The Kings and Queens of Roam: A Novel

by Wallace, Daniel

  But then he looked at his hands. They had changed. All of the scars and calluses and wrinkles were gone. He had the hands of a young man, soft and smooth. He was not imagining it, or hallucinating in the dim light. It was real and true. What was this water? He had cut his arm on a branch that morning, not deeply, but he could see the dried blood and the open wound, and so, in thoughtless wonder, he applied the water to it like a salve, and he watched as the wound disappeared. He took a quick step away from the pool, suddenly afraid of what might happen if he let the water touch him again. He didn’t trust it. Magic is dangerous: it’s neither good nor bad, right nor wrong; it can be both a blessing and a curse. It takes strength, the strength of a man, to make the magic his own, to make it serve him, and not the other way around.

  He had much to think about as he turned and made his way back to his world.

  As he walked out of the cave, waiting for him were his replacement wife, his replacement sons, and some of the others, about ten of his people altogether. They stared at him.

  “What happened?” his replacement wife said. “I thought you were dead.”

  She seemed neither happy nor sad to see this was not the case.

  “What’s down there?” she asked him.

  “Hear that?” said one of the others. “It sounds like a river.”

  “And look,” one of the others said. “Ming Kai’s hair glows. What is it you found inside the cave, Ming Kai? Tell us.”

  Ming Kai wiped the last of the glittery cave crystals off his arms and spit. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing but the bones of the dead.”

  They did not leave the Valley. They grew some food and they killed some squirrels and sometimes something even bigger like a bear. But there were no schools and there were no stores. Little was created; objects just moved around from shack to lean-to, depending on who needed what, when. When it rained, most everything got wet, and when someone died they buried them in the grove in a plot close to where Ming Kai buried his horses. Where Roam had forced the forest out, Ming Kai’s settlement appeared to wedge itself uncomfortably within it, day after day asking for permission to exist.

  The people there had children, and their children had children, and before long it was difficult to remember who belonged to which family, or why that was so important, and there were times when a man and a woman came together who shared the same bloodline and whose children proved it. Whole crops of these offspring wandered through the Valley, some disappearing into the mossy dark, others hovering like ghosts behind stands of trees. They’d broken or buried all of the mirrors they’d brought with them, because no one wanted to see what they’d become; they carried within them the image of what they might have been had things gone differently, had Ming Kai taken a different road out of Roam, or taken a right turn instead of a left, or if doubt hadn’t made him pause briefly so that his horses could eat a bit of that locoweed.

  But Ming Kai was a good man. His people would follow him anywhere. As little as they liked the place they had ended up, they followed him, because over time he proved to them that he knew things. Magic, spells, potions that cured them from sickness and kept them from pain. The old magic the rest of them had forgotten or never knew, Ming Kai kept up here, he said, pointing to his head. I keep the magic up here. They loved him for that; they respected him. They came to Ming Kai for his miracles, brief moments of wonder punctuating the infinite dreariness of their lives. It was the water from the cave, of course, bowls of which he kept in his hut, to help soothe the souls of the people he had doomed to this dark, dank life.

  He never told them about the water. He wanted to believe that one day they would leave the Valley, and if he told them about the water he knew they never would. But a secret like that was too big to live inside just one man; he had to tell someone. So he told the old woman Liling, who in turn told Markus. Markus had yet to tell anybody. But then he had yet to know anyone he wanted to tell.

  Markus was the product of the marriage of Ming Kai’s grandson Norton and a white girl named Kelly. Kelly had long, stringy yellow hair and dark brown freckles, and had worked at the silk factory all of her life. Norton had fallen in love with Kelly years ago, when he worked in the factory, too. He was too shy to even talk to her in Roam, but when he saw her arrive in the Valley on the back of a cart his heart flew to her. Her face was blank, and she’d not bathed in weeks. But Norton knew the woman asleep inside her, and he was determined to awaken her. They were married two weeks later, in one of the first formal ceremonies of its kind in the Valley. On their wedding night he took her to his lean-to and she lay on a bed of straw and he made love to her. He made love to her often, but it took her ten years to become pregnant. This was Markus. She died in childbirth, and Norton died, too, not long after from a snakebite. Markus was raised by an old Chinese woman named Liling, whom he would know and forever think of as his mother.

  In spite of this, Markus thrived. He was slight, but strong. After Ming Kai’s replacement wife grew tired of taking care of her slowly dying husband, Markus took over, turning him in his bed of sticks and straw twice a day to guard against bedsores, and feeding him, and cleaning him with a wet rag dipped in the magic water. The tales Ming Kai told Markus! By the time he was twelve—nineteen years after Ming Kai had taken to his deathbed—Markus could recount the entirety of his great-grandfather’s life, year to year, month to month, almost day to day. Ming Kai’s early life in China, his adult life in Roam, the love and hatred (each in equal portions) that he had for Elijah McCallister—Markus knew this all so well he could have told the stories himself, verbatim. He could feel his great-grandfather’s grief and disappointment, that he had been given but one life and that this is the way it had gone for him, and his heart broke for him.

  But when Ming Kai told Markus about Roam, something inside the boy sparked. It was as if Markus were born with the idea of what the ideal world might look like, and Roam coincided with that idea perfectly. Markus dreamed of Roam—not as something created but as something discovered, a place that had existed forever, and when Ming Kai and Elijah McCallister built it they weren’t really making something new, they were carving out of the earth and the air the eternal design of Home. Roam had real streets, and on the streets there were shops, and on others there were houses, and in the houses were people who had hopes and dreams and a chance of making their dreams come true. They didn’t always come true, but at least they had a chance.

  The sad stories Ming Kai told were not about the past: they were about the future. They always began, When I go home. When I go home I will build another small cart, and I will sell what I make in the marketplace. Our home will be small, but dry, and warm. Perhaps I will have another child? Perhaps. I say this because with my wife there has always been such love. Such love. To walk again in the land I came from. I would swim there if I could, but I can’t. All I need is a boat. A small boat, enough for me and one other—you, Markus. You. You and me in a boat going home.

  Markus said, I will build you a boat.

  So Markus built a boat. Markus gathered the men of the Valley together and told them Ming Kai’s sad tale. He stood on the hillside, on a tree stump, looking down on them all; they stared at one another blankly, and kicked at the dirt with their feet. There was a routine in the Valley, and the routine had much to do with doing nothing. They lived without the will to live. Ming Kai had brought them here, to this place, and now Markus expected them to build him a boat? Why? The ocean wasn’t even within smelling distance.

  Markus saw all this in their faces.

  “He is a good man,” Markus told them. “He was knocked over the head and kidnapped, and was brought here against his will. You followed him to the Valley on your own! It’s not his fault you’re here. You could leave at any time. And yet you don’t. None of us do, because we’re scared that something even worse is on the other side of the mountain. The least we could do is build a boat for him.”

  “I will help you build your boat,” Chang Perkins said
. “But only if he takes me with him.”

  “You’re not from China,” Markus said. “Why would you want to go there?”

  “My mother is from China,” he said. “She says there’s no place better.”

  Edwin Corn said, “I’ll help, but I want to go, too. I’ve heard good things about China.”

  Huan Stone said the same thing.

  “Then we will build a boat big enough for Ming Kai, Chang, Huan, and Edwin, a boat big enough and strong enough for us all.”

  It took five years to build the boat. Five years as Markus and the three men cut and hewed and nailed and pounded and cursed and laughed. They made a clearing just fifteen yards from Ming Kai’s small hut and they worked on the boat every day, even if some days it was just a little, just a nail or two. Edwin Corn knew something about boatbuilding. He’d made a canoe once, many years before. He carved it out of a tree with a knife, a spoon, and a whole lot of muscle—but it worked. He and his father paddled around the Big Green Lake in it. Then he built a raft by tying together a bunch of tree limbs with silk, and the raft floated well. He put his dog on it for a practice run and the raft floated around the lake bend, out of sight, and when he finally found it lodged against the bank and a gnarled bunch of tree roots his dog was gone, and he never saw him again. Then he built an actual boat, with a hull and a bow and sails and everything—everything a boat needs to be a boat. It was a miniature boat; he couldn’t have even fit his dog in it, if he still had a dog. He could only fit a palmetto bug. So he put the palmetto bug on the boat—tied it there with some silk—and launched it into the green. It floated away, moved quite nicely across the water. He could imagine, he said, that if the lake were the ocean and everything else was relative to it, his boat would be about the right size. Then the palmetto bug escaped, and when it jumped into the water the boat capsized, a fish ate the bug, and the boat sank.

  These were some of the stories that were told while they were building the boat in the Valley.

  At the end of the day, Markus would report to Ming Kai on the progress they were making. Today we cut the mast from a giant tree, he might tell him. Or, We’re working on the hull, to make sure no water can get through the planks.

  Ming Kai nodded. Even with his eyes open he appeared to be dreaming of the boat. He was dreaming the boat into existence. There should be a bed on the boat, he said. And a kitchen. There will be, Markus said. I want a window in the hull, a place to watch the fish swim by. That we have already done, said Markus. I want a carving of a beautiful woman on the bow, he said. Of course! Markus said. Naked, Ming Kai said. With lovely breasts. With lovely breasts too big for my hands. Yes, Markus said. (He would leave that part to Huan.) And then Ming Kai would close his eyes, and sleep.

  Markus had no intention of finishing the boat. Whenever they were almost done Markus would find some problem that needed to be addressed—the bed wasn’t big enough, the masts insufficiently strong—and they would have to start over. Two years after they’d begun, Huan Stone died (he fell and hit his head on a rock) and Edwin Corn changed his mind, deciding he’d rather stay in the Valley than take a chance on the high seas. Chang Perkins just got tired. But by that time, four years into the project, Markus had learned enough to finish—or not to finish—the job himself.

  Finally, however, almost by accident he did. Markus hammered his last nail, smoothed his last plank, framed his last bulkhead. Though he had never seen a boat before, he could tell that this one could withstand the long journey to China, braving every wave and any harsh wind. The boat was perfect. With a piece of burnt wood he wrote the word HOME on the top of the hull, wiped his hands on his shirt, and walked the fifteen yards to tell Ming Kai the news: his boat was ready.

  But Ming Kai already knew. Ming Kai knew everything. He lay on his bed of sticks, a silk blanket pulled up to his chin, shivering. He had never been a big man; age and illness had made him even smaller. His replacement wife knelt beside him, spooning water into his mouth, letting it drip all over his body. She had loved Ming Kai, though only grudgingly, because she had never forgiven him for going first to the horse when her boy had broken his leg all those many years ago.

  When Ming Kai saw Markus, he smiled.

  “So you are done?” he asked him.

  “Finished,” he said. “And it’s very beautiful. I believe it is seaworthy. I believe it will get us to China.”

  “I never said China.”

  “What?”

  “I never said I wanted to go back to China. I said I wanted to go home. China is too far away in time to be my home anymore. I meant Roam.”

  “Oh,” Markus said. “Then why—”

  “A boy like you, he needs something to do with his hands. He needs to keep busy. And now look: you are a man!” This pleased Ming Kai. “Do me a small favor,” he said.

  “Anything.”

  “Make a world all your own. A new one. A world no one has seen before, no one has even imagined. Make it beautiful. Make it good.”

  “Only that?” Markus said, as if there were nothing easier.

  They both smiled, and then Ming Kai closed his eyes.

  His wife sighed. “It’s okay, Ming Kai. It’s okay. You said your peace. Now you can die.”

  That sounded like a good idea to Ming Kai. As he felt the life ebb from his body, he spent what he believed to be his last few moments thinking of his friend Elijah McCallister. It surprised him how much he missed that man, even after all the terrible things Elijah had done to him. He had kidnapped him, shipped him to a foreign country, lied to him repeatedly, and then, in a final act of friendship, tried to kill him. Ming Kai hated him, and yet he also loved him. Elijah McCallister was his father, his brother, even his wife. Not in all ways, of course, but in most. McCallister was his one true family. Together they could do anything, but apart they were doomed.

  “Die,” his replacement wife hissed. “Die and be with your precious horses!”

  He couldn’t believe she was still thinking about this, after all these years! As he lay here dying, this is all she could think of?

  But he smiled.

  “Not with the horses,” he said. “Not with the horses, no . . .”

  Ming Kai gasped for air, a breath he didn’t seem to exhale, and his eyes fluttered shut.

  “He’s dead,” his replacement wife said, not without a little sadness. “He’s dead.”

  A moment passed, that silent moment when the soul leaves the body. Or, rather, when it’s supposed to. “No,” Ming Kai said, eyes still closed. “Not dead. Sleeping so I can dream.”

  “Damn you,” said his replacement wife. “Damn damn damn you.”

  Markus left the hut and walked out into the night. He stood before the Home and knew that he would leave the Valley soon, just as Ming Kai had asked him to—not by boat, of course, but by foot. He knew who he was enough to know that he couldn’t become the man he wanted to, the man Ming Kai wanted him to, by staying here. This is what the building of the boat had taught him. It had kindled inside of him a fire to see the world. He stared at the beautiful woman on the bow. He had never seen a naked woman before, but it was her eyes, not her body, that claimed him. Her eyes reflected the moonlight, bright, open wide—brave—staring hard at what lay ahead.

  The dog found the body, not him. He heard it barking outside the bathroom window. Look! That’s what the bark sounded like. Look! Look what I’ve found!

  The dogs had been following him since the day he set out. One or two, then more. Now there were at least six or seven. They were hard to count because all of them were black, each and every one of them, head to tail, built like wolves but smaller, mixed breeds, wild. Not a one got close enough to touch, but they were always there, darting through the woods, appearing and then disappearing again. He thought they were waiting for a good time to eat him, so he stayed close to the road, hoping the possibility of passing cars and the long flatbed trucks of the lumberjacks might deter them—the strange logic of hope and youth. Walking by th
e road only made him wish he had a car. One day he thought he would, but for now he was on foot, and the dogs followed behind and around him on every step. Soon he stopped being scared, because the longer he went without being killed, the more he came to believe that’s not why they were there. They were there to save him.

  They had saved him twice so far.

  The first time the dogs saved him was three nights ago when Markus was lost in the woods. Night fell. He had nothing with him but a small sack made of silk, in which Liling had packed a blanket, a pound of dried beef, and a sour apple. He curled up beneath the overhang of a boulder, hoping he might be able to sleep and wake the next day knowing where he was. But he couldn’t sleep. The night made too many sounds. It was as if he could hear the trees growing, their wooden veins straining against the bark, and ghosts pushing through the branches. He felt something crawling up his leg and he had to take his pants off to flush it out. Lying beneath a boulder with no pants on, brushing off whatever happened to be crawling up his leg, he could not imagine how life could be much worse.

  That’s when the bear came.

  He knew about bears, of course. He had seen many in his life: there were plenty in the Valley. But this one was like nothing he’d ever heard before: each step fell like a bag of rocks, crushing everything beneath it with a predatory ease, like a hint—a promise—of what was going to happen to Markus when it found out exactly where he was. Getting eaten was not the worst that could happen, though: getting half-eaten and living, living somehow with only half your body—that would be the worst.

  He slowly stepped away from the rock under which he was hiding, pants-less, and saw the night was not as dark as he had imagined, not black at all, but blue. With the low moon and high stars, everything around him was almost like the day, just turned inside out. He could see everything. He could see the shadow of the bear on one side of the rise. He could see its eyes just as its eyes saw him. He thought, This is what it’s like to know you’re about to die.