“Sure,” Easy said. “Of course we need you. Glad to have you back!” He cuffed the back of my head and I swiped at his hip and missed. Little Jon pulled out the other rung, and we chased the goats across the square out along the road, and then up the meadow. Just like before. No, not just.
Easy said it first, when the first warmth pried under the dawn chill. “It’s not just like before, Lobey. You’ve lost something.”
I struck a dew shower from low willow fronds and wet my face and shoulders. “My appetite,” I said. “And maybe a couple of pounds.”
“It isn’t your appetite,” Little Jon said, coming back from a tree stump. “It’s something different.”
“Different?” I repeated. “Say, Easy, Little Jon, how am I different?”
“Huh?” Little Jon asked. He flung a stick at a goat to get its attention. Missed. I picked up a small stone that happened underfoot. Hit it. The goat turned blue eyes on me and galumphed over to see why, got interested in something else halfway over and tried to eat it. “You got big feet,” Little Jon said.
“Naw. Not that,” I said. “La Dire had noticed something different about me that’s important; something different about me the same way there was about . . . Friza.”
“You make music,” Easy said.
I looked at the perforated blade. “Naw,” I said. “I don’t think it’s that. I could teach you to play. That’s another sort of being different than she’s looking for. I think.”
Late that afternoon we brought the goats back. Easy invited me to eat and I got some of my ham and we attacked Little Jon’s cache of fruit. “You want to cook?”
“Naw,” I said.
So Easy walked down to the corner of the power-shack and called towards the square, “Hey, who wants to cook dinner for three hard-working gentlemen who can supply food, entertainment, bright conversation—No, you cooked dinner for me once before. Now don’t push, girls! Not you either. Whoever taught you how to season? Uh-uh, I remember you, Strychnine Lizzy. O.K. Yeah, you. Come on.”
He came back with a cute, bald girl. I’d seen her around but she’d just come to the village. I’d never talked to her and I didn’t know her name. “This is Little Jon, Lobey, and I’m Easy. What’s your name again?”
“Call me Nativia.”
No, I’d never talked to her before. A shame that situation had gone on for twenty-three years. Her voice didn’t come from her larynx. I don’t think she had one. The sound began a whole lot further down and whispered as out from a cave with bells.
“You can call me anything you like,” I said, “as much as you want.”
She laughed, and it sounded among the bells. “Where’s the food and let’s find a fireplace.”
We found a circle of rocks down by the stream. We were going to get cookery from the compound but Nativia had a large skillet of her own so all we had to borrow were cinnamon and salt.
“Come on,” Little Jon said when he came back from the water’s edge. “Lobey, you gotta be entertaining. We’ll converse.”
“Now, hey—” Then I said to myself Aw, so what, lay down on my back, and began to play my machete. She liked that because she kept smiling at me as she worked.
“Don’t you got no children?” Easy asked.
Nativia was greasing the skillet with a lump of ham fat.
“One in the kage down at Live Briar. Two with a man in Ko.”
“You travel a lot, yeah?” Little Jon asked.
I played a slower tune that came far away, and she smiled at me as she dumped diced meat from a palm frond into the pan. Fat danced on the hot metal.
“I travel.” The smile and the wind and the mockery in her voice were delightful.
“You should find a man who travels too,” Easy suggested. He has a lot of homey type advice for everybody. Gets on my nerves sometimes.
Nativia shrugged. “Did once. We could never agree what direction to go in. It’s his kid in the kage. Guy’s name was Lo Angel. A beautiful man. He could just never make up his mind where he wanted to go. And when did, it was never where I wanted. No . . .” She pushed the browning meat across the crackling bottom. “I like good, stable, settled men who’ll be there when I get back.”
I began to play an old hymn—Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home. I’d learned it from a 45 when I was a kid. Nativia knew it too because she laughed in the middle of slicing a peach.
“That’s me,” she said. “Bill La Bailey. That’s the nickname Lo Angel gave me.”
She formed the meat into a ring around the edge of the pan. The nuts and vegetables went in now with a little salt water, and the cover clanked on.
“How far have you traveled?” I asked, laying my knife on my stomach and stretching. Overhead, behind maple leaves, the sky was injured in the west with sunset, shadowed by east and night. “I’m going to travel soon. I want to know where there is to go.”
She pushed the fruit on to one end of the frond. “I once went as far as the City. And I’ve even been underground to explore the source-cave.”
Easy and Little Jon got very quiet.
“That’s some traveling,” I said. “La Dire says I have to travel because I’m different.”
Nativia nodded. “That’s why Lo Angel was traveling,” she said, pushing back the lid again. Pungent steam ballooned and dispersed. My mouth got wet. “Most of the ones moving were different. He always said I was different too, but he would never tell me how.” She pushed the vegetables into a ring against the meat and filled the center with cut fruit. Cinnamon now over the whole thing. Some of the powdered spice caught the flame that tongued the pan’s rim and sparks bloomed. On went the cover.
“Yeah,” I said. “La Dire won’t tell me either.”
Nativia looked surprised. “You mean you don’t know?”
I shook my head.
“Oh, but you can—” She stopped. “La Dire is one of this town’s elders, isn’t she?”
“That’s right.”
“Maybe she’s got a reason not to tell you. I talked to her just a little while the other day; she’s a woman of great wisdom.”
“Yeah,” I said, rolling on my side. “Come on, if you know, tell me.”
Nativia looked confused. “Well, first you tell me. I mean what did La Dire say?”
“She said I would have to go on a journey, to kill whatever killed Friza.”
“Friza?”
“Friza was different, too.” I began to tell her the story. A minute into it, Easy burped, pounded his chest, and complained about being hungry. He obviously didn’t like the subject. Little Jon had to get up and when he wandered off into the bushes, Easy went after him, grunting, “Call me when it’s finished. Dinner, I mean.”
But Nativia listened closely and then asked some questions about Friza’s death. When I told her about having to take a trip with Le Dorik, she nodded. “Well, it makes a lot more sense now.”
“It does?”
She nodded again. “Hey, you guys, dinner’s . . . ready?”
“Then can’t you tell me . . . ?”
She shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand. I’ve done a lot more traveling than you. It’s just that a lot of different people have died recently, like Friza died. Two down at Live Briar. And I’ve heard of three more in the past year. Something is going to have to be done. It might as well get started here.” She pushed the cover off the pan again: more steam.
Easy and Little Jon, who had been walking back up the stream, began to run.
“Elvis Presley!” Little Jon breathed. “Does that smell good!” He hunkered down by the fire, dribbling.
Easy’s adenoids began to rattle. When a cat does it, it’s purring.
I wanted to ask more, but I didn’t want to annoy Easy and Little Jon; I guess I had acted bad with them, and they were pretty nice about it as long as I let it lie.
A frond full of ham, vegetables, and spiced fruit made me stop thinking about anything except what wasn’t in my belly, and I learn
ed that a good deal of my metaphysical melancholia was hunger. Always is.
More conversation, more food, more entertainment. We went to sleep right there by the stream, stretched on the ferns. Towards midnight when it got chilly we rolled into a pile. About an hour before dawn I woke.
I pulled my head from Easy’s armpit (and Nativia’s bald head moved immediately to take its place) and stood up in the starry dark. Little Jon’s head gleamed at my feet. So did my blade. He was using it for a pillow. I slipped it gently from under his cheek. He snorted, scratched himself, was still. I started back through the trees in the direction of the kage.
Once I looked up at the branches, at the wires that ran from the power-shack to the fence. The black lines overhead, or the sound of the stream, or memory took me. Halfway, I started playing. Someone began to whistle along with me. I stopped. The whistle didn’t.
Where is he then? In a song? Jean Genet, The Screens
God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son.”
Abe said, “God, you must be puttin’ me on!”
Bob Dylan, “Highway 61 Revisited”
Love is something which dies and when dead it rots and becomes soil for a new love . . . Thus in reality there is no death in love.
Par Lagerkvist, The Dwarf
“Le Dorik?” I said. “Dorik?”
“Hi,” came a voice from the dark. “Lobey?”
“Lo Lobey,” I said. “Where are you?”
“Just inside the kage.”
“Oh. What’s the smell?”
“Whitey,” Dorik said. “Easy’s brother. He died. I’m digging a grave. You remember Easy’s brother—”
“I remember,” I said. “I saw him by the fence yesterday. He looked pretty sick.”
“That kind never last long. Come in and help me dig.”
“The fence . . .”
“It’s off. Climb over.”
“I don’t like to go in the kage,” I said.
“You never used to mind sneaking in here when we were kids. Come on, I’ve got to move this rock. Lend me a foot.”
“That was when we were kids,” I said. “We did a lot of things when we were kids we don’t have to do now. It’s your job. You dig.”
“Friza used to come in here and help me, tell me all about you.”
“Friza used to . . .” Then I said, “Tell?”
“Well, some of us could understand her.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Some of us could.”
I grabbed the wire mesh near the post but didn’t start climbing.
“Actually,” Dorik said, “I was always sort of sad you never came around. We used to have fun. I’m glad Friza didn’t feel the way you did. We used to—”
“—to do a lot of things, Dorik. Yeah, I know. Look, nobody ever bothered to tell me you weren’t a girl till I was fourteen, Dorik. If I hurt you, I’m sorry.”
“You did. But I’m not. Nobody ever did get around to telling Friza I wasn’t a boy. Which I’m sort of glad of. I don’t think she would have taken it the same way you did, even so.”
“She came here a lot?”
“All the time she wasn’t with you.”
I sprang over the wire, swung over the top, and dropped to the other side. “Where’s that damn rock you’re trying to move?”
“Here—”
“Don’t touch me,” I said. “Just show me.”
“Here,” Dorik repeated in the darkness.
I grabbed the edge of the stone shelved in the dirt. Roots broke, dirt whispered down, and I rolled the stone out.
“How’s the kid, by the way?” I asked.
I had to. And damn, Dorik, why were the next words the ones I was hurting with hoping I wouldn’t hear?
“Which one?”
There was a shovel by the post. I jammed it into the grave. Damn Le Dorik.
“Mine and Friza’s,” Dorik went on after a moment, “will probably be up for review by the doctors in another year. Needs a lot of special training, but she’s pretty functional. Probably will never have a La, but at least she won’t have to be in here.”
“That’s not the kid I meant.” The shovel clanged on another rock.
“You’re not asking about the one that’s all mine.” There were two or three pieces of ice in that sentence. Dorik flicked them at me, much on purpose. “You mean yours and mine.” As if you didn’t know, you androgynous bastard. “He’s in here for life, but he’s happy. Want to go see him—”
“No.” Three more shovelsful of dirt. “Let’s bury Whitey and get out of here.”
“Where are we going?”
“La Dire, she said you and me have to take a trip together to destroy what killed Friza.”
“Oh,” Dorik said. “Yes.” Dorik went over to the fence, bent down. “Help me.”
We picked up the bloated, rubbery corpse and carried it to the hole. It rolled over the edge, thumping.
“You were supposed to wait till I came for you,” Dorik said.
“Yeah. But I can’t wait. I want to go now.”
“If I’m going with you, you’re waiting.”
“Why?”
“Look, Lobey,” Dorik said, “I’m kage-keeper and I got a kage to keep.”
“I don’t care if everything in that kage mildews and rots. I want to get out and get going!”
“I’ve got to train a new keeper, check over the education facilities, make sure of the food inventories and special diets, last minute shelter maintenance—”
“Damn it, Dorik, come on.”
“Lobey, I’ve got three kids in here. One’s yours, one belongs to a girl you loved. And one’s all mine. Two of them, if they’re loved and taken care of and given a lot of time and patience may someday come out.”
“Two of them, yeah?” My breath suddenly got lost in my chest and didn’t seem to be doing any good. “But not mine. I’m going.”
“Lobey!”
I stopped, straddling the fence.
“Look, Lobey, this is the real world you’re living in. It’s come from something; it’s going to something: it’s changing. But it’s got right and wrong, a way to behave and a way not to. You never wanted to accept that, even when you were a kid, but until you do, you won’t be very happy.”
“You’re talking about me when I was fourteen,” I said.
“I’m talking about you now. Friza told me a lot—”
I jumped over the fence and started through the trees.
“Lobey!”
“What?” I kept walking.
“You’re scared of me.”
“No.”
“I’ll show you—”
“You’re pretty good at showing people things in the dark, aren’t you? That’s how you’re different, huh?” I called over my shoulder. I crossed the stream and started up the rocks, mad as all Elvis. I didn’t go towards the meadow, but around towards the steeper places, slapping leaves and flipping twigs as I barreled through the dark. Then I heard somebody come on through the shadow, whistling.
There are none here except madmen; and a few there are who know this world, and who know that he who tries to act in the ways of others never does anything, because men never have the same opinions. These do not know that he who is thought wise by day will never be held crazy by night.
Niccolo Machiavelli, “Letter to Francesco Vittori”
Experience reveals to him in every object, in every event, the presence of something else.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr
I stopped. The sound of dry leaves under feet, ferns by a shoulder, approached me from behind, stopped. The hills’ rim had begun to gray.
“Lobey?”
“You changed your mind about coming?”
A sigh. “Yes.”
“Come on, then.” We started walking. “Why?”
“Something happened.”
Dorik didn’t say what. I didn’t ask.
“Dorik,” I said a little later, “I feel something towards you
very close to hate. It’s as close to hate as what I felt for Friza was close to love.”
“Neither’s close enough to worry about now. You’re too self- centered, Lobey. I hope you grow up.”
“And you’re going to show me how?” I asked. “In the dark?”
“I’m showing you now.”
Morning, while we walked, leaked up vermilion. With light, my eyes grew surprisingly heavy, stones in my head. “You’ve been working all night,” I volunteered. “I’ve only had a few hours sleep myself. Why don’t we lie down for a few hours?”
“Wait till it gets light enough so you know I’m here.” Which was an odd answer. Dorik was a grayed silhouette beside me now.
When there was enough red in the east and the rest of the sky was at least blue, I started looking for a place to fall out. I was exhausted and every time I turned to look at the sun, the world swam with tears of fatigue.
“Here,” Dorik said. We’d reached a small stone hollow by the cliff’s base. I dropped into it, Dorik too. We lay with the blade between us. I remember a moment of gold light along the arm and back curved towards me before I slept.
I touched the hand touching my face, held it still enough to open my eyes under it. Lids snapped back. “Dorik—?”
Nativia stared down at me.
My fingers intertwined with hers, hammocked by her webs. She looked frightened, and her breath through spread lips stopped my own. “Easy!” she called up the slope. “Little Jon! Here he is!”
I sat up. “Where’d Dorik go . . . ?”
Easy came loping into sight and Little Jon ran after.
“La Dire,” Easy said. “La Dire wants to see you . . . before you go. She and Lo Hawk have to talk to you.”
“Hey, did anybody see Le Dorik around here? Odd thing to run off—”
Then I saw this expression cracking through Little Jon’s miniature features like faults in black rock. “Le Dorik’s dead,” Little Jon said; “that’s what they wanted to tell you.”
“Huh?”
“Before sunup, just inside the kage,” Easy said. “He was lying by the grave for my brother, Whitey. Remember my brother—”