Wizard of the Pigeons

by Megan Lindholm

  “Then what’s this?” she asked him indulgently.

  Wizard looked down. The shimmering dark cloth fell to his bare feet. Stars and crescent moons shone in the dim room, sparkled in the light of the candle on the food crate. His wizardly robe draped his chilled body. He froze, waiting. It warmed him. That was all. He smoothed his hands down the front of it, waiting for some tingle of power. Nothing. He squeezed his stinging eyes shut. Where had his mind been, and for how long? What had he really expected of a discarded Hallowe’en costume? He felt Lynda draping his shoulders with the cloak.

  He raised his hands to tie the silver tassels at his throat. He did not want her to step in front of him and see his face. His mind fumbled back through his life. He had been in this den for, well, he had seen the stores below him extend their hours for Christmas shoppers twice. And before that? There had been another den. The location was hazy in his mind now, but he remembered the smell of boiling cabbage and rice wafting up from a restaurant below. And before that? His sleeping roll tucked up under an overpass or bridge; he recalled vividly the rumble of the night traffic and the stretch-flash of passing headlights. Years as lost and wasted as fresh rain falling on oily city streets.

  His life struggled to join hands with itself. He plucked up two reference points. This was 1983, fast approaching 1984.

  He had turned twenty in 1969, on his first tour in Nam. Thirty five years old, he guessed. He hadn’t thought of his age in a long time, hadn’t related his personal span to the days and weeks flowing past him. Half of the three-score and ten due him were gone. Half.

  Lynda giggled. He turned slowly to face her and she gave a high scream of laughter. His face didn’t change, so she slapped him lightly on the cheek. “Old sourpuss. Well, you got to admit you look funny. I should have guessed from the hat. Well, never mind. At least it’s warm and dry and comfy. Even if we did miss Hallowe’en. Oh, baby!” She pushed into him suddenly, her face diving for his, her lips writhing against his mouth. Her sturdy arms enfolded him and trapped him against her body. She nuzzled his neck and then jerked back her face to look at him. “You look just like a sad little kid. Cold and wet and living in this hole. But we are going to change all that. Look, I got to thinking today. There’s plenty of room at my place. It doesn’t look like you have that much stuff. Tomorrow, after work, I bet I could come up here and have you packed in half an hour. Hell, from the look of it, we could leave most of it here and not take a loss. You could stay with me, get rid of that cough, get your head straight, and then you could look for work. Or sign up for unemployment or welfare or something. Honey, I look at you and I can see you weren’t made for this kind of life. You’re the steady, reliable type. I don’t know why or how you came to this and I won’t be nosy and ask. But I think it’s time you got out of it. Back to reality. Now come and eat.”

  “You never give me a chance to talk.” It was coming more easily. More and more often, the words came out of his mouth as soon as he thought of them.

  Lynda was not impressed. “What’s to say? Who in his right mind would choose to stay here when he could move in with me? Now come and eat, baby, before it gets cold.”

  He trailed after her to the makeshift table, the wizard robes wafting around his ankles. He stopped at his wardrobe box to pull a pair of socks on over his bare feet. He was warmer, but still shivering.

  The food was in styrofoam trays on the table, still sealed. White styrofoam cups with lids squatted next to them. There were white paper napkins and thick plastic utensils. He could not remember when he had ever dined so formally within his own den.

  “Hope you like oriental food,” she announced and snapped open his dinner. He looked down at finely sliced vegetables swimming in a clear sauce, at slices of meat artfully arranged and cubes of tofu. Lynda was opening a little square paper bucket of rice. She scooped a double mound of it onto the lid of his container. There was a tiny cup of mustard and another of shoyu. The hot rice steamed. Lynda pried the lid off his cup for him. “Green tea,” she informed him. “I always have it with this kind of food. Puts me in the right mood.”

  The tea was still scalding hot. Wizard sipped at his noisily and then attacked the food. The heat of it alone was comforting to his abused body. The skillfully blended textures and flavors nearly went unnoticed in his drive to fill his belly with something solid and nourishing. Lynda silently replenished his mound of rice from the container. When his cup was empty and the food nearly gone, she produced a short, stout bottle with a flourish. “Plum wine!” Her eyebrows leaped at him. She poured, and as the liquid filled his cup, the bouquet of it saluted his nostrils. Memories of hot orchard summers drifted back to him.

  When her cup was filled, they drank together.

  He took his in a series of tiny sips, letting each moment of taste flow and ebb over his tongue. When his shivering finally ceased, he sighed and let the tensions go out of his shoulders and back. “It’s good, isn’t it?” she asked, breaking into his reverie. He nodded slowly and felt his own smile break free.

  She returned it, and began to busily stack up the disposable dishes and flatware. Wizard let her. She left the bottle of wine on the table at his elbow. He refilled his cup. He slowly sipped wine and stared into the candle flame. It was a long, still flame, steady and unflickered by any wind. The dazzling of its light reminded him of sunlight on the bright surface of a mirror pond. If you looked at it one way, it could dazzle your eyes and blind you. But if you tilted your head and half closed your eyes, you could see your reflection in the black water. Like a darker self looking up, mocking. And the more you looked, the less it looked like you. Until, finally, if you stared at it long enough, it didn’t look like you at all, or anyone else.

  “Well, he don’t look like no wizard to me!”

  Rasputin did a slow gyrating turn in his dance to his own unheard music. Wizard stared at him in awe. Cassie had dragged him up here, making him walk for blocks past the border of the Ride Free area. They stood now on a sidewalk in the midst of the Seattle Center. Grassy hillocks and imposing buildings were everywhere, along with ducks and fountains and the Pacific Science Center and the terminal of the monorail. He was dazzled and confused by it all, and especially by the lofty spire of the Space Needle. Cassie had told him all about the World’s Fair days here in 1962 as she had hurried him along. He had been bored at first by her recital of facts and numbers but soon had become engrossed in the bits of city history she spewed out so casually. Yet she had not brought him here to view the Space Needle or the Fun Forest Amusement Park or even the ducks. She had brought him here to present him to Rasputin.

  And Rasputin doubted him. Wizard did not doubt Rasputin.

  He was as impressive as the Space Needle. He was close to seven feet tall, and as black and shiny as anthracite coal. Not content with his natural stature, he had increased it by dusting his afro and painting his nails with glitter. Dangling earrings swung heavily from his earlobe. He wore a sleeveless shirt in the sweat of July, and his arms were wound with snakes of silver and eels of copper. His pants were raggedly cut-off Levis, and little chains of bells decked his ankles. His huge feet were bare and he danced. He danced always, every second. Even when he stood still to talk to Cassie, some tiny movement of wrist or ankle or neck or finger kept the dance intact, one continuous flow of motion. Wizard marveled.

  “Nope. Don’t look like no wizard, don’t act like no wizard, don’t even smell like no wizard.” Rasputin made the litany a part of his dance.

  “There’s wizardry and wizardry,” snapped Cassie. “A fountain doesn’t look like a still pool, but they’re both water.”

  “And I am the fountain!” laughed Rasputin in a voice as deep as the sea, but brown. “Leaping and splashing and flashing. You gonna tell me that you’re the still pool, shining back a reflection, soft and green and slimy on the bottom. You gonna tell me that? Are you a wizard, man?”

  Rasputin’s eyes were not brown. They were black, blacker than his skin, and they cr
ackled. Wizard flinched from their spark. “I’m not sure yet,” he said softly. “Cassie says I am. I don’t much feel like it. I’m not looking for power.”

  “Aho!” Rasputin leaped and whirled. “Not looking for power. Then you are starting at the right place, man. ‘Cause the magic doesn’t give power, it takes it. And it can’t make you strong, but it can find your strength. Can find your weaknesses, too. Sounds doubtful, Cassie, but maybe you got one this time. Let me see his hands.”

  Wizard held out his hands, palms up, to Rasputin. Rasputin slipped his large pinky-black palms under Wizard’s hands, moving them slowly and carefully as he studied them. Wizard’s hands became a part of Rasputin’s dance as he manipulated him. Slowly his own hands became strangers to him under Rasputin’s scrutiny. They looked like pale fish. His fingers were long and thin, but the joints were large, like knots in skinny twigs. Odd little scars on the backs of his hands were like little landmarks in strange terrain. Suddenly Rasputin’s hands flashed from under Wizard’s to slap his palms with a loud clap.

  “He’s got the hands, man. The man’s got the hands. Got the power in his hands. Power-handed man. He’s got the power in his hands, and in his eyes he got the Nam.” He had danced a shuffle-footed, hip-wriggling dance all around Wizard during his chant. But at the last line he stopped and stood still as his black eyes waltzed right into Wizard’s soul. “And in his eyes he got the Nam, man,” he whispered. Wizard stood steady.

  The afternoon was hot and still around them, the blue sky cupping them under its sweaty palm, holding in the secrets Rasputin whispered.

  “Know why there ain’t been so many wizards, lately? Know why? I got a theory, brother. Got myself an idea about that. Back in the Middle Ages, them Dark Ages, they got plagues and battles and poverty and tyrants as far as the eye can see. Know what else they got? Wizards. That’s what makes us, man. Gotta take a man with nothing else left; then you can make a wizard out of the leftovers. That what you got to have to make a wizard. They got the Black Death, and we got the Nam. But one part of my theory I don’t got done yet. Maybe we’re all wizards, see, but you got to have a Nam to wake it up. Like a catalyst, see. And maybe we all came back wizards, but only a few of us crazy enough to know it. Or maybe only a few of us can be wizards, but it don’t develop without a Nam. Like steel. We got hard in the fire, and wizardry is the cutting edge we put on ourselves. Other guys melt, other guys don’t even feel the flames. Not us. We feel the flames and we hurt until we’re hard. And we come back and we cool down, and then—wizards! What you think. Wizard?”

  “I don’t know,” Wizard replied foolishly.

  Rasputin danced away in disgust. “So you got a wizard, Cassie. You got an I-Don’t-Know Wizard. What the hell good is that kind? What does he do?”

  “He feeds the pigeons,” Cassie retorted. “People know they can talk to him, and he listens to them. The Truth comes out of him. And sometimes he Knows. Isn’t that enough?”

  “What do you do?” Wizard, made bold by Cassie’s defense of him, dared to ask.

  “I dance!” Rasputin retorted loftily. “And that’s enough, the way I dance. While I dance, I keep the bogey-man away. You got a bogey-man, I-Don’t-Know Wizard?”

  Wizard shivered. “There’s something gray,” he confessed, and the summer air turned cold.

  “Sounds about right. Well, what you gotta do is this. You got to feed the pigeons. Pigeons sacred to you now, hear me? Never harm a pigeon. And you got to listen to people that come up and start talking to you. Can’t turn away when what they say hurts. You got to tell them what they need to know. And you got to speak the Truth inside you. And when you Know, you got to admit you Know. Got to balance the magic, I-Don’t-Know Wizard. Got to give away more than you get, all the time. If you don’t, that gray thing going to get you. And if that happens, don’t yell, well, Rasputin didn’t warn you. Now get him out of here, Cassie. I got to dance.”

  They watched him leaping and whirling away. flashing black and silver in the sunlight. “Is dancing all he does?” Wizard had asked Cassie naively.

  “Yeah.” she said mockingly. “All he does is Dance. And look at derelicts and find out if they’re wizards or not. And give wizards the rules of their magic. And keep the bogey-man away from the Seattle Center. Come on, Wizard.”

  He trailed at her heels as they moved on the paths between the hillocks of grass. She stopped at a bench that overlooked water and ducks. She dropped into it gratefully and he copied her.

  “Well?” she demanded suddenly. “What did you think of him?”

  Wizard shrugged. “What I think of Rasputin is that what I think of him makes no difference at all. It’s like asking what I think of Mount St. Helens. It’s there, and it’s a hell of a lot bigger than me.”

  Cassie laughed softly. “I never thought of him quite that way before, but you’re right. What I really meant was, what did you think about his theory on wizards?”

  “Just what I said. I don’t know.”

  “And you don’t want to make any guesses, do you? Well, I do. I have my own ideas on it. Think about this for a minute. Think about the threads of color in a tapestry. When you need a bit of silver, for the shine on a river or the snow on a mountain top, you bring the silver threads up to the surface where they can be seen. Or if you need gold for the sheen on a princess’s hair. or the spark in a unicorn’s eyes, you bring that thread up. But it’s not like the threads come and go. It’s more like they’re seen and unseen.”

  He gave another shrug. He could tell she was getting into one of her obtuse moods. It was all going to be stories and parables for the rest of the day. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Cassie laughed wryly. “Rasputin named you well. Well, that’s how I think of us. And another thing. Imagine these special threads, silver and gold, say. The tapestry weaver doesn’t need them often. Maybe they’re hardly ever used together, but there they are, running along together behind the tapestry, and sometimes coming out on the front together to light up a mountain or deck the princesses’ robes. Think of what it would be like for those threads. Do you suppose they miss one another while they’re apart? And when they come together in the tapestry, do you suppose they’d remember the times before when they’d been woven together?”

  She had lost him again. “Do you suppose,” he asked, “that we could scrounge some lunch? I’m starving.”

  “I suppose,” she had laughed easily, but her eyes searched his with a hunger that was not for food.

  Wizard opened his eyes and stared down at the pipe in his hand. He held his throat shut against the hot smoke and passed the pipe to Lynda. “You are feeling fine,” she told him. “I can tell by your eyes. Isn’t it funny. Mitch? When we get stoned, I talk even more and you get even quieter. I don’t think you’ve said a word since you finished the wine. Are you still in there?”

  “I don’t know.” He gave her a sad and foolish smile. The I-Don’t-Know Wizard. That was him. He watched her drawing on the pipe and holding it down and then whistling smoke. She passed it back to him and rose languidly.

  He was still holding his hit when she flapped the hat in front of him. “Put it on,” she demanded with a giggle. “I’ve just got to see you in the complete outfit. When I first saw the hat in the bag, I didn’t realize it went with the robe and cloak. Let’s see it on.”

  He set the pipe down on the table. He took the midnight hat from her hands and gazed in melancholy at its bent tip. “I don’t think I want to,” he said softly. Just looking at it filled him with the sadness of opportunities lost. “Put it away,” he requested, and handed it back to Lynda.

  “Oh, come on‘” she urged, and before he could protest any more, she set it atop his head. He cringed his eyes shut, expecting the flash of magic and the tingle of power against his skull. Still expecting it. Fool. He heard only Lynda’s drawnout giggling. He opened his eyes to her.

  “It’s perfect,” she gasped. “Oh, geez, it’s perfect. You really do look like a wizard. I
never would have believed it. But with the robe and the cloak and the hat, I mean, your eyes have that mystic look, that kind of sad and weary look you see in old fairytale books about kindly wizards. It would be even better if you had a beard and mustache. But even without them, you really got the looks for it. Come on. sorcerer, work me some magic. Draw me one of them pentagon things and summon a demon. Do me a magic trick. Got any rabbits in that hat?”

  “That’s a magician, not a wizard,” he told her, trying to smile with her. “And they’re pentagrams, not pentagons.” He tried to bring the words out lightly. But the skin of his face was stiff with dread, and a chill had invaded him when she spoke so lightly of summoning demons. His required no summoning. They lurked always, chill on the back of his neck.

  Would he ever feel warm again?

  “Oh, come on, magic man,” she pleaded in a voice gone husky. “Do a trick for me.” She paused infinitesimally. “Or turn a trick with me.” She giggled suggestively. “I shouldn’t tell you this, I really shouldn’t.” She dropped down beside him and put her hand on his knee as she lowered her voice to a naughty whisper. “You’ll think I’m kinky or something. But that outfit kind of turns me on. It makes you look so strange and wild somehow. And just now, when I looked at you, I remembered that you had nothing on underneath it. And I felt this kind of a tickly shiver that began you-know-where. You know, I always wondered why men were turned on when they found out a woman didn’t have a bra or panties on. Now I know. It’s the thought of you just being kind of loose and reachable under there.” Her hand dropped to his ankle and began to creep up under the robe.

  Wizard flowed to his feet. He removed the cap from his head and let it drop with a thump upon the table. His newfound verbal skills rescued him. “Don’t you think you’re asking a bit much of me? You feed me a big meal after I’ve been cold and wet all day, pour a bottle of wine down me and then get me stoned. About all I’m ready for is eight hours of sleep.”