“Yeah? How?” Robbie was less than confident—he’d seen this Evil One’s power. Maybe Taylor hadn’t.
“We start with prayer.” He closed his eyes, lifted his face upward, hummed a powerful, atonal melody, and spoke to the heavens: “Hear me, Kachinas. This boy, whose spirit lives with you in the clouds and who harbors the loneliness of the Navajo within him, would seek your counsel and assistance in helping him ward off this Evil, which surrounds his family, which is in disharmony. Hear me and come.”
He held his arms outstretched, up toward the sky, and indicated that Robbie should do the same. Robbie did so, with an expression of awe and total dedication.
Steve saw them like that as he walked from the garage to the front yard—saw them and felt momentarily annoyed. Robbie had never looked at him that way. He said nothing, though, and strode off.
When Taylor finished his silent supplications he brought his arms down, motioning Robbie to follow. Then, with great moment, he said, “Are you ready now? To do battle with the Evil One?”
Robbie nodded solemnly.
“Good. First we must give you a new name—a name to be called, so the power of your true name is not revealed to our enemy. A person’s true name is sacred and should be spoken only rarely.”
“The power of my true name—you mean Robbie?”
Taylor nodded, his lips curving down.
“You mean Taylor’s not your true name?” the boy asked in wonder.
Taylor shook his head, his lips curving down again.
“Well, what’ll we call me?”
Taylor stared at Robbie’s gaping mouth, filled with orthodontic hardware. “From this day,” said Taylor, “you are Iron Jaw.”
“Wow,” said Robbie, moved. Then, even more quietly: “What’s your true name, Taylor?”
“Second,” said Taylor, “we must get you the proper totems.” He picked up the quartz crystal and the armadillo scale. “These I give you as gifts—though you will always draw your greatest strength from the things you find or champion or make your own. But these fetishes will be your first, and there is a power in that, too.” Robbie took them ceremoniously as Taylor continued. “The stone is a pecos diamond—it holds light of many colors, and such beauty is a harmonious thing. The other is the scale of an armadillo—it will protect you . . . when I cannot.”
Robbie stared at his gifts, wide-eyed. “Awesome,” he whispered.
“And finally,” said Taylor, “we will annoint you in the Battle Ceremony.” He pulled a jar of pigmented dye from his knapsack.
“War paint!” Iron Jaw said, beaming.
Yes. He was ready.
When Diane showed up at the tent an hour later carrying a plate full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, she was rather upset to find that not only was Robbie’s face painted with sinister green and white designs, but his Louisville Slugger baseball bat, sitting across his lap, had snakes and symbols carved all over it.
“What’s this?” she asked in as neutral a tone as she could muster.
“Hi, Mom!” Robbie answered quickly, hoping to forestall the inevitable. “I’m gonna help protect the family.”
Diane set down the sandwiches. “Go inside and wash your face.”
“Hey, I can handle this and—”
“And I’m still your mother. Go inside and wash—now, mister.”
“Thanks, Mom.” He exited, embarrassed for her more than by her.
Taylor gazed quietly at Diane. “He wants to be a man.”
“There are lots of ways to be a man,” said Diane. “I’m not sure wearing war paint is one of them.” She didn’t like war or violence.
“How would you know?” he asked politely.
“What?”
“You are not a man, are you?”
“Okay, I’m not a man,” she admitted, “but you’re not a mother. It’s my job to do everything I can to make my children part of a normal world—a world of school and friends and lovers, and families of their own someday.”
“That’s good.” Taylor nodded. He approved, but he didn’t understand the division Diane was making.
His easy agreement flustered her. “Right.” She halted. “I know. And I hope they’ll learn to forget all this soon.”
“They cannot learn by forgetting.”
His sophistry angered her. “And what would you have me do? They’re children, for God’s sake.”
“Children have fought wars,” said Taylor, as if he were explaining something to a child. “They have built nations. They are strong and have courage. Don’t patronize them because they’re young.”
“I protect them because they’re young,” she corrected.
He tried to make her understand. “Children have special powers. They have a magic that most adults lose. Because children don’t act against their natures. They are like warriors in this way. Only ‘civilized’ adults, who have learned to fear themselves, need fear the kind of Evil that now covets your spirits.”
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” she scolded like a mom. “That kind of talk. It’s just not part of the normal kind of world I want my kids to grow up in.”
“What you want has little to do with what is ‘normal.’ In my world, normality includes demons and beasts. In your world also, I suspect. No, I don’t suspect—I know. We all have beasts to conquer.”
“With a baseball bat?” She tried sarcasm, but her heart wasn’t in it.
“With whatever we have,” he assured her.
“Well, what I have is my love for my children.”
“And that is your greatest strength. Never lose it.”
“I . . . won’t.” Again she was disarmed by his concurrenc
e.
“But the universe is a wide place, with many paths. We each take a different path, though we may go to the same place—and these paths cross like the colored threads in a rug, weaving a beautiful pattern. Only when a thread leaves its shuttle to join the path of another is the pattern upset. So we each must remain on our own thread, in its own place. Your place is in the love of your family. Mine is in the way of the warrior. Your husband, I think, still seeks his thread.” He took her hand, looked at her fingers. “Your hand is strong, though—you can hold much together.”
She felt suddenly moved by his reassurance, by the poetry in his words and in his soul. And quite against her wishes, tears came to her eyes.
That was the scene Steve saw from the corner of the house: Taylor and Diane holding hands, Diane moved to tears. That, on top of the trouble he was having with the car, was just the last damn straw. He came storming up to them, sweating, dirty, and distinctly displeased. “Okay, Taylor . . . you can stay in this house . . . you can have my aura, my spirit, my ghosts. But leave my car alone. Okay? Hands off! It’s worse than before.”
“Car’s still angry?” Taylor shrugged, then nodded. “Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better.” He waited a moment, then spoke more softly. “Sometimes everything does.”
That night Taylor sat in the backyard, looking up at the stars, trying to find strength in their patterns.
This was a difficult family to help. There were none so blind, his paternal great-grandmother used to tell him, as those who would not see.
As if in answer to this thought, Steve approached and sat at the picnic table. He was drinking tequila straight from the bottle; it was blinding him further, though endowing him, at least temporarily, with a generosity of spirit he was incapable of when sober.
He took a long swig and offered the bottle to Taylor. “Whew! Ta kill ya,” he joked.
Taylor shook his head politely. “Used to drink. Bad dreams. I gave it up.”
Steve shrugged. Taylor probably had a drinking problem, he figured. Too bad; it was good medicine. Helped you forget what you didn’t want to remember.
He took another swallow and forgot something else.