I was completely caught up with his words. Not in the way that the Blues could charm me, but with my mind.
“And then I knew,” Gerin Reed said with a show of wonder on his face, “that not only can we see but we can also change. We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.”
It was the only time I ever saw Bones with tears in his eyes. He stood up and hugged his good friend, kissed him on the lips.
That night, after Preeta and Gerin and Woolly had gone, was my loneliest night in years.
Mackie and Trini wanted me to join them. They were going to Miami as soon as they could raise enough cash in the Bay Area. By late spring they were ready to leave.
The night before they left, Trini came to me. She was scared and heartbroken at the prospect of leaving Reggie. Mackie had promised the Pathfinder that he would take care of his childless bride until the war was over.
I tried to console her. I told her that everything was going to be fine, that Gray Man would have trouble with either Nesta or Alacrity or Bones alone.
“He certainly can’t beat all three,” I told her.
“Come with me and Mackie,” she pleaded. “Come stay with us.”
I looked at her, noticing, maybe for the first time, that she still looked like a very young woman; twenty but no older. None of us half-lights had aged, except for Woolly. Mackie and Gerin, Addy and I actually appeared younger than when we’d arrived. Juan Thrombone with his green elixirs had given us a fountain of youth, and we barely knew it.
“I can’t, Trini. I gotta stay until the last minute.”
Reggie kissed Trini good-bye the next morning. Bones gave Mackie a small mask carved from the wood of one of the Bellowing Trees.
Ex-Detective Barber just wasn’t there one day. He didn’t speak or even tend to the trees for the last meeting. He was simply gone.
“You have to go soon too, Last Chance,” Juan Thrombone said to me that night under the hanging shingles of Number Twelve.
“I know, Bones,” I said. “I know. But I can wait until he’s coming, can’t I?”
“You should get on with your life,” Juan said. His tenderness touched me.
“I don’t have any life outside of here. The only friends I have ever had are in Treaty, and now you tell me that Treaty is gone. What can I do now that all I had is gone?”
For a moment Juan’s permanent smile faded. “I don’t know, my friend. But you have to find something.”
A week later I was walking down the fishing stream toward the again-abandoned town of Treaty. I came upon Alacrity. She was naked, standing in the middle of the stream, bathing, I suppose.
“Hi, Chance,” she said.
There was never any shame in the child or woman. Her body was the perfection of any human standard. I remember being surprised that her nipples were enlarged. The pleasure must have shown in my eyes because she smiled and looked down at her body before returning her eyes to me.
“I been wanting to talk to you,” she said.
“ ’Bout what?”
“I want you to do something for me.” She walked to my side of the stream and up onto the bank. A few feet from the water she had set up a pallet of woven grasses. She sat down there and I sat beside her.
“What can I do for you, little girl?” I asked.
“Not so little,” she said.
“No, I guess not.”
“I want you to go down to my boyfriend, Eric, when you go away. I want you to tell him what’s happening here and that I’ll be down to see him when we finish this.”
“Where is he?”
“Reggie can make you a map. He knows where it is.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do that for you.”
“Will you do something else?” she asked.
Making love to a warrior like her was a muscular thing. It was hugging and kissing on the friendliest terms I have ever had with anyone. Her smile and sweet breath were like hands holding me up.
When she asked me, later, if I loved her, I broke down in tears.
We stayed by the stream all night, keeping each other warm. I told her everything that I had ever felt about anything that was important to me. She kissed me and rubbed me and told me over and over again that I was the only man that she had ever loved or ever would love. I held on to Alacrity for her warmth and her strength. There was nothing else I wanted from her, nothing else I needed.
The next day we went to Reggie, and he made me a map with charcoal and tree cloth. Then he and Alacrity went out hunting.
I was alone in the cathedral when Juan Thrombone came upon me.
“Ho there, Last Chance,” he said in his unusual but formal way.
“Hey,” I said.
He scrutinized and smiled more broadly.
“I have to go do something,” he said at last. “You would honor me with your company.”
I stood without thinking and followed him into the forest.
Thirty-two
We went quite a ways into the woods. Every now and then a bear would pass us. The bears were set like sentries around the cathedral of War.
“They will warn me,” Bones said. “Warn me when he gets near.”
We went at a good pace, finally coming to a slope of granite that went a far way down to a stream that was rushing in the melting snows of spring.
Far down at the base of the slope came a pack of what looked like six dogs. Not dogs, but coyotes. Well, there were five coyotes and one smaller dog that kept pace with the leader of the pack — the one-eyed mother.
The largest of the canines raised her nose and sniffed at the high ground where Juan and I stood. She yipped and gave out a small howl.
I had another friend in the grove of Juan Thrombone.
“Did you feel their approach?” I asked Bones.
“With them our strength is almost doubled,” he said instead of answering my question.
The afternoon of the arrival of the coyotes and Max, Claudia Heart’s blue dog, Juan Thrombone called a council under the trees of War. Everyone left in our woods, except for Addy, came. It wasn’t a meeting for humans, but I was intent on attending and recording for the ages what might have been the last council of the gods.
I got my skin of stone liquor from under Number Twelve and took two deep drafts. I hoped that the strong drink would brace me against the symptoms I usually experienced when trying to eavesdrop on the Blues.
The meeting came together slowly. Nesta Vine appeared with Alacrity. They were hand in hand. Winch Fargo skulked in behind them. Alacrity was naked except for a quiver of arrows and a long bow slung crisscross over her shoulders. Reggie came wearing tree cloth with a mesh of leaves over it for camouflage. Wanita seemed to have wandered in playing with Coyote and her pups. Max and the coyotes huddled on the ground with the twenty-six-year-old who still had the appearance of a child less than ten years of age.
Juan Thrombone was seated on a high stump, watching as the clan settled in.
Nesta sat near the animals and child. Reggie’s eyes were searching the perimeter. He caught a glimpse of me but said nothing.
“It is time,” Juan Thrombone said in an uncharacteristic somber tone.