Gray Man was swinging his ax to great effect. Large chips of the giant tree were flying off. But she was wide. Thirty feet or more in diameter. Gray Man was more than halfway through the thick trunk. He was standing inside the wound, hacking away. Hacking, hacking.
Somehow I realized that when the tree fell, Gray Man would be freed from his cave.
Near where I stood a man was crying. A black man. The spitting image of Death. He was different, though; he was the man I’d seen in my room before Gray Man came out of him. Horace LaFontaine.
“Who’re you?” he asked.
“I’m Chance.”
“What you doin’ here?”
“I think I must be inside your head,” I said.
“I ain’t got no head, man. I’m dead. It’s his head. I was gone up till a couple minutes ago. That tree there done blowed up an’ I was dead. I thought he was dead too; that Grey Redstar, that Gray Man.”
All the while the hacking continued. And as it went, I became more anxious and afraid.
“You have to be alive, Horace,” I said.
“How you know my name?”
“I know it from Phyllis Yamauchi’s blood.”
Horace’s frightened visage became sad.
“Yeah,” he said. “I remember her. But you know I couldn’t do nuthin’ t’stop him. He’s the devil an’ they ain’t no God.”
The chopping had stopped.
“How is she?” hissed a voice from behind.
I turned and Gray Man stood there, the ax hanging from his right hand. I didn’t respond, so he asked the question again.
“Who?” I asked.
“The little girl. The one who escaped me by jumping out the window. Alacrity.”
“Why’re you cuttin’ down that tree?” I asked to mask my fear for Alacrity.
Gray Man smiled. “So I can get at you, little man. So I can kill your perverted friends. So I can shed that one standing there with you and leave this place.”
Horace tittered in fear. I can’t say that I blamed him.
“Now tell me what I want to know,” Gray Man said.
He swung his ax before I could react, and my left arm was severed at the shoulder. Blood spurted from the wound, and I went down on my knees. Horace screamed and ran away.
“Chance!”
“Where is the girl?” Gray Man shouted.
“Chance!”
Gray Man raised the ax high over his head, poised for the killing stroke.
“Chance!” Wanita shouted.
I jumped. I was pulled. The ax blow fell. I found myself being yanked by the arm that had been severed. I was in my tree-cloth sleeping bag, and Wanita was there in my tent — saving me.
“Chance, wake up!” she shouted.
“Wanita,” I said. “What happened to me?”
“You had my dream,” she told me. “You had my dream and you almost died because he didn’t want to let you wake up.”
“Gray Man?”
“I came an’ slept next to you because I knew you had to have my dream. I saw you dreamin’ but I wasn’t there. You had it ’cause I was sleepin’ next to you. You was my dream, but you almost died.”
I called a meeting. I told them about Gray Man and how he wanted to kill everybody.
“But he doesn’t know where we are,” Reggie said. “He told you that.”
“He gonna know, though,” Wanita told her brother.
“I don’t care if he comes,” Alacrity said. “I’m not afraid of him no more.”
“Yeah,” Winch Fargo chimed in. “Let the nigger come and get it.”
Wanita stayed silent. Addy sat hushed next to Juan Thrombone.
“Can we kill him?” I asked Bones.
“Can you bring a stone to life?” Juan asked in return. “Can you set a star on fire?”
Nesta took in a sharp breath as if the words jarred some deep memory. Maybe it was a phrase from some prayer that the Blues knew before they had bodies.
We sat for a while pondering his questions. I wondered if they were riddles that actually had answers.
“What should we do?” Gerin asked Juan Thrombone.
“I am staying here, my friend,” Bones said. “But you and all of the half-lights should go.” He looked at Addy then, but she turned away.
“But you and the rest are going to stay?”
“Together maybe we can fight him off,” Juan said. He didn’t seem worried. “But divided, he would kill the children. Divided, he would kill me or Nesta or Winch. And if you were here with us, we would have to worry about you. He would use you and make us weak.”
“I don’t want to go,” Trini said. She laced her fingers with Reggie’s.
Mackie hunched over on his tree-stump seat and covered his face with his hands.
“The half-lights have learned how best to use what they have,” Juan Thrombone said. “You can see if shown, you can run if chased. There are glimmerings in you, and that may well be enough even if the rest of us die here.”
Enough for what? That was the question in my mind, but I did not ask it. That might have been my greatest mistake.
Juan shed his unique overalls. He was naked except for the thick mane of hair and beard. His body was thin, but I knew the strength that lived in those limbs.
“It is over,” he said. “Now Treaty has become War.”
“Are we gonna fight?” Woolly asked. He was short like his father but had inherited the golden skin of his mother.
“No, Woolly,” Gerin said. “We’re going to go now.”
“Go where, Dad?”
We all knew that Bones would drive us from War if he had to.
All of us but Adelaide.
Addy told Juan that she was staying, that she would kill herself if she had to leave her daughter or her man. She promised that she would kill herself if her life threatened the war against Gray Man. But she would not leave.
Juan Thrombone did not argue with her.
Gerin and Preeta left with Woolly within the week. They were headed for his mother’s house in San Diego.
The morning of the day they left, the sky was cloudless and pale. Everyone from Treaty, now War, gathered in the clearing beyond Number Twelve. Gerin was waiting when I got there with Reggie. Preeta and Woolly were the last to arrive.
Gerin Reed was the only one standing. The rest of us squatted or sat in a half lotus. A solemnity hung over us, making the talk seem more like a eulogy than a good-bye.
“I guess this is my last talk,” Gerin Reed began. “At least, the last talk here. It’s been a long time, and I was thinking just last night that I’m going to miss this place and you. Bones and Wanita and Chance and everybody. I’m going to miss drinking and dreaming with my friends. I’m going to miss the trees’ voices and, I guess for a while, I’ll miss death. Or Death will miss me. Or will he? That’s what I was thinking this morning. I can hardly remember the last time I missed anyone in particular. All I’ve done for years has been to think and speculate. I got some blood on my fingers and I stopped caring, because when I cared I also hated. I hated black men and rich men too. I never even touched my wife, couldn’t stand the smell of her sweat or breath. I hated going to work and hated coming back home. I even hated the grass growing because all I had was a push mower and I couldn’t stand the work.
“I was angry when I had feelings of love because it only reminded me of how much I was going to be hurt and disappointed. And so when I touched that blood drug, I forgot all of that. I didn’t love my children but loved the idea of children. I didn’t care about the men in my prison, so I left.
“But last night I realized that I care about you guys. All of you. I love you. You’re my family. And it’s not blue light or anything like that that moves me because I love Woolly and Preeta too and I’m happy that they’re coming with me. I’m worried about them and I’m thinking about all of you even when the rain is falling, even when the bright orange termites swarm out of a dead log. Even when the air is frozen and the wood duck breaks the silence that the trees make.” Gerin stopped speaking for a moment. His rapt expression took all of us in.