The Meq (3 page)

A friend of his told him of a poker game in which Solomon might be able to play mainly because he was German. It was held each day in the back room of one of the saloons favored by the new beer barons of St. Louis. In fact, the friend told him, Solomon looked quite a bit like one of the Lemp brothers, one of the players who would surely be there with lots of money in his pockets. But he would have to trim his beard, take off his little Jewish cap, and keep his opinions to a minimum. Solomon thought this to be a minor inconvenience in order to do “good business.” And with Mrs. Bennings’s help in the trimming and tailoring, he was physically transformed into a man he thought had the look and figure of a beer baron. He turned this way and that in front of the mirror, admiring the change.

“Not bad, eh, Mrs. Bennings?”

“Not bad at all, sir, but I’ve got to ask. What will you be playin’ with? Them fat old fellas got more in their pocket than you got on your whole person.”

He looked at her sharply, then back to the mirror. “I have enough to begin. After a few hands, zis will not be a problem.” He turned and looked to me as he was lighting a cigar. He said, “Zianno?”

I just said, “You look the part, Solomon.”

We took the wagon and mules to the address he had been given. The sky was dark, even though it was just after noon, and a hard wind was blowing. Ice still covered most of the streets and the mules were slower than usual.

Solomon wanted to be let off in the alley leading to the back room, probably so no one would see the mules and the wagon. As he stepped down and took his first few treacherous steps on the ice, I heard a voice, a boy’s voice from somewhere in the alley, say, “There he is. There’s Lemp.”

I looked around and saw no one but Solomon. The boy thought Solomon was the beer baron, loaded with money, arriving for his daily poker game. Solomon didn’t even look up. He was still concerned with the ice. Suddenly there were three of them, then five, then six. Half of them were about my size and age, but the others were bigger and older, maybe sixteen or seventeen. Before Solomon could do or say anything, they had him pinned against the brick wall of the saloon. They were yelling and shouting at him to stand still and when Solomon did try to speak, one of the older ones pulled out a baseball bat and swung it hard against Solomon’s legs. The smaller ones were tearing at his pockets, looking for money.

This all happened in half a minute. Then one of the older ones glanced back over his shoulder into the darkness of the alley and said, “Ray, he ain’t got but a few bucks. Should we do him, anyway?”

I knew what that meant and, without thinking, jumped out of the wagon. I was scared and mad. I didn’t know what to do. I reached in my trouser pocket and grabbed hold of Papa’s baseball. I pulled it out and held it up, ready to throw at the first boy that moved . . .

Then a strange and magical thing happened.

“Get away from him now,” I said. “Turn around and get away from him.”

Everything went silent, except for the wind, which was still howling around us. They all looked at me bewildered, entranced, as if some great clock had reached the hour and they were waiting for it to chime. But what clock? And for what reason? I didn’t have a clue. Then, without a word, they let go of Solomon, the one boy dropped his bat, and they turned and walked away, puzzled as to why they were even there in the first place.

I watched them leave. I was still filled with rage, but somehow calm. Solomon was slumped against the wall, moaning. I went over to him and asked if he was all right. Before he could speak, I heard something move in the darkness, back in the alley where the boy with the bat had glanced. At first, I couldn’t see anything, then a shape appeared. It was another boy, one who looked just like me or at least enough like me that we could have been somehow related. He walked over to me and stared in my eyes, searching for something. Then he looked at my hand holding Papa’s baseball.

“You are Meq,” he said.

I said, “What? Who are you? Why did they do that? Do you know who this is? This is Solomon J. Birnbaum, that’s who.”

The boy looked at Solomon, then back to me. He was listening, but not so much to what I said as to how I said it. He came a step closer.

“How long?” he said.

“How long what?”

I looked at Solomon. He was hurt, I could tell, but he wasn’t saying anything. He was just staring back and forth between the boy and me.

“You don’t know, do you?” the boy said.

“Look, I know you know those punks—you tell them they got the wrong man and they’d better . . . they’d better watch out.”

He laughed to himself, a strange laugh for a child, almost bitter. He took two or three steps backward, still looking at me until he was out of the alley and in front of the wagon and mules. Then he took off running. Fast. He literally ran like the wind; fluid, compact, graceful, like no boy I’d ever seen, and he was on ice.

Solomon finally spoke. He said, “Great Yahweh.”

I helped Solomon into the wagon and I grabbed the reins and drove us back to the boardinghouse. Solomon’s legs weren’t broken, but he was badly bruised. Mrs. Bennings and I helped him into bed and I could tell she had seen and touched the results of violence before. She was gentle and efficient and hardly spoke a word until later, when she asked me what had happened. I was confused, mad, even a little guilty for some reason, and I told her everything, even about the other boy, the one who looked like me.

“Well, don’t that beat the devil? I never heard such a thing. And them boys just walked away like that, peaceful and all?”

“Yes,” I said, “they did.”

“Well, then let’s just let it lie, eh, child? Best we tend to Mr. Birnbaum and get him standin’ on them long old legs of his.”

I agreed with her and tried to “let it lie,” but I couldn’t. I thought about it all that night and the rest of the week. Even my dreams were no refuge. They were filled with strange faces, animals, and voices. They all merged and separated, changing, dancing like images seen through a fire on the wall of a cave.

When Solomon began to recover and get his strength back, he came and woke me from one of my dreams. I was sweating and shaking and gripping Papa’s baseball so hard my fingernails had broken through the hide. He held me gently by the shoulders. He said, “Zianno, we go find that boy. You hear me? You must do zis. Tomorrow, we find that boy.”

But we didn’t have to find anything. He found us.

At breakfast, Mrs. Bennings asked why I had been up so early wandering the neighborhood. I told her I hadn’t been anywhere and Solomon and I exchanged glances.

“When did you last see him—or me, Mrs. Bennings?”

“Why, not ten minutes ago, child. And what do you mean ‘him’?”

I got up from the table and went to the door. I looked at Solomon. He wore an expression as serious as I’d seen since the train wreck.

He said, “Go with caution, Zianno. Remember what those others did.”

I walked out of the boardinghouse and down the hill to the nearest corner. It wasn’t more than a hundred yards. For some reason I knew he’d be there, and he was, leaning against a stone post. When I was no more than ten feet away, I could see how much we looked alike, but up close, in better light than there was in the alley, I could also see our differences. He had green eyes, where mine were almost black, and his lips were fuller, rounder than mine. He had no scars or blemishes that I could see, but neither did I.

I said, “How did you find us?”

He just shrugged and looked out over the houses around us. Then I thought how easy it would be to find us. I’d told him Solomon’s name. All he had to do was ask around.

He looked down at his feet. He kicked a loose rock and we both watched it arc and tumble down the hill. I waited for him to speak.

“You’re the first one I seen in a long time,” he said. “That’s all. And you got the power of the Stones. I thought that was somethin’ my old lady made up.”

“Look,” I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I know is that those boys hurt my friend bad and that one boy was asking you if he should do more.”

“Yeah, well, they’re Giza, that’s what I’m tellin’ you.”

“Giza?” I said and then I remembered. When my mama was trying to tell me something on the train, she said we were not like the Giza, the other people.

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Ray, Ray Ytuarte. Yours?”

“Zianno Zezen. My mama and papa called me Z.”

“Called?” he said. Then he bent down and picked up another loose rock and threw it down the hill. He had a good arm. “Where are they now?”

“They’re dead. So what?”

“No what. I was just askin’.”

I wasn’t sure if I liked him or not, but I was curious. So was he.

“How long have you been twelve?” he said.

“How long have I been twelve? How do you know I’m twelve?”

“Because we all are.”

I got a sudden chill. I thought it was the wind, which was still coming out of the north and bitterly cold. I turned my back to it and said, “Listen, why don’t you follow me. We can go in the boardinghouse. I’ve got my own room.” I didn’t know why I was saying this, maybe it was dangerous, but I had to know more. “It’s too cold out here, anyway,” I said.

He looked around and up at the sky nonchalantly. “Yeah, maybe, but it’ll be nice tomorrow and almost hot in three days.”

“How do you know?”

He just shrugged and laughed that same, strange laugh.

We came in the same way I had left, through the kitchen door. Solomon and Mrs. Bennings were still sitting at the big table. Solomon looked the boy over, knowing he was seeing something he’d only been told about as a child, something he thought was a tall tale told by a crazy old German rabbi. Mrs. Bennings’s mouth had dropped open and she was speechless.

If someone, anyone, had looked in my room for the next half hour, they would have thought they were just seeing two boys, maybe two brothers, talking. But it was more than that, much more.

The first thing Ray Ytuarte did was ask to see Papa’s baseball. I took it out of my pocket and tossed it to him. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him. He walked around the simple room and over to the only window. He turned the baseball over and over in his hands inspecting every stitch and the gouges my own fingernails had made. The window was completely frosted over. He blew on it and rubbed a clear circle with his fist. He stared down through the cold glass, then looked at me.

“You really don’t know anything, do you?” he said.

“No, I don’t. Why don’t you tell me. The first thing you said to me was ‘You are Meq.’ What does it mean?”

“I can only tell you what my old lady told me and she didn’t know much. It’s the word we use for ourselves, the old word. She said the Giza have called us other things, in other times; the Children, the Flock, the Enigma. I don’t know that much about that part. It’s all lost.”

“But what does it mean?” I said. My mind was racing with questions.

“Well, it means you ain’t gonna get sick. It’s in your blood. And you’re gonna heal fast if you get cut or broken. And you’ll stay twelve. You won’t get any older, at least not your body.” He blew on the glass again and this time traced a circle with his fingertip, then another circle inside that one. “It’s called Itxaron,” he said, “the Wait.”

“Can you die?”

“Yeah, you can die. If you get your head cut off or stomped beyond recognition by somethin’.”

“How old are you?”

“Older than that old man downstairs.”

“You mean Solomon?”

“Yeah, Solomon. Solomon J. Birnbaum. I seen him around years ago, but he didn’t see me.”

“You are actually older than Solomon?”

He laughed that hard laugh and blew more of his breath on the glass. He wiped the sleeve of his jacket across the circles he had made. He answered in a low monotone.

“I was born in 1783, in Vera Cruz. That’s Mexico. I turned twelve in New Orleans. Spent a lot of years there. It was easy for a kid, but not so good for my old lady. My old man was killed in a zipota match for money. Had his brains kicked in. My sister didn’t know how to stay twelve too good. She took to the brothels and slipped out somewhere. I ain’t heard a word of her since. I learned how to run gangs and that’s what I did. They called me the ‘Weatherman.’ But you gotta keep movin’ when everybody’s gettin’ older and you ain’t. You’ll learn that quick. My old lady tried to live like the Giza and got her throat cut in a fancy hotel. They never found the guy. I just made my way upriver, town to town, city to city, until I got to St. Louis. I been here to this day. In all that time I only seen a few of us and none could do what you did in that alley. My old lady told me only an Egizahar could do that. She said they’re the only ones with the Stones. I thought it was just another one of her crazy stories about us.”

He stopped talking and tossed me the baseball. I caught it and sat there in a daze.

“Where’d you get that?” he said.

“My papa made it.”

“Well, if my hunch is right and it usually is, that ain’t just a baseball. Did he tell you what to do with it?”

I looked down at the baseball, remembering Papa. “He said ‘never lose it.’ ”

“That’s because you’re Egizahar. You gotta protect the Stones.”

“What does it mean,” I said, “ ‘Egizahar’?”

“It kinda means ‘old truth.’ According to my old lady, there’s two bloodlines: the Egizahar and the Egipurdiko. ‘Diko’ for short, which kinda means ‘half-assed truth.’ The ones who Waited and the ones who didn’t. I don’t really know what it means. She was crazy, but I don’t know; I ain’t so sure now that I seen you and what you did.”

“What did I do?” I said.

“You stopped the Giza. You made them all forget, turn around, and leave. They wouldn’t—couldn’t have done that on their own. That’s old magic, old power, and for us, there ain’t nobody that can do that without the Stones. We got other things we can do, but not that.”

I still sat on the edge of the bed. I hadn’t moved. I was lost . . . overwhelmed. It was like one of my dreams. I felt as if I had stepped into a shallow pool only to be dragged out to sea.