"Good morning, Mr. Deb-ree... is a nice morning?"
"Good morning, Marag." I had planned to apologize for the fuck-up at the hotel; now I realize again there is nothing to say. "It's not a bad morning. A little chilly."
"A new season comes. The winds will now blow from the desert, more cooler and full of sand."
"No more tourists for a season?"
He shrugs. "As long as great Khufu stands there will be tourists." His bright little eyes are already chipping away at my chill. "Maybe my friend Mister Deb-ree want a guide take him to the top? Guide most reliable? You know how much?"
"Five pounds," I say, reaching for my wallet. "Let's go."
Marag tucks his gellabia in the top of his shorts and leads the way like a lizard. It's like climbing up 200 big kitchen ranges, one after another. I have to call a stop to him three times. His tiny eyes needle merrily at me gasping for breath.
"Mister Deb-ree, are you not healthy? Do you not get good nourishment in your country?"
"Just admiring the view, Marag; go on."
We finally reach the top and flush the ravens off. They circle darkly, calling us all kinds of names before they sail off through the brightening morn toward the rich fields below. What a valley. What a river to carve it so!
"Come, friend." Marag beckons me to the wooden pole in the center of the square of limestone blocks. "Marag show you little pyramid trick."
He has me reach as high as I can up the pole with a chip of rock and scratch a mark. I notice a number of similar scratches at various heights. "Now have a seat and breathe awhile this air. Is magic, this air on top pyramid. You will see."
I sit at the base of the pole, glad for a breather. "How does it affect you, this magic pyramid air?"
"It affect you to shrink," he says, grinning. "Breathe deep. You'll see."
Now that he calls it to mind I remember noticing that most of the pyramid sealers are indeed men of unusually slight stature. I breathe deep, watching the sun trying to push through the clouded horizon. After a minute he tells me to stand with my stone and scratch again. It's hard to tell, with all the marks of previous experiments, but it looks to me like I'm scratching exactly next to my first mark. I'm about to tell him his pyramid air is just more of his bull when I find myself flashing.
It's an old trick. I used to use it myself as a way to get an audience off. I tell them to take fifteen deep breaths, hold the last lungful and stand, then everybody om together as the flash comes on. Hyperventilation. Every junior-high weirdo knows it. But the business with the scratch and the magic air was so slick I didn't make the connection, even when I felt the familiar faint coming on.
I grab the pole for support, impressed. Marag has positioned himself in front of me, hands on his hips, grinning skyward. He's done this before. He flaps a moment, then the breeze stills. I follow his gaze up into the milky sky and see what he has been waiting for: the thumb of God. I see it come down out of the haze and settle on top of Marag's head, bowing him like a deck of cards until his face snaps, revealing another behind it, and another, and another, face after face snapping and fanning upward in an accelerating riffle - some familiar, from the village, the aouda, some famous (I remember distinctly two widely known musicians who I will not name in case it might bring them hamper), but mostly faces I've never seen. Women and men, black, brown, red, and whatever, most of them looking at least past the half-century mark in earthly years. The expressions completely individual and various - bemused, patient, mischievous, stern - but there is a singular quality uniting them all: each face is kind, entirely, profoundly, unshakingly benevolent. The fan spreads up and up, like the deck at the climax of Disney's Alice in Wonderland, clear to the clouds. From a distance these two vast triangles would resemble an hourglass, the bottom filled with grains of limestone, the top with face cards.
At the last there are a number of blanks, positions available for those willing and qualified. When the last blank is snapped away there is a hole left in the shape of Marag's slight body. Through this hole I can see the Sphinx, and beyond his paws those lanes of huts housing these faithful sentries who have for thousands of years guarded the treasury of all our climbs and all our falls. It is not buried. It is hidden on the very surface, in the cramped comings and goings, the sharing of goat's milk and sugercane, in the everlasting hustle by the grace of which this ancient society has managed to survive. For thousands of years this people has defended this irreplaceable treasury and its temple with little more than their hustle and bustle and their bladders.
As long as there's piss in the King's Coffin there isn't going to be a pair of McDonald's arches on the aouda.
"What you think, Mister Deb-ree?" Marag snaps back into the space before me. "Is a good trick?"
"Is a good trick, Marag. Is a great trick."
Back on the aouda I give him gifts for his family. Handkerchiefs, shoulder-bag stuff. My harmonica for Sami, and I will talk to my wife about the boy coming to Oregon for a year of school. To Marag I give my canteen, my compass, and a page from my notebook inscribed This man Marag is a servant who can be relied upon. Signed with my name and gooped over with my Polaroid fixative to preserve it. We shake hands a last time and I hurry down to check out.
My cabana door is open. Sitting on my bed is Dr. Ragar.
"Brother! I have brought for you the map of the Hidden Hall, known only to Masons of many degrees."
I begin to laugh. I'm delighted to see him. I wonder, was he one of the faces? I can't remember.
"Sorry, Doctor, I've already seen the Secret Hall. What else have you got?"
He misunderstands my exuberance. He thinks I am ridiculing him. His eyes take on a wronged look, whimpering from beneath his dark brow like two whipped dogs.
"I Dr. Ragar do have," he says in a hurt voice, "a formula for a blend of healing oils. Used by the Essenes, it is said for the feet of your Jesus. The usual price of this formula is five pounds, but, my brother, for you -"
"Five pounds is perfect! I'll take it."
He helps me carry my bags and shares the taxi as far as Cairo. He is reluctant to leave me. He knows something more than money is up for grabs, but not what. He keeps running that rancid glim over me sidelong. When he gets out we shake hands and I press the Murine bottle into his palm.
"In return for all you've done for me, Brother Ragar, please to accept this rare American elixir. One drop in each eye will clear away the cobwebs; two in each will open the third; three if you wish to see God as he appeared in San Francisco in 1965. I would not divulge this powerful stuff but for the fact that my father, you recall, was a Mason. I think he would want it so. Please, be so kind..."
He studies me, wondering if I'm drunk at nine in the morning, then takes the bottle. "Thank you," he says uncertainly, blinking thickly at the gift.
"One stone at a time," I tell him.
Epilogue. Nine forty-four by the cabbie's watch. He's finding holes no Fiat ever fit through before but I'll never make it. They said to allow at least one hour for getting through Cairo customs. Look at that mob of tourists! Like rats panicked at a sinking porthole. Nine fifty. Nobody's going to make it.
But the plane is delayed because an old pilgrim had a heart attack and they had to unload him. The guy I strap in next to tells me about it.
"Right there trying to put his camera bag in the overhead and the Lord took 'im. Happens all the time on these Holy Land hops."
The guy is a preacher from Pennsylvania and a tour host himself: very, very tired.
"Wasn't part of my group thank the Lord. But I'm due. Y'see there's so many of them that are Senior Citizens, old folks that have saved enough to take a gander at the Holy Land even if it's the last thing they do."
The engines are finally running and we taxi to the end of our runway. The spirit on board lightens. Nervous chatter is heard. Just before we take off somebody yells, Hey, who won the fight last night?
What fight? somebody calls back.
Between the Heathen
and the Infidel.
Everybody laughs, even the Turks and Nurds, but nobody knows who won. The stewardess says she'll ask the captain and report back. We blast off. When we level out the Pennsylvania preacher says, "It wasn't Foreman. I don't care what she reports back." I thought he was sound asleep. I say what? and he repeats the statement without opening his eyes: "I said Foreman didn't win, no matter what the outcome." When he doesn't elaborate I turn back to my window.
We're banking right over Cairo. There's the bridge crossing the Nile to the Omar Khayyam. There's the Statue of Isis Awakening, lifting her veil to watch us leave. There's Pyramid Boulevard... The Mena House... Giza village... but I don't see... could I have overlooked it in this haze? There! No wonder; even from up here you don't see it because you're looking for something smaller. But you don't overlook it. You can't. You underlook it.
"And you wanna know why?" the preacher has rolled his head to ask. "Because he's got a discrepancy is why! How can he be the good Christian he claims to be and still be hitting people for money?"
He fixes me with eyes worn red and raw from two weeks' keeping track of his rattled flock.
"That's what does it, the thing really gets these Holy Landers. It's not the age, not the heart. It's the discrepancy!"
His eyes close. His mouth falls open. I turn back to the window. The airplane's shadow flits across the golden ripples of the Sahara. We level out. The speaker pops on and the pilot addresses us in sophisticated Amsterdam English.
"This is your captain, Simon Vinkenoog. It appears we have to take a little detour in our routing to Istanbul, west of the Nile delta, because of... political reasons. We do not estimate much time loss. Lean back relax. The weather in Istanbul is clear and cool. The report from Zaire last night - before a crowd of ten thousand Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round, regaining the World Heavyweight Championship. Have a pleasant flight home."
KILLER
I wander thru each charter'd street
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
- William Blake
Killer, the one-eyed one-horned billygoat - rearing fully erect on his hind legs, tall as a man, tucking his cloven hooves beneath his flying Uncle Sam beard, bowing his neck, slanting his one horn, and bulging his ghastly square-lensed eye at M'kehla's back - came piledriving down.
"M'kehla, watch out!"
M'kehla didn't even turn to check. Using the fence post like a pommel horse he vaulted instantly sideways. Amazing nimble for a man his size, I marveled, not to mention been up driving all night.
The goat's horn grazed his thigh, then struck the post so hard that the newly stretched wire sang all the way to the post anchored at the corner of the chicken house. The hens squawked and the pigeons flushed up from the roof, hooting angrily. They didn't like the goat any better than M'kehla did.
"Choose me off, will you, you smelly motherfucker!" M'kehla pistoned a furious kick against the blind side of Killer's shaking head - "I'll kick your mother skull in!" - then two more to the jaw before the dazed animal could back away from the post.
"Hey, c'mon, man. This isn't anything" - I had to think a moment to come up with an alternative word - "personal. Honest, he does it with everybody."
This was only partly honest. True, Killer had tagged just about everybody on the farm at one time or another - me, Betsy, the kids when they tried crossing his field instead of going around - but the goat had seemed to choose M'kehla off special, from the moment the man had arrived.
It had been early that morning, before anybody was up. I half heard the machine pull in but I figured it was probably my brother in his creamery van, out to get an early start on the day's roundup. I rolled back over, determined to get as much sleep as possible for the festivities ahead. A few seconds later I was jarred bolt upright by a bellow of outrage and pain, then another, then a machine-gun blast of curses so dark they sounded like they were being fired all the way from a ghetto of hell.
Betsy and I were instantly on our feet.
"Who in the world?"
"Not Buddy," I said, dancing into my pants. "That's for sure."
Still unzipped I reached the front door. Through the open window I saw a shiny black bus parked in the gravel of our drive, still smoking. I heard another shout and another string of curses, then I saw a big brown man in a skimpy white loincloth come hopping out of the exhaust fumes at the rear end of the bus. He had a Mexican huarachi on one foot and was trying to put the mate on as he hopped. After a wild-eyed look behind him he paused at the bus door and started banging with the sandal.
"Open the door, God damn your bastard ass - open this door!"
"It's M'kehla," I called back toward our bedroom. "M'kehla, and here comes Killer after him."
The goat rounded the rear of the bus and skidded to a spread-legged stop in the gravel, looking this way and that. His lone eye was so inflamed with hate that he was having trouble seeing. His ribs pumped and his lips foamed. He looked more like an animation than a live animal; you could almost hear him muttering in his cartoon chin whiskers as he swung his gaze back and forth in search of his quarry.
M'kehla kept banging and cursing at somebody inside the bus. I glimpsed a face at a side window but the door did not open. Suddenly, the banging was cut short by a bleat of triumph. Killer had found his mark. The horn lowered and the hooves scratched for ramming speed. M'kehla threw the sandal hard at the onrushing animal, then sprinted away around the front fender, cursing. You could hear him all the way down the back stretch, heaping curses on the bearded demon at his heels, on the bastard ass behind the bus door, on the very stones underfoot. When he appeared again at the rear of the bus I swung open our door.
"In here!"
He covered the twenty yards across our drive in a tenderfooted stumble, Killer gaining with every leap. I slammed the door behind him just as the goat clattered onto the porch and piled against the doorframe. The whole house shook. M'kehla rolled his eyes in relief.
"Lubba mussy, Cap'n," he finally gasped in a high Stepin Fetchit voice, "where you git a watchdog so mean? Selma Alibama?"
"Little Rock. Orville been developing this strain to guard melon fields."
"Orville Faubus?" he wheezed, rolling his eyes again, bobbing in a foolish stoop. "Orville allus did have a knaick!"
I grinned at him and waited. Betsy called from the bedroom - Everything alright? - and he instantly dropped the fieldhand facade and straightened up to his full six-foot-plus.
"Hello, Home," he said in his natural voice, holding out his hand. "Good to see you."
"You too, man. Been a while." I put my palm to his, hooking thumbs. "How've you been?"
"Still keepin ahead," he said, holding the grip while we studied each other's faces.
Since we last saw each other I had wasted ten foolish months playing the fugitive in Mexico, then another six behind bars. He had lost one younger brother in Laos and another in a 7-Eleven shootout with the Oakland police, and an ailing mother as a resultof the first two losses. Enough to mark any man. Yet his features were still as unmarred as a polished idol's, his eyes as unwavering.
"... still movin still groovin and still keepin at least one step ahead."
There had always been a hint of powers recondite behind that diamond-eyed gaze, I remembered. Then, as if he had read my thoughts, the expression changed. The eyes dialed back to gentle, the lips loosened into a grin and, before I could duck free, he hauled me close and kissed me full on the mouth. He was slick all over from his scrimmage with the goat.
"Not to mention still sweatin and stinkin." I wriggled free. "No wonder Charity wouldn't let you back on the bus."
"Isn't Charity, Dev; she kicked me out last month. I can't imagine why..."
He gave me a glance of wicked innocence and went on.
"All's I said was 'Get up and get me some breakfast, bitch, I don't care if you are pr
egnant.' For that she tells me 'No, you get up, get up and get out and get gone. Just like that. So I been going."
He nodded toward the bus.
"That's Heliotrope's pup, Percy," he said. "My complete crew this trip - cabin boy, navigator, and shotgun." Then he leaned down to holler out the open window: "And he better quit dickin with me, he ever expect to see his mama again!"
The face at the bus window paid no attention; there were closer things to worry about. Killer had returned to the bus door and was working the hinges with his single horn. The whole bus was rocking. M'kehla straightened up from the window and chuckled fondly.
"Stuck out there, that billygoat between him and his breakfast cereal heh heh heh."
Heliotrope was a paraplegic pharmacologist from Berkeley, beautiful and brilliant, and a bathtub chemist of underground renown. M'kehla always liked to pal around with Heliotrope when he was on the outs with his wife or when he was out of chemicals. Percy was her ten-year-old, known to some around San Francisco as the Psychedelic Brat. He had boarded with us occasionally, staying a week, a month, until one of his parents came to round him back up. He was redheaded, intelligent, and practically illiterate, and he had a way of referring to himself in the third person that could be simultaneously amusing and infuriating.
"Percy Without Mercy he calls himself nowdays; likes to keep the pedal to the metal."
"Hello, Montgomery." Betsy came out of the bedroom, belting on her robe. "I'm glad to see you."
Not sounding all that glad. She'd seen the two of us go weirding off together too many times to be too glad. But she allowed him a quick hug.