Greenmantle

by Charles de Lint

  “I believe you.” He hesitated for a long moment, fiddling with his coffee mug before he looked at her again. “Listen, I got to tell you something. I was never investigating organized crime. I want to be straight with you. I respect you and I don’t want to have lies and bullshit lying between us. I never told Ali that stuff she told you. That’s just something she came up with because she…I don’t know. Wanted to protect you, maybe. I think she was afraid maybe you wouldn’t let us be friends if you knew the truth.”

  Frankie’s fingers tightened around the handle of her own mug. “What…what are you trying to say, Tony?”

  “I used to be one of those guys—part of the families, you know? But I never made no war on women or kids, and we didn’t deal in dope or prostitution, neither. Not when the old Don was padrone. But I was in the business all the same.”

  Frankie didn’t say anything immediately. She just sat there looking at him, wondering why this revelation wasn’t bothering her more than it should. Was it because she’d already known Tony, and for all that he seemed very capable when it came to guns and trouble, he just didn’t strike her as a gangster?

  “What happened?” she asked finally.

  Valenti give her a quick rundown of the events that had led to the fratellanza putting out a contract on him. He talked about Mario and the fumbled hit in Malta, about how he’d finally made it back here to Lanark and just wanted to disappear but her ex-husband had identified him and called down the cousins on him.

  “See,” he finished, “things were already different for me. Living here, I didn’t feel like I was in exile. It was like I never had anything to do with the families in the first place. When I think of who I was, it’s like I was a different guy. I was really starting to put it all behind me, but then all this shit came down on us. Now I don’t know. It’s all coming back to me and I don’t like it, but I can’t run away this time. Just like you.”

  He glanced at her. “It’s a funny thing, you know. I was all set to run again, but it was Ali who talked me out of it. She told me I had to make a stand.” He shook his head. “Christ, she’s really some kid.”

  The coffee pot was empty. Not trusting herself to speak yet, Frankie got up and put some more water on. She stood by the stove, warming her hands by the burner, though it wasn’t cold in the kitchen. The chill she had was inside her.

  What do I feel? she asked herself. This man’s just like Earl, only he’s the big time. Then she shook her head. No, Tony wasn’t like Earl. Not by a long shot. From what he’d told her, he’d basically grown up in a family business. He’d just never known any better. If all your role models, your father and uncles and grandfathers, if they were all gangsters, how could a growing boy think that was wrong? It was a way of life.

  She turned to look at him. God, a person could rationalize anything. What she had to figure out was, did she really understand him, or was she being forgiving because she needed him right now, needed the skills and abilities he’d acquired in that life?

  “I guess this changes things,” Valenti said finally.

  “It changes them,” she agreed, “but I’m not sure how.”

  He regarded her with a puzzled frown and she found herself smiling.

  “I liked you right off,” Frankie said. “More importantly, Ali liked you right off, and I’ve learned from experience that she’s a damn good judge of character. There’s been a lot of times when I’d come home with some guy and she’d never say a thing, but I’d know she didn’t think much of him. Unfortunately, she was usually right. I’ve never had much luck with the men in my life—not as lovers, at any rate. So now I meet someone that both Ali and I like and…”

  “Hey, I’m not, you know—”

  “Coming on to me,” Frankie said. “I know that. But I do like you, Tony. Only right now my feelings are all confused. I’m still coming down from last night, I’ve got Earl to worry about… I need you right now, for what you know, for what you are. It’s your past that makes me feel safe, makes me feel that things are going to work out—that Earl won’t be able to just walk all over me again. And that other guy, if he comes back, won’t be able to…hurt me again.”

  She combed her hair with her fingers, nervously pulling at a knot. “I don’t want to be dependent on anybody,” she said. “I told you that. But there’s something good—something healthy, I think—about having a friend that you can depend on.”

  “I can be a friend,” Valenti said. “I know the kind of guy I was. Things won’t go no further, and when this shit’s over we can just go our separate ways.”

  “I’m not saying that, Tony.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “God, I don’t know. It’s in my head, but I can’t put it into words.”

  The kettle began to boil and she turned, grateful for the interruption it offered. But once the water was poured and the coffee dripping through the filter, she came and sat across from him again.

  “I got a call from Mario,” Valenti said. “Just before you woke.”

  Frankie looked relieved for the change in topic. “Did he say how your friend was?”

  “He’s doing okay. He’s in intensive care, but the doctors are pretty sure he’ll pull through. I’d like to know what kind of a song and dance Mario pulled to stop them from calling in the police—I mean, it was a gunshot wound—but he says everything’s cool. He was calling me from Ottawa.”

  “He’s not coming back?”

  “I don’t think so. He said he was going to take care of some business in New York.”

  Frankie didn’t ask him what that was supposed to mean—she didn’t want to know. The coffee had finished dripping through, so she got up again to refill both their mugs.

  “What do you think of me?” she asked when she sat down once more. “What do you see when you look at me?”

  She didn’t seem to be able to stop the conversation from returning to them. But the terror she’d felt last night was never far from her thoughts. Coupled with it was the old fear that all men just regarded her as an object, as something they could use however they wanted. The attempted rape was just an exaggeration of what usually went down in her other relationships. The men might take her out to dinner or to a movie or something, but it all boiled down to getting into her pants and getting their rocks off. Too many times she just didn’t hear from them again.

  So why did she attract that kind of a man? What was there about her that brought them to her? Or was there something more deeply wrong with her, some Freudian explanation that centered around the way her father had treated her mother—and even Frankie herself—so that she’d go out looking for men like him? It wasn’t the first time she’d worried about this and it never ceased to confuse her.

  “I got to tell you,” Valenti said. “I’ve never been that good with women. I was never rough or anything, but I just never wanted anything long term, you know what I’m saying? But last night I got to thinking about Ali…. I’d give up everything to have a kid like her. And I was thinking of you, too….” He paused to clear his throat. “I know I said I wasn’t going to come on to you or anything, but I got to tell you, I was thinking about you and wishing I’d been a different kind of person so that I’d have a chance to be with someone like you—permanently, you know?”

  “But why? There’s nothing special about me, Tony. I’m just—”

  “Bullshit, there’s nothing special about you.” It was like talking to Ali, he thought. “It’s not just the way you look—which is sensational, I’ve got to tell you that, too—it’s the way you carry yourself. It’s what you got inside. And I’ll tell you something else: You can tell a lot about a person by their kids. You raised Ali by yourself and you did one helluva job, Frankie. A person who can do something like that, she’s special to me, let me tell you.”

  Frankie reached across the table and laid her hand over his. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.” He looked down at her hand on his, then back up to
meet her gaze.

  “I needed to hear that, Tony. I go through life needing a lot, it seems.”

  “I think we’re all like that—needing reassurance. There’s nothing wrong with it. The only thing wrong is when there’s no one there to give it to you.”

  Frankie nodded. She squeezed his hand, then let go and reached for her coffee mug. Her hand was trembling slightly and she hoped Tony didn’t see it.

  “You and me,” he said suddenly. “We’re like hearts and flowers for two mornings in a row now. It’s getting to be a habit.”

  “I’m glad we had a chance to talk.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  Valenti ached to see her sitting there across from him. There was a look in her eyes that promised him something, but there was no way he was going for it. Not now. Not today. Not so close on the heels of what she’d gone through and with everything that was coming up. But when it was over, when she didn’t need him for what he’d been, then maybe he’d see if she’d take him for what he was now. He pushed aside their mugs and fetched Bannon’s automatic and a cleaning kit.

  “Okay,” he said. “Before we start shooting up a tree trunk, you’re going to learn how this little beauty works. Now this little thing—”

  He broke off as she touched his hand again. “Thanks,” she said.

  Valenti knew what she meant. The promise was still in her eyes and it seemed warmer now. A hot flash went through him, just at the closeness of her. He cleared his throat again as she took away her hand. Brushing a strand of hair from her eyes, she leaned forward. He took a breath and started again.

  “Okay. Now, this is the safety. When it’s on, the gun doesn’t work. See, you can pull the trigger, but nothing happens.” He snapped the magazine free of the grip and showed it to her. “This is your magazine. It holds twelve rounds. Now, they called these self-loading pistols when they went on the market back around the turn of the century. You don’t get the recoil on these, not like you do on a gun that uses a cylinder. That’s because the same gizmo that ejects the spent round and brings the new one up absorbs a lot of the recoil. I’m going to let you fire both today, but I think this is the one you’ll want to hang on to. It’s lighter, easier to manage…”

  * * *

  Ali paused when they came out of the woods above Lewis’s cabin. She couldn’t see the old man from where they were, but a trail of smoke rose up from his chimney, so she thought somebody must be home. Where would he go anyway?

  “C’mon,” Mally said.

  Ali didn’t move. “I was just thinking,” she said. “Maybe I should talk to someone else—like the lady I was dancing with last night.”

  “Lily?”

  “Yes. Her.”

  “What for?”

  “Well, I know what you think and I know what Lewis has told me, but I don’t know what the villagers themselves think. They’re not all like Lewis, are they?”

  Mally shook her head. “Lewis is different, like Tommy is, but in another sort of a way.”

  “I thought so. I think I’d like to talk to her, just to get another perspective.”

  “You could try climbing a tree,” Mally said with a smile.

  Ali laughed. “But that won’t tell me anything—not about this, anyway. Do you know where Lily lives?”

  “Sure.”

  The wild girl angled off toward the village. After a last look at Lewis’s cabin, Ali followed. Looking ahead, the brush grew so dense it seemed impossible to pick through, but Ali found that if she stayed right on Mally’s heels, she had no trouble. The wild girl chose a winding way, bypassing the heavier thickets, until they were suddenly in a small pasture. Cows lifted their heads to regard the two intruders, ignoring them once they’d passed.

  “That’s where Lily lives,” Mally said as they reached the far side of the village. She pointed to a small picturesque cottage overhung with vines. Rosebushes clambered up the sides of its stone walls.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” Ali asked.

  “No. I’ll wait for you here.”

  Ali paused. “Don’t you like Lily?”

  “Oh, I like her all right, I just don’t know her. You go on ahead.”

  Leaving her walking stick with the wild girl, Ali went on by herself. As she neared the door of the cottage, she began to feel a little shy, but before she could change her mind, the door opened and Lily was standing there, looking at her. A smile creased the old woman’s face.

  “What a pleasant surprise,” she said. “Do come in.”

  “I don’t want to be any bother.”

  “Nonsense. We see few enough new faces in the village—I’m happy to see you.” She ushered Ali inside. The cottage was all one room, divided into a neatly kept sitting room, a kitchen and a sleeping area. The quilt on the bed was gorgeous, Ali thought, knowing that her mother would just love it. When she stepped closer to investigate it, she realized that the whole thing was hand-sewn.

  “This is beautiful,” she said.

  “Well, thank you—Ali, wasn’t it? That was a whole winter’s project back when Jevon was still alive. Jevon was my husband.”

  Ali nodded. She glanced at a sepia-toned photograph on the mantle. “Was that him?”

  “Yes, it was. Handsome devil, wasn’t he?”

  “Who took the picture?” Ali asked. She’d been under the impression that they didn’t have much in the way of modern conveniences in New Wolding. Where would they even get the film developed?

  “Lewis’s son Edmond took it. Before he left the village for good, he used to travel quite a bit between the outer world and the village. He left with the Gypsies one year and never did come back.”

  “Gypsies? You mean like real Gypsies?” She remembered Lewis mentioning something about them.

  Lily nodded. “They come once or twice a year—just one family, the Grys. Jango—he’s a grandfather himself now—has been bringing his family for as long as I can remember. We get what we can’t grow or make ourselves from them. Sugar, some teas and spices, that sort of thing. Lewis wasn’t too happy the year Edmond left.”

  “Why did he leave?”

  “Oh, you’re young. You know how restless young people can get. The village wouldn’t even have been settled in the first place if some of the young folk from the original Wolding hadn’t been restless themselves. My own son Peter left the year after Edmond did.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  Lily looked at the photo of her husband and sighed. “Oh, yes. I miss him. More so now that Jevon’s gone. I keep hoping that he’ll come back one day, but I don’t think he will.”

  “Why not?”

  “Lewis says that if you stray too long from the village, you lose the way back.”

  “There are fewer and fewer of you each year, right?” Ali asked.

  “I’m afraid so. But my Jevon saw it coming. We changed, you know. We’ve become, not so much lazy, as forgetful. All we do is dance at the old stone now. Sometimes the mystery comes, sometimes he doesn’t. We used to sacrifice a bull there at that old stone—every year we did that.” She didn’t notice Ali’s face go pale. “I think that’s important—rituals and the like. Not this come-when-you-will attitude that we’ve slowly fallen into. I think if it weren’t for the mystery—if he didn’t still come to us at the stone—we’d all be gone now.”

  “You don’t think he should be freed?”

  “Freed? Oh, who’s filling your head with such nonsense? There’s nothing binding him here. Do you think something like him could be held captive by the likes of us?”

  “But I thought—I thought it was the villagers who kept him here. Tommy’s piping and all that.”

  “You’ve been talking to Lewis,” Lily said, “and Lewis thinks too much. He has to have everything neatly explained, but it doesn’t work that way. We’re talking about a mystery. I love Lewis like a brother, Ali, but sometimes I just want to shake some sense out of that head of his.”

  “Mally says there’s something keeping him here, to
o.”

  “Oh, yes. The wild girl. Where did you go with her last night, Ali? You made us all very worried.”

  Ali shrugged. “Just…away.”

  Lily’s eyes went dreamy. “I always dreamed of that. Of the stag taking me away on his back….” She sat silent for a long moment, lost in her thoughts, then blinked and looked at Ali. “Not that I’m unhappy here, you understand. But there’s a little bit of Lewis in us all, I suppose. I’d like to know where the mystery goes in that stag shape of his. It must be to some very special place.”

  Ali couldn’t begin to explain that landscape of wild forestland and the circle of stone formations. “We went a long way,” she said at last.

  “I’m sure you did. But tell me. Do you long to be back there, wherever it was that he took you, or can you still be content here in this world of ours?”

  “I…” She’d spent a lot of time being scared, Ali realized, and then a lot more talking with Mally. In the end, she hadn’t really experienced very much of that other place. She remembered the moon—how big it had been and how low—and the stars so close you could almost reach out and touch them. The peace in among those stones. The very air…

  “I’d like to go back,” she said.

  There was a touch of yearning in her voice that made Lily nod her head. “I thought it would be like that,” she said. “It’s like the stories of Faerie, isn’t it? Once you’ve been in their Middle Kingdom, you can never again be content in the fields of men.”

  “I suppose.”

  Lily nodded. “But I still think I’d have liked to have gone, just once.”

  It didn’t seem fair, Ali thought. She’d gotten to go and she was just a kid with her whole life ahead of her, while this old woman… All those years and never once getting a glimpse of that place. Unless she saw it in Tommy’s music, or felt it in the presence of the stag.

  What would Lily do if the stag didn’t come anymore? Would Tommy still play his pipes? Or would all the villagers move away? Maybe it’d be better if the villagers did go. She didn’t know if the people of New Wolding were happy or not, but they had never really had a chance to see what else there was to see in the world. That didn’t seem right either.