“I guess. But this is all just memorizing dates and stuff like that. I’m probably going to flunk it ’cause I just can’t remember anything.”
“A smart kid like you? You’ll do okay.”
If this were New York, he thought, and he hadn’t lost his place in the fratellanza, she wouldn’t have a thing to worry about. He’d just have a talk with her teacher and if her teacher had any smarts, he’d pass her. Who knows? Maybe the teacher would need a favor someday. It never hurt to have connections. But this wasn’t New York.
“What are you doing?” Ali asked.
“It’s the rabbits,” Valenti explained. “Okay, I like ’em, but I’m trying to grow some produce here and I don’t like rabbits so much that I want to feed ’em all summer and have nothing for myself, you know what I mean? So I’m building the fence to keep ’em out. Maybe I’ll put a little sign on it—you know how to write rabbit?”
“Give me a break.”
“Okay. So maybe that’s not such a good idea.” He shrugged. “How do you like your new house?”
“Oh, it’s great. Mom and them put in a floor-to-ceiling bookcase on one wall of my room and I’ve got all my books in it—you should see it.”
“Maybe I will—but with a chaperone. You got to watch who you invite into your bedroom, kid. They might not all be gentlemen like me.”
“I’m not worried about you.”
Valenti regarded her seriously. “That’s good,” he said. “Because I like you and I think we can be friends, but we don’t want people getting the wrong idea or anything. Five, six years from now, though—maybe we got a problem.” He grinned when Ali blushed. “So you like books?” he asked, changing the subject. “What kind of things do you read about?”
“Oh, all kinds. Right now I’m reading this book by Parke Godwin that’s—”
“What kind of a name is that, ‘Parke’?”
“I don’t know. What kind of a name is Tony?”
“It’s Italian.”
“No kidding?” Ali grinned. “Anyway, it’s a really good book. It’s all about Guinevere and what happened to her after Arthur died. See, everyone’s against her and she ends up getting captured by these Saxons…”
Valenti went back to working on the fence, listening to her and smiling, feeling good. The work went more quickly with her helping. When she finished describing Godwin’s Beloved Exile up to where she’d read so far, she went on to talk about other favorite authors. Diana Wynne Jones. Tony Hillerman. Caitlin Midhir.
“Maybe you should bring one of those up, next time you come,” Valenti said when she mentioned her Tom Brown Jr. field guides. “I’d like to know some more about what we got out there in the woods, you know?”
Ali nodded, then pointed to the gap between the ground and the bottom of the chicken wire they were attaching to the wood frame of the fence. “They’re still going to get in.”
“Only the smart ones,” Valenti said. “I don’t mind the smart ones coming, I just don’t want to feed the whole forest.”
Ali laughed. “Tony?” she asked when there was a moment’s pause in the hammering. “Remember you told me about those kids that come joyriding up here?”
“Sure. What about ’em?”
“Well, what is it that they do?”
Valenti put the hammer down and looked at her. “What happened?” he asked. “Somebody been bothering you?”
“Not exactly. It’s just that I woke up early yesterday morning and when I looked out the window, I thought I saw someone hiding in the trees out back of our place, watching the house.”
“What kind of someone?”
“I couldn’t really tell. I’m not even sure if I really saw anything or not. I didn’t tell my mom because she’s always worrying about something or other, and I didn’t know if this was worth bothering about in the first place. I don’t want to get anybody into trouble, but it’s a little creepy, don’t you think—having someone spying on you?”
Valenti nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, that’s not so good. But it doesn’t sound like the joyriders. They just come up here Friday or Saturday night, rev their engines a lot, make some noise. You don’t see ’em much during the week.”
“Well, who do you think it is that’s watching our house?”
“I don’t know. When I first moved here I used to think there was something or someone out there watching me.”
“And now?”
Valenti thought of the distant piping, but he didn’t think he was ready to talk about it yet. “Now I think it was just some animal, like a fox or something. Say, I’m getting pretty thirsty. How about you? You want a Coke?”
“Maybe some more lemonade?”
“You got it.”
He led the way to the house, going to the back door this time. There were a couple of deck chairs by the door and Ali sat in one, turning it so that the sun wasn’t in her eyes. She noticed he had a satellite dish on the side of the house that was hidden from the road and wondered if she could talk her mother into getting one. Although it was only a few days since they’d moved, Ali was already missing all the great late-night movies that were on cable. Tony came back with her lemonade and a beer for himself and sat down in the other chair, favoring his leg.
“What did happen to your leg?” Ali asked. A look passed across his face that she couldn’t decipher and she wondered if she’d stepped out of line. “You don’t mind me asking, do you?”
“What?” Valenti asked, then he shook his head. “No, no. I was just thinking.”
* * *
He’d passed out when Mario had hoisted him up and carried him from the villa. The next thing he knew they were on a fishing boat, bound for the north coast of Africa. His shoulder wound was clean. The bullet had just clipped muscle and gone right through. But the other bullet had shattered a bone in his leg.
“We had a doc look you over,” Mario said, “and he did what he could, but you probably won’t be walking so straight no more, Tony.”
“What day is this?”
“Two days since they hit my place. We’ve been moving around some.”
“Fercrissakes! I’ve been out two days?”
Mario laid a hand on his chest and pushed him back on the rough bunk. “Take it easy, Tony. We’re gonna be okay. I’ve got a connection in Tunisia and everything’s set up. We’ll be dropped outside of Moknine where a truck’s gonna meet us and take us up to Tunis. We’ve got a place there in a hotel where we’ll be comped in style—owner of the place owes me a favor. No one’s gonna bother us, you hear what I’m saying? We’ll stay low there for a couple of months, then I go home and you go wherever.”
“You can’t go back, Mario.”
“What’s the problem? A voice on the phone tells me to hit a man that’s like my own son? I gotta do what some nobody on a phone tells me to do? Those people got a problem, that’s their problem. They can send out their own talent, but me, I’m not in the business no more, capito? No one’s gonna bother me when I get home, Tony. I got friends could cause big problems for the Magaddinos, you know what I’m saying?”
“Sure. Grazie, Mario.”
“’Ey, what’s to thank? But maybe you should think about getting out of the business too, Tony. It makes you too old, too fast. It’s not like the old days no more. Go learn another trade. I mean, what’s the family ever done for you? You see what they did to me. They let me take a fall for the padrone—God rest his soul—and when I’m out of the slammer, I’m deported. Christ, who do I know left in the old country? I’m ten years old when we land in New York.
“But I played ’em smart, Tony. I banked some money where they couldn’t touch it and it was waiting for me when I got out. So now I live on Malta—I’ve got a woman, two kids, a nice place. It’s peaceful now, you know? Think about it, Tony.”
Valenti shook his head. “I’m going to nail the fucker that set me up, Mario. I got no other choice.”
“Yeah, yeah. Your honor demands it. Well, you tell me: These
people, did they treat either of us with honor? I tell you again, it’s not like the old days, Tony. I got no respect for them now. You wait—you’ll see. By the time you’re up and running again, it’s not gonna mean so much to you neither. Trust me. A little time goes by, you’re gonna feel different about it.”
* * *
Maybe, maybe not, Valenti thought now. He’d have to see. He looked over at Ali, took a swig of beer and smiled.
“Between you and me,” he said, “I got hit in action.” He meant to stick as close to the truth as he could; they were going to be friends, he didn’t want to lie to her.
“What do you mean?” Ali asked.
“I was a soldier.”
“Really? What army?”
Valenti’s smile deepened. He could hear Mario’s voice in his mind. You got to go someplace where when you say you’re a soldato they ask what army, not what family.
“I was sort of a private soldier,” he explained.
“You mean like a mercenary?”
“Yeah. Pretty much. But I’m retired now. And let’s keep this between you and me, okay? You got to make me a promise on this.” Christ, he thought. He had to be nuts telling her this much. Except who could she talk to?
Ali nodded solemnly. “I won’t tell anybody—not even Mom—if you don’t want me to.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“My lips are sealed,” she said and pinched them closed with her forefinger and thumb.
“How’re you going to drink with your mouth like that?” Valenti asked.
Ali giggled and took her hand away. “You want some more help with that fence?”
“Sure. Did you talk to your momma about you both coming over for dinner? What’d she say?”
“She said fine.”
“Sensational. This is a meal you’re not going to forget, Ali. We’re going to start with some antipasti and—”
“What’s antipasti?”
“It’s like olives, cold cuts, cheese—that kind of thing, you know? So we start with that and a nice white wine—your momma let you drink wine?”
“With dinner, sure.”
“Okay. So how’s about this Saturday night?”
Ali nodded and followed him back to where they’d been working earlier. Valenti continued to give her a rundown on what she could expect for dinner as they finished nailing the chicken wire up in place. The afternoon went by quickly and all too soon Ali was on her way home, running because she was going to be late for supper.
Valenti watched her go, hoping he hadn’t made a mistake telling her as much about himself as he had. But he was glad he’d done it. It was good to have a secret between friends.
Collecting up the tools, he put them away and headed for the house. He planned to go down and check out the woods behind Ali’s place later on to see if he could find any sign of her secretive visitor. While he got his own dinner ready, he tried to make up his mind if he should bring a piece with him or not. In the end he settled on his cane. Out here, who needed guns?
5
There was a tall, grayish-blue stone on the slopes of Snake Lake Mountain, a pointed finger of rock that lifted skyward among the cedars and pine, the maple, birch and oak. It looked to be a part of the forest and the backbones of stone that lifted from the rich forest floor, but it was older than either—a lost remnant of something secret. It stood in a small flat meadow, scooped from the slope. Above, the forest climbed onto the top of the hill in a tangle of underbrush and old trees; below it, younger trees trekked on down the slopes to circle the small village of New Wolding and its outlying fields before it wandered off to meet Black Creek and the land beyond.
Stags scraped the velvet from their antlers against that stone. Goats and sheep grazed there often enough to give the meadow the short, trimmed look of a lawn. But mostly it was Tommy Duffin who frequented the meadow and played tunes on his reed pipes to the tall old standing stone. He played in the evenings, as the twilight fell….
Like his father before him, and his grandfather as well, Tommy had the coarse rough features of the Duffins. His face was plump, his eyes somewhat vacant-looking, his hair lifting in an untidy thatch from his head. But when he lifted his pipes and set his breath into them, he changed.
His features seemed to become thinner, more defined, and a fire touched his eyes, a flickering of firefly light that said, I know mysteries, hear them in my music. And then he was no longer the same boy of fifteen who lived with his mother in the cottage closest, but one, to the hill.
That Tuesday evening, Lewis looked up to see Tommy passing by. Lewis was sitting out on the steps of his cabin and lifted a hand in greeting. Tommy nodded, friendly enough, but already that sense of distance was creeping into his eyes and he never broke step as he continued on up to the stone. The wolfish Gaffa gamboled in the fields across from Lewis’s cabin, making his own roundabout way to his master’s destination.
Lewis continued to sit on his steps. He heard a blackbird’s song, the hum and creak of insects, then—lifted above them, sweeter by far—the sound of Tommy’s piping.
One by one the villagers began to drift in the direction of Snake Lake Mountain, what they called Wold Hill after the hill they’d left behind in the old country. The Lattens passed by first, William and Ella, both stout and graying now, their son Willie, Jr. and his wife, Rachel, walking with them. Then Alden Mudden, Emery and Luca Blegg, and the Hibbuts sisters, Jenny and Ruth, all in a group. Tommy’s mother, Flora, followed, walking arm in arm with old Ailie Tichner, the only resident of New Wolding older than Lewis since her husband, Miles had died last winter.
Peter Skegland came next with his wife, Gerda, and their two daughters, Kate and Holly. Walking with the two Skegland girls was Martin Tweedy. His parents, George and Susanna, were not far behind. Bringing up the rear was Lily Spelkins, who’d be sixty-three this summer, but was still as slender and supple as a young girl, and would sometimes dance with the younger women when Tommy’s music grew too gay to resist.
There aren’t many of us left, Lewis thought as he fell in step with Lily. There were still representatives of all the families that had first immigrated here, all in a group in the late twenties, but slowly and surely they were dying out. Their lives were long, but Lewis didn’t like to think of a time when there would be no one left to follow the old ways.
There were so few children—and none in the past ten years. Many had left the village. Of the twelve cottages that made up New Wolding, four stood empty now. They needed only one of the two big dark-timbered barns to winter their diminishing herds and store their excess crops. The only part of the village that truly prospered these days was the graveyard.
“I love this time of year,” Lily said. When Lewis didn’t answer straightaway, she laid her hand on his arm and gave it a squeeze. “You think too much, Lewis. It’s going to make you an old man.”
Lewis gave her a half-hearted smile. “And that would never do, would it?”
“When Jango comes this year,” she told him, “I’m going to see what sort of a perk-up tea he can whip up for you, Lewis. Anything to get your nose out of those books and into the fresh air a bit. Remember the walks we used to take?”
Lewis nodded. That was before his wife Vera died, before his son Edmond left the village, not to return, before he realized that the something that had held them all together for so long was fading. It was before Lily’s husband Jevon died as well, when the village seemed more alive.
Now New Wolding was filled with memories rather than vitality. It had an air of imminent disuse about it. Tommy’s music let one forget, but only while it played. It wasn’t strong enough to draw new blood to the village anymore. The old haunting mystery just didn’t seem to run so deeply anymore. It no longer held the dark hounds at bay. And one day, too soon, it would all—
“Lewis!”
Lily poked him with a sharp elbow, bringing him back to the present, but not before he finished his last thought: One day it would all fade away.
“It’s as much what we feel,” Lily said, “what we give back, as what we take, Lewis. You of all people should remember that—you told it to me.”
Lewis nodded. The music didn’t come from a void, nor did it play to one. It was a conduit between themselves and the mystery that lay behind it. What it woke in each person who heard it reflected only what was inside them to begin with.
“You’re right, Lily,” he said, slipping her arm into the crook of his own. “I keep forgetting—It really is that simple.”
Lily leaned over and kissed his dry cheek, then gave his arm a tug. “Come along, Lewis. There’s something in the air tonight and I think I want to dance.”
Lewis smiled at her. Arm in arm, they hurried after the others, drawn to the meadow of the longstone by the call of Tommy’s music. No one quite entered except for Tommy. The rest sat or stood in a half circle among the trees, watching him play. The last light of the day washed over him and for one breathless moment he appeared to glow. His reed pipes woke an exultant music that skirled to meet the approaching night in a rush of breathy notes. Then the darkness stole in and the music turned into a jig.
The two Hibbuts sisters, in their fifties now, were the first to leave the shelter of the trees. They moved to the music, Jenny’s graying hair undone and falling across her thin shoulders as she stepped to the tune, while Ruth, the years wearing on her a little more, didn’t move quite so sprightly. Kate and Holly Skegland were next, both young and limber, though not quite graceful yet, and then Lily left Lewis’s side to join them.
To those watching from the trees it seemed that there were more than just five of their own dancing to Tommy’s music. The little meadow appeared to be filled with other dancing forms, ghostly shapes that spun in the steps with more abandon and an elfin grace. They danced a May dance that plucked the apples of the moon, silver and cool, rather than the bright apples of the sun.