The 37th mandala : a novel (27 page)

"You—you've been cooped up in here, an outcast your whole life, taking hold of any fantasy that offered itself. Now you've found the flip side of escapism. It's like some nightmare where you can't wake up, isn't it?

"You need help, but not from me, not from someone who feeds your fears by nodding and taking notes and agreeing with you. You need someone to tell you honestly that you went over the edge somewhere in the past, maybe when you were a kid; someone who can bring you back to reality while there's still time. But I'm not that guy, Eli. Maybe you should talk to your children, your family, people who know you. I'm just ... just a hack, okay? I'm not going to hurt you, but I can't help you either. Except by refusing to write your book. From this point on, I'll be out of your life, Eli. I'll leave so you can get in touch with people you trust."

Eli's eyes were dark hollows. Derek scarcely dared to glance at him. His hand was on the doorknob and he turned it, aware of that distant bone chime chattering somewhere out there, in a dry wind that made no sound in the skeletal trees. The sound of an ambulance crept in as he opened the door. Eli stiffened as if he heard the banshee coming for him.

"Good night, Elias," Derek said. He had to get out; he was close to weeping.

Eli didn't answer.

Walking out, closing the door, continuing on to his car: These were among the hardest things he had ever done. He started the engine, looking over at the house. With the shades drawn, it seemed lifeless, empty. All up and down the street were dozens exactly like it. No comfort there. Madness mushroomed in the rows of stucco and Spanish tile bungalows. On Blackoak Avenue, sanity had gone the way of the black oaks themselves.

He flew home toward the city, anxious for its noise and disorder, the reassuring sounds of fermenting humanity. Cars swerved in a high wind among the gray girders and whistling cables of the Bay Bridge, cutting each other off with blaring horns; a wino hurled a bottle on the sidewalk when he was locking up his car, splashing the cement with shattered glass and wine that smelled like vinegar; arguments brewed in the walls of his building, while somewhere above or below him, or out in the street, a woman cried rhythmically, her voice a pulse of sexuality. The sanity here was impossible to ignore, and the insanity was all standard issue. This was a world for humanity: They filled it to brimming with their sweat and their swearing, their wars and their anxious arts. No room here for invisible things, myths of dread, or acts more sadistic and improbable than the ones humankind already encompassed. The skies were empty; even the stars hid in fog.

I'm not afraid, he told himself, wondering why he should lie awake feeling fear and shame coursing through him in waves, thinking of Eli, the mandalas, of May and the cold shadow of the freeway.

I've been with him too much, listening to his tapes, hearing his voice in my head. I can still hear it now. But it will go away eventually. I've been under his spell; gullible as one of the fools who read my books. Or
his
book, if I'd agreed to write it.

But it's over now.

No voices in my head.

I'll write what I want to write. I don't need to crib from his ledgers or copy from a disgusting piece of skin.

As Derek lay reciting this litany, the phone began to ring. He had shut off the answering machine.

Leave me alone, old man. I can't help you.

It rang ten times, twenty times, thirty.

He waited, counting, sure it would stop at exactly thirty-seven. But Elias gave up before that.

Late in the morning, the phone rang again, bridging the gap between night and day. He couldn't remember what dreams he might have had; his mind was sucked empty. Groggy, thick-tongued, he mumbled into the phone and heard a woman's voice he didn't recognize.

"Is this Derek?" she said.

"Who is this?"

"I'm sorry, all I have is your first name. Are you a friend of Elias Mooney's?"

He remembered the previous night's argument. All his self-loathing and rationalizations returned to him now.

"Why?" he asked.

"Your name and number were written on a pad by Mr. Mooney's phone. I thought you might have talked to him recently."

"And?"

"I'm his visiting nurse."

He suddenly knew why she'd called. He sat up, throwing off the sweat-soaked sheets. "Is he all right?"

"Elias passed away during the night." She let her news sink into silence for a moment, then said, "Did he call you last night—is that why your number's here?"

Dead....

"Can I come over?" he said, forcing the words through a choked throat. "Are you going to be there awhile?"

"Not very long; I have another patient to attend. I've notified his daughter up in Auburn, that's all I can do. I thought if you'd spoken to him recently, you might want to know. Actually, from the way he talked about you, I thought you were his son. But you're not on the list of relatives to contact, so I figured you must be a very good friend of his. You saw a lot of him recently, didn't you?"

"A lot, yes," Derek said, numb.

"I'm sure it meant a great deal to him. He was very much alone."

"Can ... can you please stay there a little longer? A half hour? I need to—"

He wasn't sure what he needed. To see Eli's house before his daughter arrived, perhaps. Before anything was touched or rearranged.

"He's not here anymore, you know. The coroner's already come and gone."

"Still, I—" He glanced at the clock. "I can get there in half an hour."

"Well, all right, if you hurry. But I'll have to leave right away."

At that hour, there was little traffic on the bridge. He scarcely saw the other cars. Before he fully realized what he was doing, he plunged out of the fluorescence of the Caldecott tunnel and descended into the suburbs that had subsumed San Diablo and, as of last night, Elias Mooney as well.

Suicide, he thought.

The old man killed himself to dramatize his point. To get at me. To fulfill his own prophecy. But the nurse would have mentioned any suspicious circumstances, wouldn't she? She would have asked if he'd seemed depressed.

He was expecting a matronly middle-aged woman in a white cap, white dress, white sneakers, but the nurse was younger than Derek, colorfully dressed, her white coat draped over the arm of the sofa. He stepped inside hesitantly, as if it were her house now. She watched him sympathetically, saying little, following from room to room as he looked restlessly for ... what?

The bedclothes were slightly rumpled, though the bed did not look slept in. Then he saw the wheelchair folded up in the corner and realized that Eli must have been laid out here to await the coroner.

He turned around quickly and came face to face with the nurse.

"How did he die?"

She shrugged, pursed her lips. "He was very frail. The coroner suspected a heart attack."

Derek slipped past her, toward the far end of the hall, where he had often noticed the closed door of Eli's temple room. He glanced at the closet as he passed but made himself go on without letting the nurse see him falter. How long would it take to drive from Auburn? he wondered. And when had Eli's daughter been called? It was twenty minutes to two.

He opened the door at the end of the hall.

The room was dark and spare. A small votive candle guttered in a glass holder on the center of a plain black table pushed up against the north wall. Pale blurred patches on the paint showed where pictures or objects had once hung. One shape marked where a round mirror might have hung; the spot looked faintly scorched.

What did the candle represent? A last offering? Something to light the old man's way and dispel a bit of the darkness his madness had drawn in around him?

It was painful now to think of Eli as insane. He'd been a visionary, imaginative, extremely sensitive—not a madman. If he was deluded, it was because his mind was so vast, so open to the myriad unadmitted possibilities of nature. Mad only in comparison to the bland assumptions of a dwarfed, stunted society.

He backed out of the room and closed the door.

"Would you like to wait here for his daughter?" the nurse asked.

"I don't know her but ... I'd be glad to stay. If you have to go on, I'll take care of things here. His daughter might be glad to know he had some friends nearby."

The nurse smiled, nodded, squeezed his arm gently. "I'm so sorry, Mr. Crowe. He was a remarkable man."

"I know. I..."

He couldn't finish, but she didn't expect him to. How many such scenes had this young woman witnessed? Death was a prosaic fact of her career. So she left him there, another friend of another deceased, in another empty bungalow.

When she was gone, he went directly to the closet and took down the box.

He listened for Eli's voice, bearing advice or warnings, but his head felt clear. He heard nothing, not even himself, as he carried the box outside and put it next to him on the front seat of the car.

He had something precious now—the only thing in the little house that meant the least thing to him; the only link, however tenuous, with Eli Mooney.

The box seemed absurdly important, almost a second person in the car. And as he drove away he shrugged off the thought that, like a passenger with a destination of its own, the skin inside might be giving him directions.

Wherever a soul goes dying, we gather there to feed.

—from
The Mandala Rites
of Elias Mooney

Wherever a soul goes crying, we go to the one in need.

—from
The Mandala Rites
of Derek Crowe

Daggers of ice grew like deadly fruit in the bare white trees. Sunrise set the water-daggers gleaming, and also lit a frozen poison sheen that caked the highway, forcing Michael to slow down through the steep, winding gorges time had carved in the Smokies. The sheer rock walls to either side were cloaked in mist, bearded with frost. Icicles, layered like shark teeth, dripped from the ledges. He rode the brakes, watched his speed, gave the road exactly what it demanded—no more, no less, his panic held in check for the moment. He had a job to do and he was doing it. Lenore claimed she felt steady, normal, but there was still a trace of the alien in her eyes, and sometimes he thought he saw that whirling shape like a ghostly buzzsaw seething around her head.

Ahead were nearly three thousand miles of unfamiliar road. He couldn't imagine how many days of travel that meant. He'd heard of people driving it in a few days without stopping, splitting shifts at the wheel, but he didn't see how he could possibly manage that alone. He had a pocket full of Black Beauties now, thanks to Earl, but you could only ask so much of amphetamines. Eventually the body would enforce its need for sleep.

They had, as Lenore suggested, dragged his mother back to her car; she was breathing drunkenly but steadily, and his fear of concussion had gradually eased. Michael didn't want to leave her car in the driveway, since he had good reason to make sure no one came around the house for as long as possible, so he'd given in to Lenore's insistence that she was able to drive. He had driven his mother home in her own car, and Lenore had followed in the Beetle.

Earl was watching TV in his pajamas and bathrobe when Michael hammered on the door, but he'd pulled on a pair of boots and slogged out into the rain to help carry Michael's mother into the house. They laid her on the bed, snoring now, while Michael explained how her car had come crashing into the driveway and he'd found her there unconscious, apparently having cracked her head in a minor crash. Earl didn't ask too many questions, and Michael was anxious to get going. Then he remembered what he needed.

He'd already dug into his mother's purse to take her gas station credit cards; she retained quite a collection from her crosscountry perambulations. He'd also taken what little cash she carried. But he needed more than that.

"Earl, I wonder if you could help me out."

He had never asked Earl for anything before, and he could see that it warmed the man, as if they were coming closer together, Michael playing the role of son.

"Sure, boy. What can I do for you?"

"I'm not sure how to say this—I really don't want her to know." He gestured at the body laid out on the chenille bedspread.

"Well, then, she doesn't have to." He put a hand on Michael's shoulder, easing the door shut. "Come on now, you can tell me."

"Lenore and I are driving up to Manhattan to see some old friends for a few days."

"Yeah? That sounds like a blast. Sure wish I could leave the state; I could use a vacation myself. What's the problem, you need some money?"

Michael hunched into himself but managed to nod. It pained him to ask, but they needed something, and even sucking their checking account dry tonight at an ATM, before leaving town, wouldn't get them very far. "I sure could use some," he said. "But I also need some ... some of what I saw you selling."

Earl's smile was wide and slow. "Well, well, boy, nothing escapes your notice, does it? I heard you had a taste for that sort of thing, but I never saw a sign of it. I thought you were clean."