Stories for Chip (43 page)

—Such a fearsome racket! Why all you in an uproar out here? What is going on?

—Jahs, dis old woman right here, dis one. She said reggaezzi coming for yo little boy.

—Yes. She said it would please her very well if they carried off your son to Mevilla right now, today, to live with witches and demons and flowers forever.

—I heard her too. I heard everyting. Dat's exactly what she said.

—But, old mother, why would you say such a thing? The reggaezzi! Baby, come here now; that's enough dancing. Come to Maman. Don't you hear me calling? Come, boy. Come!

—Fíjese. You see, Senyora Jahs? The boy is lost to the Song. He's faraway where you cannot touch him. The place where reggaezzi go. You cut his hair nice and neat—it is not shaggy and long. You feed him; the boy is pretty and fat—not thin from always eating smoke. He looks like people, like us—not covered all over in green lights. But he is one of them already, almost. Um reggaezzo.

—Stop your playing, old man! Are you stupid? A witch in the yard, reggaezzi, and my son—and you there are playing just like nothing. Stop I say! Stop!

—Ah, but you see? The drummer stops and it makes no difference. Still the boy dances! How does he hear, how can he know? Where does the Song come from?

—Please, cariño. Maman has you now. It's all right; wake up. Please wake up.

[
Many nights
]

Just before the Long Rains fall, some nights blow so cold no one dreams of going out without a poncho, but other nights the sea doesn't breathe at all, and the heat is like standing before the oven open at full fire. This night is one of those latter, so nobody wants much dinner. Before going to bed, Cook sets out only a bowl of leaves, a plate of fruit. Batalha crosses her arms and lays her head on the table, after just two bites from her mango. The grownfolk hardly eat, they drink palm wine, and Savary and Redamas and Jahs begin to laugh. Savary complains, I'm just getting
too
stringy and tough, going up and down these hills. Soon there will be nothing tender and soft on me, and my loves won't want me anymore. Papa says, Oh girl, please: you know you fat. But she jumps up from the table and lifts her thin cotton skirt a little, moving her foot, so the muscle jumps and bulges in her calf: There—you see? Ma Jahs leans far over and slaps Ma Savary on the bottom. Girl, you don't see all that jiggle? That's jelly! They laugh, and me too. Savary says You know, it's so blazing hot tonight we ought to take up some long pillows and sleep on the roof. So that's what we do.

Redamas carries up Batalha and lays her on a long pillow. Jahs whispers in Savary's ear and makes her happy. She giggles. Nearby in the flower court of the Tswani embassy, the circle tonight is drumming some very strange rhythms, from a country I don't know the name of. The beats make a big sound,
powerful
, they want nothing to do with fine dancing, they want jumps, cartwheels, flips—Boy! Savary shouts. How many times I
told
you! Do
not
be doing that tumbling on this roof! Come away from the edge there.
Back away
I say!

And so then it is only the fine dancing I can do after all, not the steps the drumming really calls for. Jahs wants to know why, lately, Batalha is so tired all the time that she falls asleep this early, when before you could hardly make her go to bed before the dawn comes. Savary and Redamas, they look at each other, and Papa says Batalha no longer is content to learn only the knife, that she wants more than to come every full and new moon to militia practice. What she wants is for Redamas to train her, too, with the six full-timers paid out the Johnny-fund. So everyday Batalha doesn't go anymore to help manage the orphanage with Savary, but instead comes to train with Redamas and the soldiers: spear, archery, open hand, a hard run up the steepest slope of the Mother, and now they've just got some horses too, so….

“But the girl is only eleven years old!” Jahs says.

“Well, you can talk to her, then.” Savary throws up her hands. “But, me, I am
all done
arguing with Batalha. Anyway, she's not like the baby there. This one is her
Papa's
daughter—a giant like you, Redy. Bigger than some of those men-soldiers already. So I don't see what harm it can do. Batalha was sending me
mad
with all that energy of hers; now she just sleeps. I say it's good for her.”

Inside the air didn't move, but up here, every now and then a breeze stirs off the ocean far downhill. Even so, the night is close and hot for so much dancing. I go back to where they are sitting and pour three thirsty cups of water from the jar. Redamas touches my head.

“Little man, you are all flat on one side. Didn't Nurse pick out your hair this morning?”

“Oh, that one danced his heart away at lunchtime today!” Jahs says. “He danced so much, so hard, he fell asleep under the beards of the cypress, and just slept the whole afternoon through. That's why his hair is ruint. We were loud loud loud, quartersawing the good mahogany into planks. But even that noise couldn't wake him.”

Savary snuggles and whispers; Jahs calls to Redamas.

“Watch out, my baby doesn't go dancing over the edge of this roof.
Exca senyora éeu vamos abajo um ratinho
.”

Redamas says, “
Um ratao, mas bien
,” and grins and winks at Jahs. Savary laughs out loud. He reaches and she reaches back to take his hand; their fingers squeeze, then let loose. Mamans go downstairs to the big bedroom to be alone together. Jahs never goes to be alone with Redamas, and Savary goes much more with Jahs than she does with Redamas.

“Papa?” I feel I shouldn't ask, but I
must
know. “Would it make you sad if Ma Savary and Ma Jahs loved you only half as much as they love each other?”

“Oh,
no
. It would make me very happy. Half as much is a lot!” Redamas laughs. “You don't understand, my son—
everything
here makes me happy. More than anything I wanted to have family. A daughter, a son: so it makes me feel up to the very top of happiness that two women chose me. I was just the loneliest across-bayou, you can't even imagine. Do you know how lonely the gods are? We are so lonely, there are so few of us, that
ghosts
are our teachers.
Ghosts
are our friends. We…open a box, and
ghosts
come out to tell us the things we need to know. Where are the people?
Where
are they? Only ghosts!”

“DI. Discorporate Intelligences.”

Redamas smiles. “Yes, DIs, like you said. I shouldn't call them ghosts. We know better, you and me.”

“Why are you laughing, Papa?”

“Your Johnny accent, it's very funny. I really should speak more to you in the language of the gods. But it's so sweet, it's funny, the way you say that.”

“Do a trick for me now, Papa. I like it when you do magic.”

“What should I do?” Redamas lifts a hand, all conjure and flourish. “Maybe I will make you go to sleep.”

“No, don't! I hate that one. Don't make me sleep, Papa!”

“Are you sure?” Redamas twinkles his fingers. “My DI always said it's my very best trick.”

“No. I
hate
it. Please!” I grab his hand tight and hold his fingers still. “Do another. Something else!”

“All right, all right.” Redamas shakes his hand free; he smiles. “How about this?” As glowing coals in a fire are steeped with richer color than the fire itself, so, pale as moonlight, a shine appears in the air around Papa's head, and where his naps grow not black, but indigo-color, round the edges of his hairline, the widow's peak, sideburns and kitchen: every curly strand fills with brilliance, the way hot coals do, but this light makes no heat, and it shimmers, blue as the sky at noon.

“More! Brighter! Like a strike of lightning. The way you did that other time!”

“Oh, I can't, little man. Not tonight. All day long it was so cloudy, I hardly got a taste of sun.”

Because he's sitting I can stand there and pat his hair while the blue light dims between my fingers and goes dark. When it's gone, I ask another question.

“Now I want to know something important. Batalha has blue in her hair—”

“Your Papa
never
dreamed he'd burden any son or daughter with divinity, little man. But you are every bit as much my child as Batalha. Now I
explained
this to you: Ma Savary has a little divine inheritance, as it turns out. That's why, with her recessive allele, only daughters and not sons…”

“Yes, yes, Papa. I know, I know. You said before. The thing I want to know is, when my hair is all white as sand, my face wrinkled-up like dry fruit, and I need two canes, one for my right hand, one for my left: will
you,
Papa—you and Batalha—still have all your strength and all your youth? Is that true?”

“Who said those words?
Who?
Where did you hear such things?”

“Kéké at the boatyard. He said when I am many many years drifting in the sea, just some old bones eaten up by fishes, even then you will be as young and fresh as you are today.”

“Well…we are all here now, little man. Ma Jahs, Ma Savary, Batalha, you and me. The night is good. Why should we worry so much about tomorrow? You are very young; we have a long, long time.”

“But is it true, Papa?”

“You mustn't worry about such things. That Kéké is not a very nice boy. I'm going to go down to the boatyard and have a talk with him tomorrow.”

“Oh, don't, Papa! Kéké is very handsome.”

“But, little man, that's not a good reason to let him say mean things to you.”

“I don't mind, though. It's all right, really. Don't come down to the boatyard and scare him, Papa. Please!”

“Because you say so, I won't make him scared. But I must go and say something to him, I must. I just don't like what he said at all. Pass your Papa the palm wine jar there, will you?”

[
Nights yet
]

“Batalha! That short Johnny, the one who trains you
miliciales
with the spear, I heard him tell Papa you're the best
by far
of the bunch. And Papa said to him, ‘Yes, but you must never say so to Batalha; her head's that big already.' Papa said the gods once all had such, such ‘mesomorphy and kinesthesia' as you. He said that you're a—what did he say?—‘throwback sport' to those days before the gods intermarried so much. When Batalha grows up some, Papa said, and comes into her—he called it ‘perjuvenescence,' then she will be a match even for the paladin of the Godspear.”

Batalha smiled down at him, and all her teeth showed. As if against a monster, she brandished some imaginary weapon: nor could the paladin himself, with his spear all ablaze with sun-stuff, have outmatched her gallantry. Batalha said, “You heard him?
Papa
said that?”

“Yes. But then Papa said, Oh, you're a grief to him, and among all hardheaded daughters of the world, chief of them, because my Batalha just will not practice her psionics properly. Papa said you could be a great adept if only—”

Chaw!
Batalha sucked her teeth, dismissing the rest with a turned-up palm. “
I do not care
about any damned psionics. Nothing in this world is more boring than sitting all day long, numb-assed, trying to think no thoughts at all.
One-pointed concentration!
O my brother, I sure hope you feel lucky, that Papa never bothers you about magic and stupidness!”

In fact, the least whiff of fatherly impatience or motherly frustration wafting his way tended to suffocate him like smoke, to choke off his capacity for disobedience or even dissent, until his own desires clogged in his throat, voiceless and caught. Batalha, though, argued for what she wanted. They could say No, You mustn't, You're too young, and all of it was like nothing to Batalha: just silliness, easily crushed with one hand. Her fierce words slapped parental “Nos” out of the air like gnats. Only
train
with the full-time miliciales? Ha! Batalha wanted to
be
a Johnny soldier!
Her
spear,
her
sash,
her
cuirass. And who of them rode better? Not even Papa! Yes, the big mean stallion:
that
one should be hers! Batalha had only to set her sights, and soon she would be getting her way. Now she wanted to drink the wine of Sea-john's nights, and no little cup for her, and no watering, either. Just like the other miliciales she could walk the waterfront late late late through the drunken crush, in blackest night, and kick the ass of any bully hassling the sugar girls and beaux boys. Oh, he worshipped his sister;
of course
he did! Who else, so young, was more mighty, had more swagger? Pick anyone from the whole wide world: there
was
no one else, only Batalha! So much the warrior was she that her old name fell away for this nom de guerre.

“I don't care, let them!”

“But my brother, you
—”

“Stick a knife into somebody with blood and soul and dreams inside? No, Batalha! I will never never never do that. Some Maman loved them, some Papa picked them up and put them on his shoulders. So let them, whoever they are, go on living. I will die instead.”

“But don't you understand the
horrible things
pirates do when they come to Sea-john? They are bad people, brother. No people are worse!”

“It makes no difference how bad they are, Batalha. They are just
people
to me. I couldn't hurt them.”

“You are clever,
ermano mio
, and clever people won't do something that seems wrong if they cannot understand why they must. So come. Come, sit down with me here. I will explain why Johnny mamans-and-papas want their boys and girls to learn the knife.

“It's because the laws and taxes of the Kingdom don't hold over here in Sea-john. It's because we Johnnys are free—
Jaúnedi mar libre
!—and so we Johnnys are on our own. No armies of the Kingdom, no garrison at the citadel:
nobody
will ever lift a finger to help Sea-john. When the pirates raid us from the Gulf, when they loot and rape and murder and burn, what are the people doing over in the Kingdom? They're yawning. They turn over. They go back to sleep.
Ruff yoof
come over here from the Kingdom, and what for? To beat up Johnnys. In every corner of the world, the people know us because we are so beautiful, because our music is the best, because
quí e festa
. They all want to come for a visit. And half the time, it's true, those roadboys who guard caravans, saltdogs who guard ships, and soldiers from the Kingdom, come just for a good time, to have some fun. But then a penny drops: they turn into villains. They turn cruel and strange. I see them forcing kisses, grabbing breasts and ass, so you would think any pretty Johnny belonged to them.