Rook & Tooth and Claw (39 page)

“I’m not sure I get it, Mr Rook.”

“You’ll get it when the time comes, believe me.”

“OK, Mr Rook.” He stared down sadly at his empty plate. “Do you know what I used to have for breakfast, only six weeks ago? Two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, with crispy bacon and french-fried potatoes.”

“That’s what killed Elvis,” said Jim.

“Oh, sure, I know that. I wouldn’t go so far as that. I made sure I had a tomato and a lettuce-leaf with it.”

By three o’clock, when the game was due to kick off,
the sky had become completely overcast. In the distance, over the Santa Monica mountains, lightning was flashing behind the clouds like a curtained-off photo-booth. The West Grove college band was playing
Pasadena
as if they were anxious to get it over with, and their pom-pom girls were leaping and strutting. There was a strong smell of electricity in the air.

Jim sat on the bleachers at the south end of the field and kept on checking his watch. Henry Black Eagle hadn’t turned up yet, but he tried to tell himself not to be so anxious. There was no sign of Coyote or Catherine, and for all he knew they had decided that it was enough to vandalize Jim’s classroom, without causing any further damage. But he didn’t want to bet on it.

Just as West Grove kicked off, George Babouris arrived, with Valerie Neagle. George was wearing a purple windbreaker that was two sizes too tight for him and Valerie Neagle was dressed in a leopard-print dress with a
décolletage
that was two inches too low for her age. As the crowd stood up and applauded, Jim manoeuvered his way next to Valerie and said, “Hi. You’re looking very striking.”

“Why, thank you,” said Valerie, and printed a big red kiss on his right cheek. “I always knew you had taste.”

“Listen,” said Jim, “this isn’t really the time and the place, but I wondered if I could talk to Mrs Vaizey?”

Valerie blinked her mascara-speckled eyelashes at him. “You want to talk to Mrs Vaizey? What about?”

“Something’s going to happen here today … something bad. I need Mrs Vaizey to talk to the spirit world for me.”

Valerie’s next words were drowned in a roar of applause as Azusa scored their first goal. George covered his face
with his hands and Ray Vito, who was sitting three rows behind them, let out a long string of Italian expletives, many of them involving mothers and hunchbacks and paraplegics.

“What did you say?” asked Jim.

“I said that Mrs Vaizey has left me. She decided that it was time for her to fade away.”

“Now? She decided to fade away
now
?”

Valerie shrugged. “I couldn’t stop her, Jim. She said she’d clung on long enough, and it was all becoming too tiring for her.”

“But
now
? Just when I really need her?”

“I’m sorry, Jim. She was talking to your grandfather, and they both faded away together.”

Jim said, “I don’t believe this. They both warned me that I was in danger. They both predicted that I was going to be killed. And now they’ve gone, and left me to face up to this situation on my own.”

“Mrs Vaizey left a message for you.”

“Oh, yes? What was it? ‘Rest in peace’?”

“No. She said that you really didn’t need her any longer. You had powers enough of your own. She said that you ought to have faith in yourself, and what you can do.”

“That’s terrific. The trouble is, I don’t
know
what I can do. I was very much hoping that Mrs Vaizey could tell me.”

“Well, search me,” said Valerie. “That’s all she said. Then she just … melted away, you know? I had the sweetest sensation – the sweetest, most blissful sensation – and she was gone.”

“We’ve scored!” George bellowed, so close to Jim’s ear that it almost burst his eardrum. “Magro’s scored! Did you see that run! That boy’s a genius!”

Jim took hold of Valerie’s hand and kissed her.
“Thanks, Valerie. If you ever feel Mrs Vaizey again, you can tell her how much I miss her.”

He sat down again. The afternoon was even darker now, and the clouds began to trail across the sky like sheets soaked in Indian ink. George said, “Hope it doesn’t rain. I’ve left my sandals out in the yard.”

“Your sandals?”

“They’re Greek. I bought them in Agnos Ioannis. They’re great so long as you never get them wet. Otherwise they curl up like dried fish.”

While George was talking, Jim looked across the football field, past the ducking, tackling, helmeted players – past the crowd of supporters from Azusa, waving Azusa Community College pennants and banners. Standing at the very top of the bleachers on the opposite end of the field were two dark figures, almost silhouetted against the threatening sky. Catherine White Bird, her long hair flying loose, in a big-shouldered black leather coat; and Dog Brother, in a long grey poncho, his eyes concealed by yellow-tinted glasses. Coyote, the First One To Use Words For Force, here at West Grove Community College.

Jim said, “You’ll have to excuse me, George,” and pushed his way along the row of cheering West Grove students until he reached the aisle. He kept his eyes on Dog Brother and Catherine as he circled the football field. He wasn’t sure whether they had seen him or not, but the likely betting was that they had.

“Hi, Mr Rook!” said Sue-Robin Caufield, as she jiggled her pom-poms by the touchline. “Isn’t this a great game? Isn’t that Azusa full-back just swoony? I think I’m going to the wrong college. For boys, anyway,” she quickly corrected herself. “Not for education.”

Jim gave her a smile and a nod, although he hardly heard her. One of Azusa’s guards had ducked through
the West Grove defence for a touchdown, and suddenly everybody was on their feet. For a moment he lost sight of Dog Brother and Catherine, and he had to keep jumping up to see if he could catch sight of them. But then a last ray of sunshine reflected like a heliograph from from Dog Brother’s yellow glasses, and he located them again. He didn’t quite know what he was going to do when he reached them, but they were dangerous, both of them, and he didn’t want them here at West Grove, threatening his students.

He had almost reached the other end of the field when he felt a tremendous slap on the back. He turned around and instinctively lifted his arm to protect himself, but it was only Ben Hunkus, the football coach. “What a game, Jim! I got a feeling in my water we’re going to win this one! Pass it, Beidermeyer, for Christ’s sake, you’re not married to the damn thing!”

“Ben, I want you to keep your eyes open,” said Jim. “The person who killed Martin is here.”

“You know who it is? I thought it was them Indian boys.”

“No, it wasn’t. But I can’t explain who really did it, not just yet.”

“Just give me the name, Jim, and I’ll have my boys pile on top of him, until you can call the cops.”

“Not as easy as that, Ben. All you can for now is to watch out for anything unusual.”

“OK, Jim. Whatever you say.”

Jim had reached the bleachers where Dog Brother and Catherine were sitting. As he climbed the aisle, however, West Grove were awarded another four downs, with only 15 yards to go to the Azusa goal line. The crowd stood up in unison, and started cheering and whistling and chanting, and in the confusion he lost sight of Dog Brother and Catherine for a second time.

He picked the row in which he guessed they were standing, and elbowed his way along it. “Pardon me, excuse me. Sorry. Pardon me. Sorry.”

When he reached the place where he had last seen them, however, they were gone. He desperately looked all around him. He caught the arm of a large man with a golfing hat on backward, so that his hair sprouted out of the front. “Pardon me, sir. Did you see two people standing here a moment ago? A girl in a black coat and a man with a pair of yellow sunglasses.”

The man turned around and looked behind him as if he expected them to be hiding behind his enormous rump. Then he looked back at Jim and dumbly shook his head.

Jim pushed his way further along the row. Azusa had regained control of the ball and the excitement had subsided. As everybody sat down again, Jim was able to see all around the field. He couldn’t understand how Dog Brother and Catherine could have escaped without his seeing them.

Well, he thought, there’s one sure-fire way to find out where they are.

He lifted the whistle from around his neck and blew it. The large man in the golfing hat stared at him in dull curiosity. He waited, his eyes scanning the field and the college grounds beyond. Nothing – no sign of Dog Brother or Catherine anywhere. He blew the whistle again, and then again.

It was then that Dog Brother raised both his arms and Jim caught sight of them, although he couldn’t believe where they were. They were standing on the opposite side of the field, only a few rows away from the place where Jim had been talking to George Babouris. It was impossible. Nobody could have made their way all around the field in only a few seconds, not even an Olympic
runner. Yet there they were, and now they knew for sure that he was here, and that he was watching them.

At that moment, Jim began to understand the immense occult power of what he was up against, and for the first time in a long time he felt profoundly afraid.

Chapter Ten

He climbed down from the bleachers and walked toward the college buildings. The sky was completely dark now, and a strong wind was buffeting the bushes. He wasn’t at all sure what he was going to do. He couldn’t call the police, because he couldn’t prove that Dog Brother and Catherine had done anything wrong. And now that Mrs Vaizey had faded away, he couldn’t even call on his only adviser from the spirit world.

He had almost reached the main entrance when Henry Black Eagle appeared from the direction of the parking-lot, dressed in his black fringed buckskin jacket and wearing a headband. He was carrying a small rolled-up parcel of buffalo-hide, tied tightly with waxed cords and decorated with faded old feathers.

“I managed to talk to Paul and Grey Cloud,” he said. “They’re both very worried that Coyote has come here. He’s very vengeful, you know, and they think that he intends to kill many people to show you that he is greater than all of your white man’s spirits.”

“Did they give you any ideas how to stop him?”

“They say the same as all of the legends. Coyote must be killed by one of his own kind, and his heart must be taken away from him. The only spirit who hates Coyote more than he fears him is the Rain Spirit. The story says that Coyote tricked his daughter into having sex with him, and that after she had done so, she died of shame, because
she was supposed to be keeping herself pure for a noble hunter called Deer Slayer.”

“So how do we go about enlisting the help of this Rain Spirit?”

Henry Black Eagle lifted the buffalo-hide bundle. “In here, there are sacred bones which Grey Cloud brought back from the Wide Ruins reservation. They were used to call the Rain Spirit in times of drought. This time we shall have to ask him to do us another kind of favour.”

“Won’t he want something in return?”

Henry Black Eagle said, “Yes. He will want a gift. What do you think you could offer him?”

“It depends what kind of gift he likes. I mean, what do you give to a Rain Spirit who’s probably got everything?”

“You could give him your gift of supernatural vision.”

“He’d really take it?”

“Why not? It’s a gift like any other. One man gave his singing voice to the Buffalo Spirit, in exchange for bringing his family plenty to eat.”

Jim frowned. When he first discovered that he could see spirits, he would have given his vision away to anybody who could have taken it, and been glad to be rid of it. But now it seemed so natural and normal that it would be like having one eye taken out. All the same, a man could still see with one eye, and what was important was saving Catherine and ridding the world of Coyote.

“All right,” he said. “He can have my vision, if he wants it. I don’t really have anything else.”

“You’re lucky you have that,” Henry Black Eagle told him. “Sometimes a spirit will ask for a hand or a foot, or even a man’s virility.”

“The vision, OK? He can have the vision.”

“Then we must hurry,” said Henry Black Eagle. “Have you seen Coyote and Catherine here already?”

“The last time I saw them was in the crowd. I tried to go after them, but when I got to where they were standing, they were way over on the opposite side of the field.”

“What would you have done, even if you
had
caught up with them?”

Jim shrugged. “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought it through.”

“With Coyote, you
must.
He is too cunning to be faced head-on. Now, let’s get under those cedars, and see what we can do to call up the Rain Spirit.”

There was more cheering from the football field as Russell Gloach caught a perfect 20-yard pass from Micky McGuiver.

“Run with it, Russell!” the captain was screaming. “Get those goddamned legs moving!”

Jim didn’t try to see what was happening. He could imagine Russell lumbering along at his usual elephantine pace, and knew that he would be lucky to cover more than a yard before the Azusa quarter-backs brought him down. He followed Henry Black Eagle to the three tall cedars which stood on a rise at the north-west corner of the college. Underneath their overhanging branches it was quiet and dark and sheltered from the wind.

Henry Black Eagle sat cross-legged on the ground and untied the buffalo-hide parcel. Jim stood beside him and watched. “I’m not a wonder-worker myself,” said Henry Black Eagle, “so I will have to rely on
your
spiritual gifts to contact the Rain Spirit. All I can do is to perform the ritual.”

He rolled the hide out flat. Inside were five yellowed bones, which looked to Jim like old human arm-bones. The ends of each of them were tied with hanks of hair and faded red ribbons. Henry Black Eagle picked up two of them and tapped them together, in a quick, hesitant rhythm.

“Sit in front of me,” he instructed Jim. “Empty your mind of any thoughts about Coyote and Catherine. Empty your mind of any thoughts about yourself – any fears, any questions, any doubts. Your mind should become as dark and as empty as the universe beyond the stars, where there are no more stars, only blackness, and that is where the Great Old Ones live, far beyond the reach of men.”

Jim eased himself cross-legged onto the dry turf. He hadn’t sat like this since he had last eaten at Koto, the Japanese restaurant, and then he had spent the rest of the evening walking like Groucho Marx. Henry Black Eagle tapped the bones again, and then again, and each time the rhythm because faster and more frenzied. He began to hum, and then to sing, both in Navajo and in English.

“
The Rain Spirit walks in the west… He lives on top of the highest mountains, wrapped in clouds for a cloak … He carries water in his cloak and spreads it on the dry ground … He is generous and just, the protector of all life … We ask him now to appear so that we may honour him, and to ask of him a special favor
…”

This went on and on, in a monotonous warbling singsong. Jim didn’t need to make much of an effort to empty his mind – Henry Black Eagle’s singing was so hypnotic that it emptied it for him. He kept his eyes open, but he could feel all conscious thought sliding out of his head. Soon there was nothing but blackness and emptiness.

“
Rise now, O Rain Spirit and lend us your strength … Rise up, so that we may see you … Throw back your cloak of clouds and stand in front of us, so that we can witness your return … Rise up, Rain Spirit
!
Rise up
!
Rise up
!”

Henry Black Eagle was chanting this so loudly that two passing students stopped to give Jim and him the most peculiar looks. But they had hardly turned away when there was a blinding flash of lightning and a deafening
crack, and the cedar tree under which they were sitting was split halfway down its trunk, and instantly burst into flames.

“Henry! For God’s sake, let’s get out of here!” Jim shouted, trying to untangle his legs.

But Henry Black Eagle stayed where he was, tapping and tapping the bones, murmuring and singing, while sparks drifted down all around him, and the cedar tree crackled and spat.

Several people started running toward them. It was then, however, that Henry Black Eagle lifted the bones right over his head and let out a howl like a triumphant animal.

“
Let us see you, O Rain Spirit! Let us see you! Rise up and be our guardian! Rise up and be our protector!
”

As he clacked the bones together one last time, the ground shook with the reverberation of a massive peal of thunder, like all the kettle-drums of all the orchestras in the world, all rolling at once. Even before the first helpers could reach them, rain came blasting out of the sky in a vicious, slanting torrent that almost stopped them in their tracks. The rain drowned the fire in the cedar tree and came rattling down through the branches. Jim looked down toward the football field, and he could see some people running for cover and others holding coats or newspapers over their heads. The game, however, was still going on. West Grove and Azusa were battling for their honour, and neither team was going to let a rainstorm put them off. West Grove were looking for their first victory this season, and Azusa were determined not to be beaten by the Fumblers at any cost. Swathes of rain trailed across the football field like soaking-wet net curtains, and in only a few minutes the grass was half-flooded. The players dodged and kicked and scrimmaged in showers of spray,
with rain dripping from their helmets and water spraying from their boots.

Jim yelled at Henry Black Eagle, “What the hell’s going on? There’s plenty of rain, but where’s the Rain Spirit?”

“Believe!” Henry Black Eagle shouted back at him. “You have to believe!”

The rain was so heavy now that Jim could barely see the football field. It spouted off the college guttering and filled up the rosebeds beside the main entrance, until muddy water started to pour over the top of the brickwork and run down the path toward the parking-lot. Many parents and supporters had convertibles, and they had all rushed to the parking-lot to put up their tops.

Another devastating crack of lightning jumped across the sky, and then the ground shook again.

“
Believe
!” screamed Henry Black Eagle. “
You have to believe
!”

Jim stood up and walked out from under the cedar tree. He was instantly soaked in freezing rain – his coat hanging from him, his hair plastered flat against his forehead. There
is
a Rain Spirit, he said to himself. There
is
a Rain Spirit and I believe in him. I have the gift. I have the vision. I believe in him and I can see him. I believe in him and—

I can see him
!

There, in the pouring rain, right in front of him, Jim could make out the watery outlines of a tall creature – almost like a man, yet not a man at all. It had a proud, remote face, as colourless as rain, and a body swathed in tumbling, smoking cloud.

Jim felt its power – cold and sharp and stinging like the rain itself. He had never believed that such spirits existed – that the elements themselves were controlled by living, thinking beings. But here in front of him was the proof,
its watery features wavering and pale and distorted, a face from the times when America was being created out of rock and wind and water.

He dropped to his knees on the grass. He felt exhausted and humble. He felt as if everything he had ever taken for granted had been swept away, like the mud and the leaves that were being swept away by the Rain Spirit’s storm.

Henry Black Eagle came up and laid a hand on his shoulder. “You can see him, can’t you?” he said.

Jim nodded. “He’s there. He’s just like the rain.”

“You don’t know how much I envy you,” said Henry Black Eagle. “To see what a spirit can do, that’s one thing. Rain, thunder, lightning, that’s impressive enough. But to see a spirit’s face—”

“What do we do now?” Jim asked him. “How do we get him to kill Coyote?”

“We ask. That’s the only way.”

Henry Black Eagle knelt down beside him and raised both hands. “O great spirit,” he said, “we have been wronged by the First One To Use Words For Force. He is here today, with my daughter, Catherine White Bird, whose hand he wants to take in marriage. He has deceived me in the same way that he deceived you, O spirit. For my sake, and for my daughter’s sake, I beg you to kill him for me, and take away his heart.”

Jim kept his eyes on the Rain Spirit but he didn’t see any response. The spirit continued to drift in the rain, its cloud-cloak billowing and fuming. Sometimes it was almost impossible to see if there was anything there at all.

“Please, great spirit. I abase myself in front of you.” And with that, Henry Black Eagle laid himself flat on the ground, his arms outstretched, while the rain continued to pour down on top of him.

A black senior called Mo Sharp came up to Jim, his
college T-shirt soaking. Mo was academically slow, but he was almost a genius at cabinet-making. “You okay, Mr Rook?” he asked, looking down suspiciously at Henry Black Eagle.

“Sure, Mo, everything’s cool. You get back down there and cheer us on.”

“Never saw it rain like this before, Mr Rook.”

“No, well, neither did I. Maybe you should start building us an Ark.”

Another crackle of lightning lit up the falling rain like a strobe light. Mo scampered off and Jim turned back to the Rain Spirit. It looked to Jim as if he were fading, as if his cloud-cloak were breaking into fragments.

“You have to help us!” he shouted. “You can’t leave us to fight Coyote alone! You have to help us! I’ve got the gift of vision! You can have that, if you kill Coyote for us!”

Jim heard a blur of words in his mind. It was like somebody with a very deep voice whispering very close to his ear. Henry Black Eagle lifted himself from the ground, and said, “Thank you, great spirit. Thank you.”

“What?” Jim wanted to know.

“The Rain Spirit has agreed to do it. He will kill Coyote for us. All he wants in return is your gift of vision and one of my fingers.”

“You’re kidding me. One of
your fingers
?”

“Mr Rook – it will be a very small price to pay to get my daughter back.”

“But you can’t let it take one of your fingers!”

Henry Black Eagle lifted up his right hand. “It already has,” he said. His middle finger was missing, except for a quarter-inch stump of broken bone. Blood was pouring down the back of his hand and into his sleeve.

Jim touched his forehead. “He hasn’t taken my vision yet, has he?”

“Not until he has killed Coyote. He wants you to see him doing it.”

Jim heard more blurred words. Henry Black Eagle dragged a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around his hand. “We should follow him,” he said. “He is going to find Coyote and rip his heart out.”

The blurry Rain Spirit turned around and began to move down the slope toward the football field. The rain was still driving down just as fiercely as before, and Jim found it difficult to follow it. It kept fading away, and then reappearing, no more substantial than a drift of smoke from a garden fire.

They followed it all the way around the back of the bleachers, until it reached the far side of the field. There – almost alone at the very top – stood Dog Brother, his hair streaked with rain, and Catherine, with her collar turned up. Jim walked up the rows of bleachers and stood in front of them, with rain pouring from his chin like a faucet.