Anonymous Man was intrigued by this, for he too was a fan of Emerson and had often wondered if Nietzsche might have known the American’s work. Hennes became quite animated by Anonymous Man’s question, and launched into a detailed analysis of Nietzsche’s fondness for the American sage. He told how Nietzsche discovered Emerson at age nineteen, considered him one of the four greatest writers of the century, rarely traveled without a copy of Emerson’s Essays, and was one of the few thinkers Nietzsche didn’t turn against later. After citing examples of Emerson’s possible influence on Nietzsche, their conversation turned to dozens of other important writers and thinkers.
That same afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel Sharc and his entourage showed up at camp. He was making a round of the front lines during a short, relative calm in the fighting. Anonymous Man wrote:
A few of my men and I were sitting unarmed among our new found German friends, laughing it up as we passed flasks of bourbon that two Germans had been kind enough to offer us. A few of my men were posted in the trees in case the prisoners tried to escape, but there was no threat of that happening.
We had a fire going, and a comical-looking snowman resembling Adolph Hitler that we had built together with our prisoners was slowly sweating and melting away. The sky was crystalline blue and it was a beautiful day. Spirits were high, especially among the Germans, who appeared relieved to have been captured. They seemed satisfied that they had performed their duty, been outsmarted, and could pass the time as relatively safe prisoners of war.
The young soldier with whom I had earlier discussed literature suddenly stood up and announced that after the war he was going to tell his father to go jump in the Rhine, that he was going to become a great scholar. Everyone, his men and mine, saluted and cheered this declaration of independence and passed the flasks.
At that moment I saw a jeep drive up, and the fat, pinch-faced Lieutenant Colonel Sharc got out and took a long hard disapproving look around the encampment. We had met before. I recalled with a grin his parting words to me then: “You’ll get yours, you smart-ass-son-of-a-bitch!”
He looked around some more, obviously indignant at his less than enthusiastic welcome. Only Daisy, the mongrel mascot dog that had wandered into camp and befriended the Druids a few months earlier, showed him any interest. She sniffed at his boots.
“Who’s in command here?” Sharc bellowed.
We all exchanged uncertain glances, the Germans too, and after a double-shouldered shrug, smiled and pointed at Hitler the snowman.
The colonel snap-kicked Daisy out of his way and marched up to me. I happened to be holding the flask at the time. I offered him a drink that he declined by swatting the flask into the snow. “What do you think you’re doing here soldier?” he barked.
“I ask myself that question every day, Sir,” I answered.
“Don’t wise off to me soldier,” he said. “Get up and stand at attention!”
I got up, but not at attention. In the corner of my eye I saw Daisy hobble over to one of my men and collapse whimpering at his feet.
“Step aside,” Sharc ordered, “I want to talk to you.”
“What you have to say to me you can say in front of my men. I keep no secrets from them.”
“Is that so?” His eyes narrowed and I could see squiggly blue lines on his fat red nose as he flared his nostrils. “Hear this,” he blared. “As of this moment you have no men.”
“Are you telling me that I’m no longer in command?”
“If I have my way I’m going to see to it you’re no longer a soldier, soldier.”
My men leapt to their feet in protest and began to crowd around the colonel raising their voices in my defense. The three dog-faced soldiers who were traveling with Sharc ran up and shoved their guns into the faces of some of my men and ordered them to back down.
Then, from above came the steely clink-clack of cocking rifles. I nodded toward the treetops where three Druid sharpshooters were perched, barrels pointed.
“You kicked Daisy,” I said. “You’re a bully.”
“What?”
“You heard me, tubby. And we don’t like your kind.”
“Bully!” jeered my men.
“You’re insane,” Sharc yelled. “I’m going to see to it that you’re all disgraced, that you all—”
I grabbed up some snow, rolled it into a ball and stuffed it down the colonel’s pants. Then I gave him a wedgy and a boot and sent him and his men on their way. It was a really stupid and immature thing to do. Kicking a poor defenseless dog, I mean.
Intruders
That was fast, I thought. Doreen said an hour but it had only been twenty minutes. I stashed the journal with the others in my laundry basket under a layer of smelly socks and underwear and answered the door.
Two large, grave-looking men dressed in suits and ties stood before me. One had short, curly brown hair; the other, a blond crew cut and a thick red scar by his right eye. Both looked like ex-defensive tackles—hulking, mean, and unfriendly.
“Guy Andrews?” Curly said.
“He moved out a couple of months ago,” I said.
The man smirked, reached into his jacket and pulled out my gas bill, a letter from my mom, and the current issue of National Geographic. He handed them to me. “Today’s mail, Mr. Andrews,” he said. “May we come in?”
Without waiting for a reply, they pushed past me into the house and immediately set to snooping around.
“Hey,” I said, “who are you?”
“That depends,” said the guy with the scar. “If you cooperate, we’re a figment of your imagination, in and out of here like ghosts, never to bother you again. And if you don’t cooperate…well, let’s not even consider that an option, Guy.”
Curly disappeared into my kitchen. Scarface reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out some snapshots. The first was of a man in his fifties with white hair and rimless glasses. The photo looked like it was taken without his knowledge at an airport.
“Do you know this man?” he asked.
I shook my head, no.
“Have you ever seen him before?”
“No.”
He turned to the next picture, a black and white snapshot of a handsome youth about eighteen years old. He wore a football jersey, number 7. The handsome young man had longish, dark wavy hair, a strong jaw, and intelligent-looking eyes. I shook my head again.
He displayed the next picture. Taken from a distance, it was of a woman with a mop of brown hair wearing faded Levis, T-shirt, a daypack, and a baseball cap. A pair of binoculars hung from her neck, and in her hand was a gun. She was smiling, perhaps laughing. She was pretty. She was Melody. I shook my head, no.
“Look again,” the man said.
“Cute girl,” I remarked.
“We don’t think so. What do you know about her?”
“I’ve never seen her before.”
“Lie, Guy. We know she made contact with you.”
“I don’t know this girl,” I repeated.
Whoa, Melody, you weren’t kidding! People really are after you. Big, mean-looking dudes too!
“Where is she?” he demanded.
“Really, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re in big trouble, you know that? Cut the crap and tell me what you know about her.”
“I’m in trouble all right,” I said. “I got a final on Monday and you’re keeping me from studying. Maybe I’ll just call the police…” I started for the phone but before I moved two steps Scarface shoved me into the couch, knocking the breath out of me.
Now I was scared. I thought of screaming for help but I figured he’d break my nose before I even got to the ‘elp!’ part.
He glared down at me. “Talk, squirt.”
“I told you, I don’t know anything.”
“In the hospital. She came to you. Why? What did she want?”
“I told you already, I don’t—”
“Do you know what aiding and abetting a
terrorist can get you?”
“A what?” I said, incredulous.
“You heard me. A terrorist.”
The other bruiser was now searching my desk, dumping the drawers out onto the floor, rifling through my books, whipping stuff around. “Hey,” he said. “Check this out.”
Scarface fixed me with a cold eye meant to keep me pinned to the couch and walked over to his buddy. Curly ripped the picture of Doreen and Zeeva from the wall. “Look familiar?” he said.
My interrogator took the picture and examined it closely. He ran his finger across his scar. “Well, well, the bitch is back…”
Bullseye!
“…And then what happened?”
“Keep your eyes on the road, Doreen,” I said. “You’re making me more nervous than they did.”
We were halfway up Mount Lemon where the desert yielded to scrub juniper and pine. The narrow, winding road would soon lead into thick woods. One great thing about living in Tucson was that a huge mountain rose from its belly. Rain and snow would not come to the desert, so the desert came to them.
“Well…?” Doreen asked again, this time watching me through her rearview mirror.
“That’s it,” I said. “I don’t know. I bolted. Before I knew it I was sprinting down Speedway like a swarm of bees were after me. You guys are lucky you saw me. You might have walked right in on them.”
“So who do you think they are?”
“I have no idea. FBI, maybe?”
“Did they show you a badge or anything?”
“No.”
“Guy,” she scolded, “you’ve seen enough movies to know that you should have at least asked.”
“Doreen, you weren’t there. They weren’t interested in my questions.”
“Okay, but are you sure that the girl in the picture was Melody?”
“I’m sure.”
“And they called her a terrorist?”
“Twice.”
“Wow.”
“But that’s not the weirdest part,” I said. “Why did they show such an interest in the picture of you and Zeeva?”
Until then, Zeeva, who was sitting in the front seat, had said next to nothing. She turned and asked, “Did they find what they were looking for, Guy?”
“I don’t know what they were looking for. The only thing they took that I know of was the photo of you two.”
“Well,” Doreen said, “what might you possibly have that they wanted? You’re not dealing drugs or anything, are you?”
“You know I don’t.”
“Well, did Melody give you anything?”
“No, just that photography book…” And then I remembered—the journals. But what could they have wanted with those? They were harmless. Unless…unless they figured that I had all of the journals, and that something in a later one wasn’t so innocuous. But I didn’t even know who the writer was. He was anonymous. Did they know who he was? Were they after him? Melody knew the identity of Anonymous Man, and they obviously knew who she was.
Doreen said, “Melody didn’t look like a terrorist to me.”
“You met her?” Zeeva asked.
“Once, briefly, at the hospital, when she came to visit Guy. Guy, what are you doing hanging around with terrorists?”
“Hey, when I met her she was dressed as Santa Claus.”
Zeeva chuckled, “Santa Claus?”
Doreen turned and gave me a censuring eye. “I don’t want you seeing her anymore. If those men are after Melody she must be in big trouble. You don’t know anything about her and you don’t owe her a thing.”
“Doreen, I haven’t seen her since the hospital.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Zeeva observing me, as if she were curious how I would respond to my sister’s order to stay away from Melody. “Besides,” I added, “I consider her my friend. I’d help her if she asked me to.” I saw Zeeva lift an eyebrow. A wisp of a smile floated across her face. She turned casually and looked out the window.
“Don’t be stupid, Guy,” Doreen said. “What do we really know about her? Nothing. She could be a lunatic for all we know.” Doreen shook her head. “I still think we should have gone straight to the police.”
“And miss out on such a beautiful afternoon?” Zeeva said. “There’s plenty of time for that later.”
“But Guy could be in serious trouble.”
“All the more reason to keep the police out of it. Guy…?” Zeeva said, turning to me. “Do you trust this Melody girl?”
“I hardly know her.” Then I recalled Noriko asking me if she could count on me if she ever needed my help. I told her, yes. Of course, I’d have said just about anything then if I thought it would have increased my chances of getting naked with her. But I meant it too. And I liked Melody equally as much. It wasn’t a sex thing. If I could help her, I would. Okay, maybe it was a sex thing. How do we know?! “Hell, what’s a couple of hours, anyway?”
Zeeva pointed to a dirt road on the right and we slowed, turned and followed it for about a hundred yards to where it ended, the topic of conversation along with it. We grabbed our things from the trunk and were soon tramping down a winding brown path. The air was cool and clean, scented with the sweet smell of pine. We walked for some time, Zeeva leading the way.
I was breaking in my spiffy new hiking boots that my sisters had given me for Christmas. They were thick and heavy and I felt clumsy in them, but the sturdy leather, hefty soles, and steel toe construction also made me feel kind of invincible: Guy, the rugged outdoorsman. The girls chatted between themselves as I watched my step and Zeeva’s shapely butt.
I thought about Anonymous Man, the young platoon leader leading his faithful band of Druids through the woods of war-infested Europe. Did the forest look anything like this? I was already lost, tired, and uncomfortable. The girls, however, were quite at ease and their laughter and merriment put me to shame. But heck, I reasoned, they’ve been doing this kind of thing every weekend for months. They were used to it.
We walked on for another ten minutes and then stopped beside a gurgling stream beneath a high sheer cliff. The girls dropped their packs and emptied their contents onto the ground. I plopped down on a large rock, drank from my canteen, and observed them with interest. Without a word they snatched up their bows and arrows, skipped from stone to stone across the stream, and headed towards a nearby clearing.
“Hey,” I shouted after them, “what about lunch?”
“Help yourself,” Doreen called back.
I grabbed an apple and crunched into it, content with spectator status. For an hour I watched the two wood nymphs take turns shooting at a dead gnarled tree. I thought they both looked really cool in their cutoffs and T-shirts, bows raised and tightly drawn, looks of concentration on their faces.
Zeeva gave my sister many pointers along the way. I felt happy for Doreen for having made such a good friend. I thought this is the real Doreen. She was a pretty good shot too, though Zeeva was clearly superior, never missing and firing fast and sure.
When they returned they sat down on the ground and shared a canteen, continuing a conversation about some finer point of archery. I congratulated Doreen on her newly acquired skill and told her how impressed I was. I asked Zeeva where she learned to shoot like that.
“A friend taught me.”
“Some guy from your army days?”
“No, an amazing young woman I met about four years ago.
Doreen said, “The girl who saved you from the tiger, right?”
“That’s her.”
“What?” I chuckled.
“Two summers ago Zeeva and some girl friends were trekking in India when Zeeva stumbled upon a Bengal tiger and her cubs. Big mama didn’t take kindly to strangers, and the tiger looked like she was about to tear Zeeva to pieces when the girl strolled up to the big cat and talked it out of it.”
“Yeah, right,” I scoffed.
“It’s true,” Zeeva said. “She started humming a melody and walked right up to the tiger, the whole while stari
ng it in the eyes. After about twenty seconds the tiger growled and strolled off with its cubs.”
“Tell Guy how she could read your thoughts.”
“Oh, come on,” I groaned.
Zeeva affirmed the claim with a nod.
“Zeeva, you shouldn’t be telling my sister stuff like this. You know how gullible she is.”
Zeeva smiled. “I said she was amazing. She was only sixteen when we first met, but like no one I had ever known before. She was beautiful and radiated a kind of, I don’t know—grace. She taught me much more than how to shoot an arrow.”
“Heck of a teenager,” I said.
“Yeah,” Zeeva said, ignoring my sarcasm. “I miss her.”
“Where is she now?” Doreen asked.
“Asia somewhere, last I heard. She moves around a lot.”
“Do you think you’ll ever see her again?”
Zeeva looked thoughtfully down at her hand and toyed with a silver ring. “Yeah, someday…”
Well, I thought, whomever that chick was she made quite an impression on Zeeva, and Zeeva didn’t impress me as the kind of person who was easily impressed.
I mused that the world contained many remarkable people—thousands, even millions of anonymous men and women who lived quiet lives, richly and deeply, inspiring all those who were fortunate enough to meet them. They were my heroes. I admired their stoic blood and the way they seemed to contradict the times by obeying some higher authority within them. I envied their determination, their healthy indifference to society’s pretensions, and their self-reliance and courage. To them, life was not about coping or a series of obstacles to be overcome. No, for them, life was meant to be explored and experienced: to be sniffed, chewed, fondled, and rolled between the fingers. Life was whatever one had the courage to make it.
Aurora Borealis
The above musing was only partially my own. I swiped most of it from Anonymous Man’s fourth journal, which I found waiting for me back at my house on top of the toilet. Whoever put it there obviously had done so after the two thugs had finished ransacking my apartment. Underneath the book was a note. It read:
Say Uncle Page 11