THEO
IT WAS JULY. A black panel truck was parked on the edge of Beech Road. I descended the sandy path for my morning walk; kept my eye on that truck. The cab was dark.
After months of going to the prison twice a month, feigning interest in the lies of culpable men, and listening with intent for the voice who threatened my sister, I’d grown increasingly paranoid. And now Toreck was free. It was an old familiar friend, that anxious wait for the moment I stepped into the ring, when that imminent bell that can’t be un-rung, rings.
***
Along the shoreline logs and driftwood had been tossed and piled like toothpicks by the night’s storm. I wanted to take my walk but couldn’t shake the feeling someone was watching me. I glanced back up to the road; the truck was gone. Swift shadows of clouds moved about the ground as I rushed up the sandy hill. The truck was now parked at the end of Fourth, and this time someone was in the cab. Maybe a poacher getting a two-month jump on elk season? Maybe. Maybe not. I kept walking toward town with my eye on that mysterious visitor.
Aside from the faint hiss of the outgoing tides, the only sounds were the low tootles of an owl and the crunch of my footsteps on the pavement. There was a red glow inside the truck. Cigarette, maybe? I didn’t have the patience or luxury to wait and see, so I turned and headed toward it. The driver started up the engine, flashed his headlights, and drove up Beulah Road—evidently he didn’t want company. He disappeared around the bend.
In her school-bus-yellow hat, Pearl bobbed up and down behind her picket fence as she yanked out weeds, turned soil with her trowel, and cussed in Korean. I stepped across the street and said, “Morning Pearl,” still watching for that truck.
“Morning, Teo,” she said. “I like dis garden . . . but so much work.”
“Mm hm,” I said and nodded toward her fresh-plucked pile of weeds. “Well, at least you know who your enemies are.”
Pearl sat back on her knees, wiped her black licorice hair from her brow, and said, “Yeah. Apids, weeds, slugs, frost, spiders. I no like the black spiders.”
With dirt smudged on her face and hands calloused as a shoemaker’s, she looked like a Korean farmer tirelessly working in her rice paddy fields. But here alone, she was a good target.
“Today, rhubarb pie,” she said.
“Good, good,” I said as the truck slowly appeared again at the end of Beech.
“I see him before,” she said.
“Who?”
“That truck,” she pointed.
“Don’t point. Where have you seen it?”
She jabbed at the dirt. “Two days, he jus’ sit there. He bad, like black spider.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.”
The truck idled at the corner of Beech.
“You not good liar, Teo.”
“Yeah, I’ll work on that,” I said. The stranger backed up, turned, and tore down Second Avenue, disappearing around the corner. I looked for it to reappear like the telltale nose of a coyote sneaking around a chicken pen. But there was no sign of it. There was also no sign of Bud’s car. “Bud gone already?”
“He go in early today,” she said.
I scanned the street from corner to corner. “Okay . . .,” I said. “How about you go inside and get an early start on that pie.” Then I rushed home and left a message for Bud to call.
***
Solomon was in his yard chanting, low and muffled, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. Then he materialized like a ghost out of darkness—a vision of his younger self, as he had done many times when I was a boy. He appeared shadowy, though the morning was now clear blue, and sat on his tree stump next to Raven totem and Frog box, eagle feathers in his long, black hair, bare back in his buckskin pants and moccasins. He carved a piece of red cedar, Young Wolf by his side. He started his mantra low and rhythmically. Dragonflies and hummingbirds flitted about. I stood at the kitchen window listening, sharpening my knife.
When I was a boy I told Mamaí that I’d seen him disappear and then reappear, like a ghost. She looked at me so matter-of-factly that I knew she’d seen this apparition herself. “Son,” she said, burning her moss-green eyes into mine. “Do you honestly think that all the Irish who swear upon their loved ones they’ve seen the good Mother Mary or Saint Joseph himself, floating over some or another town, that they be crazy? Do you doubt them, boy?”
I shook my head, no-no-no.
“Do ya think there’s only holy magic in Ireland, child?” she said, offering a Baby Ruth. “Now go sit quietly, listen to Solomon. Don’t be questioning a wise man till you are one.” She had shooed me out into the world, ever shaped by the sharp edge of her words.
Then, before my disbelieving eyes, Solomon dissolved; vanished into the shadows. I shut my eyes, and then opened them again. Solomon, ever free from the laws of this universe, was gone. And in that instant I knew that whatever he prophesized had begun with that lurking black spider at the end of the street. It was time.