I send Deadend in to Potrero-Taraval. Not because I’m afraid to go myself, ni dong, but because this is protocol. Smeagols always go in first. And as I have already been where smeagols fear to tread, so Deadend doesn’t dare beg off.
I am on pine cones and needles until he returns with his report.
“Lord E is inclined to disbelief,” he tells me. “Actually, he said monkeys would fly from the nether regions of his royal anatomy ere he believed your intent was benign.”
“I expected as much,” I have to admit, and cannot contain a sigh.
“I ain’t finished yet,” Deadend informs me. “Lord E thinks this is all crap, but it seems he’s got hisself yet another new merlin, and this new merlin advises him he ought to hear me out. So he does, see. And then the new merlin tells him he’s got nothing to lose by accepting our most benign offer. And damned if old Elvis don’t turn right back around to me and say, ‘Well, I got nothin' to lose by accepting your most benign offer.’ I tell you, Taco, it was like somethin' out of Star Wars — creepy.”
I am immediately suspicious. “So, who’s this new merlin?”
Deadend shrugs. “Clueless, your merlinhood. Some smilin' jack he found under a rock someplace, I guess. Like I said — righteously creepy.”
“Creepy?” I try to get details.
“Creepy. Never stopped smiling. Not once. Oooga-booga.” He does a reasonable Creepy Lou impression.
“So, we’re on?”
Deadend nods. “You got a high level conference to be held at the location of your choice — as long as it’s in Potrero.”
I have no problem with that. There’s only one place I’d want to hold this conference, Potrero or no.
oOo
The Mission Dolores seems almost a part of the real world in the unusually bright and wintry day. There is no shabu dong nor any other fog-like (or un-fog-like) substance in evidence. The stones of the courtyard are smudged and pale and, in the sunlight, the graveyard isn’t scary, just sad. I try to remember how long it has been since I was here. Six years; seems like a hundred.
Elvis keeps me waiting. I expect as much. It is his way of exerting Authority. Fine by me; he can exert all he wants in ways that don’t mean a sneeze. For my part, I go for the whole enchilada: I braid up the sidelocks of my hair and wear my best jeans, my brightest and best merlinly robes and a rabbit-leather amulet bag that contains a vial of Attar of Doug. I hang this on a thong around my neck, since according to the Books of Kingdom, this is the way merlins have worn them since time immemorial... and since I have determined that a glass vial in the pocket is a Bad Idea.
The negotiations take less time than they would if Potrero’s Lord and Master half-cared about details. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t even bring his new merlin, who is, he tells me, minding the ‘ranch’ while he’s away.
In the end, I get classes set up for young Potreros both on home ground and in Embar. Lord E will get private tutoring from our finest teachers and the Mission Dolores, and all approaches thereunto, are declared The Neutral Zone.
I only have to put up with about a dozen suggestions, whines, wheedles, pleas, growls and long-winded soliloquies all of which indicate that, 1) we ought to consider just giving them cars and stuff and teaching them how to drive them and, 2) I ought to think about the advantages of being merlin to Elvis instead of Hismajesty. This I pointedly ignore, mostly because I am listening for whispers. I hear a word now and again, usually punctuating something Elvis has said — sort of like "harumphs" or other expressions of skepticism.
When the whole thing is over and done, and I have Lord E’s squiggly and thumbprint on a contract he can’t read, but swears his new "ear man" can, I hear one great Whisper from out of everywhere.
Good, it says. Just, good, like a giant’s sigh, or like wind soughing through the sequoia, which I guess is the same thing.
I am pleased they approve, whoever the heck they are.
After the Agreement, I go up to the Mission at least once a week, usually alone, except sometimes for Doug. The Mission seems a peaceful place to me now. Peaceful, but filled with a kind of bottomless sorrow. The Whisperers speak to me most clearly when I am here. I am understanding about every other word, but the words sometimes make no sense whatsoever. Like amnah they say, and then people. And then cattaus, they say, and son.
I severely regret having something so pea-like for a brain. All I can do is sit before the rock pile, rolling strange syllables around on my tongue, while my language lessons provide entertainment for a bunch of slack-jawed Potreros.
One day, I have given up on the rock pile and am wandering about in the ruined sanctuary of the old church. It's silent but for the sound of pigeons in the rafters, and it is still but for the fluttering of their wings and the slow sifting of the dust they send raining onto the gritty floor. Light pokes into the place through every hole, every broken window, every rotted out eave, every door half off its hinges.
I move through the shattered light to the altar because I am drawn there. And when I am there, I get down on my knees in the grit to pray.
I am in the middle of a conversation with the Almighty when something creeps up my spine and makes my hair stand on end. It is a portentous Moment, and I am surprised I recognize it, being that all I have of Doug on me is the attar in my amulet bag. I wait for the Moment to unfold, but what unfolds instead is a wheezy, hacky, snuffly sound behind me. I freeze.
“Hell, Taco, I didn’t know you was Catholic.”
The pigeons freak. I turn around to see Scrawl standing in the aisle in a mad rain of feathers and dust and other crap.
She folds up on herself just a little when my eyes hit her. Then she kind of sidles down the aisle toward me, making these little mewing noises. Simpering, I think they call it. When her face comes into the puddle of light where I am standing, she blinks and looks aside so she doesn’t have to meet my eyes.
“I’m not,” I say.
She just nods, then glances around like a kid who’s just been told to apologize to somebody by a mother who is watching from close enough by to land a solid blow.
“I got somethin' to say t’you, Taco,” she says. “It’s important. ‘Cause I hate bad enough goin' down in history for somethin' I did. I can’t stand goin' down for somethin' I didn’t.”
“Meaning what?” I ask.
“Meaning, you got me righteous on two counts for burning out that old bum and scopin' for Lord E. But I had nothin' to do, no way, with that fire on the pier. That wasn’t me. I did the old clown’s digs ‘cause I was s’posed to create a distraction and I figured, why not get sweet revenge while I’m at it? They was s’posed to grab the Tree right then and there, but when you sent old Winky into the Palace and then got back pronto yourself, they couldn’t do it. The night of the big fire, all I did was let Lord E’s smeagols know you was out of the Palace. That fire wasn’t me — I’d’ve never burnt out no innocent fisherfolk. That was someone else.” She holds up her left hand. “On a stack of Holy Books,” she adds, with great conviction.
Something in my heart of souls tells me this is muy important to the old girl.
“You’re serious — a stack of Holy Books?”
The hand doesn’t waver. “Bhagavad Gita, Iqán, everything in between.”
“Someone else, you said. Like who — Lubejob?”
“Naw. Don’t think so. Lubejob an’ that bunch was caught nappin'. When I went to tell ‘em you was out of the house, they had to scramble to snatch the Tree. I don’t know who done it. I can only tell you what I seed.”
She stops right there. Good old Scrawl, still knows how to milk a mystery.
“Which was?”
She takes a step toward me, so her face is in weird shadows, and lowers her voice, like the pigeons might hear something they shouldn’t.
“Ninjas,” she says and nods once, emphatic.
“Ninjas?”
“Little hurry-scurry guys all in black. Like shadows. Like big old cats. Like the shadows of big old cats.”
“At the Wharf?”
“Down by the Old Ferry Building, just after the fire started. They was watching the hulks burn. I seen ‘em afore that, too.”
“Where?” I prompt.
“Around. Just around. Around the Palace and the Gee Gah, mostly. Always at night.”
“Yeah? Got any theories?” I invite her to feel as if I am consulting with her. Equal to equal.
“I think they’re evil spirits. Demons.” She steps closer and lowers her voice even more — those pigeons are gonna catch none of this. “Nasgul,” she intones, then makes a high-pitched whiny sound and signs at the altar. “Oi! Bad ju-ju.”
I thank her kindly for this revelation and assure her three times that I believe her before she will leave me alone to think. And what I think is that I don’t know what to think. I sit in the dust and debris on the floor, stare at the carvings behind the altar, and finger my amulet bag.
Five nameless, painted saints stand frozen in niches, looking for all the world as if they are about to leap from the windows of a very fancy building. There was once a crucifix in the middle niche of the first row. I can tell because of the light spot in the back of the niche.
A crucifix is a wooden cross, by the way, that has a carved, wooden Jesus hanging on it. But He’s gone, and there’s a funny shaped light spot in His place.
“So let’s say I believe old Scrawl,” I say to the saints. I expect no response, ni dong, but I get one, from the pigeons, who flap crap all over the place. “What’s the story — bad ju-ju ninjas from Godknowswhere start a fat old fire on a couple of barges and Lord E opportunes into a Tree-napping? Why?”
The saints do not answer. No surprise there. I wish I had Doug or my rune can or both with me right about now. I doodle in the dust beyond my knees and try to order my assumptions. Then, on a whim, I take out the vial of attar and twist out the cork.
“Okay, first things first: do I believe Scrawl?”
I inhale.
Dui, says Somebody, which is about as ‘yes’ as you can get in Chinglish.
For a moment, I imagine it’s the saints, then feel foolish for thinking some painted wooden guys are talking at me. It’s the Whisperers, of course, suddenly speaking perfect Chinglish — and most emphatically, too, I must say.
I draw another deep breath and ask, “Who besides Lord E would send ninjas to set fire to the pier?”
Wiwe, say the Whisperers and I sigh. We’re back to verba incognita again.
“Look,” I say, “ni shi shei? Who the hell are you?”
Yelamu, Ssaisen, Huimen, Saclan. The names roll out of the mist, then the whisper dies to a murmur, like a stream as you walk away.
I know these names. These are the names of tribes to which the Spanish gave the name Ohlone for their common language, and Costano, because of where they lived. To my ancestors the many were one. They couldn’t tell the Yelamu from the Ssaisen, or the Tuibun from the Huimen. They were all just Indians — Ohlone. I read these names in a book once, five — maybe six — years ago.
And then I tried to forget them.
My suspicions, which I have buried for lo, these many years (having other things to occupy my mind), have been verified. I have been talking to the Ohlone Dolores (or rather, they have been talking to me) in a state of self-imposed cluelessness. As I said, it is my ancestors who put these poor guys in the ground. You can’t blame me for not wanting to think about what they might want from me.
I have read the history of the Mission in the Micro-Fish archives of the old Diocese, but it lacks a certain perspective and detail, I guess you could say. Like, for example, it doesn’t tell the tales of cruelty, of overwork, of desperate escapes, and the diseases that swept the Ohlone into the grave. The Diocese records count each Ohlone soul won for the Church; the Ohlone counted each soul and family and tribe lost — Tuibun, Tatcan, Rumsen, Chupcan, Chiguan — like lights going out in a neighborhood as households go to sleep. When night came, their world shrank from the forever horizons to the four walls of their mission rooms.
Five years ago, having read those names and seen those lights go out in my head, I hadn’t wanted to know more. Now I did.
I went home. I shared what I had found with Firescape and Doug. They went with me to the Wiz to learn more. What I learned was that while the Ohlone had disappeared into the missions (and into the earth) they had risen again, tattered, on the rancherias — lands deeded to them by the new American government, or bequeathed to them by the Californios, the New World Spanish families — they had served.
I might have breathed easier but for one thing: that last Ohlone, Pedro Alcantara, didn’t know any of this. He had died believing he was the End. For some reason, this bothered me most outrageously. I mean, try to imagine being among aliens and thinking everyone you love is dead and that after you, there’ll be no more them or you or anything. No more family, no more tribe, no more Ohlone.
Gone. History.
Pedro Alcantara was an old man when he died — an old, lonely man. A man whose son had run away from the Mission and had never come back. Pedro never knew whether he’d escaped to the east, or had been killed by the soldiers sent to stop the runaways.
I know what losing folks is like. Losing my parents was the worst. But I gotta believe it’s worse to watch your children die before you. ‘Cause it’s not natural, y’know? It’s just not natural. I couldn’t even bring myself to think about having a little Flannigan with Firescape only to lose him or her.
I don’t get anything more out of the Whisperers that day, though I try. All I get is the same litany of tribal names. After a while, even that stops.
Later, Firescape and Doug and I wonder aloud about where Pedro’s son might’ve run away to and what he might’ve found there. And we pray aloud that he made it to wherever he was going. Some of them must have made it or Pedro really would have been The End.
I glance over at Doug, who is playing with the dust motes in a ruddy sunbeam and checking out a video on the Great Sequoias of the North Coast. Firescape sits just beyond him, squinting into a book of history.
“Am I being a ditz?” I ask them. “‘Cause this is what I’m thinking. I’m thinking that maybe if I tell the Dolores they weren’t the last, they’ll get it. And that they’ll tell Pedro. And, who knows, maybe that’s all they need to be free. To be able to stop hanging around the Dolores.”
Doug stops playing with the motes and Firescape turns to look at me.
Firescape says, “Don’t you s’pose they might already know? I mean, after all, they’ve — y’know — gone on.” Her eyes graze the ceiling. “I thought that meant they knew more than us.”
Well, there’s an interesting theological quandary.
“Huh,” I say. “I guess I’ve always thought that way about ghosts — when I’ve thought about ghosts at all, I mean, which isn’t much. But why would they know any more than we do? Or maybe they do know more about some things but not so much about other things. I gotta think there’s some reason the Dolores are still haunting that Mission. Some reason they’re still here.”
She frowns, wrinkling her delicate nose. “Maybe this Pedro is waiting for his son. Isn’t that what the Whispers call you — son? Maybe Pedro thinks you’re his son.”
I gotta admit, this is something I’ve given a little thought to myself. It’s a creepy-crawly kind of thought — I mean, having a bunch of haunts think you’re kin. Of course, mi madre y padre being dead, I guess you could say I was already the son of ghosts. But then, mi madre y padre have not, to my knowledge been haunting anything.
Whoa. Now, that is a scary thought and it raises this horrible spectre (you should pardon the pun) of a building somewhere in the Buena Vista where mi madre y padre are permanent residents.
I shake myself real hard. No. I can’t believe that. I celebrated them at the Day of the Dead. I laid them to rest myself, with my prayers. Which is something Pedro Alcantara never got to do for his son and which I gotta think there was never anyone to do for poor old Pedro himself.
“Del?” says Firescape. “What’re you thinking?”
“That it’s better to be safe than sorry. I want to make sure that Pedro knows he wasn’t the last. And that I’m not his son.”
Doug’s boughs quiver and I know I’m right.
“Maybe if I tell the other Dolores they can, like, get a message to Pedro. And...I think maybe we gotta do something to celebrate them. I mean, maybe that’s part of why they’re still here — nobody prayed for them, nobody cared. What do you think?”
Firescape nods and smiles at me in that way that says she really likes what she sees. “When are you going to do it?”
“Tomorrow, I guess.”
Doug’s boughs more than quiver, they wave.
Firescape gives him a sideways look. “I think maybe you’d better go now.”
I leap up, full of resolve or beans or something. “You wanna come?”
She rises and her hair bursts into flame as sunlight strikes it.
“You’d really let me come? This is part of your vision thing.”
“You’re my wife,” I say. “What I have is yours. No weird secrets.”
She grins. “Neon. I’ll get my AK.”
We set out for Potrero-Taraval with the Sun burning down behind the tall buildings pulling the color out of the sky. I drag Doug in his Radio Flyer, which also carries candles and some incense so we can say prayers properly. I bring my rune can and a battery torch, too, thinking if the Mission is as strong a place as I suspect, I might cast things there I’d never cast somewhere else. Firescape watches everything, casual-like, her AK at her side. She looks relaxed. She’s not.
On the way, I think about fires and ghosts and ninjas all in black. The Dolores seemed to know that Scrawl was truth-telling. I wonder if they know who the ninjas belong to.
The Sun sets while we are traversing The Neutral Zone. A gauzy shabu rises up the walls of the unnatural canyons, and every step of our feet, every squeak of Doug’s wagon comes back at us like the shrieks of demons. I do not like the thoughts I have here. I really got to get more positive.
We go to call on the Dolores in their rock pile, which I tell Firescape is a memorial to the thousands of Ohlone buried around and about. While she looks on, I sit cross-legged in the chilly, weed-eaten courtyard in the yellow glare of the torch, hoping my cheeks don’t freeze to the stones. I set out and light the candles and the incense and say some prayers for the departed. Then I wait, wondering if I have just sent the Dolores on to the Abhá Kingdom.
I have not. Out of nowhere comes something like a humongous sigh, and then I hear "Cattaus."
“But I’m not!” I exclaim. “I’m not your son. I’m Taco Del, merlin to Hismajesty, King of Embarcadero and Keeper of the Fabled Tree of Destiny.” I grab one of Doug’s boughs and squeeze, praying for his assistance. “This Tree, here.”
Diablo, say the Whisperers, apropos to nothing. They go clammy again.
I decide I might as well say what I come to say.
“Pedro? Pedro Alcantara? If you’re in there, or out here, or wherever — I need to tell you something.”
The shabu over the rock pile shifts ever so slowly, and there is a great silence, like the whole place is holding its breath. I feel light-headed and little sparks fly before my eyes. I begin to think this is significant, then I realize I have been holding my breath. I suck up some air and let my head settle down. Through wonky eyes I see that the rock pile is the same as ever. I determine to deliver my message.
“Pedro, you gotta know that I’m not your son. I’m muy honored and all if you thought that, but I’m not him. I said some prayers for him just now, though, and for you too, but I don’t know where he is...or was. I also want you to know, Pedro, if you can hear me, that you weren’t the last one — the last of the Ohlone, I mean. There are still Ohlone...somewhere. I don’t know any personally, I don’t think, but I s’pose I might. Well, anyway, that’s all I wanted to say.”
I wait, but there is no word from the Dolores.
Great, I think, all these years they yammer at me, then when I finally got something important to say, they clam up.
I’m a little upset, I gotta admit, and I start to get up to leave when I knock over my rune can. I don’t really feel like casting runes right now, but somehow when the can is in my hand, I turn it upside-down in front of me on the flagstones. Then I lean close, squinting in the lamplight.
Firescape leaves her guard post and comes to look over my shoulder. The shadows are bizarre and my eyes go wonky before I can even focus on the rune junk. Even so, I can tell this is one of the weirdest castings I’ve ever thrown. The rotting peach pit is circled by general junk; a fly-button from my jeans, a thimble, an acorn, some blue and green glass chips, some pebbles and some raisins that are just as hard. The usual bottle caps and coins are there, and so is the sea gull beak, which is about to clamp down on the fly button. Surrounding all of this is a ring of nails and tacks.
With a sigh, I chuck the peach pit and sweep the nails aside.
Firescape’s hand lights on my shoulder. “Are you supposed to do that?” she asks. “I thought the rules of runing said you gotta take what you get, no matter what.”
Irritation doesn’t tickle; it burns like stomach acid in those funny old commercials.
“Who said that?” I ask, trying to sound arch.
“Bags did,” she tells me. “He said a merlin gotta work with available materiel. And that God maybe puts that stuff there for a reason.”
“God didn’t put that stuff there. Somebody else did.” I think of Scrawl.
“Does it matter who put it there?” she asks.
I don’t answer, but just shrug and go back to the runes. Truth is, I feel a little guilty about tossing the pit and the nails, ‘cause Firescape has cited Bags pretty accurately, but it doesn’t change the essential message of the runes, which is that there’s some sort of squeeze play happening here. And if, as I suddenly suspect, that bird beak is still Lord E and that little silver fly button is me — I’m caught between a beak and a hard place.
The Whisperers choose this time to break their silence again. Wiwe, they tell me, and a chill dribbles down my spine. They have said this word to me before. Now, I decide it’s time to find out what it means.