Milo woke up on the sand beside a slow clear river.
The sun in the white sky was a small, fierce, fossil sun. The sun of bleach and bones.
His memories of eight thousand years came back, as usual. He welcomed them and his sense of his larger self, as usual.
What was unusual was the feeling of gray melancholy in his stomach and soul. This, he knew, was left over from his suicide. It took a degree of emptiness to end your own life, and that emptiness didn’t wear away between worlds.
“Take your time,” someone said.
A pale man, thin and angular, with softly blazing eyes, crouched in the sand at Milo’s feet. Long black hair wrapped him like a shroud, or maybe like wings.
Death. One of them, anyway. Not Suzie.
“Where am I?” Milo asked.
Death said, “You’re right where you’re supposed to be,” and vanished in a burst of dust and hot wind.
Asshole.
A heavy, oceanic sadness filled Milo.
Suzie. He sat paralyzed for a while, remembering.
Then he shook himself and did his best to come alive. He had forced himself out of bed on half a million Monday mornings and knew how to do this.
Okay. To begin with, once again, where was he?
The afterlife, like time, was infinite, but he had a definite sense of having been dumped beyond the fringes. Like, if he usually woke up in Boston, this time he found himself on the moon.
At least he was dressed for it. He found himself wearing the robes of a desert traveler.
Milo had been a Bedouin nomad in a former life and knew it was foolish to travel in the heat of the day. So he pulled his robes over his head to make a kind of tent and closed his eyes awhile.
He woke up shivering under a star-washed sky and hiked along the river in the night.
Just after dawn, when the heat had begun to rise, he came upon the river’s source: a tiny oasis with green weeds and a single date tree. Beyond this splatter of life, the desert stretched like a windblown tortilla.
Would it be best to backtrack, Milo wondered, hoping the water led to bigger water and maybe to people? Maybe he could just stay here and become the official Water-Hole Hermit.
As he stood there, considering, someone called, “Halloooooo!”
He beheld a rider on horseback, leading a camel, atop a nearby ridge.
Milo waved. The rider waved back and nudged his horse downhill.
He was, Milo observed as he approached, a man with a proud beard and an air of cheerful assurance.
“Do we find you in need of assistance?” this person asked Milo.
“A state of indecision,” answered Milo, “at least.”
“You’ll make slow headway on foot,” the bearded man predicted. “I offer you my companionship and the loan of a camel.”
Milo bowed his head and said, “Thanks.” He held out his hand and said, “Milo.”
The traveler shook the hand and said, “Akram.”
Akram began unloading camping equipment from the camel. Milo assisted by leading the horse to drink.
The tent Akram pitched bore a logo, advertising, in silver letters, AKRAM THE REMARKABLE.
“Remarkable what?” Milo asked. Astronomer? Dogcatcher? Beard grower?
“Juggler,” Akram explained. He tossed some tent stakes into the air, whirled them around in a lazy circle, then stomped them into place.
“Remarkable?” asked Milo. “Not ‘Great’? Not ‘Astonishing’?”
Akram lowered his eyes and said, “Modesty intercedes.”
The juggler was kind enough to share his tent, and the two of them slept through the heat of the day. Milo dreamed about Suzie.
Her voice, in the dark. Far away.
“Milo!” she called faintly. Was this a sign? Was she still in the world, in the afterlife? At twilight, Akram shook him awake.
“Milo!”
“Suzie?” he croaked.
“Well, no.”
There followed an hour of pulling down tents, loading camels, and brewing fresh coffee over a fire, after which Milo climbed aboard Akram’s camel.
The beast tried to bite him. Succeeded a little.
Milo shrugged. How would he feel if a stranger climbed on him? They would get to know each other, and their rapport would improve.
Later, the camel kept wandering off course and wouldn’t listen when Milo shouted and flicked the reins. Akram would have to trot after him and tow him back. Minutes later, off course again.
Each time he redirected the animal, Akram murmured, “As-salāmu alaykum.”
“ ‘As-salāmu alaykum’ means ‘God is good,’ right?” Milo asked.
“It does.”
“Then why, when this excellent camel needs correcting, over and over—”
“It’s better than cursing. Curses darken the soul. I am sorry he’s so troublesome.”
Milo recalled from his own life as a Bedouin how to be virtuous and grateful.
“Satan is a fine animal,” he assured Akram. “Merely headstrong. Is he young?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Then I’m sure he will mellow and provide many good years of service.”
“If you appreciate him so,” said Akram, “he is yours. I gladly make you this gift.”
Aw, sonofabitch, no!
But refusing a gift was rude.
“As-salāmu alaykum,” said Milo, bowing his head.
Akram’s horse tossed its head proudly, almost dancing across the sand.
“That sure is a nice horse,” said Milo.
Akram didn’t answer.
It was a long, starry night.
Followed by a hot day with hot winds, spent dozing in the tent. Followed by another starry night. Then, an hour after dark on the second night, lights appeared over the horizon. Gradually, soft grass and date palms rose around them, and they found themselves on the outskirts of a grand oasis.
Grand enough to have buildings and streets. The streets were lined with candles and colored lanterns and people. It smelled like food, incense, animals, and burning wood.
Satan did his best to ruin the moment. He drooled a thick, sustained rope of snot, saliva, and vomit, leaving behind something like a snail trail. People made faces as he passed.
Milo stayed focused on the good things.
I might stay here awhile, he thought. Maybe a long while.
It seemed like a happy thought. Underneath it, though, was Milo’s awareness that he had no reason to be anywhere else.
They stayed in town that first night, just long enough to eat a couple of chicken dinners and drink some beer. Then they rode back out into the desert a little ways, where other nomads had pitched their own temporary neighborhood, and set up camp in the midst of it.
The next day, Milo became part of Akram’s remarkable magic act.
Here’s how that happened:
Akram woke him around midday and said, “You may wish to come into town with me. I’m going to get some breakfast and maybe put on a show.”
“Sure,” said Milo, shrugging.
They left the tent and the animals behind and made their way toward the heart of the oasis.
Milo pointed out that Akram hadn’t brought along anything with which to juggle.
To which Akram replied, “How mysterious!” and said nothing else.
There was, Milo noted as they made their way to the bazaar, no shortage of entertainers already hard at work. Anywhere you looked, anywhere there was room, were people doing a whole spectrum of things to get travelers to stop, look, and maybe toss some coins in a hat.
There were jugglers already. Some better than others. There were snake charmers, hucksters, and musicians. People who would draw caricatures of you. Fortune-tellers. Face-painters. Body-painters.
Not all of the entertainment was in the form of talent. Some of it bordered on the mystical, like a man who had tied himself into a complicated knot. For a dollar, you could try to undo him. Milo tried and failed. There was a woman who could talk to animals, and a man, prudently concealed behind a canvas drape, who would shit you a gold necklace for five bucks. It was all very interesting, but it made Milo uneasy, too. These were people who had been hanging around the afterlife for some time and had no plans to be reborn anytime soon. They had found their way to the edge of things, for whatever strange reasons.
Anonymity? Apathy?
“How long has it been,” Milo asked Akram, “since you lived an Earthly life?”
“Five years,” answered the juggler. “Maybe more.”
They stopped for burritos and coffee.
“How long,” Milo asked, “before you think you will go back again?”
Akram sighed and chewed.
“There are these two universal women,” he said, “named Obong and Glee. They are my counselors. Everyone has them, yes? Well, they blew in on a sandstorm one day and suggested I go back to Earth as a tax accountant. I told them I would think about it. I have been thinking about it for some time. In my last life, I was in a coma for seven years. With apologies, Milo: The world of the living doesn’t interest me much.”
Milo began to ask another question, but Akram forestalled him.
“They will not allow me to wander forever, I suspect. I know this. Eventually I will throw off the precious balance of things and have to go be a salesgirl or a mule or a coffee bean, and I will be sad. No, no more questions. Peace.”
They purchased Milo a tent of his own.
“Not that I mind sharing,” said Akram. “I just might wish to entertain a houseguest or two, some evening, if—”
“I get it,” said Milo.
So now here he was, walking down the bazaar, balancing a load of canvas and tent poles over one shoulder. This left him blind on one side. He turned to make sure Akram was following.
He wasn’t.
“Akram?” Milo called.
The crowd milled around him. No one answered.
Then something caught his eye. Several paces away, amid the crowd, something shiny flew into the air, caught the sun with a flash—it was a brass lamp, the kind you burn oil in—and came back down.
A moment later it rose again, followed by a wooden bowl.
Finally, the lamp ascended a third time, followed by the bowl, a basket, someone’s hat, and a plastic spray bottle of some kind. At this point, the crowd spread out to make room for whatever dervish was causing these phenomena, and of course it was Akram.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Akram had collected a bunch of merchandise from one of the stalls and begun tossing it into the air, quite without permission or explanation. The shopkeeper stood before him, throwing a fit.
“Good people,” Akram said to the crowd, “you will now be treated to a demonstration of aerial sorcery! I heartily recommend that, afterward, you visit this fine gentleman’s stall—what’s your name? Bill? Visit Bill’s stall. His goods are not only aerodynamic but of the finest quality, priced to move.”
Mollified, Bill the shopkeeper withdrew. Milo returned his merchandise.
“Now,” said Akram, cracking his knuckles, “someone throw me something to juggle.”
Someone tossed Akram a pair of sandals and a straw hat. He tossed these things in a lazy circle.
“Make it interesting,” he challenged the crowd.
Someone called out “Yo!” and tossed him—what? Something long, like a question mark in the air, something that moved—
“Holy shit!” cried Milo and a lot of other people.
A snake!
Akram cried out, too, but he caught the creature, and around and around went the hat, the shoe, and the snake. The snake hissed, twisted, and tried to bite, but Akram winked and boomed laughter.
The crowd showered him with applause. He tossed the shoe and the hat back to their owners, leaving him with the snake, which he let slide down his arm and off through the crowd. This caused some jumping around, but most of his audience remained to see what would happen next.
They were happy they did.
Akram performed for another half hour. They threw him knives, bricks, hot coals, and stools.
Akram seemed perfectly at ease, even when they threw him a whole sack of golf balls all at once. He snatched them from the air, his hands so fast that he and the golf balls became like a cloud. He wasn’t perfect. He dropped one or two but easily flipped them back into play with the toe of his sandal and kept smiling.
His only failure, if you could call it that, was when someone threw him a bucket of water. Not the bucket itself, just the water. Akram stood there dripping, looking unsurprised. He bowed to the woman with the empty bucket.
“My congratulations, madam,” he said. “You have offered me the one thing that can not be juggled.”
The crowd applauded. Akram concluded his act by juggling three pretty girls, collected his earnings, and waved to Milo.
“We’re rich!” he said. “For the moment. Tonight we’ll buy baked cheese and beer.”
He was kind enough to shoulder Milo’s tent for a while as they walked back out of town.
“How strong are you?” Milo asked, thinking of the three pretty girls.
Akram shrugged. “It’s all in the wrist,” he said.
Later, after a lot of food and drink, they were struggling to put up Milo’s tent, and Milo blurted, “I want to work with you.”
Akram hiccupped and said, “I work alone.”
They succeeded in getting one part of the tent to stay up, and another part fell down.
“God is great,” said Milo, instead of cursing. “Okay, but listen: If you had a partner, you could do stuff like juggle things back and forth. And we could talk and have patter, you know, instead of just standing there grinning.”
“Again,” said Akram, “I decline. I am thinking of writing a book or buying a horse farm.”
The whole tent collapsed again.
“Forget it,” said Milo. “I’ll just think of it as a very expensive sleeping bag.”
And he walked off to gather the animals and take them to the pond.
The beasts drank, and Milo sat with his feet in the water, trying to juggle three stones. The best he could do was to keep two of them in the air, while the third either thumped to the ground or splashed into the water.
A voice behind him said, “There’s a trick to it, you know.”
Milo turned to find Akram behind him, juggling beanbags.
“I can teach you how to juggle in less than five minutes,” Akram said. “It’s easy. Stand up.”
Milo stood. Akram handed him two beanbags.
“Hold a bag in each hand,” Akram told him. “Toss one bag from your left hand to the right, so you wind up with both bags in one hand.”
Milo tossed. Easy.
“Now do it again, except this time, when the first bag is in the air, toss the other bag so that it crosses behind it, in the air, and catch it in your left hand.”
It took Milo a couple of tries to get this right, but he got it.
“That’s the trick,” said Akram, shrugging. “Toss, crisscross, repeat.”
It took only a few minutes’ practice before Milo could get all three beanbags popping and circling in the air.
“Wow,” said Milo. “Thanks!”
“So here’s what we’ll do,” said Akram. “Now that I’ve shown you the trick, it’s up to you to figure out how to juggle more than three. When you can keep seven things in the air, I’ll show you how to juggle knives without stabbing yourself in the face.”
“Thank you?” said Milo. “That’s nice of you? What made you change your mind?”
“The mind is a blessing and a mystery,” Akram replied, departing.
Milo had purpose again.
He was a lowly student, studying under a great master. He was the sorcerer’s apprentice. It was a role he knew, of course. In his thousands of lives, he had learned kung fu and how to fly airplanes. He had been a poker champ, a pool-hall hustler, and a prima ballerina. He knew by now how to learn a thing and practice it until it looked like magic.
It wasn’t easy. That was the first thing about learning anything worthwhile; you had to have patience. You had to know that if you tried to do a thing a thousand times, you could usually succeed in doing it, and if you practiced that thing a million times, you could do it very well. And so on. Mastering a thing was not magic, just hard work.
Chop wood, carry water, as the Buddhists said.
So Milo worked hard. He kept the animals fed and watered. He watched Akram. And he practiced. This became his life.
Of course, you had to have a reason to work that hard, to practice like that, and Milo did. He wanted very much to do what Akram could do with a crowd. Not only that, but he wanted the strange, easy peace that seemed to come over the master when he had a bunch of knives or shoes or kittens in the air. As if he weren’t there, almost.
Sometimes he found himself dreaming of juggling instead of dreaming about Suzie. Sometimes.
“Who’s Suzie?” asked Akram one morning when they were eating donuts in the bazaar.
“Why?”
“You call her name at night.”
Milo didn’t want to talk about it. Or think about it, or dream. He stuffed his whole entire donut in his mouth and glared into the sun.
“As you wish,” said the master. “Obviously this is a mystery of some import. Now chew, please.”
How to juggle more than three things?
Milo watched Akram. He did exercises. He whirled his arms and flexed his hands. He learned to roll marbles between his fingers. He did push-ups in the sand.
Satan liked to bite him and step on him when he did push-ups. He practiced dodging Satan.
The aha moment, when it came, was not what he’d expected. He had been juggling beanbags all morning, trying new ways of crisscrossing, when it suddenly hit him.
Ask.
So Milo walked to the bazaar, caught a tall, dark-eyed juggler at the end of his show, and said, “I’ll give you fifty bucks to show me how to keep more than three things in the air,” and the dark-eyed juggler said, “You throw them higher.”
“And faster, too, right?”
“Nope. Just higher.” And the guy took his money and walked away.
Aha!
Milo practiced for a month before he went to Akram and said, “Watch this.”
“Now is not a good time,” said Akram, who had a bunch of paper and a pen and was busy writing. “I told you I might write a book. Well, I am doing it. The story of my life and also my teachings about juggling.”
Milo popped five beanbags into the air. This did not seem to impress Akram much, but he stopped writing to watch.
Milo added a sixth. Then a seventh. The bags whirled higher, now circling a crescent moon.
“I’ve seen worse,” said Akram. “Of course, it’s been a month—”
Milo added more bags, reaching into his robe for one more, two more, ten more. While one hand was busy fetching new bags, he kept the rest of them going with the other.
Akram’s jaw dropped open. He put down his pen.
Milo caught each of the beanbags, one by one, and stowed them away in his robe.
“Well?” he said.
“Well, indeed!” said the master, wide-eyed as a child.
“What were you writing about in your book?” Milo asked. “What’s it called?”
“It’s called The Day Milo and Akram the Remarkable Started Working Together as Partners.”
Milo offered a grateful bow.
“God is good,” said Akram.
“Fuckin’ A,” said Milo.
They practiced juggling together, passing things back and forth. And Akram spent some time teaching, finally.
“There’s a secret,” he told Milo, as they passed seven beanbags back and forth, “to juggling anything the crowd throws at you.”
“Like the snake that one day?”
“Precisely.”
“What is it?”
“In the air, an object tends to spin on three axes—three separate directions—and you need to get it to hold still and just go up and down.”
And this is exactly where Milo’s training took a complicated, technical turn. His days became a montage of science and repetition. Throw this, throw that. Learn how objects move in the air. Some of it Milo already knew; in his many lives, he had been a scientist. He had flown the trapeze in the circus. He had pitched baseballs and swung swords.
Time passed. He practiced, survived injuries, and practiced more.
Akram worked on his book. Sometimes he showed Milo an interesting passage or two.
“I juggled an elephant one time,” he said, handing Milo the book. “Read.”
“It says here,” said Milo, “you juggled only one elephant. Is that really juggling?”
“It is when it’s an elephant.”
“Akram, Jesus! How strong are you?”
“As strong as I need to be. Go do your push-ups.”
Milo did a thousand push-ups, and Satan stood over him and drooled something like a dumpling all over his back.
Time passed. Nomads came to the oasis and went away again. Milo dreamed dreams. Heaven and Earth turned. Desert winds blew, wearing things away and burying things, as desert winds do.
The first time they performed together in the bazaar, it was Milo who began the show.
First he grabbed three I’M HOT FOR THE DESERT T-shirts from a young shopkeeper’s stall.
“Hey!” cried the shopkeeper, leaping after him.
Within seconds, Milo got the T-shirts spinning up and down in the air, flying like swans.
“Ooh!” said the crowd, circling around.
“Good morning!” Milo called out. “Friends, you will now be treated to a demonstration of highly scientific juggling feats. I heartily recommend that, afterward, you visit this fine gentleman’s stall—what’s your name? Moudi? Visit Moudi’s stall.”
Moudi backed off.
It was a routine show, up to a point. Milo asked the crowd to throw him some things, and they threw him their sandals. Threw him a Frisbee. He juggled these things backward and forward. He juggled three turkeys and a dozen eggs.
“Come on, folks,” he said. “We can do better than this.”
And that’s when someone threw him a baby.
It cried as it came whirling toward him over the front row of spectators.
Milo nearly froze. Like everyone in the crowd, he gasped. But he caught the thing, just as one should always catch a baby, neatly across his forearm, supporting its head with his palm.
But then another baby sailed his way, and another.
Milo had no choice. Reflexively, he caught them all, and before he knew it, he was juggling three wailing infants.
The crowd raised helpless hands in the air, surging forward, then surging back, not wanting to get in his way. The crowd grew then, as the noise drew attention, and people farther down the bazaar came running, saw, and stayed, hardly daring to breathe.
It wasn’t long before Milo—having been a father and a mother and a baby countless times—realized that something was amiss. Something about the babies was too stiff, their cries too much the same…
Dolls.
Some bastard had grabbed a whole display of baby dolls from a stall, and—well, here came the shopkeepers now, gesturing.
One, two, three—Milo tossed them their merchandise.
One, two, three—the crowd caught on.
A moment of disturbed, uncertain silence. And then a blast of relieved applause that went on and on and on.
There was Akram, amazed and relieved like the rest of them.
“Bow out, and let’s go,” Akram said, drawing close.
“But!” Milo protested. “We haven’t even done our tandem act, with the swords and—”
“You can’t do better than what you just did,” Akram said. “Finish at the top of your act, whenever that comes. Now let’s go!”
Milo bowed and collected his pile of coins, and they went and got some tacos, and that was Milo’s debut as a professional juggler.
That night he had a wonderful, awful dream.
Someone in the crowd threw him a woman. It was Suzie.
“Suzie!” he cried, tossing her up in the air and catching her with expert grace.
“It’s no use,” she said to him, and before he could answer, she was pulled from him, just like before. Stretching away. Her hand trailed along his face as she left him.
“No!”
Her fingers grew long, soft and warm on his face, as she vanished across dimensions—
Milo awakened. He could still feel softness and warmth on his cheek. Up above him, in the dark, hot breath and wet chewing noises. A long, damp shadow thrust through the tent flap—
“Aw, Jesus on a stick, Satan!” Milo screamed, shoving the camel’s head aside, nearly uprooting the tent as he staggered out into the night. Wiping at his face, feeling for the water bucket by starlight, washing away strings of camel drool.
“Milo!” called Akram, emerging from his own tent. “Milo, what’s amiss? Are you sick? Are we besieged?”
Milo, sputtering, explained.
Akram laughed.
“It’s not funny,” said Milo. “He’s making my life hell in his nasty little ways.”
“What’s funny,” said Akram, “is that, one: Yes, he’s nasty. He’s a camel. But, two: You do not see why he pays you all this attention? It is his way of showing that he loves you.”
Milo sat down in the sand. He said nothing. Akram went to buy them some cinnamon rolls.
It was true. He felt the truth of it. He even felt his own heart softening a bit. But…
“Why?” he finally asked, when Akram returned.
Akram shrugged. He handed Milo a roll, and they ate in silence.
“Because you are kind and good to him, despite his faults? Because you were a female camel in some distant life? Who knows these things?”
Satan emerged from the tent. He found Milo and came near, breathing on him.
Milo reached up and patted the beast on his gross, sweaty neck.
Satan made a horrible noise and bit him tenderly on the arm.
The next day, Milo and Akram managed to perform together. They threw pretty girls back and forth. They threw apples back and forth and ate them as they threw. They juggled knives and fire, china plates and glass figurines. In a sort of slo-mo dance, they juggled bubbles and balloons.
They hauled coins by the sackful back to their tents.
Time passed.
They juggled buckets full of water one day, a feat of strength and timing. That was Milo’s idea and design. Another time, he figured out how they could juggle rubber balls and let some of the balls bounce on the ground, as if the two of them were a human popcorn machine.
Quickly enough, it became obvious that the student had surpassed his teacher.
Akram did not seem to be the jealous kind. More and more, his book started to be about Milo.
The time Milo juggled three sleeping girls without waking them up.
The time Milo juggled a pile of sunbaked bricks, so that it went from being a pile over here and became a pile over there.
The time—the many times—Milo howled, “Suzie!” in his sleep, but wouldn’t talk about it, and acted like a child if you asked too many questions, and was obviously in denial, and was hiding something…
One evening, Akram came out and stood over Milo, who sat staring at the moon and flexing his fingers in the sand. Satan knelt nearby, sleeping, snoring like a steam engine full of puke.
“Friend,” said Akram, “you need to get out from time to time. Let’s go into town and find some trouble.”
“I’m good,” answered Milo, his voice barely audible.
Akram heaved a sigh. “You can’t just disappear into your work,” he insisted.
Milo roused himself a little.
“It’s not disappearing,” he said. “It’s concentration. It’s how you become great at something. Others think you’re obsessed, and you’re the only one who understands what you’re looking for.”
“Which is what?”
“Perfection.”
“Bullshit, respectfully, my friend. You’re running from something.”
“So are you. So are half the people out here. We’re circling the drain as slowly, as far out, as we can get.”
“That’s true. Fine. Very true. But I’ve never seen anyone do what you do. You practice. You perform. You sleep. You sit here with your evil camel. That’s neither life nor afterlife.”
“It’s my business.”
He stopped flexing his fingers in the sand.
Akram went into town by himself.
The next day, some newcomers came riding into town, making their way through the bazaar on elephants.
“Elephants,” said Milo to Akram.
“Elephants, indeed!” said Akram. “Magnificent creatures! Have you ever been an elephant? I have. Once, back when—”
Milo had a certain look in his eye.
“Milo,” said Akram. “No.”
But Milo was already approaching the first and largest of the new arrivals. A wonderful animal, draped in jeweled cloth, with painted tusks and a howdah full of well-dressed nomads on its back.
He began talking pleasantly to the people up in the howdah, and they seemed to be amused by what he was saying.
“Milo!” barked Akram, stepping up beside him. “No!”
“You did it.”
Akram twiddled his thumbs.
“I may have, and I may not have,” he said.
“It’s in your book.”
“Lots of things are in my book. It’s just a book.”
The nomads climbed down, and Milo stepped under the elephant.
“God is good,” said Akram, “and protective of fools.”
It didn’t work.
Milo trembled, pushing up against the elephant’s belly. Every muscle in his body—and these had grown to be considerable—vibrated visibly, but the trouble seemed to be that there was nothing, really, to push against. The elephant grunted. It didn’t seem put out; if anything, it seemed to want to help, if it could only discern what this strange, eerily focused two-legs wanted.
But some things are impossible. There are limits and absolutes.
Akram drew a circle in the dust with one sandal. Maybe this was the sort of lesson his friend needed. Maybe afterward they’d ride out of town, go someplace else for a while.
Then the back end of the elephant rose into the air, just a little.
“Ooh!” gasped the crowd.
The elephant made a slight trumpeting noise.
A long second later, the front feet left the ground, as well.
Complete, stunned silence.
It didn’t last long, and the elephant didn’t go very high. Maybe a couple of inches. But it was an undeniable, visible fact that, for an instant, there was a man holding an elephant in the air.
With an exhausted “whuff!” Milo fell to his knees, the elephant landed daintily, and the crowd shouted and hurled money.
Akram bolted into the street, nudged the elephant aside, and helped Milo to his feet.
Milo wouldn’t stay on his feet, though. He got about halfway up and then sank like a ship.
“I think I broke myself,” he whispered.
“What did you expect?”
“I expected to lift the elephant. And I did.”
Akram lifted Milo over one shoulder, fireman-style, and carried him out of town.
“It’s hardly juggling,” he said.
“Save it for your book,” said Milo, and passed out.
Milo slept.
Akram laid him out in his tent and checked on him now and then, stepping over Satan to do so.
The sleep became a coma. Maybe a half coma, because he woke now and then to drink water and even eat a little. But then he’d slip away again.
Time passed. Specifically, a week.
Then, in the middle of a cool, breezy night, the flap of Akram’s tent lifted, and Milo stood there in the dark.
Akram lit a candle.
Yes, it was Milo. Awake finally, and looking pretty good. A little slimmer, maybe, but overall good. At least that’s what Akram thought until he saw his friend’s eyes.
The eyes had already developed a strange, inward glow before the elephant. That glow had somehow intensified, as if stoked by a week’s worth of constant dreaming.
“I came in to say goodbye,” said Milo. “And to tell you I’m grateful.”
“Goodbye? Where—God is good, Milo!—where in hell do you think you’re going? You’re in no condition—”
“I am going off alone somewhere,” Milo interrupted, “to learn to juggle water.”
Outside, a breeze kicked up. Satan belched.
“Milo,” said Akram, “please listen. Water cannot be juggled. No, listen: The elephant was just a question of degree. It was heavy, but at least it had substance, something to hold and move…”
Akram fell into a helpless silence.
Milo said, “God is good,” and slipped out.
He spent a solid week riding Satan across the desert. Milo let the beast go where he liked. What difference did it make? He flexed his hands as they went. He juggled stones.
After a time, entirely by accident, Milo found himself at the same spring where he had first met Akram. The source of the clear river that led who knew where.
And there he stopped, and pitched his tent, and dipped his hands in the water.
Travelers who found him at his oasis called him the Juggling Hermit or the Staring Hermit or the Splashing Hermit or the Hermit with the Unholy Camel, depending.
If they were lucky, nomads discovered him in a relatively expansive mood, juggling nuts or rocks or mudballs. He might even put on a show for them, juggling anything they tossed his way. Other times, they might find him sitting at the very edge of the water, staring down without blinking. Not at his reflection, it seemed, but at something deep and invisible.
Sometimes they found him splashing in the water like a child, although he seemed not the slightest bit embarrassed to be caught out. In any event, he was always gracious and welcoming, if somewhat withdrawn. His camel, unfortunately, was off-putting, but you didn’t fault a man for that. Especially a holy man, which this specimen obviously was.
The stars circled, and the moon and sun passed overhead, and the desert rolled and changed.
One day, Milo was staring down into the water, trying not to see Suzie’s face, trying to see the secret thing in the water that would give it form, when a large traveler in a bright-green robe appeared from downriver. Masked in a tightly wound headdress. Leaning on a tall walking stick.
“Ah!” said this apparition, drawing near. “There you are!”
Milo looked up and blinked. Sometimes out here he saw things that proved not to be real.
The traveler was real. She unwound her headdress, knelt, and reached for him with big, fat, wonderful arms.
“Mama,” he rasped, and let her hold him.
He found food, and fetched her a cup from his tent, and warned his camel not to vomit at her. They sat and ate quietly, until the sun finished going down and she asked him, “Milo, what in the scarlet goddamn hell do you think you’re doing?”
He mumbled about juggling water.
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. You can’t.”
“If I could, though,” he argued, “it would be an act of Perfection.”
Mama unwound her travel robes and waded into the water.
“Is that what this is about?” she asked, floating amid reflected stars. “Because it doesn’t count in the afterlife, you know. You know?”
Milo said he supposed he knew that.
“You know what it’s about,” he said.
She swam out just far enough to become featureless. Just a shadow. Just a voice.
“Yes,” she said. “I know.”
Silence.
Milo was good at silence. He let this one go a long, long time.
“If she’s been smooshed into the big cosmic soul,” he finally said, “then what’s the point?”
Mama swam closer. One great warm hand reached up out of the water and grasped his ankle.
“I can’t answer that for you,” she said. “I know you have to decide whether to sit here pouting like a child or go do something about it. Maybe you won’t get what you want. But is this it? You’re going to just quit?”
Milo started to say something.
“Look at yourself,” Mama said.
Milo did what she said. It took a while, but eventually his eyes adjusted in the starlight, and he saw his own reflection for the first time in a long time.
He was a skeleton, pretty much. Drawn flesh, hollow eyes. His desert garb hung on him like a shroud.
“Go back,” said Mama. “Go back and at least try.”
“Try what?” he croaked.
“Try what?” Now she was pissed. “Are you kidding me? What’s wrong with you, you selfish dumbass? Try and be perfect! Try something! What’s the coolest life you’ve ever lived? Maybe not cool, maybe that’s not the word, but—”
“Captain Gworkon,” said Milo.
“Really? Okay. Well, good choice, I guess. Captain Gworkon certainly wouldn’t have sat here in the afterlife, rotting away in front of his own reflection. He would have gone back and spent another lifetime—”
“Juggling,” said Milo.
Mama’s grip tightened on his ankle.
“Dammit, Milo, if—”
“I’m kidding. Fighting evil. He would have gone back and spent everything he had fighting evil.”
He stood up and started unwinding his robes. Behind him, Satan stood, too.
Why not? Being born was a way of getting lost, too, wasn’t it?
“Go,” said Mama. “Fight evil. Do it perfectly. Then come back and we’ll see.”
Bullshit, thought Milo.
But he forced himself. He was, after all, the veteran of half a million Monday mornings. It’s something a wise man or a wise woman knows how to do: shake off your self-pity and your obsession, and put one foot in front of the other and keep moving.
And you wade into the dark desert pool a little way and sort through the lives you see. And just when you’re about to make yourself dive in, there’s a dumb, sad honk! from the riverbank, and you look and there’s that animal, that gross, hateful animal that loves you and maybe thinks you’re a girl camel in disguise. And it has that look animals get when they don’t know if you’re coming back or not.
And you’ve had enough dogs and been enough dogs to know that it doesn’t help when you go back and say goodbye, but you do it, anyway. And the animal drools on you and pants and sweats, and its heart breaks, and there are hearts breaking all over the place like popcorn in this big stupid desert. And you’re bitter. And you feel sorry for yourself, and that’s what’s on your mind when you dive in and the water takes you down and makes you forget all, all except the singularity of You, the escape pod of your soul, moving on and starting over for the nine thousand nine hundred ninety-eighth time in a row.