He straightened, his hands dropped to his sides, he took several long, deep breaths, his knees bent, his arms came up, elbows at his sides, to form two gentle curves before him, and he appeared to go into a trance. Minutes passed, and more minutes, until Bill could see the beginnings of a fine trembling about his thighs and knees, first hinted at by the faint vibration of fabric in his pants. Still he held it, what he called standing post, until the trembling increased into an obvious tremor, and what must have been twenty minutes passed before he sighed, a long, continuous inhalation and exhalation of air, and slowly straightened into an erect posture, only to sink back into it again, and this time from the stance into motion.
She never tired of watching him practice tai chi chuan. In Chinese the name meant “soft boxing,” a form of martial arts dating back five thousand years. It focused more on defense, designed to take advantage of an opponent’s offensive moves and discourage them, deter them or deflect them.
Moses in motion was grace personified, wholly concentrated on his art, from commencement to conclusion, through movements with prosaic names like Pull Back, Press Forward and Push, to the more exotic movements with names like Step Back and Repulse Monkey, Stork Spreads Its Wings and Retreat to Ride Tiger.
He went through the form three times. Sounds natural to the creek, birds calling and fish jumping and branches creaking in the breeze, seemed muted and distant. One was aware, watching Moses practice his art, of the inherent possibility of mankind. One grieved that, in five thousand years of practice, that potential had yet to be achieved. But for a few precious moments Moses shrugged off the millstones of modern man and reached back in time for the grace and strength and endurance inherent in us all. It was always there, waiting to be tapped. It was only that so few knew to reach for it.
Bill looked around to see that Tim was watching Moses, too.
Moses said, “Come here, boy.”
At first it didn’t seem that Tim would obey.
Moses waited, without turning, without moving, without repeating himself, facing north, waiting.
Tim approached reluctantly. “What?” He affected a yawn.
“This is called a modified horse stance,” Moses said, sinking back into the bent-knee, arm-bent-at-the-elbow position.
“So?”
“So,” Moses said, displaying a rare patience, “this is the best exercise to tone your muscles for the practice of tai chi chuan.”
Tim opened his mouth to say “Who cares?” caught Bill’s eye, and changed it to the less dangerous “So?”
“So do it. Now.” Moses stood straight and walked behind Tim, poking his hands into the backs of the boy’s knees and manipulating Tim’s arms into the raised position, much as someone would operate a marionette. “Not like that, like this. Not straight, curved, and cup your hands. Deeper.” He nudged the backs of Tim’s knees again. “You’re young and healthy, you can go deeper than that.”
“Why would I want to?” Tim muttered, just loud enough for Moses to hear.
Surprising everyone in the clearing, Moses laughed. “Oh, you want to, all right, young Gosuk. You were watching me, and you thought what I was doing was way cool.” He raised his voice. “Amelia!”
He had to shout her name three times before she came to the door, rumpled clothes and bloodshot eyes and hair askew. She looked hungover because she was.
“Down here,” Moses said, pointing next to Tim.
Befuddled, she shuffled down the steps, and stood next to Tim, swaying a little. Tim watched from the corner of one eye. She was pretty, underneath all the bruises, and not that much older than he was. It seemed strange to think of her as married. People seventeen didn’t get married, they went to high school. Melanie Choknok, the junior he had a secret crush on, was Amelia’s age.
Moses poked and prodded her, too, until she and the boy stood in a parody of Moses’ assured stance. “Breathe,” he barked. “Feel the air, the breath of life, making a circle around your body, pulling all life to you and in you. Breathe, goddamn it! Bend your knees, deeper, deeper, I said! What are you trying to do, boy, pluck a duck? Give me a respectable tai chi cup on that hand. Yeah, okay, that’s close enough for now. You, girl, nobody yelled ‘Attention!’ Lower your chin. I said lower it, damn it, not fall face forward onto your chest. Bend your knees. Bend them!”
He kept them in one position for half an hour, always carping, always criticizing, grudgingly accepting their stances only as an imitation of the real thing. “Okay. Stand up. Where you going, boy?”
Tim halted. “I thought we were done.”
“Who told you to think?” Moses demanded. “Resume your position.”
Tim resumed his position. Bill was left to wonder how Moses did it. He was five feet seven inches tall, his features were boringly regular with the merest hint of his Yupik ancestry, he had no dignity to speak of, there was no authority vested in him by the power of the state, in fact no earthly reason for anyone to say “How high?” when he said “Jump!” Tim, who had had a very rough and very nearly fatal childhood in the Yupik village of Ualik and who had been rescued from it by the timely intervention of one Wyanet Chouinard, and who was only now learning how to be an American boy, jumped. Amelia, who had been beaten into a cringing and nearly servile subservience within the space of little more than five months, her obedience was easier to understand.
Still, Moses commanded. There was no other word for it. Maybe it was his eyes, a penetrating gray so light they seemed at times absent of any color at all. Maybe it was the grin, saved from being purely evil by the curl at one corner that invited you to laugh with him. Maybe it was his age, which no one knew but everyone agreed had to be ancient.
He sat on his stool in Bill’s and he drank an endless amount of beer, but never got too drunk to talk or make love, the two things most drunks most wanted to do and couldn’t. Petitioners for news of the future approached him with the deference normally reserved for royalty, or genocidal maniacs. Should I marry the father of my child, should I quit fishing and go to school, should I move Outside? From time to time he issued proclamations. He had declared Bill’s bar to be a cell-phone-free area, reinforced his edict by launching the mayor’s cell phone out the front door and into orbit, and no one had murmured so much as a protest. Nobody brought any more cell phones with them when they dropped by for a beer, either.
Half the people in Newenham thought he was crazy. The other half thought he was divine. The whole of the population trod with care in his presence, and most of them listened when he spoke. If and when they didn’t, they almost immediately regretted it. If they lived.
She watched him chivvy and chastise Tim and Amelia for two hours, a grouchy little bully even older than she was, and loved him and wished for him immortality, or to live as long as she did, because she had no wish to live without him.
“All right,” Moses finally decided, and stepped back.
Amelia, trembling in every limb, tears and sweat running down her bewildered face, folded up where she stood, subsiding to the ground with a thump and a grunt. Tim, more prideful, managed to walk to the porch and more or less fell onto one of the folding chairs.
“Now to the sweat,” Moses said. “Come on, come on, move it!”
Amelia began to cry in earnest. With no regard for her distress, Moses took hold by the scruff of her neck and yanked her to her feet. Tim, determined to work the old fart into the ground if it killed him, struggled upright on his own. Both of them tottered around the cabin to the sweat lodge next to the creek, a tiny, enclosed shack, weatherproofed more to keep the steam in than the cold out. There was a woodstove inside, vented through the roof, with a pan of rocks sitting on top and a bucket of water sitting on the floor. Built-in benches wide enough to lie down on provided space for four. Moses stripped both kids down to their underwear and more or less shoved them onto a bench. Tim tried not to look at the lacy little brassiere Amelia was wearing, or at the further bruising the removal of her clothes had revealed. Amelia lay down and closed her eyes, oblivious to his presence.