Jaguar (26 page)

By the strictest standards of the Roam, Afriqua Lee had nothing to offer a suitor. She had accumulated no dowry, nor was there a male of her household available to offer one for her. An independent woman of sixteen was a liability, two years past her prime with neither promise nor arrangement. In truth, an independent woman of Afriqua’s age was a rarity in the Roam.

She had proven herself an unusual child and an even more unusual young woman. Her beauty marked her desirable during quarterly gatherings of the kumpaniyi, yet she retreated to her van at the first sign of interest from the men, young or old. Rafferty had escorted her in her work as an interpreter in the cities, an agreement that had saved her honor and her life more than once.

A traditional wedding of the Roam was between a woman of fourteen and a man of twenty-five, an honorable spread by the Roam’s standards. Rafferty and Afriqua Lee were both sixteen. That made him precocious and Afriqua Lee nearly an old maid.

Rafferty stepped into the current, the braid in his hand. The brush-birds continued to sing, and a buzz of insects urged him on. A school of fingerlings flashed away from his foot and the cold of the stream calmed the tremble in his right hand, where he held tight to the braid.

At midstream, she glanced up at him in spite of herself. He slipped once, twice, and flailed his arms trying to catch his balance.

“Look out!” a voice shouted.

Too late, she half-stood as he hit the water backwards. She dodged the drenching wave but lost her footing herself and plunged atop Rafferty into the stream.

The women laughed so hard that men came running, thinking trouble. Through it all Rafferty managed to hold his precious braid out of water.

Afriqua Lee clutched his bachelor trousers to her chest and shook the water out of her hair with a
snap.

“My hair!” she shrieked, “the Romni worked hours on my hair! Who would marry this muskrat of a woman?”

Rafferty held the braid in front of him like a shield, like the warding-off sign, and got his footing. His right knee throbbed, and it would throb worse once he left the cold stream.

“I brought you the braid,” he sputtered, his voice as formal as he could muster. “I, Rafferty, would marry this muskrat.”

Ash does not suffer.

—
The Destruction of the Jaguar,
translated by Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno

After his recovery from the beating, Eddie had been released to Dr. Mark and he never went back to school. He spent the summer recovering on The Hill, where he submitted to the constant round of tests and to Dr. Mark’s “experiment” that included Maryellen. Eddie threw himself into recording their thoughts and dreams, something he’d been afraid to do.

“What am I afraid of?” he asked Maryellen one day, “that they’ll read this stuff and think I’m crazy? I’m in here because they’re
sure
I’m crazy.”

They filled notebooks and sketchpads, they scribbled thoughts and images on the nearest surfaces including the day room’s refrigerator door.

One Saturday afternoon Dr. Mark brought Eddie home to help him with the yard work. Sara had asked to see his notebooks and Maryellen’s drawings. When Mark and Eddie came inside for their lunch break, Sara’s eyes were aglitter with excitement. Books, papers and drawings scattered the oak tabletop and Sara called them over.

“Look here, Eddie,” she said, and pointed to one of Maryellen’s drawings of Afriqua Lee’s clothes. Next to the drawing, she had a page open in one of her big picture-books, a picture of some young Guatemalan girls. They wore identical dresses and head-wraps. The stonework behind the girls in the picture was the stonework of the ancient Roam.

“Yes,” Eddie said, and he said it with a sigh that felt like relief. “Yes, that’s the Roam.”

His hand couldn’t help but caress the page. As he flipped through the book, he recognized a couple of the stake-down sites from his dreams of the southern highlands.

“So, Eddie,” Dr. Mark said, “what do you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you think that you’ve seen pictures of these places before? Maybe that’s how you’ve constructed—”

“You still won’t believe me, will you?” Eddie said. He couldn’t keep the anger and disappointment out of his voice.

“Eddie, I just asked you whether you’d seen these pictures before. It’s my job to ask everything, you know that. If you answer my question, I’ll answer yours.”

Sara handed Eddie a big glass of Coke, even though she must have known that it got Eddie too nervous, sometimes. He sipped it gratefully while he studied the pictures.

“No,” he said. He looked Dr. Mark square in the eye. “I’ve never seen these pictures, these books or any pictures like them except in dreams.”

“Ok, Eddie. Thanks.” Dr. Mark held Eddie’s gaze, and said, “Yes, I believe you.”

While Eddie ate two meatloaf sandwiches, Dr. Mark talked to him about how other cultures repeat some patterns without ever meeting each other, how their art formed what he called “archetypal patterns.” All of this was stuff that Eddie had read years ago in the quiet little library at The Hill.

“So,” Eddie said, “what you believe is that I haven’t see those pictures. You still don’t believe me about the dreams, right?”

“It means . . . yes,” Mark said. “Yes, I believe you haven’t seen the pictures. But I’m really not sure what to think about those dreams. They’re real to you, and to Maryellen. You have a common language between you that I can’t explain any other way. I would like to explain it some other way because if what you say is true. . . .”

“If what I say is true, then we’re all crazy, right?”

Dr. Mark laughed.

“Yep,” he said, “that about sums it up. Crazy or not, everybody will sure think so unless we can prove otherwise.”

“Criminals are innocent until proven guilty,” Eddie said. “But anybody who’s the slightest bit different is loony unless they prove themselves normal.
That
seems pretty crazy, to me.”

Aftereffects from the beating had changed the character and frequency of Eddie’s dreams, and had brought on episodes of extreme disorientation. Mark had signed Eddie in at The Hill as a “resident outpatient,” a vague category which would not show up on his record as an involuntary commitment.

That afternoon, when it was time to go back to The Hill, Mark asked Eddie whether he would like to stay with him and Sara.

“It’s very unusual,” Dr. Mark told him. “They tell you in medical school not to do things like this. Your uncle is gone too much, The Hill isn’t a healthy environment, no matter what the administration PR says. And we like you, Eddie, that’s a fact. What do you think?”

Eddie thought that he was afraid. Not afraid for himself, but afraid for what he might bring down on Dr. Mark and Sara.

But he said, “Yes.”

A meeting ensued, with the lawyers and the state people and people from The Hill.

“He’s all yours, Doc,” Eddie’s Uncle Bert said.

Kurt Prunty, the hospital attorney, passed the paperwork from Bert to Dr. Jacobs to Dr. Mark and Sara for signatures, then collected and jogged it into a neat stack before slipping it into his briefcase.

“Well, Mark,” Kurt said, his hand outstretched, “congratulations. You’re the proud father of a sixteen-year-old.”

Technically, now, Mark and Sara were his foster parents, but for the most part The Hill was still his home. Dr. Mark found him a job there, rolling carts and delivering envelopes, and he started to save a little money. He was glad. Now that he had a family he wanted to be sure he could buy them something for Christmas.

Eddie remembered that day dimly, but proudly. He never wanted to do anything that would make Dr. Mark sorry that he took such a big chance with him. But he wanted to see Maryellen—he
needed
to see her. He knew that she could help him find the Jaguar, then this whole thing could stop, this craziness could stop. Until then, Eddie couldn’t live with the idea that he’d abandoned Rafferty and the others to be hunted down like rats at the dump.

Maryellen graduated with their class, with honors. Eddie had been so far out of touch on The Hill that

August came up on his blind side. He couldn’t bear the thought of going back to school in the fall, even if they let him, so he took the GED cold and passed with top scores. Now, in a big way, he felt free to hunt the Jaguar.

Eddie felt some changes in his dreams, changes out of his control. The dreams were after him now, and sometimes he sat up all night rather than risk a dream. He suspected the Jaguar, and that if his guard was down that would be the end of him. If the Jaguar got to him, Eddie knew that he could get to Maryellen. He vowed that he would not become the bait that would trap Maryellen.

Dreams battered him constantly, and Rafferty was just a small part of the whole mess. Some days now Eddie looked forward to the medication that he used to tuck into his cheek and spit out later. He dreamed about bursting through the blue butterfly into the slathering jaws of a jaguar. He knew that they were only nightmares, but the impression was the same. He was repeating the infinity sign, and the repetition would work as a brand eventually and let the Jaguar in.

The week before Thanksgiving, Eddie decided that he had to face the Jaguar down or die, because he felt his mind was dying, anyway. He didn’t know whether he could muster the others or not, but he knew he could count on Maryellen.

“Let’s go away together for a couple of days,” Eddie said. “We could manage it, you know. Things are getting bad, real bad. I need to get away from here, pin down the Jaguar, and I need you to help me in case . . . in case things go bad for me, too. Besides, I want to be with you . . . you know. . . .”

A telltale flush crept out of her collar. He could tell by her eyes that she agreed, and his stomach flipped the way it had that first time they’d met, when he’d tested her by talking about the Lazy-Eight.

“Well?” he asked, and drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Yes or no. Going or not?”

“Yes,” she blurted. “It’s just what we need.”

Neither of them trusted Maryellen’s home phone or the phone at The Hill. If her father had not dreamed the phone call, then someone here was out to get them.

But if it was a dream. . . .

Neither of them wanted to believe that the Jaguar had a hold on her father, and if they didn’t talk about it then it wasn’t so. One thing was clear. Somehow, somewhere they’d made an enemy who was more than Mel Thompkins.

Eddie would work swing shift at The Hill and, at the appointed hour, Maryellen would drive up and they would disappear. He often slept at The Hill when he worked nights, so he wouldn’t be missed for awhile. Eddie didn’t feel good about slipping out of Dr. Mark’s place, after all they’d done for him, so it had to be The Hill.

They needed a place, someplace isolated, and Maryellen had the answer.

“Olive has a cabin,” she said, “up on the mountain, and nobody goes there this time of year.”

“They’ll look for us up there,” Eddie said. “That’s one of the first places they’d look.”

Maryellen shook her head.

“They know that I can’t stand her, or anything about her,” she said. “They’d never think I went there. Besides, we’re smart. We’ll just make sure they think we’re someplace else.”

She waved a fistful of Disneyland brochures that she’d picked up from a travel agent.

“Are you kidding?” he laughed. “
Disneyland
? Who would think that we’re the Disneyland types?”

“They already believe that we’re permanently in Fantasyland,” she said. “And don’t criticize unless you have a better idea. Besides, the travel agent is a friend of Olive’s. I made sure I asked her a lot of questions.”

“How would we get there?”

“Fly, of course. Have you saved any money, working for The Hill the past few months?”

“A little.”

“Well, I saved almost nine hundred dollars for college over the last three years. We’ll draw it all out. We don’t have to use it, they’ll just see our withdrawal receipts and brochures lying around and airline schedules. I bet it’ll work.”

“Betting isn’t good enough.”

“Ok,” she said, “then we’ll just have to make sure.”

“Why don’t we just take the money and go someplace else?”

“Because if we go anyplace commercial they’ll find us, or somebody will find us. It’ll be a license plate or description or some stupid mistake we make. . . .”

“Ok,” he said, and rubbed his head. “We’ll just have to make sure.”

Dr. Mark and Sara fixed a real Thanksgiving dinner, something that Eddie hadn’t seen in years. He volunteered for the Thanksgiving shift later that night, reminding them that on holidays the pay was double-time. Eddie felt a little guilty that neither of them questioned him at all.

A few other people came to dinner, Eddie knew them from the hospital—Dr. Jurgens, the gruff old drunk, and his wife who was surprisingly pretty and the same age as Sara. The neighbor couple, the Martins, tried to make conversation with him from time to time but their glances between Eddie and the carving knife betrayed their discomfort.

They probably think I’ll go berserk and hack them all to bits.

At one point, when Eddie looked from them to Dr. Mark, Dr. Mark shot him a wink and a grin and he felt a lot better.

“Like Kurt said, I’m the proud father of a sixteen-year-old,” Mark said, and raised his glass. “Here’s to a real family Thanksgiving.” They let Eddie have a couple of glasses of wine, too, after making sure he was off his meds.

The others left and Eddie helped Mark and Sara clean up. Eddie felt close to a real family for the first time since his mother died. He wished he could tell them what he had to do.

If they only believed me,
he thought.
They’d know how important this is.

“How’s your writing going?” Sara asked. “Are you still keeping your journal?”

Eddie felt uneasy around her for the first time. The warmth of the family dinner, put him on guard, yes, but something more. He’d never tried to deceive them before, never deliberately kept anything from them or lied to them. Sara was especially hard to face, so he concentrated on the dishes.