Jaguar (19 page)

There’s your blood sacrifice,
Rafferty thought, and stowed the knife with the rest of the gear. He left Nebaj a cup of water covered with the other cup, then scrambled up the cliffside to safety.

It is the egocentricity of adolescence that has specific pertinence to the development
of these states and demands our attention . . . He now becomes capable of
thinking about thinking . . . he can now plan from the possible to the real,
and in so doing may never return from the mental realm of the possible.

—Theodore Lidz,
The Origin and Treatment of Schizophrenic Disorders

Eddie bicycled up to The Hill twice a week for his sessions with Dr. Mark. Dr. Mark made the choice easy because he let Eddie come for free, and because he introduced him to Sara. Sara gave him a journal and showed him how she kept notes in hers, and Eddie’s journal kept him sane. Besides, after his meeting with Rafferty he knew he’d have to keep better track of his dreams if he ever wanted to meet him again.

Dr. Mark was still on the Hill after five years, and he saw some private patients in his home. Eddie was welcome there, but a lot of the tests they did required the equipment on The Hill. The doctor looked young in his face but not in his eyes. He didn’t look like he got outside as much, either. Like many of his patients, Dr. Mark’s skin was beginning to sallow, and he was always looking for things that were already in his hand.

Eddie tried to say as little as possible about Rafferty and the dream world, but Dr. Mark had a way of making him want to. Dr. Mark was a good listener, but Eddie didn’t think he believed a word about the other side. Twice a week he found himself talking about the dreams anyway.

He knew he made a mistake when he mentioned Maryellen Thompkins. For the rest of sixth grade, besides seeing Eddie on The Hill, Dr. Mark came down to the school for an hour a week to test Eddie and Maryellen and a few other kids.

Eddie was afraid that they might be separated, but both of them learned a lot from Dr. Mark about their dreams. The main thing that they learned was that they
were
different. Whether Dr. Mark believed it or not, they knew that nothing they read or that he told them about others fit their situation. Both of them read everything the bookmobile could find for them on astral projection, dreams, and on what Dr. Mark called “multiple personality disorder”—something Eddie read in his chart when nobody was looking.

“That’s not the way we are at all,” Eddie told her one day in disgust. “I thought he was
smart.
”

During that summer and the next year, Dr. Mark set up experiments, trying to get them to dream the way he wanted. He gave one of them a week’s worth of envelopes, dated, stamped and sealed. Before going to sleep, the other opened an envelope and concentrated on the card inside, then tried to dream that picture for the receiver.

When a design appeared in a dream, the person with the stamped envelopes sketched the design, placed it inside an envelope and mailed it to Dr. Mark. On Saturdays they met for results, and for more tests. The first week they scored a hundred percent. The second week they scored a hundred percent. The third week he gave them twenty random passages from the
Encyclopedia Americana
, and they scored a hundred percent. Their migraine management counselor got Dr. Mark’s files; a staff member interested in clairvoyance copied them for a friend, and word was out.

Maryellen’s stepmother accused them of cheating to get attention. She forbade Maryellen to have any contact at all with Eddie Reyes. She tried to get Eddie removed from the school before fall term.

“Look what he’s done to our little girl,” she shouted.”

Eddie and Maryellen listened outside Dr. Mark’s office while her stepmother raged.

“He showed up and now half the school’s loony. She’s not crazy or psychic. She’s . . .
influenced
, that’s all. He’s like a little Hitler. Get him up on the Hill where he belongs, but keep him away from Maryellen.”

“Shit,” Eddie whispered.

“Never mind,” Maryellen said. “She’s drinking again. She hates everybody.”

“Especially me.”

“Especially herself. She won’t get you kicked out of school, don’t worry.”

“I know. Dr. Mark told me already. I’m glad we’re getting skipped next year. You know, I think something big’s going to happen.”

“Something big? How big?”

“Like the earthquake. Like meeting Rafferty. I just have that feeling.”

Eddie felt closer to Rafferty than he did to anyone except Maryellen Thompkins. Rafferty and the Roam were in danger from a power that Eddie couldn’t identify. He tried the other side as often as possible, but headaches were tremendous and the fabric didn’t always allow him through. Dreaming other peoples’ dreams on this side was dangerous to other people. Eddie had to find out how he could help Rafferty.

The next year his absences from school got worse. He and Maryellen skipped to ninth grade and still their scores hugged the high end of the scale. Maryellen took up photography and buried herself in her darkroom out in the shed. Eddie buried himself in dreams. The counselors saw that getting after Eddie for missing school didn’t do any good, so they went after his Uncle Bert.

“It’s not right, Eddie,” Bert said. “You stay here, I don’t ask anything except you stay out of trouble.”

“I know. . . .”

“Listen.” Bert put a finger to the end of Eddie’s nose. “It’s simple.”
Tap
the nose. “They get money from the state when you’re in school”
tap
“they get nothing when you’re not.” Bert dropped his hand onto Eddie’s shoulder. “Now, they can take you away, they can put you back on The Hill, or in a foster home where nobody will leave you alone for a minute. Is
that
what you want?”

“No.”

Uncle Bert pulled a new pack of Luckies out of his shirt pocket and cracked the cellophane.

“Then get
ahold
of yourself. I don’t know what to think about this ‘other world’ you talk about, except it’s bringing the law down on my head.” He
tap-tap-tapped
the top of the pack against his fist. “You daydream so much you forget to eat, forget to go to school. You sleep sometimes for a day, two days and years of doctors hasn’t done a thing.” He offered Eddie a smoke.

“No.”

“Smart boy.” A flick of his wrist flipped a cigarette from pack to lips. He lit the smoke and coughed. “They won’t send you to no foster home; they’ll send you straight back to The Hill. Permanent. People in this town are out to get you. I can’t be here every minute. You get a grip.”

“Uncle Bert, people are
dying
. . . .”

“Don’t give me that crap,” Bert snapped. “I don’t see no bodies.
You
see the bodies. And that’s the problem. Boys your age should be dreaming of warm bodies, with tits.”

Eddie’s uncle took a long swallow of cold coffee and tossed the dregs out the front door.

“Listen,” he said. “Look at it this way. If you go down the tubes, so do your dream people. Take care of yourself, and you can take care of them. Get it? And it’ll make life easier on me. I hate it when the state takes up snooping. Your dad and I fought a war over that shit. Look what it got him.”

“What
did
it get him?” Eddie asked. “My mom never talked about him, nobody talks about him. . . .”

“Maybe when you’re older,” Bert said. He wouldn’t look Eddie in the eye. “But you take after him, boy, you sure do.”

“How? How do I take after him?”

His uncle stalked out the door for town.

Maryellen had her photography for focus, so Eddie took up archery because he’d read that zen monks did it. He became the youngest member of the valley archery club, where he was still known as a loner. He got a job at the club repairing targets and equipment. By the time he was fifteen he fletched his own arrows and took up restoring guns of all kinds. By the time he was sixteen, he was making a wage at it. Maryellen’s father was a drunk, but he was also a gunsmith who owned a sporting goods store, and Eddie thought this might help keep him closer to Maryellen.

Maryellen’s father took an interest in Eddie at first, in spite of his wife’s opinions. But the bond between Eddie and Maryellen became too much for him. He shut Eddie out of his life, and out of his shop.

“You two spend all of your time together,” he told her. “That’s not healthy at your age.”

“It’s the dream study, Dad,” she said. “Dr. Mark explained it to you. If we can understand more. . . .”

“If you can understand that I know what’s best for you, that’s fine,” Mel said. “If you can’t understand it, tough. You will when you get older. He’s out of the shop. Socially, he’s out of your life. Period.”

“But, Dad. . . .”

“And I can take you out of that study, too. Some of that stuff you’re doing, it’s voodoo stuff. Sometimes you’re sick for days. . . .”

“But we’re way ahead in school, they’re talking about skipping us again. Here at home . . . we’re helping other people, too.”

“Don’t talk to me about those imaginary people of yours. That’s baby talk, and I don’t see why that doctor lets you keep it up. Hell, Eddie’s almost a grown man and he still believes that crap. How’s he going to make it thinking that way?”

“Dad, I meant, it’s helping other people,
real
people, who have personality problems, nightmares and stuff. You know that. And we’ve . . . I’ve studied up on it a lot and written papers for school. . . .”

“That’s why I let you do it. I’m not blind, you know. I just don’t want to see you throw your life away on some dreamer. . . .”

“Dad, you forget.
I’m
‘some dreamer.’”

He dismissed that with a wave of his hand.

“You’re a photographer,” he said, over his shoulder. “Stick to that.”

Maryellen met Eddie at their usual spot down at the river. He was drawing squares in a sandbar.

“It’s
her
doing, you know that,” Maryellen told him. “My dad has to drink to put up with her,
that’s
the problem. I can’t believe he married that woman. . . .”

She cried, something she didn’t do easily. In her struggle not to cry she displayed the bitter struggle that light has always fought for souls in darkness. The twin furrows between her brows deepened, and Eddie realized they were a sign of age, of
physical
age. Life on the dreamways tossed out fate like dice. He hoped if it tossed them age that they would get wisdom, as well.

Eddie knew that Maryellen’s father didn’t just start drinking because of his new wife. Maryellen’s mother had been killed years ago, while Eddie was in Montana. Maryellen’s father had been drunk then, and drove the car off the levee road and into the river. She got halfway out the window before the river rolled the car. Maryellen had been at the babysitter’s and wasn’t told until after the funeral.

She stopped crying and fished in her pocket for a tissue to blow her nose.

“Something’s keeping us from the other side,” Eddie said. “I think the Jaguar’s onto us, blocking our moves before we make them.”

“Or maybe we
are
crazy,” she said. “Do you know how crazy it sounds for you to say that.
Do you
?”

“Does that mean you won’t help me anymore?”

Maryellen blew into her wet tissue. She wore one of those pink, fuzzy sweaters that shed like a dyed cat. Clumps of the stuff clung to the arms of his plaid shirt, a flannel material that he liked more for the feel than for the looks.

“Well?”

Eddie thought that the intimacy of the dreamways made them like an old married couple. Familiarity, a kind of intimacy, but without the benefit of romance.

Romance was something Eddie didn’t understand, but he knew he had no time for it. Still, when she blew her nose so unselfconsciously in front of him, Eddie had to admit to himself that he loved Maryellen Thompkins. Love was the kind of thing that could ruin everything.

“I’ll help you,” Maryellen said.

Her voice was husky from all the crying.

“I’ll help you because it’ll help me figure all this out. And because I don’t know what else to do.”

“I don’t, either,” he said. “But we’re not supposed to. We’re just kids.”

Maryellen looked at Eddie one of those long looks that was a cross between accusation and pity. The red rim around her eyes did not diminish their beauty, their fire.

“Kids!” she snorted. “Whatever we are, it’s not kids. Have you looked in a mirror, lately?”

Eddie swallowed. He’d had a hard look in the mirror just this morning, and the person who looked back had been a stranger. His eyes were still blue, but the mirror wasn’t deep enough to hold them.

Even the damned love.

—Stephen King,
The Drawing of the Three

The Jaguar loved to pry. When he was young and lived in the world, his hobby was burglary. The young Jaguar had not been a big-time burglar of diamonds and cash, though when he saw them for the taking, he took. He was after the simple thrill of lifting a pair of lace panties from the floor beside a snoring couple, a watch from their bedside table, a comb from the vanity.

Sometimes the young Jaguar became excited, standing over their sleep, and unzipped his pants to release his excitement in hot spurts atop their covers. Then, savoring the freedom of the nighttime streets, he ran wild down the sidewalks, and laughed.

Young Jaguar, hitched to the world by his need. The Jaguar still felt the need to pry. He no longer ran wild down the streets, but oh, how he loved to pry!

The Agency changed hands. The Jaguar no longer faced their inquisition when he woke. He still woke to the rock-faced, unamused, cold-eyed Max, but Max didn’t hurt him anymore. He understood that it was nothing personal, and that policies change, and that he should make the best of it while he could.

The new administration considered him a valuable national treasure, and never did they use the word “spy.” The old boys operated on greed and fear, they sent Max to punish him for his distractions. The young bucks understood that money meant nothing to him, that he was not good to them dead, that he was not good to them unless he woke up willingly. They let him play.