The Meq (4 page)

He stepped away from the window and took something out of his pocket.

“Look, kid,” he said, “I know what that baseball probably means to you, but . . .”

“Don’t call me kid,” I said. “It’s ridiculous. You look just like me. Why don’t you be Ray and I’ll be Z.”

He put his hand out to shake. “Deal,” he said.

I looked down at Papa’s baseball. “So, Ray, you think this baseball is magic?”

“I don’t think the baseball is magic, but I think what’s inside is.”

“Inside?”

“That’s right. I think your papa put the Stones in the middle of that ball. Why don’t you give it to me and let me cut the stitches. I got a penknife right here.”

“No,” I said, but I didn’t say it with much heart. I wanted to find out myself. I had to. I tossed him the ball.

He didn’t waste a second. Without a word, he sat down on the bed and put the baseball between us. He cut the stitches one at a time and carefully peeled back the flap of hide. He took out the coarse hair and fiber underneath and suddenly there it was. Like a single egg in a bird’s nest, there it was. In fact, it was shaped like an egg. A dark, pockmarked stone in the shape of an egg that would easily fit in the palm of your hand. And like the four points on a compass, there were four tiny gems embedded in the Stone. In the light, they all reflected a different, brilliant color. I lifted the Stone gently and it was heavier than I expected. The gems were a mystery, I had no idea what they were. But Ray did.

Ray said, “That one there at the top, that’s blue diamond. The one on the bottom is star sapphire. The other two are lapis lazuli and pearl.”

I turned it over and over in my hands. I touched the gems with my fingertips, then I put it in my palm and closed my hand over it. I shut my eyes and thought about Mama and Papa. I couldn’t touch them anymore. I couldn’t run up to them and ask them a thousand different questions. I opened my eyes and looked at the cold glass of the windowpane. The light coming through was low and faint. I turned and looked at Ray. He was putting his knife back in his pocket.

“What do I do now, Ray?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I got a hunch you’re gonna figure it out.”

Three days later it was almost hot, just like the “Weatherman” had predicted. Solomon was on his rounds again, doing more bartering than gambling, now that he was getting prepared for his annual trip west. I went with him and tried not to let him see what I was thinking and feeling. I should have realized he knew me better than that. He said, “You don’t go with me out west, kid. You stay and find zis thing, zis thing inside you.”

We had never discussed me going west with him, but I think we had both assumed I would.

“You know about me, don’t you?” I said.

He barked at his mules, then turned to me.

“I know what I know, Zianno. No more than that.”

I made him stop the wagon and I told him I had discovered something special, something I didn’t understand, something from my papa. I told him I had to find something else now. I had no choice. I had to find someone named Sailor; it was the last thing my mama had said and maybe Ray Ytuarte could help me do it. He said he understood and that he’d already made arrangements with Mrs. Bennings for me to stay with her. Of course, I’d have to earn my keep and maybe watch over her a little for him. He said he might go all the way west this time, maybe to California. I told him that sounded like good business.

In the next few weeks, Solomon and Mrs. Bennings made no more pretense about their relationship. She knew he would be away for at least six months and they spent most of their time together.

I spent a lot of that time with Ray. Every day we met somewhere and I asked him about the Meq. Ray still ran his gang, but I could tell he was drifting away from that. He was starting to need me as much as I needed him, for what I didn’t know. Some days he actually seemed like a twelve-year-old and some days he was just strange and distant. One day, for no reason, he told me his sister’s name. He said it was Zuriaa, a beautiful old Basque name, but she had changed it to something else.

I asked him about us, all of us. How could we even be born if our parents stayed twelve. I knew babies didn’t come from storks.

He said there was a ritual, something only the Meq did, called Zeharkatu. He didn’t know much about it because he’d never done it, but after the ritual the Meq became like the Giza, the other people. They could have babies, get sick, grow old and die, just like the Giza. But their babies would be Meq. He wasn’t sure when or how the ritual was done. He said it had something to do with the Itxaron, the Wait. He said there were all kinds of old stories and legends, but his old lady only knew a few and since he’d been on his own, he’d learned very little. He heard that some of us were old, older than you would believe, and some were not to be messed with. I asked him if he’d ever heard of one named Sailor and he said he had, but it was more like a ghost in one of his old lady’s stories. I asked if he’d ever heard the name Umla-Meq, but that name was unfamiliar. We both wondered about the Stones I carried—Ray a little more than I.

Finally, the day came for Solomon to leave. St. Louis was turning green with spring and it was a fine bright day. He and Mrs. Bennings said their good-byes inside, she acting as if it was just another day, but I knew better. Outside, after he’d hitched the mules and climbed in the wagon, he tossed me the little round cap off his head. “Here, kid,” he said, “zis will make you safe, smart, and rich.” He waved once and was gone.

Four days passed and I hadn’t seen or heard from Ray. Then, he burst into my room one morning and wanted to know which way Solomon had headed west. Had he taken a northern or southern route? I said I didn’t know, but probably northern, because he had mentioned a man in St. Joseph named James he wanted to see and if he went that way, following the railroad as was his custom, he would stop at the Missouri–Pacific Railroad in St. Joseph to check on new lines and track. Ray said this was bad because there was a big storm about to form and there would be tremendous rain and flooding in that part of the country. I almost laughed, but he was serious, so we told Mrs. Bennings that she ought to wire St. Joseph and warn him. She thought that was silly, but when it came to Solomon her feelings were clear—“better safe than sorry.”

She sent the telegram and we waited for a reply, but none came. One day later, news broke of a devastating storm that raged through the Great Plains and created hundreds of flash floods and destruction everywhere. Mrs. Bennings feared the worst. Two days after that, Ray disappeared without a word. I looked for him in the pool halls, outside the saloons, around the levees, and all his usual street corners. He was gone. We never heard from Solomon.

I felt lost again and I didn’t have the faintest idea what to do next. Solomon had asked me to “watch over” Mrs. Bennings and that’s what I would do, but somehow, I still had to find Sailor.

That night, my dreams were filled with driving rain and mules and baseballs and pistols and wind. Everything kept splitting apart and everyone was screaming and crying and running for dry ground and a safe place to hide. In the middle of it, calm as could be in a bowler hat, there was a boy waving to me and saying something I couldn’t quite understand. I woke up soaking wet from my own sweat and took a deep breath, then a thought crossed my mind . . . even if you can predict the weather, you can’t predict the “Weatherman.”

The next day was May 4, 1882. I would be twelve again.

3

ARMI-ARMA

(SPIDER)

Imagine a warm summer afternoon. You’re sitting on a porch swing or in the grass leaning against a tree. Caught in a ray of sunlight, out of the corner of your eye, you detect movement. Not sudden, yet quick and graceful. You turn toward it and see nothing at first, but you wait and watch. Then you catch a silver flash, then another, descending in the light. You follow it with your eye and there, dangling in space, she sits, stands, hangs, you can’t tell. She is the spider suspended in space. Alone, defying gravity, she spins her magic home and trap. You are mesmerized. You watch her in a silence filled with power. Her power of will and perseverance and the slow knowledge that what she weaves will work. The beauty is incidental. Or is it? You watch her until the light fades and she blends in with shadow and darkness. You rise and leave by ways familiar to you, but you know that behind you, back there, she has spun her web and, in darkness, waits.

I t was Independence Day before Mrs. Bennings and I really talked about it. Solomon’s absence in body and spirit, by wire and by letter, was absolute. We hadn’t heard a word from him or about him. Mrs. Bennings kept busy and never mentioned it. She might have had an extra nip or two in the evenings from her bottle of Old Bushmills, but that was the only outward sign I could see that she was worried. After chores, I spent most of my time combing the piers and levees looking for traces of Ray. He had vanished as completely as Solomon.

At breakfast that morning, Mrs. Bennings suggested I accompany her to Sportsman’s Park for the day. She had tickets to the baseball game between the St. Louis Browns and the Chicago White Sox and after the game there would be a fireworks display. I told her I’d be glad to go. I loved baseball and she loved fireworks.

There were several thousand people there and after she bought us both lemonades and we made our way through the shouting, sweating crowd, we sat next to each other in the grandstands. That was my first professional baseball game. I took in everything at once. I loved it. I still think the few minutes just before a game starts are the most exciting. Mrs. Bennings turned to face me, oblivious to the hoopla around us.

“I think it’s gettin’ to be downright rude of Mr. Birnbaum to not be tellin’ us whether he’s alive or dead.”

“I think we’ll know soon,” I said. “I think we’ll find out he’s just fine.”

She looked out at the field, started to say something else, then didn’t. She watched the whole game and never spoke. The Browns won and the sun went down and the fireworks began. She took off her wide-brimmed hat and some of her black hair fell loose from the bun on top. Her blue eyes flashed in the fireworks. For a few minutes, she looked more like a child than I did. Then she said, “I’ll not be waitin’ to learn.”

“Learn what?” I asked.

“The truth,” she said.

After that, Mrs. Bennings’s spirit changed. For better or worse, only time would tell. She still worked hard, but her heart wasn’t in it. She spent more and more evenings in the saloons and taverns on the south side. I followed her for a while, “watching over her” as Solomon had asked, but after a time, I quit. It was her life and she seemed to want it that way.

I spent all of my free time at the ballpark, hanging around with other boys, sneaking into a game when we could and trying to get the ballplayers to talk to us. Most of them would and I became good friends and errand boy for one of the most notorious players, the “Whirling Dervish,” Billy Covington. He was a great second baseman and a wild man on the base paths. He’d tell me stories about baseball and growing up in the South and how he’d love to have his twin girls see him play, but he couldn’t afford to keep them. I’d listen to everything he said and then run to get him a sandwich and a bromo. He always needed bromo, because he had a reputation as a “whirling dervish” on and off the field. Billy got me my first job as a bat boy in a weekend series against the Phillies. I’ll always be grateful to him for that and for something he had nothing to do with at all, except for dying.

It was a Saturday in late summer. The game started at one o’clock, so I was up early and at the ballpark by ten to watch batting practice. I noticed right away that Billy wasn’t on the field. I asked around and Charlie Sweeney, the pitcher, said he was out by the ticket office talking to his girls. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but I thought I’d go and see anyway. When I got there, Billy was still in his street clothes, holding the hands of two girls who looked completely lost. They were both blond and skinny, about twelve years old, and wearing dirty print dresses. Billy saw me coming.

“Hey, kid,” he yelled, “come here, I want you to meet my girls, my daughters.”

They both looked over at me. One of them smiled and one didn’t. I could tell they were twins, but they weren’t identical.

“This here’s Georgia,” Billy said, pulling the smiling one forward and patting her head. I nodded and so did she. “And this here’s Carolina,” he said. He pulled her forward and she looked me up and down.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hello,” I said. I was smiling, but she kept a straight face. Both girls looked tired and worn-out. Billy knelt down so he was on our level.

“Listen, kid. I been waitin’ for you. I got a game to play and these two, well, they been through a rough time. You know your way around, so you stay with ’em, will you, ’til after?”

“Sure, Billy,” I said, “do you want us to just stay here?”

“No, no. I got y’all tickets.”

He slipped me a silver dollar and kissed both girls on the forehead, then he did one of his “whirling dervish” moves and went in to dress. They watched him leave with blank expressions. Carolina picked up her sister’s hand and turned to me.

“Who are you?” she asked. Her face was still blank.

“Zianno,” I said. “Z for short.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know. I love baseball, that’s all.”

“That’s silly.”

I didn’t say anything and turned and motioned for them to follow me. We went inside and watched the game. I bought roast beef and lemonade for all of us with the silver dollar Billy had given me. Billy had one of the best games he’d ever played. He went five for five and scored the winning run in the bottom of the ninth. After the game, a bunch of players carried him off the field on their shoulders. They took him out of the ballpark and down to Chris Vonder Ahe’s Beer Garden, where he drank fifteen beers and chased them with fifteen whiskeys, then did one “whirling dervish,” passed out, and never woke up.

The manager, Charlie Comiskey, was told about the girls and the fact they were waiting for Billy back at the ballpark. He found them sleeping by the ticket office next to me. He’d seen me around.