“If you wonder too much about the Mysteries,” the old man told the fisherman, “insanity becomes part of the package.”
“What?”
“You are wondering if a small step forward is worth the attendant destruction.” The guy chuckled. “I am very, very old, and very wise, and a helluva lot smarter than you. It pays to pay attention.”
The fisherman glanced again at the Canal. “I make it to rain in five minutes.”
“You see,” the old man told him.
“That guy used to be a junkie,” the fisherman explained about Chantrell.
“Perhaps he still is,” the oldster mused, “there’s all kinds of junk. On the other hand, it takes moxie to stand preaching in the rain.” The old man moved pegs. “Needfulness clusters around joints. There’s a sufficiency of needfulness.”
“Is there such a thing as an honest hustle?” The fisherman remembered telling the tow truck kid there was no such thing. “Maybe being mistaken, or even wrong, doesn’t have much to do with being honest.”
“It’s something to think about,” the oldster admitted. He glanced toward the Dragon-Lady-red doors. “What happens next may explain quite a bit.” He shuffled and dealt.
A red-hair thing entered, simpering. Its hair was permed, and it exuded a light stench. It walked to the bar with all the ease of slime draining from a garbage truck. It looked the bar over, then took a seat beside Chantrell.
Chantrell stood. He looked at the red-hair the way a cop looks at drunken vomit. “There’s things I’m not strong enough to handle,” he told the bartender. Chantrell’s voice was actually calm. “But I grow stronger every day.” He moved toward the door. “Parking lot,” he said quietly. “Grace is like rain. It can happen anywhere. Take my word.”
“We’re fresh out of strychnine,” the bartender told the red-hair. The bartender watched Chantrell leave, watched rain begin to patter on the Canal. “You have certainly settled for a shabby incarnation this time,” the bartender told the red-hair. “I thought you’d pick something attractive, something people would like.”
“They like this,” the thing said. “I gave it a lot of thought. This incarnation is actually perfect. It’s that sort of time in history.”
“Suppose I grant your point,” the bartender said. “Which, of course, I do not.”
“You may take my word about what losers like,” the red-hair said. “I’ve been at this for a long, long time.”
“As have I,” the bartender murmured. “And sometimes the days move slowly.” The bartender turned toward the back room. “We have among us a creature of urges and low desires.”
Cussing flowered, then sparked, then threatened to blister paint. Lee came from the back room, gray shirt, orange tie, wrinkled face. “Didn’t we just do this?”
“Time flies,” the red-hair suggested.
“Hear what I say and trust it,” the oldster whispered to the fisherman. “Every three or four centuries there’s a meeting of these forces. Every three or four centuries some nation begins to slide. When that happens you get this caucus. I am a superior diplomat.”
“Incarnation or not…”
“Stay out of it,” the oldster insisted. “You are truly helpless. That thing is a force. It can empty you as it emptied others. Lee and the bartender are forces. They play on a stage too big for your imagining.”
“People are dead.” The fisherman did not lower his voice.
The red-hair turned. “Death is not a thing I enjoy. Where necessary, yes, but death is not an object. My pleasure comes from damage, wounds, wreckage, broken and fractured things.” The red-hair simpered. “I enjoy you, your ruptured hand, your age, your feeble indignation.” The red-hair stopped simpering. “And now you must shut up.”
“Are you not premature?” the bartender asked. “It took a goodly while for you to manifest this time. You were hardily opposed.”
“Perhaps a little,” the red-hair admitted. “Always before it’s been a walk. But the stage has become bigger.”
“Always before,” the oldster whispered, “the battle lay within the heart of one or another nation. This time it’s in the heart of the western world.”
“One thing puzzles me,” the bartender said. “Why here? Why manifest in this small and unimportant place?”
“The cities are already mine,” the red-hair said. “They did it to themselves. But there are small pockets out here in the boonies where people stumble around and bump into each other. They aren’t particularly good, or particularly bright, but they halfway try to take care of each other. They actually try to protect their worlds. I’m doing a mopping up operation, nearly meaningless, an amusement, actually. Most enjoyable.”
Lee loosened his tie. “The next time we go through this you won’t find me owning a joint. Next time through I’ll raise mangos or cabbages. Or, maybe I’ll seed clouds.” Lee’s scorn was so great the fisherman thought he could hear it sizzle. “The problem with a joint,” Lee told the red-hair, “is there’s too many guys like you… look the same… talk the same…” Lee wrinkled his nose. “…smell the same… and too stupid to zip their drawers.”
“It’s my specialty,” the red-hair simpered. “Intelligence doesn’t damage things, just lack of it.” The red-hair snickered.
“Gimmie a time-line,” Lee said, “then get the hell out.”
“Be careful,” the red-hair told him. “If it were not for me, folks like you would have no work.”
“What a delightful idea,” the bartender said. “Or, as Grandma used to put it, ‘Land of Goshen’… or did she say, ‘my stars and garters.’” The bartender smiled broadly.
“There will now be negotiation,” the oldster whispered. “Dreadfully boring. All about wealth and lack of it, ideas or lack of them, offers and counter offers. Lee will choose a new continent to bring to prominence. The bartender will work at protecting history. The red-hair will fake and giggle and hustle.”
“I got nothin’ to lose,” the fisherman said, and knew he talked like a kid. “I could get in one good swing.”
“You have everything to lose,” the oldster whispered. “That thing is immortal. Go now, and wend your way; but take this with you: although a civilization dies, it does not mean that intelligence must. Thought and honor are that thing’s enemies, and thought and honor are individual. You may remain strong in the midst of squalor. Protect your loves if you can. Protect their worlds if you can. Wend your way.” The oldster moved pegs. “Crib,” he said.
Epilogue
After heavy storms the forest seems to rise and stretch and shake like a dog waking from a nap. Branches of fir that sailed before the wind lie on the forest floor and arrange themselves in clusters. Cones continue to mature, and from the decaying clusters will eventually sprout new seedlings. No one knows how the branches manage this, but people of the forest know it is true.
And movement returns. The birds of winter, sparrows, of which there are more than twenty kinds, Oregon juncos, nuthatch, and chickadees emerge from sheltered spots where they have huddled against wind. They flit and putter about tops of giant trees where they pick seeds in the canopy. Sometimes a robin, who has failed to get the winter message, hops on the forest floor where there is movement of mice; while up and down the trunks of trees chipmunks whistle, chase, and chatter.
This, according to the poet, is / the forest primeval / the murmuring pines and the hemlocks / and this, according to forester and lumber magnate, is old growth timber in which resides owl, cougar, bear, deer, goat, wolverine, shrew, and in which, from time immemorial humans have dreamed dreams, some shabby, and some of beauty.
And, after a storm, a hound may trot through a splendor of smells, because wind and water bring breakage. New sights appear in old places. As Jubal Jim trots through the forest he pauses at the site of an ancient Indian village. Rain has flooded the slope, washed at roots of trees, tumbled shrubs and unearthed a variety of things.