He rubbed at his eyes, and the terrible ache behind them was worse man any tears. “I’ve lived through this before,” he told himself sternly. “And I can do it again.” But he could not quite recall what loss had ever so grieved him. There was only the hopeless sense of deja vu, and the press of the Now, cold against his back. There were things he had to do. Best do them.
He drew closer to the knife and stared at it.
Evil had soaked into its wood and honed its metal. It was a fearsome thing, possessed of its own wicked lusts. He had sensed that on the bus. He knew it was true, he could remember the loathsome touch of its nastiness against his bare mind. But now he stooped and picked it up by its thong without a shudder.
Like a photograph in the hands of a blind man, its secrets were safe from him. Best give it to others less blind than he.
The alley dumpster yielded all he needed. He tore free a section of brown paper sack and wrapped the knife securely, folding in the ends of the paper to make a package. With a broken bit of crayon, he wrote POLICE as firmly as his shaking hands could manage. Composing himself, he ventured out upon the sidewalk once more. He dropped the package into the first mailbox he came to. There. It was gone, on its way to tattle on the killer, if he had left more prosaic traces of himself upon it. Wizard walked quickly on.
The sidewalks and streets were busier now, with the cafes and restaurants in the throes of the breakfast rush. He should have felt confident and brash; this was the best time of day to cadge a meal. But that other emptiness inside him had engulfed his hunger and made it trivial. Coffee, he tried to lure himself.
There was always coffee to think of; his shaking hands would feel steadier wrapped around a steaming mug. Waves of giddiness assailed him. He touched his own face and throat surreptitiously, trying to remember if he had taken the fever pills today. The thought swirled away from him, and he was annoyed to find himself patting at his face. What had he been needing?
Coffee.
At the door of the next cafe, he composed himself, running his hands over his wind-tousled hair and tucking in his shirt a little tighter. He pushed the door open and strolled in. As he stood in line, he scanned tables hopefully, looking for someone with food on a plate and showing signs of leaving. Luckily it was crowded enough that people were already sharing tables.
No one would fuss about a stranger sitting down. He fingered the coins in his pocket and studied the menu printed high on the wall.
“You.” He felt a hand on his arm and someone eased him out of his place in line. Wizard looked up at the man in trepidation. He didn’t know him. He was big and stern and determined.
“Sir?” Wizard managed with cold courtesy.
“Try one of the missions on Second. Or the Bread of Life on Main. They do a coffee and donut thing there at noon.”
Wizard found he was being walked to the door. He knew his mouth was open, but he couldn’t get words out. He tried to pull the coins from his pocket, in a childish show of cash, but the man had too firm a grip on his arm. The grip tightened when he thought Wizard was trying to struggle. “Look. Don’t make a scene. I can’t have your kind in here, or I lose my regular trade. Here’s some change. Go get yourself some wine or whatever. But don’t come back here, and don’t try to panhandle my customers. Next time there won’t be a handout, just a cop. You’d better believe me.”
The man gave him a firm pat on the back that propelled him out the door. Wizard found himself back on the morning streets with a handful of pennies and three nickels, but no coffee. Worse, no confidence. His hands shook worse than ever as he stuffed the telltale coins into his pockets.
Two cafes later, he was still coffeeless. In one a hostess had refused to seat him. In the other, the manager had come from behind the till and suggested they have a little chat outside.
He’d given Wizard another quarter. He was carrying more money now than he ever had before, and he still couldn’t get a cup of coffee.
He dragged himself along the street. He felt colder and emptier than a lack of coffee could account for. Giddiness came and went, washing over him in surges. He hoped he wasn’t coming down with something; what if last night’s fish had been spoiled? His body had begun a headache to protest caffeine withdrawal. He ignored it and walked, his hands pushed deep into his pockets, his fist gripping the money there. Money. He had withdrawn from the major economic system of this country a long time ago. He didn’t need their official federal confetti, or their Social Security, or their welfare, or their lousy Veteran’s Administration. Hell, that screwed-up Vets Ad was strictly a place for old men to get their prostate glands fixed or their ingrown toenails dug out. Go to them with a real problem and they shit on you. They were just a part of the whole shitty system. Well, they’d had all they were going to get out of this boy. Six years of his life shot to hell, not to mention. Not to mention.
Wizard had lost his train of thought. He looked about himself in some alarm as he come out of his brown study. How had he gotten off the main drag? There were no bus stops on this street. No cafes, either, just business offices: lawyers, accountants, and brokers. He had even lost his orientation. He walked for three more blocks before he figured out where he was. At the next intersection, he turned and headed back toward Western Avenue. His headache throbbed. He had to stop it so he could think. There were things he had best admit to himself and accept, but not without a cup of coffee.
He found a diner that consisted of a long counter and a row of stools. The windows were dirty, with old tape marks on‘ them Inside it smelted of grease. As he approached the counter he dragged his money from his pocket and held it before him like a talisman. He made it to the counter and claimed a stool.
A waitress grudgingly paused before him. She was forty and bursting from an aqua uniform with a line of greasy dirt at the collar. She looked at the money in his hand and demanded,
“What do you want?”
“Coffee.”
She nodded, clanked a saucer and empty cup onto the counter in front of him and hurried away. He stared after her, feeling old. So this was what he had come to. The magic had turned its back on him. Here he sat, no character, no hopes of breakfast, just coins for a cup of coffee. He felt dirty.
On her next trip past, the waitress dumped coffee into his cup, wrote his slip, took his money, gave him change and told him, “You get three refills. And I do keep track.” The whole transaction took her less than a minute. He gave a defeated nod. The coffee was old and black and acid. The cream in the little tin dispenser came out stringy and yellow. The sugar dispenser was stuck shut and she hadn’t given him a spoon.
The magic was gone. The top of the cup tasted bitter and the dregs were a sugary syrup in his mouth. She refilled his cup with more of the same and didn’t hear his request for a spoon.
A heavyset man on the stool next to him gave him a supercilious smile. “Going to sober up, huh? Well, her coffee would sober up Jack Daniels himself.”
“I haven’t been drunk.” Wizard spoke softly but clearly.
“No, me neither. Haven’t been sober, either.” The man laughed at his own witticism and went back to shoveling scrambled eggs. Wizard watched him fork a mound of egg onto a piece of toast and bite the whole thing off at once. The smell of the eggs and the sound of his mastication made Wizard’s stomach roll over. He took a deep drink of the bitter black coffee.
By his fourth cup, his headache had changed to a standard migraine. He drank down the last of the coffee, left a nickel tip and headed for the restroom. No mirror. No hot water, and the cold stayed on only if you held it. A blower instead of paper towels. Wizard patted his face lightly with wet fingertips and stared at the chipped plaster over the sink. On the wall was a condom vending machine. Someone had written on it, “Don’t buy this gum, it tastes like rubber.” He wanted to find that funny, but couldn’t dredge up a smile. The magic was gone. He headed for the streets.
He didn’t know where to go. The more he thought about it, the more
he hurt. He wandered into an alley and squatted beside a dumpster, out of the wind. If he had no magic, he wasn’t Wizard. If he wasn’t Wizard… A terrible combination of anger, bitter hurt, and bewilderment churned through his guts on a tide of acid coffee. Like a man helplessly slapping his pockets for a lost wallet. Wizard searched within himself for the subtle signs of the magic.
But all was silent inside him. Nothing. It was gone. Stubbornly, frantically, he tried to think of ways to test it. Nothing came to him. He stepped away from the dumpster, feeling a bit shaky in the legs. He was hollow now, light as a man made of straw. The wind off the bay nearly pushed him down. He hit Western Avenue and tromped down it, feeling the sidewalks slap back against his feet until his arches ached. He could hear the gulls crying on the bay like abandoned babies in bombed out places. The city stinks choked him. What the hell was he doing in a city anyway? He had always hated cities. He walked too fast, feeling his shin stick to him with sweat even as his ears stung with cold. He didn’t pause as he passed the market.
He didn’t want to face Euripides today. Cassie be could not even think of. He turned up Marion, driving himself on. It was steep going. The first block or two didn’t bother him.
He distracted himself by watching the cars with manual shifts struggle to advance through the changing lights without rolling backwards into the cars behind them There were stoplights at the lip of each rise, and the cars clung there, snorting and then roaring forward when the lights changed. Wizard was glad he was on foot. The buildings along here were old, with ornate decorations, some weathered to near obscurity, but some preserved proudly. Past Third, past Fourth, past Fifth he climbed, his calves aching. On Sixth he was stopped by the great gash of Interstate 5. He leaned against a building, panting. For a moment he closed his eyes and let his head loll back against the wall. His throat was dry, his legs ached. He had to stop fleeing. He needed shelter, quiet, and a moment of thought without fear. He twitched his eyes open and stared around.
Across the roaring interstate in its bed, towers rose tall in the leaden sky. They were tipped with blue one shade deeper than aqua. He shivered in their grip, feeling their attraction.
Then he turned left and jogged down a block to the overpass on Madison. He turned right on Ninth, trotting on, unmindful of the stares of the passing drivers. His throat and mouth were parched from panting. The buildings here emanated cold pride.
He ignored them and moved on, drawn without thought.
On the sidewalk before the fortress he stopped. His breath cracked in his dry throat. The blue towers soared above him.
Concrete steps draped in trailing ivy rose before him. His eyes ascended first. On the front of the building, gold branches twined on a shining black backdrop around a benign figure, I AM THE VINE it said, AND YOU ARE THE BRANCHES St. James Cathedral. He crept up the steps, heart thundering. The cathedral doors were of plain brown wood. Sanctuary. For him?
They looked locked. He dared himself to push one, and it yielded to his cautious touch. He went in, out of the wind.
Silence and warmth filled the foyer, but it was a barren place. Posted notices of scheduled meetings said nothing to him. This was but a limbo between the outside world and that which lay beyond the inner doors. They were upholstered in leather with brass studs and prophesied wonders beyond. He coughed and pushed his way in.
It took his breath away. Had he been some European peasant viewing for the first time Christopher Wren’s cathedral the impact could not have been greater. There was too much to behold and all of it shimmered with majesty. He groped his way to the back pew and found himself genuflecting in a reaction that went beyond his memories. He entered the pew and knelt, too humbled to sit. Before and beside and above him the cathedral opened out in swelling glory. Fat pillars of red marble held up the lofty ceiling. The green carpet and brown wood of the pews yet managed to give a sylvan air to the vastness. Marching forward on either side of him were stained glass windows set high in the walls, and below them small shrines to individual saints. Little votive candles burned before the saints in many-hued holders like shining gems offered to God’s holy ones for their aid. His eyes followed the line of shrines forward to the front of the cathedral, where angels decked the main altar and hovered over it.
Slowly he became aware that the church was not empty.
There were folk gathered here and there for silent devotions, but what was their puniness to this immense repository of godliness? They paid him no attention, and, encouraged by this, he rose and began to cautiously explore. Each stained glass window was dedicated to someone. The brilliance of the daylight when it reached through the purple or yellow of the glass brought tears to his eyes. “In Memory of James and Mary German,” he read, and wondered if they knew their window scattered bits of colored light upon his upturned face.
He paused at the shrine dedicated to St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. Facts surged to the surface of his mind from some forgotten reservoir, broke like bubbles upon his thoughts. Mother Cabrini. A saint for Washington. In Seattle she had become a citizen in 1909, and worshiped in this very place. Canonized in 1949, she was the first United States citizen to be so honored. From his pocket he drew coins and pushed them into the donation slot. The book of paper matches was tucked behind one of the candle holders. He lit a candle in a blue glass and knelt to watch it burn before the image of the homely woman in simple garb. He felt consoled by its light and let himself sink into a dream.
First Communion Day. His stiff collar chafed the back of his neck raw. He approached the altar beside a little girl in a white dress with crackling petticoats. She wore a veil over her shining hair and her eyes glowed as she turned them up to the crucifix. He had knelt beside her at the altar railing, the gold and white fence that separated the priest and the holy place from the commoners. He had put out his tongue and received on it the round Host. It was white and stiff and dry, tasting of sanctity. It stuck to the roof of his mouth as he rose and carefully walked back to his pew with the other First Communicants.
He knew it was unseemly to chew it, so he waited patiently until it dissolved into a soggy mass he could swallow whole.
And as it went down, an interior Goodness so real that it warmed him flooded his whole body, making a shiver up his back and tears in his eyes. Never had he felt so Chosen. Jesus Christ was in him and his soul burned with a white flame of purity.
He had tried to play it at home, to recapture that elusive feeling for himself. In the game he was the priest, with a roll of Necco Wafers, and two small sisters who would do anything to get them They knelt before him, wildflower crowned, and responded “amen” as be set the candy on their pink outstretched tongues. It was good, but it was not the same. Only in the church did that feeling touch him, and he longed for a white surplice and vestments of green and gold and purple, and people kneeling before him to be nurtured. The mystical chanting of the choir, the high Sanctus, Sanctus. Sanctus, like a joyous bird rising to heaven. He knew that someday he would stand before that altar, elevating the Host high, his sleeves falling back to bare his arms as the masses behind him bowed their beads and murmured, “my Lord and my God.”
He had become an altar boy, memorizing the mystical Latin responses with ease. He could still remember the tingle on his skin the first time he slipped the black and white robes of his office over his head. He had poured the water over the priest’s fingers from the tiny glass carafe trimmed in gold, had seen him shake the shining drops from his fingertips as he mimicked Pilate’s denial. The white cloth for the priest to dry his fingers on was always folded precisely over his arms, waiting to be used. And, at exactly the right moment, he had rung the four golden bells fastened to a single handle, let their metal voices cry out in sweet precision at the elevation of the Host. That moment had always closed his throat and made his eyes sting with tears.
He felt a tap against his foot, heard a woman’s murmured “Excuse me.” Like a diver rising from deep water, Wizard took a deep breath of air a
nd looked around him with fogged eyes.
The church was filling with people. There were small family groups, easily identified as they filled half a pew, mothers holding small babies, fathers trying to maintain manners among older children. There were old women, their white heads draped in lacy scarves, and older men who sat, eyes lowered and shoulders rounded as they spoke to God. Wizard rose from kneeling at the shrine. The Mass was about to begin.
He left. He looked back as the heavy doors swung closed behind him. The tall pipe organ in the back of the cathedral had begun to sound, and the people rose as one. He watched them sail away from him on a sea of peace, and then the doors closed between them. He pushed through the outer doors into the cold and wind. He stumbled going down the steps and nearly fell. He glanced back once at the golden vines on the front of the cathedral. Once, he had been a branch. Now he was defoliated.
He sniffed as he strode down the street, and then surprised himself by coughing. Once he had begun to cough, he couldn’t stop, as if he had loosened some sickness in the bottom of his lungs. He felt his face grow red and hot with the strain of it; for long moments he couldn’t draw in enough air to fill his lungs. He leaned against a building until his chest quit heaving, and then took in short, cautious breaths of the chill air. It had gotten colder while he was in the church. The brief November day was drawing to a close. He was glad of it, glad it was nearly done with. He was tired and suddenly weary. Sleepy was too gentle a word for what he felt. He wished he could just curl up on the sidewalk and sleep. Or in a doorway. There were those who did that, he knew, but he had never been one of them.
Wizard of the Pigeons Page 13