"Hey! Hey! Lookee what I got here!"
He didn't wait for those he'd summoned to come to him, but strode with a quickening step to the remains of a garage, its pumps like rusted sentinels guarding a half-demolished building. A black woman in early middle age-her bones marking her indisputably as Cesaria's grandchild-appeared.
"What is it, Tru?" she asked him.
He handed his prize over to her, and the woman studied me.
"That's a sign," Tru drawled.
"Could be," the woman said.
"I told you. Jessamine."
The woman called over her shoulder, back into the garage. "Hey, Kenny. Look what Tru's found. Where'd you find it?"
"It just blew my way. And you was saying I was crazy."
"I didn't say you was crazy," Jessamine replied.
"No, I did," said a third voice, and a man who was in age and color somewhere between his companions came and snatched me out of Jessamine's hands. His skull was as bald as an egg, but the rest of his face was covered with a thick growth of beard. Again, there was no doubt of his ancestry. He didn't even look at what he had in his hand.
"Ain't nothing but a piece of trash," Kenny said, and before the other two could protest he'd turned his back on them and was stalking away.
They didn't follow him. At a guess, he intimidated them. But once his back was turned on them, I saw him cast a forlorn look at what he held. His eyes were wet with tears.
"Don't want to hope no more," he murmured to himself.
Then he turned my face to the flames of a small fire burning among the bricks. There was a moment of sheer panic, as the heat caught hold of me. I felt my body curl up in the flames, and blacken, blacken until I was the color of Galilee. Then I woke, bathed in enough sweat that had I indeed been burning I would have surely extinguished myself.
There; that's the dream, as best I remember it. One of the stranger night visions I've had, I must say. I don't know what to make of it. But now that I've written it down, I withdraw what I said earlier, about it not being prophetic. Perhaps it is. Perhaps somewhere out in the middle of the country three of Luman's bastards are waiting for an omen, even now; knowing that they're more than the world has let them be, but not knowing what. Waiting for someone to come and tell them who they are. Waiting for me.
PART SEVEN. The Wheel of the Stars
Today I made my peace with Luman. It wasn't an easy thing to do, but I knew that I was going to have to do it sooner or later. Just a few hours ago, sitting back from my desk to muse on something, I realized suddenly how sad I'd be if events were somehow to quicken, and L'Enfant fell, and I was to have reconciled with Luman. So I got up, fetched my umbrella (a pleasant drizzle has been falling for most of the day; perhaps it will clear the air a little) and took myself off to the Smoke House.
Luman was waiting for me, sitting on the threshold, picking his nose and staring down the path along which I approached.
"You took your time," was his first remark to me.
"I did what?"
"You heard me. Taking all this time to come an' tell me you're sorry."
"What makes you think I'm going to do that?" I replied.
"You look sorry," Luman replied, flicking something he'd mined from his nostrils into the vegetation.
"Do I indeed?"
"Yes, Mr.-High-and-Mighty-I'm-a-Writer-Maddox, you look very sorry indeed." He grabbed the rotted doorjamb and pulled himself to his feet. "In fact I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't jus' throw that sorry carcass down on the ground an' beg me to forgive you." He grinned. "But you don't have to do that, brother o' mine. I forgive you your trespasses."
"That's generous of you. And what about yours?"
"I don't have none."
"Luman, you virtually accused me of killing my own wife."
"I was just telling the simple truth," he said. Then added: "As I saw it. You didn't have to believe me." His goaty face became sly. "Though somethin' tells me you do." He regarded me in silence for a time. "Tell me I'm wrong."
What I really wanted to do was beat that smug smile off his face, but I resisted the temptation. I'd come here to make peace, and peace I was going to make. Besides, as I've admitted in these pages, the guilt for Chiyojo's death does in some measure lie with me. I'd confessed it on paper; now it was time to do the same thing staring my accuser in the face. That shouldn't be so difficult, should it? I knew the words; why was it so much more difficult to speak them than to write them?
I put my umbrella down and turned my face up to the rain. It was warm but it still refreshed me. I stood there for perhaps a minute, while the raindrops broke against my face, and my hair became flattened to my scalp. At last, without looking back at Luman, I said:
"You were right. I'm responsible for what happened to Chiyojo. I let Nicodemus have her, just as you said. I wanted…" I began to feel tears rising up in me. They thickened my voice; but I went on with my confession. "I wanted to have his favor. To have him love me." I put my hand up to my face, and wiped the rainwater off. Then, finally, I looked back at Luman. "The thing is, I never really felt as though I was his son. Not the way you were. Or Galilee. I was always the half-breed. So I scampered around the world trying to please him. But it didn't work. He just took me for granted. I didn't know what else to give him. I'd given myself and that wasn't enough…" Somewhere in the midst of saying all this I'd started to tremble; my hands, my legs, my heart. But nothing short of death would have now stopped me finishing what I'd begun. "When he set eyes on Chiyojo I felt angry at first.
I was going to leave. I should have left. I should have taken her-just the way you said-taken her away from L'Enfant so we could have had a life of our own. An ordinary life, maybe-a human life. But that wouldn't have been so bad, would it?"
"Compared to this?" Luman said softly. "It would have been paradise."
"But I was afraid to go. I was afraid that after a while I'd regret going but that there'd be no way back."
"Like Galilee?"
"Yes… like poor Galilee. So I ignored my instincts. And when he came after Chiyojo I looked the other way. I suppose, deep down, I hoped she'd love me enough to say no to him."
"Don't blame her," Luman said. "The Virgin Mary would have given up her pussy for Nicodemus."
"I don't blame her. I never blamed her. But I still hoped."
"You poor idiot," Luman said, not without tenderness. "You must have been a mess."
"The worst, Luman. I was torn in half. Part of me wanted her to reject him. To come running to me and tell me he'd tried to violate her. And part of me wanted him to take her from me. Make her his mistress if that made him pay more attention to me."
"How was that going to happen?"
"I don't know. He was going to feel guilty so he was going to be kinder to me. Or we'd simply have shared her. Him at one end and me at the other."
"You'd have done that?"
"I think so."
"Wait. Let me be certain I understand this. You would have had a mlnage a trots with your wife and your own father?" I didn't answer, but I suppose my silence was reply enough. Luman slapped his hand over his eyes with comic gusto. "I thought I was twisted," he said. Then he grinned.
For myself I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. This was more than I'd confessed with pen and paper; this was the dirtiest truth; the most wretched, sickening truth.
"Anyway, it never happened," I said.
"Well that's something," Luman replied. "You're still a pervert, mind."
"He took her and fucked her and gave her feelings I guess I never gave her."