The Meq (8 page)

“You knew my papa?”

“Of course,” he said, “and your mother.”

“And you know Geaxi?”

“
Oui,
” he said.

“Then you know that I look for Sailor and Umla-Meq.”

He glanced at Usoa and they exchanged a bewildered look. “Both?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “it was the last thing my mama told me to do.”

Usoa looked at me and said, “Sailor is the wind, Zianno. He finds you, you will not find him.”

I looked at Usoa and then over to Unai and understood that I would get no more directions to Sailor from them; that somehow I was to find Sailor myself.

They turned together, holding hands, and started back toward the house. I went with them.

“I see you have learned the Giza,” Unai said, “and you work well among them.”

“Yes, I have,” I said.

“It is a good way to travel; to be with one who needs the Stones. We do the same for the woman, Isabelle, and we have our freedom.”

“Do you travel together always, you and Usoa?” I asked.

“Yes, always,” he said. “We do the Itxaron, the Wait, together. We will cross in the Zeharkatu when it is time . . . when we have finished something. Until then, she is
ma chérie.
”

We had reached the stone steps at the back of the house. I looked at them. Their black eyes were shining in the light. They were absolutely quiet and still.

“How old are you?” I said.

They both laughed, sounding just like two children giggling.

“On the way to New Orleans, Zianno. There is time for everything.”

“Why do you go to New Orleans?” I asked.

“Because the woman Isabelle goes there,” he said, “and Usoa and I seek an evil one. Let that be that.”

Captain Woodget, his two mates, and Isabelle appeared that moment at the door and we set off—first to the
Clover,
then to the Gulf, and eventually to New Orleans.

On the voyage, I learned many things about the Meq and heard tales of adventure that trailed back to the courts of Charlemagne and beyond, but I wanted more. I wanted to know everything; I was hungry and thirsty for any and every detail. I asked about Mama and Papa and they told me of caravans and crusades, journeys to the East Indies with the Portuguese, all manner of people and places and times they had witnessed together. I listened to it all and still wanted more. They sang Meq songs and once, while my eyes were closed, I caught myself singing along without any idea how I even knew the words. Usoa laughed and told me it was common, a trait we carried inside ourselves from the time we were painting horses on the walls of caves in the Pyrenees, caves that were still unknown to the rest of the world. “
Oui,
” Unai added, “it is true, Zianno. Not even the Visigoths were aware of the caves, and believe me, some of them preferred caves.” We all laughed together at the inside joke and I could only marvel at the fact that it was based on real experience.

The captain sailed the
Clover
at her usual pace, but it seemed too swift for me. I wanted the sea itself to stop and let me catch up. And yet, for the first time since I had been on my own, I felt the connection that was in the blood, our blood, and I knew it was alive and ancient. As Unai told me one night when I became impatient, “You are Meq, you are Egizahar Meq. Learn your Stone. The Stones speak; we are silent.”

We arrived outside New Orleans on a late afternoon in March, not long after Mardi Gras. It was snowing—strange weather that was just beginning. We decided to drop anchor and not disembark until morning. Captain Woodget wanted to make sure all his papers were in order, both legal and illegal.

I was supposed to stay on board and only Captain Woodget would accompany Isabelle and her entourage ashore and through customs, acting as her escort. This was as close as I’d been to St. Louis in more than twelve years and I thought about it most of the day. I felt anxious and after dinner I asked Unai and Usoa who was the “evil one” they sought. Their answers were vague, only telling me that he was “diko” and “aberrant.”

I fell asleep in an agitated and frustrated state of mind. Outside, it kept snowing, and inside, I came apart.

I dreamed I was in the stone cell again, only this time there was an opening in the wall and a hole in the floor. I walked over toward it and saw that it was really a well, a dry well, with no borders around the edge. I had to watch my step. I heard a voice or thought I heard a voice, coming from inside the well. I got down on my knees. I crawled to the edge and looked over. Down in the darkness, floating in space, was Carolina’s head. Her eyes were wide open and she was trying to scream, but there was only a faint cry coming from her lips. I reached down and couldn’t touch her; her head kept floating away. I yelled “No! No!” but it was drowned out by another sound, a sound like a train roaring through the night, and Carolina’s head spiraled out of sight, disappearing into nothingness.

I awoke in terror. I knew what I must do. I had to get to St. Louis and get there quick. Carolina was in danger and a dream as sudden and clear as lightning had told me so. I thought of Papa’s very last words, “We are the Dreams.”

I ran to Captain Woodget’s cabin. I knocked and woke him from a sound sleep. I told him of my dream and the absolute necessity for me to leave at once. He was calm, just as he was at sea. I never remember seeing him anything but calm in dirty weather. He told me to wait and slip ashore when he and Isabelle disembarked. He would create a diversion, and as a child, I could easily get lost in the chaos.

I waited. Morning came and the rare snowstorm had disappeared. Captain Woodget and Isabelle, along with Unai and Usoa, went ashore. The captain immediately created a ruckus concerning the luggage and the customs agents came running. I slipped easily through the confusion and shouting, acting as if I were lost and looking for my sister.

I was in the United States, in New Orleans, and on my way to St. Louis.

For over twelve years I had smuggled goods and valuables in and out of countries. Every time, the cargo was something someone wanted or treasured. This time, I only smuggled fear.

5

ETSAI

(ENEMY)

Sometimes, an enemy is just an adversary, no more than an opponent in a game, such as chess. Rules are followed and expectations are familiar, as is the enemy. Other times, an enemy is discovered by surprise; a flame flares up and hatred ensues, intense, obsessive, then a violent end and the enemy disappears—the only trace—a scar you carry somewhere, inside or out. But what if the enemy doesn’t disappear? What if the enemy appears again and again? What if the enemy becomes your son’s enemy? And your son’s son, following a bloodline that follows your own, he advances, carrying a single purpose behind ever-changing identities, he knows you and your kind better than he knows himself. What if the enemy is one of you?

I t was more difficult than I expected picking up a ride to St. Louis. I finally hired on as a cabin boy on a barge hauling coal to Dubuque. In a little more than a decade, river trade had begun to decline due to federal regulations and competition with the railroads, I was told. Maybe Solomon was wrong when he said the money would be on the water.

Whatever the reasons, I was being delayed and in my mind the fear kept growing that I might be too late, but too late for what, I didn’t know. I only knew that up ahead, upriver, there was danger, and the closer we got, the more I felt its presence.

After stops in Natchez and Memphis, we docked in St. Louis late at night. I collected some of the wages due me and said I’d be back in an hour. I never returned. I made my way through an unfamiliar St. Louis to the south side, walking hills and streets I knew from memory, but feeling like a stranger.

I rounded the corner where I had met Ray and saw the boardinghouse. I walked toward it. The sun was just rising. I saw the sign out front and it still read “Mrs. Bennings’s House.” I walked around the back to the kitchen door. It was unlocked and I opened it.

She was in the kitchen, in the dark, but I saw her in the half-light that shone through the windows. She was standing by the stove putting water on to boil. Her blond hair was piled on top of her head. She tried to tuck a strand of it behind her ear. I watched her in silence. She was in her mid-twenties and beautiful, even in a worn old cotton robe and unlaced boots. She was at least six inches taller than I was. She watched the stove. I watched her.

“You know it won’t work like that, don’t you?” I said.

She jumped back, kicking over a chair and landing against the table. She regained her balance and looked over toward the door. “Who’s there?” she yelled.

I said, “You can’t boil water and watch it too. You know that.”

She didn’t make a sound for several moments, then she got on her knees and sort of half crawled toward me and the light from the open door. She stopped and looked at me, started to rise, then sat back down on the floor and crossed her legs, never taking her eyes from mine.

“Hello, Carolina,” I said.

“God, Z, I knew it. I knew you would come back just like this, just this way. I didn’t know when, but I knew how.”

I stared at her. I had seen the gold flecks in her eyes before, but now those eyes were in the face of a grown woman, a beautiful woman. Suddenly we both laughed, not a nervous laugh, but a real out loud laugh. It felt so good to see her.

“How’s Georgia?”

“She’s fine, she’s fine.”

She reached up and put her hand on my cheek. It was a woman’s touch. It was my mama’s touch. This was crazy. Inside, I was a man who had traveled fifty thousand miles at sea for twelve years; outside, I was a child being touched by the fingers of a beautiful woman.

“Should we talk about this?” I asked.

“This? What do you mean—this?” She put her hands in her lap and rubbed them together. She nodded at the door. “Why don’t you shut the door . . . it’s cold.”

I shut the door. “But what about—”

“Come on,” she said, cutting me off and taking my hand. “I’ve got something for you.”

I wouldn’t quit. “But what about—”

“This?” she said, cutting me off again. “I told you a long time ago, Z, ‘this’ doesn’t make any difference.”

She took me out of the kitchen and through what had once been the front room. Walls had been knocked out and the whole space was one big parlor with velvet couches and chairs, a full bar at one end, a card table, and an upright piano between two windows hung with thick, blue velvet. There was one gas lamp lit, next to one of the couches where a woman in a full-length red gown was sleeping, snoring heavily.

“What the—”

“Shhh,” she said, covering my mouth.

She took me up the stairs and down the hall, which now had a runner of rich blue carpeting down the center and tiny gas lamps over every door. She pulled me into her room.

“Carolina,” I said, “you want to tell me what I just walked through?”

“A lot has changed, Z.” She knelt down by a chest in front of her bed. She opened it carefully and brought something out. She stood up and hid it from me behind her back. “I’ve got something for you,” she said, “something I think you forgot.”

She smiled and held out Mama’s baseball glove. I took it from her and put it on my hand, smiling myself. I pounded the pocket with my other hand and rubbed it as I’d done a thousand times before. “I didn’t forget it. I left it so you wouldn’t forget.”

She sat down on the bed and looked directly in my eyes. “That would be impossible,” she whispered.

I sat down on the bed next to her. Everything felt strange, yet familiar. I looked around her room. A few pictures were new, and perfume bottles, and clothes, lots of clothes, but many things were the same. The bed we were on was the same one we had sat on as children . . . when we were both children. A lot of things were the same, but now I was the only child in the room. I stood up and walked over to one of her pictures and turned around.

“Look,” I said, “I’ve been around a little bit and this place—downstairs I mean—it looks like, well . . . uh . . . a whorehouse.”

“Yes. It is,” she said.

Just then, Georgia burst into the room. At first, she didn’t see me. She ran over to Carolina, picked up both of Carolina’s hands, and spread them apart. Then, she waved them back and forth, one at a time, in front of her own face, acting as if Carolina were slapping her. Carolina nodded and took her hands back, then she smiled and pointed to me. Georgia turned and saw me. She cupped her hand over her mouth to stop a scream that never came, never had. She sat down on the bed next to Carolina and stared at me, her eyes welling up with tears.

“How are you, Georgia?”

She didn’t answer, but she looked over at Carolina.

“She can’t hear you,” Carolina said. “She started going deaf about three years ago. Now, she can’t hear a sound. It’s funny, though. It seems the more she gets cut off from the world, the more she gives back. She plays the piano now, real well, and she never did before she went deaf. And she’s the only good thing Mrs. Bennings has got left.”

I looked at Carolina and Georgia. So alike, so different. They were Giza, “the other people,” Mama had said, and I was Meq. But it was like that among us too. So alike, so different. I cleared a place on the floor and sat down. I motioned for them to do the same, like we used to, and they did. I looked at Carolina’s face and thought of my dream.

“Tell me what has happened,” I said.

Carolina glanced at Georgia and Georgia slowly closed and opened her eyes, then nodded her head once. Carolina could still “read” her.

“It happened by degrees,” she said. “After you left, Mrs. Bennings seemed to unravel. I don’t know whether it was you leaving or you taking with you the last reminder of that man you told me about, Solomon. But, either way, she started drinking heavily; drinking to get drunk, and going around more and more with Corsair Bogy.”

I looked at her with alarm and straightened up, unconsciously reaching for the Stones beneath my shirt.

“No, no,” she said, “he hasn’t done anything to us. Yet. But I am scared of him, Z. He’s not a good man and I think he’s hired someone—”