“Ex-detective. I was retired because of my...” He finished the sentence by gesturing at his face. “But we’re here because we heard somethin’. Mackie and me heard it.”
“You?” I couldn’t hide the shock. “How? You thought that Ordé was an idiot and a criminal. How could you hear anything?”
“I can feel pain,” the ex-detective said. “I feel it every second of every day. I feel it on my skin, in my bones, and in my soul, whatever that is.”
Barber then produced a.38 pistol, ending any lingering thoughts of murder.
“Where is he?” Barber demanded.
“Hey, man. Point that somewhere else.” I looked over to my fellow black man for support, but Mackie’s wasted face held no hope and little interest.
“Don’t play with me, son.” Barber gestured dangerously with his pistol. “I don’t have a shield anymore, and that means you don’t either.”
“Who?”
“No name. Just Gray Man.”
Laughter was the best answer I could give.
I brought Barber and Mackie Allitar to the cathedral. No one there was very surprised to see new citizens for Bones’s town. Wanita even knew their names before she was told.
“Why didn’t you tell me they were coming?” I asked the dreamer.
“You already knew people was gonna come,” she said. “And it’s not polite to tell people’s names. They like to do that themselves.”
“Did you see any bears?” Reggie asked Mackie.
“Huh?” the escaped convict asked. He was looking at Wanita with his nostrils opened wide.
“Did you see any bears?” Alacrity repeated the question.
“Nuh-uh. I mean, we heard some shit like that but we ain’t seen nuthin’.”
“But the bears chase everybody,” Alacrity said. She stood up, which by itself was a threat.
“Don’t be killing him if the man is not your enemy, child,” Juan Thrombone said, appearing from somewhere out past Number Ten. “The bears know the scent of our friends now. They can move unmolested. They come for gardening, not for gutting.”
“But they look bad.” Alacrity always told the truth and had never even heard of manners.
Bones walked up to her and cupped his hands around her face. “And you look like an angel. But we all know to be afraid when you do not smile.”
Alacrity’s blush and grin put us all at ease.
“I am Juan Thrombone,” Bones said to his guests. “And you are Mackie and Miles. I will take you to your lodging. The rooms are ready, and you even have some neighbors.”
Bones looked deeply into the eyes of the ex-detective and smiled.
“One need not look for death, Miles and Miles. He is forever seeking you.”
The policeman shuddered.
“Come,” Juan said. “Let us find your new home.”
I followed the three without being invited. On the way Mackie was silent, Barber was sullen, and Bones was full of incomprehensible puns and jokes. He had good laughs at the expense of pine needles and sunlight and winter winds out of the sea.
Mackie was startled to see Gerin Reed, his old warden, at the doorway of the ramshackle hotel in the makeshift town of Treaty. But he was put at ease when the warden smiled and shook his hand.
“Mackie, isn’t it?” the warden asked.
“They got the blood drug here?” were Mackie’s first words.
“Come on,” Reed said. “Let me show you guys to some rooms. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Twenty-eight
Six weeks after the ex-detective and the escaped convict came to Treaty, I saw Gerin Reed and Juan Thrombone picking their way through the deep woods. This was not an unusual sight. The onetime warden and the gardener were fast friends from the first day they met. Gerin could listen to Bones for hours without getting tired and without needing any of Bones’s odd phrases or jokes clarified.
Just a few minutes of the little brown man’s words and telepathy left me gasping for silence. But not Gerin Reed. He basked in the power of Juan Thrombone. And I suspect that the little gardener was lonely for someone, a friend, to hear him. Maybe that’s one of the reasons that he brought so many half-lights into his presence.
Full Blues didn’t understand Bones any better than I did. They struggled trying to decipher their nature, procreate, and change the world to fit their image. But they rarely laughed or played. At first I thought it was because they were no longer human, that they had become in some way the Platonic ideals. These ideals, being beyond human idealism, had turned in on themselves, and so you had the philosopher without humanity, the lover who felt no love. Of course, there were Blues like Eileen Martel and Phyllis Yamauchi who were friendly, but even they seemed to be following some complex inner compulsion, some drive that seemed to be more instinctual than it was enlightened.
But Juan Thrombone did laugh and play. He capered and was, it seemed, haphazard about what he believed and said. He was more human than the other Blues. Instead of a mere concept like Love or Death, he had a personality. He loved Addy as any man would a woman.
Bones was a secret beyond the secrets held in blue light. He was the key and that, finally, was why I stayed close to him. I might have stayed anyway — because of Death. I believed Reggie when he said that Treaty was the safest place on Earth. I believed him mainly because of Bones and his great bellowing sequoias.
One day while thinking of those trees, I asked Bones if he had made the great redwood’s seeds into trees because most of the Blues were infertile and he wanted to change that.
He answered, “No, Last Chance. I am not a midwife. I loved the song and I knew that it would end. I was a man who became light and then a light who became man. I don’t like the sting of death, but neither do I need to see the world transformed. A little song and a good laugh, a dream of far away and I am satisfied.”
I could have fallen down on my knees and asked him for the truth for me right then, but I knew that he would only leave me there.
The only way I could learn what I needed to from Bones was to observe him. I decided to follow him and Gerin Reed on the way through the thick brush and woods that day. The smaller Thrombone was moving fast, making it hard for his friend to keep up. Bones wasn’t laughing or joking either. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t saying anything at all.
They covered ground quickly and, after quite some time, entered a part of the forest that was familiar to me. This was unusual because of two things. One, I’m a city boy with no woodlore. Two, my second sight makes everything I see different no matter how many times I see it. I could see a tree a thousand times, and in every encounter, the tree would have something new to say to me.
But that particular grove of white firs was different. As Bones and Gerin Reed made their way, I began to feel dread. It wasn’t until a colorful wing flitted past my face that I realized we were under one of the deadly canopies of Blue-killing butterflies.
Above me were tens of thousands of brightly colored wings. They moved continually, resembling a masterfully created kaleidoscope that never repeats an image. I was captivated by the undulating blanket of their wings. For a moment I was lost in their performance. The wisp of blue in my veins seemed to flutter along with them. If I hadn’t heard the plaintive note of human despair, I might have died there watching the colors.
As it was, I tried to turn to see where the cry had come from and found that I was on my knees. Bones and Gerin were nowhere to be seen. I tried to get up, but my first attempt failed. The second try got me to my feet, but I was unsteady.
A loud moan could be heard through the woods.
I stumbled off in that direction.