The Remembering

by Steve Cash

  “Good-bye, Caine.”

  “Good-bye, Z. Good luck.”

  “As a great friend and a wise man used to always tell me—‘Zis is good business.’ ” I waved and ran to catch up with Opari. We had half an hour until first light and another hour and a half until the Remembering.

  Our driver was a heavyset man in his fifties who looked at us in the mirror and talked incessantly. Before we had even turned out of Billings onto Highway 87, he said, “I suppose you kids are flyin’ in and tryin’ to beat the eclipse, am I right?”

  “You sure are,” I said. “All our cousins are waiting for us.”

  He winked in the mirror. “Don’t you worry. Lewis and Clark’ll get you there.”

  But he was nearly wrong. Fifty miles north at Roundup, he missed a turn and didn’t realize it for several miles. The mistake and turnaround cost us forty miles and another thirty minutes. As dawn began to break, we were still miles from our destination, and our driver couldn’t increase our speed because of patches of black ice on the two-lane highway. Finally, just south of Grass Range, we turned onto the county road that led to the hunting lodge twelve miles away. Thin gray clouds in the east hid the sun. It was 7:32 A.M.

  The entrance to the lodge was marked by a split-rail fence and an open gate, over which there was an eighteen-foot arch made entirely of antlers, spelling out the words “BLACK ELK RANCH.” We sped down the gravel drive another half mile to a compound of buildings in a wide semicircle. Our driver stopped the van next to the largest, an adobe Spanish-style ranch house with a red tile roof. A jeep was parked nearby with its motor running. Before we could get out of the van, Ray Ytuarte burst out of the jeep. I opened the side door just as Ray got to us. He grinned and said, “Damn, Z! Cuttin’ it kinda close, ain’t you?”

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  “Always is, my friend, always is.” Ray glanced at Opari, then back to me. “There were some of us, I won’t name names, who thought you might not make it. I was not among them.”

  “We’re here now, Ray. That’s what counts.”

  He gave me an odd look. “Well, come with me and I mean quick. We only got a few minutes.”

  I thanked our driver and Opari and I hopped into the jeep with Ray. He could barely reach the gas pedal, but he set out cross-country toward a rock outcropping in the distance, a small promontory in the middle of a cold, vast, and barren landscape.

  I looked up at the sky, and the clouds obscuring the sun had vanished. I thought to myself, it might have looked just like this thirteen thousand five hundred years ago when the Stones were distributed. They were somewhere south of the ice, but close to it. They would have been close to the ice wherever they were. I thought about what Sailor had said last, “The Stones must cross,” and I felt for the Stone of Dreams in my pocket. I turned to look at Opari, and she was staring straight ahead with the hint of a smile on her face.

  After a rough ride, mostly along a dry creek bed, Ray brought the Jeep to a jolting halt. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “Eight-eleven,” he said. “We got five minutes.”

  We leaped out and Opari and I followed Ray as he scrambled around boulders and climbed up the south slope of the outcropping. At the top, standing in a ragged line, the others were waiting for us, all wearing heavy wool blankets around their shoulders. Against the empty sky and desolate landscape, they looked like abandoned children at the end of nowhere.

  Opari and I ran to greet them with an embrace and the words “Egibizirik bilatu.” Sailor and Sheela were standing together, as were Geaxi and West, and now Nova and Ray. Mowsel and Zeru-Meq stood alone.

  “I never had a doubt,” Sailor said calmly.

  “Neither did I.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, but there is something Opari and I must do.” We had not yet greeted the Fleur-du-Mal and Fielder. We walked over and I embraced the Fleur-du-Mal for the first time in my life. “Egibizirik bilatu,” I said. He stiffened a little, but returned the greeting and added, “I must admit, mon petit, I did not think you would be here.”

  I nodded to Opari and she took the leather necklace and the Stone of Blood from around her neck, while I took the Stone of Dreams out of my pocket. I reached for the Fleur-du-Mal’s hand and placed the Stone in his palm. Opari slipped the necklace and Stone over Fielder’s head and around her neck. Fielder was not surprised. She looked Opari in the eyes and smiled, nodding once.

  “After you have crossed and carried this,” I told the Fleur-du-Mal, “you will understand.”

  Sailor shouted, “Zianno, wait—”

  Just then, Mowsel said, “It is beginning. It is beginning now.”

  Although no one gazed directly at it, we could all feel it happening—the cold dead disk of the moon sliding into place in front of the burning disk of the sun. Simultaneously, we began to feel something rising inside us—fear, yes, but something more, something overwhelming. Mowsel had a grin on his face and Zeru-Meq had his eyes closed. Nova looked at Ray and Ray looked at Nova. Susheela the Ninth took hold of Sailor’s hand and entwined her fingers with his. Geaxi removed her beret and West wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. The Fleur-du-Mal glanced at me, giving me an enigmatic grin, then took Fielder’s hand in his and turned to face the sun. Darkness spread rapidly and the shadow bands raced across the landscape in a surreal dance toward the horizon. Twenty seconds to go. Ten seconds. I turned to Opari and we embraced. I held her so tight and close I could feel every part of her. I whispered in her ear, “We are on our own now.”

  She whispered back, “I know.”

  Totality!

  We both looked up and stared at the beautiful and terrifying burning black hole in the sky, the Strange Window, the Empty Ring, the Bitxileiho, and we became suspended, weightless, nowhere and everywhere. Where was where? What was where? I was so far away and small, centuries of light-years from anywhere or anything, falling without falling, drifting into nothing. I knew nothing, there was nothing to know, nothing to remember. There was no remembering, only returning. I felt the pull of the current, the inside tide of darkness gently pulling me into the waters of the Long Dream. Then came the voice, so faint and so familiar. “Beloved, wake … wake.”

  Even though I was not aware I had closed them, I opened my eyes and realized I was on my knees, and so was Opari. I glanced over at the others and everyone was on their knees. The sun was still in partial eclipse, but totality was over. It had lasted only two minutes and forty-nine seconds, and I thought it was odd how something so anticipated, complex, and fundamental could pass so quickly. Fielder and the Fleur-du-Mal, Geaxi and West, Sailor and Sheela, and Ray and Nova, each looked the same as they had two minutes and forty-nine seconds earlier, but they were not. They had crossed in the Zeharkatu, and during that time every cell in their being had been changed, altered, and restructured. That which in the past had made them invulnerable to age and disease was now gone, along with the mystical Meq ability to heal, repair, and restore all tissue, fiber, sinew, and bone in a matter of minutes or hours. They were now more like Giza than Meq, but each one could also do something they could not do before. Like the Giza, they could now mature and reproduce. Of course, Mowsel and Zeru-Meq remained unchanged because they had no Ameq and could not cross. But everyone else had crossed—everyone except Opari and me.

  • • •

  It had long been assumed that Opari and I would cross during the Remembering. Even Opari and I had assumed it, though we rarely discussed it. In St. Louis, when we made the decision to stay with Jack while he was dying, even if we missed the Remembering, we both knew something essential had occurred. Betrayal is too strong a word, but Opari and I understood that we had separated ourselves from the others in some way, and it was irreversible. After Jack died and we felt we might still have a chance to make it to Montana in time, I realized what we must do with the Stones and with ourselves. The solution was absurdly simple and seemed meant to be. For us, it became the key th
at unlocked the whole purpose of the event. Ray and Nova were the first Egipurdiko and Egizahar Meq to ever cross. It wasn’t thought possible before. Susheela the Ninth was Sailor’s second Ameq and they crossed. That also had never happened. West and Fielder were a completely different species, and they crossed with Geaxi and the Fleur-du-Mal.

  For some reason, the Meq were evolving, changing from the inside out, and this Remembering was all about that evolution. Sailor had said “the Stones must cross,” and now they had. By transferring the Stones and their mystery to Fielder and the Fleur-du-Mal, Opari and I had made sure the Stone of Dreams and the Stone of Blood became part of that evolution. But for Opari and me, this Remembering was not our moment, not our time to cross. The Meq are blessed with destiny and free will. We decided to continue the Wait.

  Back in South Wales, Ray had asked if this Remembering would “tell us why we are the way we are.” I didn’t think so, but I was hoping it would. Who are the Meq? I don’t know. Why are the Meq here? I don’t know. Where are the Meq going? I don’t know. Opari and I had not found these answers. Instead, we had found each other.

  It was a cold Monday morning, February 26, 1979. Below us the earth was turning, and overhead the sun was shining. Along with the others, Opari and I stood on the small outcropping of rock and turned in a full circle, staring at the barren beauty around us and remembering it. That’s all we can do with any moment. We can do that and we can endure and survive. Moment to moment to moment.

  There is a lot to be said for traveling in a twelve-year-old body. First, there is your height. You are halfway between a little kid and a big kid, or teenager, both of whom are highly visible in public. But the twelve-year-old is invisible. No one pays attention to the activities of a twelve-year-old, or even two of them. With the right resources, time, and imagination, any kid could do it. In the years following the Remembering, Opari and I traveled this way, generally unnoticed and always unannounced, and never stopping long in any one place. We had only one criterion for choosing the next destination—it had to be a place where neither of us had been.

  Using a complicated system of drop boxes and postcards, we kept up with the whereabouts of most of the others. Ray and Nova had moved to Veracruz, Mexico, which was the city where Ray was born. They were the first couple among those who had crossed to have a child. In 1984, when Nova turned seventeen, she and Ray became the teenage parents of a healthy baby girl, seven pounds eleven ounces, named Eder Zuriaa, and she was born with a rare and unusual characteristic—her left eye was dark brown and her right eye was green. Ray reasoned that this would make her a good switch-hitter when she learned to play baseball. I didn’t understand the logic, but Ray said, “Damn, Z, it’s clear as a tear to me.”

  Geaxi and West returned to live on the south coast of Wales at Morgan Manor. Two years after Nova, when Geaxi turned nineteen, she also gave birth to a baby girl after being in labor for thirty-three hours. It was a trying and traumatic experience, but Geaxi never complained. She told me, “It was no worse than playing chess with you, young Zezen.” The baby was named Iza, the Meq word for “first,” because Geaxi said she was the first of a new species of Meq.

  Sailor and Sheela settled in Cairo, living with a wealthy family of traders Sailor had known and trusted for centuries. Mowsel and Zeru-Meq lived with them for a few years, then left suddenly, heading in separate directions, Mowsel going west and Zeru-Meq going east. Both of them had no fixed plans and were not intent on arriving anywhere in particular. In the late spring of 1988, Sailor and Sheela had their baby, a beautiful boy with sharp features and dark skin. He was given the formal name of Zubi-Meq, but Sailor called him Jack.

  The following year Opari and I stopped in Cairo for a visit and to see the baby. It was bizarre to see Sailor as a young man. He and Sheela were twenty-two years old and looked just like any other young, modern, handsome couple. It was also odd to be so much smaller than Sailor. However, the most surreal moment of the visit was an act that is completely common and mundane, but something I never thought I’d witness. Early one morning I happened to see Sailor shaving.

  Before we left, I asked about the Fleur-du-Mal and Fielder. Sailor said he thought they were living somewhere in the United States, but no one knew their exact location, or if they had a child.

  In 1990, six months after the accident, Opari and I received the tragic news that Koldo and Arrosa had been killed in a car wreck in Cornwall. We had missed the funeral, so we sent our condolences and best wishes in a letter to Kepa and Yaldi.

  For the next ten years, as Opari and I continued to travel, I called St. Louis on a regular basis. Except for the usual aches and pains of old age, Star, Antoinette, and Caine remained healthy. Georgie had moved back from California with her border collie, Carolina, and was now running the household and taking care of her parents and Star when they needed it. Then, on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1999, Star died peacefully in her sleep. She was ninety-nine years old. Three years later, Caine suffered a massive stroke at the age of eighty-four. At the moment of his death, he was writing a book on his theory of the origins of the Basque language. He was in midsentence when the stroke hit, and Antoinette said the pen was still in his hand when she found him. His death must have been difficult for her because afterward her own health began to deteriorate rapidly. Six months after Caine, she developed pneumonia and never recovered. Georgie said she passed away on February 1, 2003. She was seventy-six years old.

  Opari and I kept moving. Year to year, country to country, continent to continent, avoiding war zones and tourists with equal disdain, we kept to ourselves and we kept moving. Traveling without the Stones was a new experience for both of us. Many times in potentially dangerous situations, I unconsciously reached in my pocket for the Stone that was no longer there, and it wasn’t until 2012 that I finally broke the habit. That year we were in Argentina, and we crisscrossed South America for two more years, then followed the sun and headed west, stopping to live in the middle of the Pacific on the Marquesas Islands for another year.

  By 2016 we were living in Australia, where we spent a year wandering through the cities of Sydney and Melbourne. We then began a slow journey across the Outback for the same reason we went anywhere—because we’d never been there.

  On my birthday, May 4, 2017, we decided to visit Ayers Rock, or Uluru, the massive, solitary block of sandstone standing in the middle of the Australian desert, sacred to all aboriginal tribes in the area. The big rock changes color with the changing light and weather, and parts of it are covered with ancient paintings, dots, and handprints. There were dozens of tourists there with us, some to climb the rock, some to study it, and some to just look at it and wait for sunset, when the rock turns red in the falling light. While the sun dropped silently below the horizon, Uluru came alive, and as it seemed to glow from inside something happened to Opari and me. It happened quickly and quietly, unasked and unannounced, and was as gentle and effortless as an angel’s touch. We weren’t sure when or if it would ever happen, and neither of us expected it, at least not so soon. I looked up and saw the Southern Cross hanging like a kite in the sky.

  I turned to Opari and Opari turned to me. “Let’s go home,” I said. “Let’s go home for good.”

  We bought tickets in Sydney and flew into Los Angeles using the same family emergency story we’d used hundreds of times in the past. We then flew on to Dallas, where in order to change planes we had to use the internal tram system connecting all terminals. Opari and I took our seats on one of the crowded trams and turned to look out the window. Across the platform another tram going the other way came to a stop. Just as our door began to close, the door of the other tram opened. Among the first out were a man about fifty years old and an unusual but striking-looking boy about twelve years old. The man was impeccably dressed, and he had his arm around the boy’s shoulders. The boy was dressed in a black T-shirt and black jeans. They were in a hurry. The man had a perfectly trimmed beard that was showing a bit of silver, an
d even from a distance I could see his red ruby earrings. It was the boy who saw me, or should I say “felt” me first. He stopped immediately and stared at me from across the platform. In the next moment he reached in his jean pocket and pulled something out. He held up his arm, waving it at me, and in his hand I could see the Stone of Dreams. He smiled a bitter smile, showing off his perfect white teeth, and in a matter of seconds our tram was gone.

  St. Louis is beautiful all year round, but in the spring, in May and early June, it is especially so. We landed in the afternoon. The sky was blue and clear, and the temperature was seventy-five degrees. It felt good to be alive and good to be in St. Louis.

  Georgie was sitting in her car waiting for us outside the airport, along with her new border collie, Solomon. Sadly, she told us she had put Carolina to sleep two years earlier. “But you never knew Solomon,” I replied.

  “Oh yes I do, Z,” she said with a smile. “He is everywhere in that house.” Georgie was fifty-eight years old and had taken over her father’s position at Washington University. She also resembled her mother, Antoinette, more than ever. On the drive back to the big house, I asked Georgie if she could take a slow detour through Forest Park and as we were driving through she asked Opari, “How long will you two be staying?” I had my head out the window smelling and feeling the air just like Solomon. “As long as this place is here,” I shouted back.

  • • •

  A day later Opari and I bought bicycles and began exploring St. Louis the way two twelve-year-old kids should in the summertime. We went everywhere every day and at night we usually went to the ball game if the Cardinals were in town. June and July passed by and Opari and I hardly ever talked about what was approaching; however, we did discuss how many children would make a good family. She wanted three. I told her that was fine with me.