Stone Junction (16 page)

The other near-vision began with him floating just under the surface of Nameless Lake. He wasn’t dead, but had barely enough strength to lift his left hand out of the water. He knew no one would see, but it was all he could do. He floated, gathering the energy and will to lift his hand again. When he did, his hand was seized by another, powerful and sure. As it lifted him from the water, he saw a woman he didn’t know, tall and lovely and smiling, and he wanted her to lift him into her arms and hold him tightly, but in the same motion of pulling him free of the lake, she hurled him into the heavens. He fell through the galaxy, his hand still outstretched, but it didn’t matter – he would fall forever. He might as well have been waving good-bye. When he laughed, the wind-lashed rain was hurtling past the cave.

The real vision occurred on his last night. The storm had passed, trailing a thin fog in its wake. Feeling faint and dislocated, Daniel was sitting at the cave mouth watching the wisps of fog tatter and swirl in the moonlight when he heard his mother clearly call in the distance ‘
Alie-alie-outs-in-free
,’ just as she had so many evenings playing Hide-and-Seek at the Four Deuces when he was a child. ‘
Alie-alie-outs-in-free
,’ she called again, her voice more distant; and then once more, barely audible. She didn’t call again. Rocking back and forth, arms around himself, Daniel wept.

As he worked his way carefully downslope toward camp the next morning, Daniel felt simultaneously serene and raw.

Wild Bill was cooking pancakes when Daniel walked into camp.

‘Those smell wonderful,’ Daniel greeted him. ‘If there’s extra batter, drop one on for me. I’ve been fasting for almost a week.’

‘Yeah?’ Wild Bill tried to flip the pancake on the griddle, then had to pause and unfold it with the spatula. ‘What were you fasting for?’

‘Dreams and visions, as instructed.’

‘I don’t remember any instructions about fasting. Fasting is tricky. It can put an odd twist on things.’

‘It worked. I had visions.’

‘Just a second.’ Wild Bill slid the creased pancake onto a tin plate and handed it to Daniel. ‘So. What’d you see.’

‘I saw …’ Daniel started, then hesitated. ‘Well, actually I didn’t
see
anything.’

Wild Bill grunted. ‘Good start.’

Daniel couldn’t tell if the grunt was playful or cutting or both. He could feel the warmth of the pancake through the tin plate against his palm. ‘Do you want to listen or not?’

Wild Bill looked up. ‘Is it important to you?’

‘I
cried
,’ Daniel said, feeling like he was going to again.

Wild Bill said softly, ‘Then I’d be honored.’ He gave the pancake batter a quick stir and poured it sizzling onto the griddle.

‘It was something I
heard
,’ Daniel explained. ‘I heard my mother calling ‘
Alie-alie-outs-in-free
.’ That’s what you yell at the end of Hide-and-Seek when you give up the search. That’s how the other players know––’

‘I’ve played the game. When did you hear her?’

‘Last night.’

Wild Bill watched the bubbles burst thickly on the pancake’s surface, then slipped the spatula under the crusted bottom, hefted it a moment, flipped. The pancake turned over two-and-a-half times, splatting down perfectly. But Wild Bill looked glum. ‘Goddamn, Daniel, I don’t want to crap on your parade, but you deserve the truth. That wasn’t your mom you heard last night. It was me. Yodeling.’

Daniel stopped his pancake halfway to his mouth. ‘Yodeling?’

‘Yodeling,’ Wild Bill affirmed. He lifted the pancake and slipped it on Daniel’s plate. ‘Eat. You’re delirious with hunger.’

‘You weren’t yodeling,’ Daniel said.

Wild Bill turned solemnly and faced the lake. He tilted his head back, exhaled slowly, took a slow deep breath, then another, and then astonished Daniel. With a power and bell-note clarity completely unlike his habitual grunts and mumbles, Wild Bill blended and blurred long open vowels and gliding consonants into an undulant song that shifted between rejoicing and keening, delight and lament. Daniel heard it clearly toward the end: ‘
Allleee-allleee-ah-sen-freeee
.’ Wild Bill repeated the phrase, then whirled it through itself in tight variations, winding it inward, suddenly leaping an octave, then slowly letting it slide into the last haunting note.

Wild Bill stood listening to his voice echo across the basin until it was absorbed into the air. He turned to Daniel. ‘Yodeling. I learned it from Lao Ling Chi, my teacher when I was doing work on breath and breathing.’

Daniel said, ‘That was lovely, it was close, but it wasn’t
your
voice I heard – it was my mother’s.’

‘Whatever,’ Wild Bill shrugged. ‘You heard it, so it’s yours to understand. Me, I’m going to go look for mushrooms for tonight’s rabbit stew. If you feel ambitious, I got a stack of fir saplings I thinned that need to be trimmed up and hauled back to camp. They’re piled at the base of that big maple on the west side. Take the hand-ax.’

‘Fine,’ Daniel nodded, wolfing down a pancake. ‘See you.’ He wondered what Wild Bill wanted with the fir poles but refused to give him the satisfaction of asking.

Swinging the horribly lopsided basket he’d woven from split reeds and grasses, Wild Bill made his way around the lake and then up the south slope to the rim. As he went over the crest, he stopped and gave a short yodel: ‘
Oodell-a-eee-ooooo
.’ It resounded in the basin.

‘Jerk,’ Daniel muttered. Wild Bill – always watching for mistakes, and taking a malicious glee in pointing them out. What kind of teacher was that? Daniel was beginning to suspect Wild Bill’s eccentricities were merely a screen for incompetence, and with a mean satisfaction he realized how much he’d enjoyed the seventeen days by himself – no scrutiny, no picking and prodding and little put-downs.

Daniel did the dishes, then took the hand-ax and headed around the lake. The saplings were stacked on a small bench about a hundred yards upslope from the lake’s edge. As Daniel hauled the first one off the pile he caught a flicker of color in the corner of his eye, thin bright red, thinking
snake
at first flash, then, with a bolt of terror, realized it was a wire.

A voice screamed from the sky. ‘Daniel! Run!’

He swung the ax at the wire but he was a moment too late. The explosion rocked him and he staggered backward, hands covering his temples, staring blankly as the blast-showered confetti of soggy leaves settled around him. He looked at his hands: no blood. He picked up the ax and spun around. When he saw a wisp of smoke from the small crater fifty yards uphill, he let the ax drop to his side and started looking for the wire.

With the piercing cry of an osprey, Wild Bill dropped on him from the overhanging limb of an ancient fir, driving Daniel to the ground. Wild Bill picked up the ax and tossed it away as Daniel rolled and came up quickly. He hit Wild Bill in the chest with a round-house right, following with a glancing left off his cheek. Wild Bill rolled his heavy shoulders and brought his fists up to cover his face, elbows tucked to protect his solar plexus. Daniel hit him a solid right to the stomach. Wild Bill grunted but kept his hands up.

‘
Fight!
’ Daniel yelled, and hit him hard in the stomach again. When Wild Bill’s hands dropped for an instant, Daniel followed with a left to the head. Wild Bill yelped, staggering sideways a moment before catching his balance. He shook his head to clear it, blinking against the blood running from a cut above his eye.

‘
Fight
, you fucker!’ Daniel screamed again.

‘She’s dead, Daniel. Dead.’

Daniel threw a left uppercut that hit squarely on the point of Wild Bill’s elbows, sending a jolt of pain up Daniel’s arm to his shoulder.

‘Come on,’ Wild Bill said wearily, ‘get it all.’

Daniel hit him with a right hook above the ear but Wild Bill rolled with the blow. Daniel threw a left but there was no strength in that arm so he threw a right that Wild Bill easily blocked with a shoulder. Daniel threw another, another, another, and then he had nothing left, all the rage and fear and loss emptying in a rush, and he fell into Wild Bill’s arms.

Back in camp, Wild Bill held an improvised compress to his cut eye and Daniel soaked his swollen hands in the cold water. They didn’t speak for a long time. Daniel was exhausted and Wild Bill had nothing to say. Finally, Daniel stood shakily and worked his hands. ‘When are we leaving?’

‘I’m heading out in the morning,’ Wild Bill said. ‘You’re welcome to go with me or you can stay if you want. Owen’ll be there around dark if you want a ride.’

‘What then?’

‘I’m going to Arizona and put some desert between my ears. All this lushness sort of depresses me. Makes the eye sloppy.’

‘What about me?’

‘You go on with your training. Up to you.’

‘My
training
? I didn’t know I was being trained. What for?’

‘Depends on what you learn.’

‘Uh-huh, right. Well, one thing I’ve learned is not to expect a straight answer.’

‘I take teaching seriously, Daniel. I won’t tell you what I don’t know.’

‘Then tell me what you do know.’

‘There’s sort of three levels of association with AMO. The first is friends and kindred souls. That association is a loose system of mutual aid and moral support. They don’t pay dues. The second is allies, actual members of AMO who pay their yearly five percent, and who receive and provide direct benefits of the Alliance. And then there are adepts. They are people with particular gifts and understanding who sustain and expand the Alliance’s traditional arts and practices.’

‘Is that what you’re trying not to tell me, that I’m being trained as an adept?’

‘No one is trained as an adept. An adept is one who has mastered a particular art, who has achieved a certain understanding. You can’t teach mastery. You can only teach certain skills of awareness, which in turn lead to the recognition of possibilities and opportunities for further development – as well as the dangers involved. Beyond that, you’re on your own. But as Synesius noted as early as the fourth century, “There is always guidance available if you’re available.”’

Daniel considered this a moment, flexing his hands. ‘Do you think I have potential as an adept?’

‘I don’t give grades, Daniel. But yes, clearly, you have potential. Most everyone does. But you see, it’s like this: The brain processes information, and information can be an endless ride. With the addition of the heart, some information becomes knowledge. The spirit, or soul, transforms it into understanding. But that’s the problem with abstraction – it misleads by separation.’

‘What sort of potential do I have? I mean, what direction should I take? I’m not asking you to make the decision for me, understand – it’s just that I’d value your opinion.’

‘I don’t know. But I have a strong
hunch
that you’d make one helluva thief. Actually, what AMO calls a Raven, which goes way beyond stealing. “Agents of exchange and restitution” is what Volta calls them. Ravens are the only adepts that AMO allows to kill other human beings, and they can only use their imaginations as the weapon.’

‘You mean by imagining them dead? Or like shooting them from a hot-air balloon drifting by their window?’

‘I mean by writing them a note saying “I’m going to kill you tonight.” And the next day, one that reads “I was detained; it’s tonight,” and the next day, “Prepare yourself,” and do it day after day for a couple of weeks and then catch him asleep one night and fire a bullet just above his head and when he screams awake say, “Oops, shit, I missed – oh well, there’s always tomorrow.” And ten days later the guy runs his sports car into a concrete abutment.’

‘Jesus, what had he done?’

‘Daniel,’ Wild Bill scolded, ‘silence is golden.’

‘It’s still murder, though, in a way. Right?’

‘If you want to split moral hairs, talk to Volta. The use of violence has always been hotly debated in AMO, and over the centuries there’s been about a hundred different “official” policies – I’m relying on Volta’s scholarship here. The current policy is what Volta calls “compassionate condemnation.” That means you shouldn’t use lethal violence except in the most extreme circumstances – like self-defense – but that people, out of fear and ignorance and rage, make mistakes. And there is a meanness in the world that must be dealt with.’

‘How’s your eye?’ Daniel said.

Wild Bill chuckled. ‘It’ll heal if you don’t keep hitting it.’

‘That was dangerous what you did, setting off that explosion. You couldn’t know for sure how I’d react.’

‘Not for sure, no, but life’s full of hazards. Despite the boom, it was a piddley charge, plus it was fifty yards from us, buried, and I had the det-switch in my hand.’ Course I was tired from having to haul ass back down the hill to get up in the tree, and then you spotted the wire.’

‘So while I was out starving and having visions, you were setting me up.’

‘Nope. As a matter of fact, for about the first two weeks I was in sunny Florida visiting my sister, and then I hustled back here to be with you. Had to hump it in two nights ago during that storm. I tell you, crossing the Eel cinched me up – I was going hand-over-hand on that rope we rigged, and that water had me
horizontal
. Don’t think my feet touched bottom once. Only way I made it was telling myself that I didn’t care how much Volta sweet-talked me, if I got across I was a retired teacher, finished and gone, just watch those desert sunsets and yodel with the lizards.’

‘That’s something I have to ask you,’ Daniel said, ‘something I really need to know.
Were
you yodeling last night?’

‘I was. But given the acoustics of the basin, I doubt you could hear me. Besides,
you
heard what you heard. I was just trying to help you understand it, that’s all.’

‘Why didn’t you say so this morning?’

‘Because I wanted you thinking. That way I could take you by surprise.’

‘I had two other visions if you want to hear them.’

‘Always interested in visions. But let’s talk over lunch, because not only did I dare the raging river with explosives in my pack, but also four thick filet mignons from Tilly and Owen, plus lettuce, broccoli, sourdough bread, and a twenty-buck bottle of Cabernet. Not to mention a small personal gift for you that must wait for the proper moment.’