The Radio Magician and Other Stories (27 page)

Jermone crushed his hands into fists under the sand. If anyone else said this . . . but no one else would. Only Cynda, the accidental Queen who had always been the second daughter would be so irreverent, and only because she was his friend could he listen.

But he feared for the ceremony. He thought she was trying to back out.

“Everyone says Bundi is mad. He’s old, mad, and no one listens to him.”

Cynda went on as if she didn’t hear him. Sunlight glistened on her shoulders. She closed her eyes as if shutting out him and the forest and the light.

“The old wreck on the beach shows we’re from some other place. Bundi says from another star. It carried us to the island, but the trip or the landing damaged it. People tried to live here, though. They tried, and there must have been a lot of them. Look at their buildings.”

“Those are the gods’ homes.”

A branch snapped in the woods. Strain as he might, Jermone heard no more sounds.

Cynda said, “They built them tall and shiny, but the forest fought back. Maybe their babies all had to be killed, and they couldn’t live with the sorrow. Maybe the animals were too much. They lost. They retreated to the island where they could kill any threat.”

“The people have lived on the island forever.”

“And what about the clothes-apes? What do you think they are?” Cynda turned again toward him, reached across herself and held his wrist next to the sand.

“Devils?” Jermone offered. His thoughts tumbled. There were no elders to answer her arguments. He had to stand for the island and the ceremony’s success. He could see it slipping away. What would he tell them if he failed? The hunts would go bad. The whales would run deep and too fast. Fish would flee the nets and fruit would rot in the orchards.

A low frond on a tree near the edge moved, and for a second Jermone thought eyes looked out at him. He blinked, and they vanished.

“Are they apes becoming men, or are they men becoming apes?” said Cynda.

Jermone rubbed his free hand across his mouth, profoundly aware she still held his wrist. “Cynda, if I had not been king, and if you had not become queen, would you have declared for me?”

She didn’t answer, but her grip tightened.

“The tide is almost out,” she said. “It’s time for the ceremony.”

“You’ll do it?” he gasped. “You’ll do the ceremony?”

She stood and straightened clothing, knocking the sand from the feathers in the skirt and untangling the bead strings that dangled from the breastcloth.

“Not for the gods. I’ll do it for you, and because you believe in them. It’s ritual and offering just like goats and fish and grain. Don’t make me talk, afterwards, though. I have to end it then.”

She walked toward the water line, then waited till a wave came in and made a mark in the sand where it stopped. She knelt and pushed sand aside, hollowing a place in the beach. Water flowed into the bottom, but she continued digging a long, shallow depression. “It has to happen where the sea gods and the land gods meet. Bundi says we believe in symbolism.”

“We believe in gods.” Now, so close to the ceremony, Jermone struggled to breathe. They were doing the gods’ business, making life good for the island, and they should be joyful. But Cynda moved as if she wore a thousand stones tied round her. Her movements slowed and seemed painful.

He didn’t know all the details of the ceremony. These were the Queen’s secrets, and the Queen’s mother. They knew the ritual’s procedures, the hidden words to be spoken and the mystic gestures. Jermone knew just his part, and what he had to do. “I don’t want you to be sad.” He held his own hands together helplessly. “The gods will reward us all for a good ceremony.” But he didn’t believe his own words. The gods seemed imaginary, and only Cynda existed.

She stopped and observed the shape she’d dug, a human shape with a place for arms and legs to lay flat, half buried and half revealed. “Next year there will be another king for the Whale’s run. I’ll be here with a different king. In fifteen seasons, mother had eleven children.” Her voice sounded old and distant. A wave slipped over the edge and carried some sand into the depression.

She faced him, eyes so brown and profound he thought he could fall into them. “I am to remind you the ritual is not about you and me as people. You are, today, on the Whale’s run first day, a representative of the male force in the universe.” She chanted now, not looking at him anymore. “The male force hunts and protects, feeds and builds, fathers and dies.”

Moving her feet into the matching shape, she sat. The water covered the back of her legs. “I am a representative of the female force in the universe.” Laying half in the earth and half out, she said, “The female force nurtures and instructs, creates and maintains, mothers and dies. If the sea gods and the land gods are with us today, we will make a Queen’s daughter to lead the people when I am gone as my mother did before me. We will assure the Whale’s run success and the hunters will come home sated and unharmed. Many children will be born live and whole.”

Jermone looked at her. Water soaked the feather skirt. Her eyes closed, and the line of her jaw was grim.

“Think of me,” she said, “as earth and sea. You are sky and trees. Cynda and Jermone are not here now.”

Still, Jermone did not move. From the jungle he could feel eyes upon him, judging him, and nowhere did he feel the gods. For many nights he had envisioned sky and tree gods filling him at this moment; he had imagined Cynda as she was now, willing to be with him and everything would be correct, but he hadn’t guessed at this emptiness. He hadn’t foreseen reluctance or misery.

Cynda opened her eyes. “Come on,” she whispered, reaching her hand up. “We have no choice.”

And she drew him down into the sand, into forgetfulness, where the sun warmed him and the sea became a salty caress. And at the explosive, powerful moment, he thought she said, “I want just you, Jermone.” But he couldn’t tell because he called her name over and over again in his mind. In the sand and the sea, in her and in him, he sensed no gods—or he touched them all. The world was different and new. Nothing mattered.

Afterwards they both cried. He didn’t feel adult. He didn’t feel like a king. The ritual ended, and he had done his part. Cynda lay beneath him in the sand, and every wave swept around them in warm baptism.

Now, only the sacrifice, the offering, remained.

He didn’t talk, and Cynda kept silent as she had promised. Like some earth elemental, she rose from the bed she had dug, the sand and water falling from her. Before she stepped into the canoe, she touched his face once, not like a good-bye, but as if she wanted to be sure he was real. Then she paddled into the ocean, leaving him sitting on the beach, watching her form grow smaller and smaller until he lost her on the horizon.

For a long time, he sat thus.

He thought of her on this beach a season from now, digging a bed for herself with some other king, and the picture left him empty. He could see no gods in it.

Then, something screeched in the jungle behind him. Jermone didn’t turn at first. He searched for Cynda on the sea, one last glimpse. Dried leaves crackled; something grunted, and stealthy footsteps crunched in the sand.

When Jermone turned, twenty had come from the forest. Some monstrous, some human, male and female. Others, he didn’t know. He wished he could tell Cynda—he wished he could talk to her again—they did wear clothes. Cloth scraps hung from their shoulders or around their waists. One wore a hat, a battered blue cap with leaves stuck in it.

As they drew close, one caught his eye: tall, and blonde and familiar. Jermone only saw him for a second before the others crowded around. Their harsh breath rattled, and they hardly seemed like gods or devils.

THE BOY BEHIND THE GATE

As you are now,

So once was I.

As I am now,

So you shall be.

Prepare for death and follow me.

—from a tombstone in the Central City Cemetery

CENTRAL CITY: TODAY

P
ine tree tops creaked overhead, but the air didn’t move in the granite-strewn gully as Ron hiked up the steep gulch. He consulted his compass, then rechecked the map. Another hundred yards above him should be The Golden Ingot #9, and if the rusted mining equipment he’d been climbing over and around for the last ten minutes were any indication, the map was right. He scanned the ground, his eyes aching from sun and dust. The backpack, heavy with a powerful flashlight, rope and bolt cutters thumped against his kidneys. Was anything out of the ordinary? Was there any sign? A patch of cloth? A child’s shoe? Could Levi have walked this far? Ron imagined the eight-year-old being towed up the mountain, hand- in-hand with the stranger who’d taken him. Would Levi have been crying, aware in his little boy way of the danger he was in?

Ron closed his eyes. He wanted to imagine Levi scared. He hoped he was scared to death because the alternative . . . Maybe he’d been wrapped in a blanket or a plastic sheet slung over the man’s shoulder. They knew who the man was, Jared Sims, but Levi wouldn’t have known. Ron shivered and continued climbing.

A jumble of cable, thick as his wrist and so rusted that wherever the metal crossed itself it had corroded into one piece, blocked his path. Ron scrambled partly up the gully’s slope around it. Piles of yellow and white mine tailings humped up above him, and soon he topped out to the relative flatness of the claim. The old map he’d photocopied in Central City had shown him where the mine was; it wasn’t marked on the USGS maps. Most of the abandoned mines and shafts had been filled in. Too much chance of some tourist wandering around old mining property, snapping pictures of busted down mills and what was left of miners’ cabins, and then stepping on some rotten boards covering a shaft a hundred feet deep. So over the last twenty years, the state and park service had been closing the properties. Still, the Gilpin County mining district had been huge, and thousands of claims had been made. There were hundreds of openings even now for someone to find if he knew where to look. Perfect, mysterious holes blasted into the mountain, timeless monuments to long-dead miners’ hopes. Perfect places to hide a little boy you didn’t want found. Here, at the Golden Ingot #9, except for the rust, it could be 1880 again. He half expected to surprise a dozen miners waiting for their turn in the bucket and the long ride down the shaft.

Ron kept his eyes down. Little chance that there’d be a footprint in the yellow gravel, but it didn’t hurt. Maybe Levi would have dropped something for him to find. It seemed years ago, but it was only last winter that Ron had read him
The Lord of the Rings
. The hobbit, Pippin, had broken from the orcs and dropped a sign that he was still alive, a beautiful beech-tree leaf brooch. Levi had said, in his little man’s voice, “That was very clever of him, Daddy, wasn’t it?” Ron remembered Levi’s head resting on his arm while he read. He could almost feel the weight of his little boy leaning against him until they got to the end of the chapter. “Read some more, Daddy. Read some more,” he’d said sleepily.

A pile of boards laying almost flat looked hopeful. Ron lifted the end of one. It creaked as it rose slowly, pulling a dozen nails from the rotted plank beside it. Dust slapped into the air after Ron moved it aside and dropped it. The next one showed a shaft’s edge. A minute later, he’d cleared most of the boards. The pile looked like it hadn’t stirred since Grover Cleveland held office, but since he was here, he was going to check.

The afternoon sun showed only six feet of shaft wall, while the rest was black. Was the bottom only a dozen feet away, or was this one of those deep, deep holes reaching hundreds of yards down?

As always, as he had scores of times since the police gave up looking ten days before, he crouched at the shaft’s edge, cupped his hands around his mouth and called into the darkness, “Levi! Levi! Are you there, son?”

Wind stirred sand behind him, blowing a little over the edge where it glittered in the sunlight, then disappeared. Only the breeze’s sibilant hiss answered him.

CENTRAL CITY: 1879

Images flitted in Charles’ mind as he stayed motionless in his bed, listening to the boy’s even breathing on the floor beside him. It was the small hours of the morning, when time came unanchored, and memories piled willy nilly atop one another. Charles could see them all: his wife dying, the Laughlins, the McGarity’s, the bloody hands in the mine. The fireplace coals had long since died, and the moon’s thin line outside the window cast almost no light through the muslin drape. He’d light a candle if he dared, but if he did, the boy’s eyes might be open; he might look at him through the flickering light and know that he knew.

He couldn’t sleep. No, not that. Charles would dream, and in his dreams he’d see the Laughlin children burning up, their red skin baking from within. “Scarlet fever,” the nurse from Idaho Springs had said. “Poor things.”

Charles had stood at the Laughlin’s door that morning, a basket of bread and clean sheets hanging from one hand, blinking at the darkness in the room. Only the sun behind him provided light. They’d covered the one window, and the cabin smelled close and moist and sweaty sick. The nurse sat by three-year-old Lisa to his left. Against the back wall lay Evelyn with her mother sitting beside her. The baby’s crib rested in the opposite corner. William Laughlin sat at the rough-hewn table in the room’s middle, resting his forehead in his hand.

The boy crept around Charles, even though he’d told him to stay with the mule. His arm wrapped around the back of Charles’ leg, and he leaned into the room. Charles put his hand down to push him back, but he didn’t. He didn’t like touching his son, the stranger who lived with him every day. Lisa panted under the blankets, blonde hair plastered to the side of her face. Four-year-old Evelyn turned to the wall, her chest still for a moment before she drew her next wheezing breath. Her mom, a hint of the scarlet flush across her own cheeks visible in the sunlight, pressed a wet cloth to Evelyn’s forehead.

“The little one?” Charles said.

William Laughlin shook his head without moving his hand. “She went during the night.” He coughed. It sounded wet and pathetic.

“I brung some things,” Charles said. He stepped deeper into the room, and the atmosphere pushed back. Outside, the sun shone bright and men filled the valley, moving surely from mine to mill, loading ore wagons or carrying supplies. Blasting echoed off cliff walls above, and Clear Creek murmured like watery wind. But here, the air felt dead with fever.

William draped a hand over the basket’s edge. “You’re a right Christian, Charles.”

“You going to your shift?” Charles moved back. The heat in the room oppressed, and he didn’t want to breathe so close to the sick girls.

“I’ll be along.”

Charles retreated to the porch. The boy leaned over Lisa, his legs bright in the sun pouring through the door, while his upper torso faded in the room’s shadows. He drew a finger across the little girl’s forehead, through her fevered sweat. He stood, facing his father, his finger up as if he’d erased chalk off a blackboard. For a moment he looked at Charles as if surprised to see him still waiting for him, then he put his finger in his mouth.

When they crossed the footbridge over the creek, Charles said, “Why’d you do that, boy? I told you to stay out.”

The boy held onto the mule’s bridle, his head not even coming up to the mule’s chin. “They’ll burn, Papa.”

Charles nearly stumbled, then glanced at the boy. He wore an old, flannel shirt too big for him with the sleeves rolled up. Pale, skinny arms. Dark hair cut above his eyebrows. Dark eyes. He was given to long, unblinking looks. A serious mouth, like his mother who died bringing him into the world eight years before.

“I’m glad he’s out of me,” she’d said in the moment before she died screaming.

“What do you mean, boy?”

“I put the death in them.” He held up his finger that had touched the girl as if in proof. “Just like the other lambs.”

“Don’t talk like that.” Charles pulled the bridle from the boy’s hand, his own hand shaking. “You go on home, and I don’t want to see a mess in the cabin when I get back. Sweep the floor.”

“I can smell the fire,” the boy said before turning toward their cabin.

Charles thought about his son all day, deep in the mine, as he worked the single jack, bent low in the tunnel only three quarters of his height, placing the steel bit against the stone, pounding it a bit deeper with each blow, rotating it each time to clear the bit. Pausing just before he drove the hammer home. The angle had to be perfect. The placement, perfect. He had to judge before he struck. Striking without looking could shatter the drill. There was always the pause before the hammer came down to be sure he was doing the right thing. So there could be no mistake. It was a feeling of good or bad in the way the drill stood. Charles considered his judgement with the hammer to be his only genius. He never struck wrongly.
Clang!
The hammer would fall against the rod. Rock dust crumbled from the hole.
Clang!
He’d hit it again, his strong right arm driving the blow home. Numbing work to create a hole for the charge. He could raise the hammer all day with that arm; the work had made it larger than the other one, a giant’s arm, but he couldn’t shape the boy with it. He couldn’t even hold him.

The boy had been bad from the beginning. His wet nurse took sick and died. After that, no one would help Charles, so he fed the child himself with goat’s milk, certain that the first winter would kill him, having no mother to care for him, but as winter filled the mountains with snow and cutting wind, even as influenza swept through the camp taking many babies, the boy thrived. He was walking by the next summer, and Charles would leave him locked in the cabin when he worked his shift, half expecting to find the toddler dead on his return. But every day the boy met him, a little taller, a little stronger, and never smiling.

Setting the powder took a half hour. Each hole had to be filled with the proper amount. Then the fuse cord had to be measured. Charles worked methodically. This deep in the mine, the stale air hurt his lungs and gritty rock coated his eyes and tongue. He checked the candle burning brightly in its shadowgee stuck in the wall. When he set the last charge, he retreated to the bucket lift, covering his nose and mouth with a soaked bandana to protect against the dust. After the blast, he stood with head bowed, breathing through the wet cloth.

Charles wanted to love him. He tried. The weather in the boy’s heart was cold, though, and hugs meant nothing to him. He never played. He never cried. And always, around him, children died. Diphtheria. The grippe. Typhoid. The croup. Pneumonia. Whooping cough. Small pox. Lingering diseases. Wasting illnesses. The cemetery filled with tiny corpses.

The ore cart rattled on the rails as Charles pushed it toward the broken ore. For the rest of his shift he’d fill the cart, take it back to the lift, empty it and return for another load. No candles lit the path, but that didn’t matter. Charles didn’t mind the dark most days, but today he couldn’t stop thinking about the boy. What does the boy do while I’m at work? What does he daydream about? Charles imagined him wandering through the camp, looking for children.

In the spring he’d taken the boy to a funeral. Seamus McGarity had lost both his boys and his wife to dysentery three days apart. McGarity, his kin and friends circled the coffins, two tiny wood boxes and a long one. During the prayer, Charles looked down at his boy dressed in mourning black. The corners of the boy’s mouth turned up and his eyes were shining. At the ceremony’s end, the boy dropped dirt in each grave. Surreptitiously, he also put a handful of grave soil in his pocket.

“Lucky your kid’s doing good,” McGarity said to him the next day as they waited for the bucket to take them down the shaft. His lunch pail dangled from his hand, and the miner looked exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept for a month. “He came by a week ago. Found him sitting by the door.”

“What did he want?” Charles wished he could pat McGarity on the shoulder. How would it be to lose your whole family? There’d been other men whose children died who drank themselves to death. The other miners stood away from them. People died in the camps all the time, but it wasn’t easy to be next to the bereft, not at first.

McGarity didn’t answer for a while. He stared out over the valley, but he didn’t appear to be looking at anything. Finally he said, “Caleb used to sing his little brother to sleep. I don’t think he knew I was listening. ‘Amazing Grace’ it was. Learned it from his mom. He had a nice voice for a ten-year-old.”

They found McGarity at the bottom of a shaft a week later. Was he drunk and fell in, or did he jump?

At the blasting site the dust still hung in the air, surrounding the candle in a pale globe. Charles hefted ore into the cart. My boy’s not human, he thought as each rock crashed against the metal. Methodically he bent and lifted, bent and lifted. Not human. Not human. Charles pictured the boy with his finger in his mouth, salty-bitter from the Laughlin girl’s scarlet fever sweat.

After a while Charles stopped loading. His hands stung. He stepped next to the candle’s feeble light and held them up. Blood ran down his wrists from his ragged fingertips. Dully he realized he’d not worn his gloves. And a certainty came to him, a gravestone solid conviction: my boy’s a monster!

Charles lay in his bed, motionless. The boy breathed evenly on the floor below him. Only the sliver-moon lit window floated in the dark. Charles kept his eyes wide open. If he shut them, even for a second, the boy might stand. He might lean his unsmiling face close. The boy might run his finger across Charles’ forehead.

“I see you burning, Papa,” the boy would say. He always called him Papa, like it was a curse.