3. Yellow People

The years passed and Nqong became a man. For Auntie Clara, he maintained the buildings and the grounds and kept them painted and planted, clean and weeded. He hiked two miles up the trail into the forest every day to take care of business. For Mr. Hope, he adjusted the flow of the water daily, keeping the temperature of the baths constant throughout the year, even though nobody used the bathhouse anymore. Nqong had no use for the bathhouse. He preferred the pools in the forest: the hot sulfur pools, the cold clear pools, and the warm mud.

He gardened the high meadow and cleaned the shrine, and in the spring and summer he placed fresh-picked wildflowers in the fingers of the marble image of the lady who had called him her boyfriend.

Early every spring he nursed the beetles through their delicate larva stage and set them out into the world to grow their wings and turn the summer yellow, and early every fall he gathered their eggs from warm pools and put them to bed in jars of sulfur water for the winter.

He drove the truck to town once a month and bought what he needed, charged to Joel Hope’s accounts. He hardly ever spoke to anyone. He never heard from his employer.

Libby Pomeroy never returned to Hope Springs.

Nqong assumed old Livingston Pomeroy must have died.

The yellow beetles lived on, season after season. They were Nqong’s community.

———

In 1950 Joel Hope, Junior returned to Hope Springs. He was twenty-two years old, and full of the concept of ownership and stewardship. His father had recently died, leaving Hope Springs to the three children in a strange arrangement designed to keep the family from squabbling. Joel Hope, Junior would be in charge of the place for the next ten years. His weekend retreat.

Joley ordered Nqong off the land. Nqong, who had no citizenship, no passport, no friends, no money, no formal education, no possessions, no clothes, no white skin. “Not my problem,” Joley said. “You will be gone by the time I get here next Friday, or I’m calling the cops.”

“But the gardens.”

“I’ll hire gardeners,” Joley told him. “Professionals. People who know what they’re doing for a change.”

“What about the water?” Nqong asked.

“What about the water?” Joley answered.

“Who will care for the water? Keep it right?”

Joley laughed. “Horse shit,” he said. “Hocus pocus. Voodoo doodoo. That was my father’s hobby. I don’t give a shit if the temperature of the water goes up or down a few degrees. I’m not running a hotel here. Forget the water. I want you out. You understand me?”

Nqong nodded. Nodded vigorously.

Joley laughed at him, and Nqong nodded again.

———

Nqong disappeared up into the forest, taking with him the canvas cloths that had covered the library furniture. He lived at the source of the water, in the water house. He tended the waterworks and took care of the bugs, and he took care of the shrine and the statue of the woman who had treated him like a person. At first he missed his home in the valley, but that home now belonged to Joley, and he did not miss Joley, or any other person either. He was alone for good.

He stopped driving into town and learned to live on what the forest could provide.

He washed the canvas cloths over and over in the mineral pools and pounded them with stones until they became soft to the touch and yellow as a morning sun. He wrapped himself in yellow to sleep at night, and after his old clothes fell apart, he wore the yellow canvas as a wrap.

He piled stones on either side of the water house, which rested on a granite ledge, back against the side of the mountain, where the water left the earth. When he was done, the house was invisible from almost any angle. All but the front of Joel Hope’s water house had disappeared into the mountain, and to find the door one had to stand right in front of it, on a ledge that overlooked a sheer cliff.

It was dark in the building without windows, but Nqong didn’t need light. He knew the waterworks as well as he knew his own body.

———

In 1960 Joley turned over Hope Springs to the care of his sister Nellie. Nellie largely ignored the place. With no supervision, the gardeners let the weeds take over, the peafowl went wild into the woods, and the hotel lost its paint to the weather. Nqong didn’t care.

Another decade passed, and Nqong grew hairier and stronger and harder. He forgot the sound of human speech. He knew the taste of every bug, slug, and berry, every root and leaf. He cooked himself a rodent once or twice a week and used the drippings to oil the valves in the water house. He bathed daily and learned to stretch in thirty-six ways, and he did his stretches seven times a day. He remembered the stories of the Wanqong, but did not remember the words in any language.

One summer morning there was a knock on the door of the water house. Nqong opened the door gently, expecting to find a woodpecker looking for a handout.

There was a person standing on the ledge. A human person. A woman.

Nqong’s eyes were adjusted to the dark indoors, and the morning light was bright behind the woman, so he could not see her face clearly, but he could see that she was smiling. It was a face he knew.

She said, “I knew I’d find you.”

He answered, “I knew you’d come.” Words. Human, English.

For the first time in years, Nqong was conscious of being naked. He ducked back into the water house and wrapped a greasy yellow canvas rag about his waist, then stepped outside. His heart was pounding like a mallet.

The woman was leaning back against the front of the water house, gazing out over the valley. “It’s a long way down,” she observed. “I’ve never been up here before.”

He looked at her closely. No. She was not Libby Pomeroy. She just looked like Libby might have looked. Older than Libby used to look, but not as old as Libby would look now. She wore leather sandals and blue cotton trousers, a gaily patterned shirt, and a necklace of wooden beads. Her hair was long and straight. Her skin smelled of spices and her breath smelled like burned leaves. She turned to him and grinned, with a tentative twitch at the corners of her mouth.

Nqong’s heart settled down and his mind took over. He knew she was not there to harm him or to cast him out. He asked, “Who are you?”

The woman smiled. “I’m Karen Hope. I live in the valley.” She held out her right hand, and he took it in his left. She squeezed his fingers, and he squeezed back, gently. Her hand was as soft as a sparrow. “I’ve heard about you,” she said. “People say they’ve seen you. Some say you’ve lived up here in the mountains since the beginning of time. Is that true?”

“I don’t know,” Nqong answered. “When did time begin?”

“Wow,” she answered. “That’s a good one. Right. Listen, I live in the hotel now. With some friends. We’re a commune. We’re going to fix the old place up. We’d love to have you join us. You know. I mean for some herb tea sometime, or, you know, whatever. Since we’re neighbors, let’s be friends, right?”

She shrugged and Nqong smiled back. He said, “I would like to garden.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “The garden needs so much work.”

“Your mother loved to garden.”

“Wow,” she answered.

That evening, in the dining room of the old hotel, for the first time in more than twenty years, Nqong ate in the company of people. Karen Hope and her friends feasted by candlelight on brown rice, black beans, and curried tofu, and they toasted their woodland neighbor with red jug wine.

Nqong grinned and said, “You are good people. This is good food.” He could think of nothing else to say; he wasn’t shy, just out of practice. He gave his grin to the community members, one by one, repeating the names he had learned at the beginning of the meal:

Karen, of course. Beatrice, the big, round one. Emily, the dainty little flirt. Theresa, whose smile was half-frown. Arthur, the fat one with greasy fingers, who worked with machines. Nels, who wore a farmer’s hat to dinner. Larry, Herbert, and Will, in their paint-stained overalls. Herbert asked questions about the water, and how it was kept at a constant temperature, all year round. The little fellow, Baxter, who didn’t talk but darted nervous glares this way and that. Diana, the tall blonde with the biggest smile, the one who cooked the dinner.

After dishes were cleared away, Nqong remained at the table with Karen, drinking tea and listening to her remember the past and dream about the future. “When my father died in nineteen-fifty, he left Hope Springs to his three children: Joel, Nellie, and me. But he knew we couldn’t get along; we had never much liked each other. Joley’s a little shit, Nellie’s a glamorous Beverly Hills and Malibu playgirl, and me? I’d be the black sheep in any family. I happen to like myself, but I wouldn’t want me for a daughter or a sister. I was a beatnik in the fifties and a hippie in the sixties, and now here it is the seventies. I’m what? I’m forty years old, I’m still single, I’m mellow, I’m together. Together, that’s how I like to think of myself. I’m together with my community and with myself.

“Anyway, Father’s will stipulated that Joley would get Hope Springs for the first ten years, the fifties. Then the place would go to Nellie for ten years, the sixties. Then me. Here it is the seventies, and here I am. Me and my friends. We’re going to make something of this place. At least we’re going to fix it up. We’re not going to let it go to seed and fall apart, like Joley and Nellie did. They totally trashed this place. I’m going to make it beautiful again.”

“For what?” Nqong asked.

“For what?”

“Will you open the hotel again?”

“No way,” Karen answered. “This is a commune, man. We’re a community.”

“With what purpose?” Nqong asked.

“Purpose?”

Nqong nodded.

Karen nodded back, and then she smiled. “An ashram,” she said. “We’ll make Hope Springs an ashram.”

“What’s an ashram?” Nqong asked.

“Like a community, but with a teacher.”

“Do you have a teacher?”

Karen reached across the table and covered Nqong’s hand with hers. “I believe we do.”

———

And so Nqong gave civilized life another try. He moved back into the loft of the carriage house. Then, because they asked him to, he turned the carriage house parlor area into what they called a meditation room, which Karen outfitted with burgundy carpets and paisley cushions and sandalwood-scented candles. They joined him every morning and sat on the floor in a circle, holding hands.

He still hiked daily up into the hills, to tinker with the waterworks and to monitor the growth of the little worms in jars. Now and then Herbert accompanied him up the trail and watched him while he tested and adjusted the water. Sometimes Nqong stayed long enough in the forest to enjoy a mud bath, followed by a hot mineral bath, followed by a cold plunge. But he was always down in the valley by dinnertime. One thing about civilization: Diana’s cooking beat fried squirrel.

They treated him like a teacher, and so he taught them what he knew: the thirty-six ways of stretching. That was all he knew, but every time he spoke, they thought they were getting more wisdom out of him. He kept his words to a minimum, and that made them attend him even more. This attention made him uncomfortable.

———

There was a continual gathering in the bathhouse, where the community bathed naked and smoked. Because of the danger of fire, the bathhouse was one of the only two places where smoking was allowed. The other was on a footbridge that crossed the sulfur creek. As a result, the atmosphere inside the bathhouse was both smoky and steamy, and smelled of both sulfur and skunk.

“You never take baths, Nqong,” Nels observed. “How do you stay so clean?”

“I take my baths in the forest,” he answered.

“How come you don’t join us in the bathhouse?”

“I don’t like the smell of marijuana,” he said.

Within a few days everyone in the community had quit smoking dope. Except for Karen, who smoked marijuana once a day in her apartment in the hotel. She allowed herself that pleasure because she believed a daily joint made her a better friend to her friends, and besides, she owned the place.

———

One day late in the fall, Beatrice, the round one, asked Nqong what color she should wear to make her look less fat. He shrugged and said he liked yellow. Within a week the entire community was wearing nothing but yellow clothes. Karen had the burgundy carpet and the paisley cushions in the carriage house replaced with yellow carpet and cushions.

———

Diana asked him one cold winter morning if he thought her need to feed people was a neurosis. That made no sense to him, and he told her so. “There goes a decade of therapy,” she told him.

“I’m sorry,” Nqong said. “Don’t listen to me.”

“No, don’t be sorry!” Diana insisted. She held his hand and kissed his fingers. “I’m so grateful, Nqong.”

“I don’t know what a neurosis is,” he confessed.

“Nobody else does either,” Diana said. “You’re just wise enough to admit it. Do you want a cookie?”

———

Arthur took Nqong aside one spring afternoon and confessed that he loved Beatrice, but was too shy to tell her so. Beatrice came to Nqong early that evening and told Nqong how she wished she were brave enough to hit on Arthur. The next morning Nqong sent the two of them to the same hillside to gather wildflowers for the dining table. They came back holding hands and smelling sweetly of new grass and new love.

———

Baxter seemed to need the most help. He moped and scowled and never said a word. “What’s wrong with you?” Theresa challenged him at community meeting, one hot summer night. “You’re so negative. So secretive. What’s up, little boy? You got a problem or something? Why don’t you ever talk? You never talk, Baxter. How come? Why are you such a downer?”

Baxter looked to Nqong and said with his face, What should I tell her.

Nqong bowed his head and pouted the obvious: Tell her the truth.

Baxter took a deep breath. “I’m horny,” he mumbled. “Which is why I’m such a downer.”

Theresa reached across the distance between them, her frown melting to tenderness, and said, “I love you, Baxter. You’re such a beautiful man. No need to talk. Let’s find something you’re more comfortable doing.”

The two of them stood up and left the carriage house together. Before the door shut, Baxter stuck his head back inside and grinned broadly at the members of his community, his eyebrows bouncing on his forehead.

Baxter and Theresa remained a couple for a week, by which time she had lost the constant frown. Even in the months to come, after Baxter had moved on to Emily, then to Beatrice (“Don’t worry, Arthur, it’s just Baxter.…”), then Diana, and even eventually to Karen, Theresa never frowned again, except for a couple of days each month, when she would go to Diana, who would feed her popcorn and massage her cramps away.

———

One afternoon, when Nqong had lived with Karen Hope’s community for three years, he went up to his favorite mud pond on the mountainside to meditate in the gook. It tingled. He could feel motion. The earth was thirsty, excited. Fall was coming. The warm mud spoke to him, and told him what he had to do.

He adjusted the valves until he had them just right. Then he put on his yellow canvas wrap, blew out the lamps, and left the water house. It was time to go down. Time to tell them.

———

That evening, after dinner, before the dishes were cleared away, he spoke. “The earth is quickening,” he told them, “and the rains are coming. The mud will be refreshed, and I must spend more time with my jars.”

“What jars?” Arthur asked.

“Jars,” Nqong answered. “Also, I know now that it’s becoming a strain on this old body to climb that big hill every day. It’s a two-mile hike each way, or so old Mr. Hope told me.”

Karen asked, “Do you have to go up there every day? Every day, Nqong? Wouldn’t it be easier to just go now and then?”

Nqong shook his head, which meant “no” to the Wanqong, as it does to the whites, but also meant “I understand your love.”

“Every day,” he said. “I don’t have to go up there every day, but I have to be there every day. It’s the water, you see. And the beetles.”

“Beetles?” Nels asked.

“The yellow ones. They hatch in the spring.”

“Oh, those beetles. Yeah, they’re nice.”

Nqong smiled. “Nice,” he said.

———

“We’ll miss you, Nqong,” Karen told him the next morning in front of the hotel, where he was shouldering his makeshift yellow canvas bag of stuff. “Will you come to see us now and then?”

“I’ll keep an eye on you,” he promised.

“Whenever you need anything from town, feel free to charge it to my account.”

“Thank you.”

She gave him a pair of binoculars. “You’re our guardian angel,” she said. “Please protect us.”

That was a large favor for her to ask, when all he knew how to give to her and her people was the yearly flight of yellow fairies. That was all the protection he had to offer, but perhaps it was more protection than most people enjoy in this capricious, cruel, mindless, beautiful but self-gobbling universe.