The Meq (14 page)

Just then, I felt a presence, a presence laced with fear—the net descending. I looked at Sailor and Ray and they felt it too. We instinctively looked around and through the crowd. Someone was watching us and it wasn’t the usual glance of curiosity. I searched the faces, at random, quickly, chasing the eyes that were following mine. And just for a split second, I thought I caught the razor-thin eyes of a man in a bowler hat, like Ray’s, staring back, knowing me. Then he disappeared in the crowd.

“Was that the unexpected guest?” I asked Sailor.

“I think not,” he said.

“Then what was that?”

“I do not know. Let’s hope our train leaves soon.”

“Does Solomon have any enemies?”

“I presume many, but that presence was directed at us. There is always danger when two or more of us who carry the Stones travel together. That is the first time I have felt danger since we met.”

“Have they been stolen before? The Stones, I mean.”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never, though it has been attempted a thousand times. The gems have always attracted the Giza’s attention.”

“But how would they know? How would they ever know where any of us were going to be?”

“Mistakes, inattention, carelessness, fatigue, taking time itself for granted, false security, the Fleur-du-Mal—”

“The Fleur-du-Mal!” I shouted.

“Yes, his greatest avocation is selling the Giza on a plan to steal the Stones, getting his money, and laughing as he leaves, knowing they will not succeed.”

“What stops them?”

“Our . . . abilities . . . and the kind of people we are on our way to meet. They and their ancestors are tireless sentinels.”

Solomon’s railroad car was recoupled to the appropriate line and we departed for the spectacular route through the Rocky Mountains and into the Great Basin and Salt Lake City. I watched Ray watch the mountains and I could tell he really had never seen them before. As we snaked through passes, only to find more mountains, more passes, more of everything, he watched in silence and awe and truly became twelve years old again.

I thought briefly of Mama and Papa, but not in a sad or nostalgic way; I felt that their bones inhabited a good place; a place of clean rock and water, pine, aspen, and hawks. Their material passage back to dust would be a good place for their spirits to rise.

Sailor rode through the mountains in silence. He was alone in himself, but his memories were crowded. He turned the ring on his forefinger sideways and stroked the priceless sapphire with the smooth part of his thumb.

We made a connection in Salt Lake and turned north toward the high desert and Boise, Idaho.

We arrived in the late afternoon. It was hot, dry, and windy. Sailor opened a window and a fine mist of grit and dirt blew in. You could feel it like sand in your eyes and teeth. Our railroad car was uncoupled on a side track and left by itself as the rest of the train pulled back on the main line. We stepped down from the car and looked around for our hosts. I saw people scurrying in and out of the station, holding on to their fedoras, Stetsons, bonnets, and scarves, most keeping a handkerchief over their nose and mouth.

Ray was holding on to his bowler too. “I wonder if it’s always like this?” he said.

Out of nowhere, a voice answered, “Not always, señor. In the winter it snows.”

We all turned at once to see a wiry young man of about twenty years old holding a red beret in his right hand and motioning us toward a wagon with his left. He and three other men on horseback, all wearing red berets, had appeared silent as shadows around the corner of the station.

“This way, please,” he said. “I will take you to the Aita.”

Sailor took a step toward him, squinting with his ghost eye. “Are you Pello?”

“Yes, señor, I am.”

“In the blink of an eye,” Sailor said, “I swear, Pello, in the blink of an eye you have become a man.”

It was odd. I had never seen it before, but the young man, who looked to be at least Sailor’s older brother, maybe even a young father, was self-conscious and slightly embarrassed, as he would have been if an uncle or grandfather had made the same remark.

Sailor turned to me and told me he wanted to check and see if Owen Bramley had sent a message. He left for the station and the Basque men dismounted and loaded our things onto the wagon. Sailor was back in minutes and I couldn’t tell from his expression whether there was a message or not. He jumped in the wagon and we headed south across the Snake River, trying to shield our eyes and mouths from the grit. The Basque didn’t seem to notice.

I asked Sailor what “Aita” meant and he said it meant Father. We were on our way to see the Father of the western clan of the tribe of Vardules. Most of them were sheepmen and many had emigrated from Vizcaya and Navarra in Spain. Cousins, nephews, sons, and daughters, all came and went under the tutelage and blessing of their “Aita.” Only this “Aita” hadn’t always been a sheepman. He had been a sailor in his youth and toured the world many times before he became “Aita.” Sailor knew him as Kepa, Kepa Txopitea.

We changed direction at a town called Riddle and headed east and south, crossing two small rivers. The sun was low and the mesas to our west cast shadows across the basin ahead of us. Just at sunset, we veered toward what appeared to be a single mesa at least twenty miles long, but as we came closer, turned out to be two mesas, running parallel and staggered.

We rounded the end of the first mesa on a narrow, well-worn trail and a world within a world came into view. Between the mesas, two miles wide and five miles long, was a valley, an oasis, a green world of pine, aspen, and spruce with a bursting spring-fed stream winding down the center. So unexpected and dreamlike was the sight that Ray whispered, “Damn.”

We followed the trail that followed the stream back toward its source. Along the way, I saw thousands of sheep grazing in four different natural meadows angling up and away from the stream. I heard music at one point and Sailor heard it too. He straightened up sharply and we both looked in the same direction. It was behind the pines, among the rocks somewhere. Sailor smiled. It was the same melody I’d heard from a distance in Bermuda. It was Meq.

We slowed for the gate to a corral to be opened and closed behind us. We came to a sprawling set of buildings, all of them stucco with red tile roofs and supported with pine beams. Each was directly or indirectly connected to the other and together they loosely formed the shape of a horseshoe.

There was life everywhere. A campfire burned in the center even though there was still some daylight. There were men tending to sheep and horses; women carrying water and baskets of vegetables while yelling at children who were laughing and ignoring them; dogs, chickens, cats, and, on the veranda of what looked like the central building, an old man in a rocking chair, watching our arrival.

We pulled to a stop in front of him. Sailor got out first, then Ray, then me. The children gathered and surrounded us. Some were shorter than us and some taller. The men on horseback tied their horses and stood behind the old man’s chair. A small woman with gray hair pulled back in a braid came from inside the building wiping her hands on a cloth and smiling. She walked over to the old man and stood beside him.

He rose slowly, but no one moved to help. I could tell that even if he needed help he wouldn’t have asked for it or expected it. He was thin and wiry, but not weak. His hair was white and close-cropped and he had at least a seven-day growth of grizzled, white beard. He wore an old and unique vest of sheepskin and leather with colored symbols carved and dyed into it. Underneath the vest, he wore no shirt and there was a small tattoo of a bull on his left breast. Even in wide cotton trousers, I could tell he was bow-legged and he started walking toward us, then stopped abruptly.

“Miren!” he said, turning to the woman at his side. “My beret!”

She quickly ran inside and back, handing him an old red beret. He placed it on his head at a precise angle. Then, he walked directly to Sailor and said, “It is good to see you, old one.”

“You too, Kepa,” Sailor said in a monotone, then he smiled and added, “You smell like sheep.”

Everyone broke into laughter and the real greeting began. Sailor already knew half the crowd that had gathered and was introduced to the rest. Then Sailor introduced Ray to Kepa, his wife Miren, his four sons, one of whom was Pello who drove our wagon, three of his seven daughters and their children, and several other cousins, lieutenants, nieces, and nephews. He turned to me then and spoke to Kepa.

“I brought someone else, someone I think you should meet. It is a good time of year for such a thing.”

“It is a good time of year, indeed, old one,” Kepa said. “We have fat lamb and fresh water from the stream and even a full moon tonight. Let us meet.”

He walked over to me and looked down in my eyes. He was an old man, but still taller than I was and I met his gaze with my own.

“Your father was like a father to me,” he said. “I miss him as a blind man misses touch—I want you to know that. I am Kepa Txopitea, Aita in the tribe of Vardules, protectors of the Stone of Dreams. I welcome you to our camp. We would have met sooner or later, but I am pleased it is now. Now is a good time of year.”

“Yes,” I said, “now is the best time of year.”

We embraced and it was a formal embrace, but genuine. He backed up a step or two and opened his vest, nodding his head for me to look at his tattoo. I looked and it was magnificent; a bull as big as his fist in profile and drawn with skill and detail in now faded blues, blacks, reds, and golds.

“You see,” he said, “Zezen, the bull. Your name, your family,” and then he placed his open hand over his chest. “My heart,” he said.

Miren elbowed him in the ribs and made him introduce her to me, then she insisted we be shown to our rooms and be given fresh towels, soap, and water. We were treated like family, not guests. I appreciated the feeling and told Kepa so. He shrugged it off, waving his arm, and said, “I know you have been to sea, Sailor has told me; so have I, but wait ’til you see the stars here, Zianno. There are more than in the Fijis.”

“I’ve never been to the Fijis.”

“Then remember these—they will be enough.”

Our rooms were simple and clean. There was a single bed in mine with a window next to it looking out and across the space between the mesas. It faced west, and by turning your head from right to left, you could follow the stream all the way up the valley to where the mesas seemed to join and the stream found its source.

I sat on the bed to take in the view and almost sat on a cylindrical leather case lying on the blankets. It was very old, about eighteen inches long, and divided into two sections held together with brass clasps. Slipped underneath the case was a note folded in two. I read the note and it said, “For the Shepherd of the Izarharri—Good for wonder, good for wolves!”

I opened the leather case carefully. Inside and fitting perfectly in a molded purple velvet lining was a single-lens telescope in two parts, one sliding into the other. It was made of brass and highly polished. The craftsmanship was exquisite and there were no markings on it except for two tiny initials engraved near the eyepiece: A. L.

I held it in my hands and it felt somehow familiar. I extended the two sections and looked through it to the west where the sun had set and the first few stars were appearing. Old as it was, it worked perfectly.

I put the telescope back in its case and walked to Sailor’s room where he had changed clothes and was lacing up his boots.

“This was lying on my bed,” I said and handed him the case. “This was with it.” I gave him the note. He read it and smiled.

“What does ‘Shepherd of the Izarharri’ mean?” I asked.

“Izarharri is the old word for Starstone. You are the Shepherd, the caretaker, of the Starstone. Kepa wants to give you something in recognition of this, something priceless to him. Therefore, he gives you his telescope; the same telescope that your father gave to him years ago.”

“My father!”

“Yes, and it was given to your father in the seventeenth century by Baruch Spinoza, the Dutch philosopher, who in turn had it given to him by Anton van Leeuwenhoek. It is very rare and of very good quality for its time. Look, there by the eyepiece, you can read the etched A and L.”

“I know, I saw it. I can’t keep this, you know. Even if it was my father’s, it must mean too much to Kepa for me to accept it.”

“You must accept it. It would be an insult not to. It is because it does mean so much to him that he gives it to you.”

I walked to Sailor’s window and gazed out at the same view I had from my own. It was getting dark and light at the same time. The full moon was rising. Something basic and fundamental occurred to me. I suddenly felt light, almost weightless, as if I were a piece of paper no bigger than Kepa’s note and I might, at any second, fly out of the window, over the stream, up the face of the mesa, and disappear in the western sky. I turned to Sailor.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to
do
here,” I said.

“Do? You are not supposed to
do
anything. In time, you will have a dream, we hope. A dream your father and his father and his father never had.”

“Why do you think I will have the dream?”

“I do not think it—I hope. There is no way to know, but there is also no reason for you to worry and doubt. Besides, tomorrow you meet Eder-Meq, my sister, and her Ameq, Baju Gaztelu, and their daughter, Nova. Nova is newly born and I have only seen her once myself. Kepa is planning a feast that will last all day and night. Do not worry, Zianno. You have time. You are Meq, remember? You have all the time in the world, so enjoy it.”

“You have a sister?”

“Yes, it is strange to see her aging, but always good to see her, nevertheless.”

“Was that her singing we heard? From the wagon?”

“Yes.”

I remembered the melody, the ancient melody, and the way the notes rose and fell, hanging on to each other like hands across an abyss, lifting and swaying, never letting go.

“The song’s about return, isn’t it?”