Greenmantle

  “Want a toke?” she asked, offering it to him.

  “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

  “We,” Sherry announced, “have got the munchies. What do you say to pizza?”

  Howie’s little fantasy of the two women both going down on him hadn’t come about, but Sherry kept giving him considering glances like she was interested in him. It didn’t make sense to Howie—women never wanted him unless they were going to get something out of it—but he sure wasn’t going to complain if something started. He found himself wishing that Lisa would make herself scarce.

  “Pizza?” he said. “Sounds good.”

  “So what don’t you want on yours?” Sherry asked him.

  “The works.”

  Sherry giggled. “Right, so you don’t want anything on yours.”

  “No, no. I meant—”

  Howie never finished as the two of them exploded with laughter. Sherry and Lisa had been smoking all afternoon and were both flying high. Howie had smoked about one joint for every three of theirs—enough to keep a buzz on and dull the ache from his shoulder, but not too much so that Earl would come back and find him blasted. He grinned at the women now and took a long toke, holding the marijuana smoke deep in his lungs. Fuck Earl. He’d waited around for Earl long enough.

  “Okay,” Sherry said when she caught her breath. “The works for you, Howie.” She started to giggle again but held it in.

  “I’ve got it,” Lisa said. “We’ll get one large—mushrooms and green peppers on half, the other half with the works—and one small ham and pineapple.” She retrieved her joint from Howie. “Anybody want to come along for the ride?”

  Howie glanced at Sherry. She gave him a look that made him feel a little weak-kneed, so he shook his head.

  “Okay. I’ll be back in half hour or so. Don’t get into trouble, kids.”

  When Lisa was gone, Sherry knelt down beside Howie’s deck chair. “You’re a funny kind of a guy, Howie,” she said.

  He cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah?”

  “Mmmm. You’re quiet—but nice quiet, not creepy quiet, you know? How’s your shoulder?”

  “It’s okay. Pretty good, considering.”

  She leaned forward, resting her arms on the chair by his leg. “You know what I think would be really therapeutic?” she asked. She reached out with one hand and ran her fingers along his thigh. Even through his jeans he could feel each individual nail. “Can’t you even guess?”

  Howie shook his head. He didn’t want to break the spell. Christ, he thought. This can’t be happening to me.

  “Well, speaking as your personal doctor,” Sherry said, “I think…” She paused and started to pull down his zipper, slipping her hand in to grasp his hardening penis. “I think you need a little therapeutic loving—just to give you back your will to live. What do you think?”

  Howie swallowed and nodded.

  “Of course,” Sherry said as she lowered her head, “this means you’re going to owe me, and I’ll warn you right now, I always collect on my debts….”

  Howie leaned back in the deck chair. Maybe she was feeling sorry for him, maybe she liked him, maybe she was just high—he didn’t care which. He just couldn’t believe this was happening. He didn’t want it to ever stop.

  * * *

  Two empty pizza boxes lay on the ground. Nursing beers and sharing a joint, the three of them watched the dusk settle on Calabogie Lake. Howie was just flying. He kept glancing at Sherry, remembering, then looking away. The twilight reminded him of last night, chasing Earl’s kid and the stag and everything, but mostly the music.

  “The guy who owns this place,” he began.

  “Steve?”

  “Yeah, Steve. When’s he coming back?”

  “I don’t think he’s coming back tonight,” Sherry said, looking to Lisa for confirmation.

  Lisa shook her head. “He’s got something up tonight—him and Max. Pam said she might be coming by later with Eric. He’s got some dynamite weed that he scored off of Johnnie Too-Bad—do you know him? He’s one of those Rastamen with the snakey hair.”

  “I know a couple of those guys in T.O.,” Howie said. “But I was thinking, do you girls want to go for a drive?”

  Lisa smiled. “To see your big buck deer?”

  “How’d you know that I was talking about that?”

  “I know all and see all,” Lisa replied. Sherry started humming the theme to The Twilight Zone and all three of them laughed.

  “But I’m serious,” Howie said after a few moments. “I don’t know if we’ll see the buck—Christ, I don’t know if I want to see that sucker again—but that music. It was something. It was really something.”

  Sherry and Lisa exchanged glances.

  “Why not?” Sherry said.

  Lisa grinned. “Sure. Why not? It’ll be good for a laugh.”

  A half hour later they were on the road to Lanark, Howie concentrating on where to turn off. He was high, but he was pretty sure he could find the place again. They hit a bump that he felt in his shoulder and he reached for the joint that was smoldering between Sherry’s fingers. A couple more tokes wouldn’t hurt at all. They missed the turnoff and ended up in Lanark village. It was almost full night by the time they retraced their route, coming from the south this time so that Howie could recognize the landmarks.

  “This is it,” he said. “Turn here.” He smiled at Sherry sitting beside him. “You’re going to love this,” he added.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Lisa said with mock seriousness, but Sherry just smiled back at him.

  Christ, Howie thought. He didn’t know what he was doing, but he was sure doing it right, whatever the hell it was.

  11

  As dusk drew its veil across the day, Lewis led his guests outside. None of them spoke. Mosquitos whined by their ears. The twilight air was heavy with the scent of meadow and forest. The chorus of frogs and crickets was occasionally punctuated by the strident whirring of a June bug.

  Valenti began to fidget as it grew darker. He leaned heavily on his cane, wondering again about whether they should go through with this. The coming of night had unsettled something in his soul—an anticipation of the piping, but also a vague uneasiness as to what might be revealed tonight.

  When he thought about what Lewis had said—how the mystery reflected what you brought to it—his discomfort grew. Whatever it was going to find inside him, wasn’t going to be peaceful. He’d been through too much. He had too much crap kicking around inside him. The scars from his years in the fratellanza weren’t healed yet. They might never be healed. Not when he had to live with an armory in his home and an automatic in his jacket pocket.

  He touched the gun’s cold metal, then withdrew his hand from his pocket. He wished he hadn’t brought it, but he was comforted by its presence all the same.

  “It’s an old stone,” Lewis said suddenly. His voice was soft, but it startled them all in the quiet of the dusk. “It’s been here for longer than we’ve lived in this land, maybe longer than the Native Peoples have been here, too. It’s unlike any stone in the area. What it’s doing here, not even Ackerly Perkin knew. Maybe the Vikings—whom the historians now admit were here before Columbus—maybe they raised it to Thor or Odin. Maybe it was done by Celts. They were supposed to be here around that time too. Or maybe it was raised by people who came before either of them—came before the Native Peoples as well. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.”

  “Another mystery,” Bannon said.

  Lewis nodded. “Or part of the same one.”

  “The Indians had stone works,” Ali said. “I’ve read about them—big stone circles and standing stones.”

  “But not this far north,” Bannon said. “And it still hasn’t been proven that they actually constructed them.”

  Both Ali and Valenti regarded him with new consideration. They didn’t know much about him, Valenti thought.

  “That’s true,” Lewis said. “But this stone is different. You’ll
see.”

  Before they could talk any more about it, there was movement on the track leading up to the stone. A wolfish-looking dog gambolled by, trotting up the path, pausing to smell something before racing back to make sure that its master was following, then taking off again. Lewis’s guests studied the boy that followed the dog. In the growing darkness they could only make out general details. He was plump-faced with an unruly thatch of hair. He ambled by them, clearly in no hurry to get to wherever it was that he was going. When he glanced at the four of them standing in front of Lewis’s cabin, Ali nudged Valenti with her elbow.

  “That’s the boy from the garden,” she whispered.

  Valenti nodded. He’d recognized him as well.

  “His name is Tommy Duffin,” Lewis said.

  “Tommy…?” Ali frowned. “You mean the one who plays the pipes?”

  When Lewis nodded, she tried to get a better look at the boy, but he was already too far up the track. He didn’t seem much older than she was, Ali thought. And from what she remembered of him earlier this afternoon, he didn’t seem to be exactly the brightest of people. Or at least not the friendliest. He was the one that made the uncanny music?

  “He doesn’t…you know…” Ali hesitated, not really knowing how to say what she wanted without it coming out all wrong.

  “He doesn’t seem like much,” Lewis said for her. “I know. It’s a curious thing. I’ve never understood why it’s always been one of the Duffins who’s been the piper. It’s just another facet of the—” he glanced at Bannon “—mystery, I suppose. But Tommy changes when he begins to lip the reeds. His eyes lose their vacant look, his features seem to become thinner, more intense. It’s something like the village itself. There’s something about it…some air that keeps strangers away. They might be walking along a direct line that would take them straight through New Wolding, but somehow their feet are led astray and they never quite reach us.”

  “We got here,” Valenti said.

  “Ah, yes. But you’ve heard the music.”

  “What about aerial photography?” Bannon asked.

  Lewis looked confused.

  “Photographs,” Bannon explained. “Taken from airplanes.” He pointed to the sky. “When they were photographing this area for regional maps, the village should have shown up in the photographs, but according to Tony, New Wolding’s not marked on any maps that the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources made from those pictures.”

  Lewis nodded, understanding now. “I can’t explain that,” he said. “There’s so much that’s not clear that I can’t even begin to…”

  His voice trailed off as a liquid spill of reed-pipe music came gliding across the quiet night air. It touched each of them with its plain and simple beauty. Lewis smiled, his heart opening to welcome an old friend, but his guests stood transfixed. Ali and Valenti had never heard it so clear and pure. It resonated inside them, waking yearnings and needs that they couldn’t explain. Bannon, virgin to the music’s spell, lifted his head, nostrils widening as though to take the music in with every sense he had.

  “Madonna mia,” Valenti breathed. “It…it’s…” But he had no words to describe what he heard or what he felt.

  The villagers were walking by Lewis’s cabin now, heading for the stone where Tommy played. They were old and middle-aged for the most part, with a few teenagers in their ranks, but no young children. As a woman in her sixties paused at the end of Lewis’s path, the four of them joined her and took up the rear of the ragged procession.

  “Who are your friends, Lewis?” Lily asked.

  Lewis introduced them, but they were too entranced by the music, by its closeness and clarity, to do more than simply nod. Lily smiled and took Ali’s hand.

  “Is this your first time to the stone?” she asked.

  Ali nodded.

  “Well, you’ll have to dance with me—will you do that?”

  Ali glanced at Valenti and Bannon, but they were both looking ahead. She felt the tug of the music too, and was eager to reach its source, but she nodded again to the woman holding her hand.

  “I…I think I’d like to try,” she said shyly.

  “Oh, you’ll do very well,” Lily told her. “Won’t she, Lewis?”

  “I gather she will,” Lewis replied.

  Mally was perched high in a tree overlooking the glade and its stone as the villagers trickled in. She’d arrived before anyone. She’d watched Tommy come, slow-footed and heavy-jowled, saw him put the reeds to his lips, watched him change as he woke the music from them. A smile glowed deep in her eyes at the sound of the reed pipes. Oh, it was good and strong tonight, the music. Strong enough to call up the mystery—maybe strong enough to keep the hounds at bay.

  She settled more comfortably in her perch as the villagers continued to arrive. Tommy quickened the music so that it went from a slow air into a dance tune, and then Kate and Holly Skegland were swaying back and forth on the damp grass. Martin Tweedy soon joined them, but Mally no longer watched them. Her gaze was now on Lily and Lewis, and the three outsiders they were bringing to the glade.

  “’Lo, Ali,” Mally said as she saw the teenager step onto the grass, her voice so soft that only she herself could hear it.

  Lily was holding Ali’s hand, drawing her out toward the dancers. The two men stood with Lewis watching the piper and the moving figures. Mally nodded to herself as she judged the effect the music was having on Bannon. There wasn’t exactly a fire in him—not like there was in the other two—but maybe something better. A deep stillness.

  Old Hornie liked that. He needed the fires—like the bonefires on the hilltops on the merry eve and midsummer night and ghost night—but he liked the quiet too. You could hear things in the quiet. The drumming of hooves and the whisper of the music. The dawn chorus when the feather-throated sang his praise.

  Mally smiled. She wanted to go down and dance, especially with Ali, but she wanted to see their faces when the stag came, too. So she stayed in her perch, fidgeting and eager, waiting, smelling the air, watching their faces.

  * * *

  It was the stone that drew Bannon’s gaze first—the dark bulk of it lifting skyward, moonlight on quartz veins that spiralled up and down its length like ancient runes. Then he saw the boy. Tommy was transformed—physically transformed. He wasn’t the same boy at all as the one Bannon remembered seeing in the garden earlier that day.

  Bannon hadn’t known what to expect—either with the music, or what would take place at this stone. It had all sounded too spacey, too crazy. But now, hearing it, feeling the sense of mystery that deepened in this glade…he could understand what it was that neither Tony nor Ali nor the old man had been able to explain to him before.

  It was magic, plain and simple.

  That such music could come from that backwoods hick of a boy. That this place could remain hidden from the world. That there might even be some enormous buck that was a manifestation of…of whatever it was that set the heart apart from the actions of the body…

  It was magic.

  Bannon could feel a grin stretching his face. He understood why the villagers stayed on, and, in some way, why Lewis Datchery felt it was so important to know just what it was that happened when the music sounded. But for himself, it seemed more important to just go with the flow. Not to question, but to experience.

  He had questioned. He had scoffed. But he knew now that those who questioned, those who took it all apart trying to find out what it was and what made it tick…they lost out in the end. The magic would always elude them. The mystery would only deepen. Because if it lost its secret, it just wouldn’t be the mystery anymore. It would rob the experience of its potency. All you’d have left would be dry dust and the voices of men discussing what it was all about. The quiet, the music, the magic would be gone.

  * * *

  Valenti watched Ali dance, feeling like a doting father seeing his firstborn take her first step. A rush of affection went through him. In his mind’s eye, he added
Ali’s mother to the scene. He imagined her standing here beside him, holding his hand maybe, the two of them watching Ali move to the music. Or maybe Frankie would dance with her daughter. Maybe she’d look at him from among the dancers, her gold hair spilling down in tangles and the music draining away all her worries and fears, making her strong like she really was, even if she wasn’t ready to believe that yet. Maybe if she could hear this she’d believe it. Then he shook his head.

  Yeah, he thought. She’d believe it. But it’d never be him with her. He had too much unfinished business hanging over his head and what the hell would someone like her want with the kind of guy he was anyway? She’d already gone through all that shit with Earl Shaw, fercrissakes.

  He was surprised at how much that hurt—that he felt like that about Frankie in the first place, that it hurt so much that there was never going to be anything between them.

  What kind of a guy made a living the way he had anyway? And for what? As soon as they had no more use for you, the pezzi di merda just dumped you. Didn’t matter how loyal you’d been. Didn’t matter what kind of shit you’d done for them.

  The music played, a jiglike tune that only exaggerated his regret. Not for what had been, but for what might have been. For all the things he’d lost because of the business he’d been born into. He’d trade all that shit—the money, the respect, everything—just to have a kid like Ali to call his own. A woman like her mother to call his wife. He’d work as a fucking ditch-digger, fercrissakes, he didn’t care.

  But it was too late. He’d been what he’d been and now the debts were being called in. The Magaddinos were going to get him, one way or another. Either they’d kill him or they’d keep him boxed up in a life where he was always looking over his shoulder, where he could never get close to anyone because he’d never know when the bastardi would be there just waiting to get him.