Although I do sing, “Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink or clothing?
Come, dame or maid,
Be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.”
1
It was starting to get dark, earlier than usual. Some clouds starting to drift over from the north, maybe even a little rain tonight, Tom thought. The first of the season. Last night clear and sharp and cool, the moonlight strong and bright; tonight, maybe, rain. A change in the weather, perhaps heralding other, bigger changes just ahead. Go back to the room, take a nice shower, fix yourself up for dinner. Afterward have a talk with some of the people here, this Ferguson, the fat girl April, some of the others. The Time of the Crossing was getting close. Like the coming of the rain: the season was changing.
“Let’s go,” he said to Ferguson. “We been out here for hours. Time to head back.”
“Yeah,” Ferguson said. “Sure.” He sounded half-awake, or less than half: vague, dreamy, furry. He had been that way since Tom had given him the vision. Sitting quietly under the giant trees, smiling, shaking his head from time to time, saying almost nothing at all. It was as though the Green World dream had stunned him. Or was it something else, Tom wondered? Was it that somebody had turned to him at last and said, Look, man, I care for you, me, an absolute stranger with not a damn thing to gain, I just want you to stop hurting and this is what I can do for you. Maybe no one had ever said anything like that to him before, Tom thought.
“Come on, then. Up.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I’m coming.”
“Give you a hand. Here.”
Tom pulled Ferguson to his feet. He was a big powerful man, plenty of beef on him. Getting him up was work. Ferguson wobbled a little, rocking back and forth. Easy, Tom thought. Get your balance. He hoped Ferguson wasn’t going to fall. He remembered what it had been like catching hold of April when she went over. Easy. Easy.
Ferguson managed to steady himself. They started toward the trail back to the Center.
“You think I’m going to get the space dreams all the time now?” Ferguson asked. “Without you having to do that to me, I mean?”
“Sure,” Tom said. “Why not? You’re wide open. You always were, except you wouldn’t let it. Now you know how to let it.”
“What a beautiful thing. That green world. I understand now, the fuss. I want to see the other ones too, you know? All seven of them.”
Tom said, “There are more than seven.”
“There are?”
“The seven are just the main ones, the strongest visions. There are others. Thousands. Millions. An infinity. Some have come to me only once, for a fraction of a second. Some only a couple of times, years apart. But the main seven, they come all the time. Those are the ones that I can give to others, the strong ones, the main ones.”
“Jesus,” Ferguson said. “Millions of worlds.”
“Look up there,” said Tom. “You know how many stars you can see when the sky is clear? And those are just the bright ones near by. This galaxy, it’s a hundred thousand light-years from end to end. You know how many stars there are in a hundred thousand light-years? And that’s just this galaxy. They’ve got nebulas out there that are whole galaxies in themselves. Andromeda. Cygnus A. The Magellanic Clouds. Full of stars, and all the stars have planets. Makes you dizzy, just to think. This funny little planet… what gall, saying we’re the only stuff there is in the universe. You know?”
“Yeah,” Ferguson said. “Yeah. Jesus, what was I doing all my life? What was I thinking of?”
Lost in the vision, still. Floating along with his head in the stars. He seemed to be altogether different now, that cold knot in his breast gone, his face smoother, younger-looking, more at ease. Well, Tom thought, that won’t last. You don’t get completely transformed in one single flash, no matter what. The old sad mean bitter cold Ed Ferguson might come back, probably would, an hour from now, a day, a week, sooner or later. Unless something big was done to change him, very soon now, while he was still open and vulnerable. Tom gave that some thought.
“Tom?” a sudden voice whispered out of the underbrush. “Hey, you, Tom!”
He looked around. A face in the shadows, blue eyes, thin lips, little scars all over the cheeks. A hand beckoning to him, pointing, signaling him to get rid of Ferguson and come over there.
Buffalo, it was. Hiding there like a ghost.
Tom shook his head. Pointed toward the Center, pointed at Ferguson.
Buffalo gestured again, more urgently. Whispered again.
“Come here, will you? Charley’s here. Wants to see you.”
“All right,” Tom said, frowning. “Wait.”
He trotted forward, catching up with Ferguson, who by now was twenty, thirty paces ahead. “You go on back,” he said. “I’m going to stay out here another five minutes, okay?”
Ferguson didn’t seem curious about that. Right now the Green World was more vivid to him, he figured, than anything that might be going on here in the woods. “Yeah,” Ferguson said. “Sure.”
“I just need to be alone a little bit.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
He went trudging on. Tom hesitated, watching him go; then he turned back into the deeper forest. Buffalo stepped out from behind an enormous tree.
“That was the guy from the highway, wasn’t it? The one who hurt his leg, the one with the dark-haired girl?”
“That’s right,” Tom said. “Why are you here? What does Charley want with me, Buffalo?”
“To see you, man. To talk to you. He misses you, you know that? We all do.” Buffalo winked. “Hey, you look good, Tom! Got yourself cleaned up a little, huh? New pair of jeans, new shirt, everything fresh. This a pretty good place here, this Center?”
“It’s all right,” said Tom. “A lot of fine people here. I like it.”
“I bet. Well, come on. Come on. This way, right back here. Charley wants to see you.”
Buffalo led the way between the great trees, across a meadow thick with clumps of leathery ferns. A few more of the scratchers were hunkered down in a secluded little glade near a stream that had just about run dry. Charley was there, looking tired and gloomy. Mujer. Stidge. White-haired Nicholas. They all seemed even scruffier than usual, a worn-out, beat-up group of men. Tom wasn’t happy to see them. He hadn’t expected ever to see them again.
“There he is!” Charley called out. “Son of a bitch, look at the new outfit! They gave you a bath, too, put some food in your belly, huh? Hey, there, Tom! Tom, how you been?”
“Charley.”
“Sight for sore eyes,” Charley said. “You been doing okay. Hasn’t been going so good for us, you know.”
“No?”
“We ran into a little trouble, up Ukiah way. Tamale and Choke, they were ambushed and killed.”
“I thought they were back out there with the van.”
“Van’s in here,” said Charley. “We floated it right between the trees, got it a little ways back in the meadow. Tamale and Choke, uh-uh. Rest of us, we were lucky to get away.”
“Not so lucky, them,” Tom said. “The Time of the Crossing’s almost here. What a time to get killed, missing out on all the splendor, on the redemption.”
“Give you a bath, it don’t change you any, I see,” Charley said, smiling faintly. “The green world and the Loollymooly planet and all the rest. That’s okay. We dream the visions too. Loolymoolly and everything. Mujer, Buffalo, me. Stidge says he doesn’t. That right, Stidge? You never get a vision, huh, you sour-faced bastard?”