Taco Del and the Fabled Tree of Destiny

by Bohnhoff, Maya Kaathryn

His M’s grin goes flat.

  By now I hear noises of great turmoil from the AV Shrine. His M gives me a little shove and I hurry to investigate, Hismajesty, Squire, and Firescape on my heels. The Big Ugly Dudes have cleared one whole shelf of video discs and have piled them on a table in the center of the room. Squint stands by, an disc in each hand, clearly clueless as to what to do with them.

  “What is this stuff?” he wheezes at me, while behind him, Lubejob mutters, “This is the place. Yeah, this is the place. This is where I saw the magic pictures. There was a box. And the pictures were in the box.”

  I point at a Learning Booth, then gingerly open the smoky plastic door. A Video Disc Player and screen are set up inside.

  “Yeah!” says Lubejob. “Yeah!”

  “You can watch a video in one of these booths,” I explain, “or go to one of the Videoschool rooms.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” says Lord Elvis. “Show me how this works.”

  Squint shoves a disc into my hands and stands back, arms folded, looking like a squinty, grubby Pharaoh (Yo, Moses, make with the serpents, already). I go into the learning booth and slip the disc he’s chosen into the player. It is Stephen Hawking’s A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME — PBS version. This should be interesting.

  The video screen comes to life and a voice says, “This program is brought to you through a grant from Cornell University and-“ The voice rattles off a list of sponsors (which are like patron saints) and the Big Ugly Dudes hunker down and glance about shifty-eyed.

  Then the program starts: pictures of black holes, nebulae, comets whirl about while cosmic music plays. Then, for a word of introduction, appears the man we reverence as The Sagan. He is smiling (he is always smiling, ‘cause knowledge brings happiness) and he tells us how we go about our lives knowing almost nothing of our world. How we don’t even think about where sunlight comes from or how come life even is or why we can stand and walk and run on a big ball spinning in space without ending up there ourselves. And chaos — he mentions chaos. And then there are pictures of the solar system and a close-up of Earth with an arrow that points to the blob that contains Embarcadero and Potrero-Taraval and a whole lot else and says, YOU ARE HERE.

  “What’s this? What’s this?” Elvis snarls.

  “Physics,” I say calmly and send silent praise to the Wiz and the all-knowing Dios Who gave it into our unworthy hands.

  “Shit,” says Elvis, and Lubejob all but spits at me. “What’s with the marbles? Where’re the cars and the bikes and all the great-looking food?”

  Squint shoves another video at me. “What’s this one? It’s got cars on the box; does it do cars?”

  “That’s THE ART AND BUSINESS OF AUTO MAINTENANCE. It shows how to fix cars when they break down.”

  Lord E howls. “I don’t want to fix cars, dammit! I just want to have cars!” He gets in my face, then. “What the hell is this stuff? Where’s all the magic shit you promised me?”

  “Right here, Lord E. In the books, the videos-“

  I can tell he doesn’t believe me, ‘cause he throws a video at me. Shortly, he and his BUDs (the aforementioned Big Ugly Dudes) have torn the place apart, looking for the magic that makes Embarcadero work. They topple shelves, upset reading tables (not to mention readers), and put a dent in the Fish’s console.

  When they are finished, the Wiz is one humongous mess. I can only pray they don’t torch the place.

  They don’t. They snarl and snap at Hismajesty and demand cars at AK point. By now, His M has gotten into the spirit of the thing. He enjoys seeing old Elvis all sweated up. He jerks a thumb at the front doors.

  “You want cars? Go get ‘em.”

  They do. It takes them all of two minutes to discover that cars do not magically drive themselves. And these guys drive about as well as they read. Surprise, surprise.

  They get so busy seething and frothing that Doug and Firescape and I slip from under gunpoint and get the drop on them. In the end, they hoof it back to Potrero with no Tree, no Wiz, no magic, just one, lonely little AK with less than half a magazine of ammo. They are not Real Clever Boys, so I don’t expect they’ll learn how to make more.

  His M yuks it up real big when they’ve all gone, and pounds me on the back.

  “Well done, merlin! Well done! Those guys make bozos look like Rhodes Scholars. But tell me, why did you allow all the chicanery to impact our idyllic lifestyle?”

  “Well, sire,” I say, vamping, “I was trying to smoke out a mole; Lord E has a most secret double-smeagol in our court.”

  Already Scrawl is sidling away. She is forced to sidle all the way to the Borderland where she is politely ushered to the Potrero side and the bridge rolled up behind her.

  I, meanwhile, am a hero. I eat this up for a while, then the niggling starts.

  Don’t get me wrong — being a hero is a muy cool thing. I could definitely get used to it. But in the back of my mind is this little voice that says, “You are an impostor, Taco Del. A faux pas. What’d you do, anyway? A whole lot of nada is what. You get Doug tree-napped, you get yourself merlin-napped, put Firescape, the Wiz, and the whole of Embarcadero in dire jeopardy. You generally screwed up bigtime.”

  All true, I admit. It is through the grace of a very patient God and the illiteracy of Elvis and company that I have pulled my chestnuts (and a few other things) out of the fire.

  So, even though I am enjoying the hell out of being a hero, in the back of my chickpea brain is the idea that I will not feel better until I have done something truly heroic.

  Twelfth: We Spring a Leak

  Back in my street-monkey days, I had occasion to meet all sorts of interesting, unexpected and potentially dangerous people. Hoot stands out as a prime example of this. I mean, first glance told me he was probably in my alley to beat the living crap out of me, but he wasn’t and he didn’t and the rest, as they say, is history.

  Meeting these unexpected people almost always did strange things to my head in terms of worldview, if you know what I mean. Let me give you a for instance.

  For instance, once upon a time, there was this rat pack that called themselves the Jade Dragon. They liked to pretend they were the heirs to the old Tongs and pretty much high-nosed the new Tongs under whose auspices they ate and slept and got doctored after close encounters of the bloody kind.

  I gotta figure that since the real Tongs had gotten out of the lording-it business, and just took general care of things, that must’ve created a sort of lord-it vacuum, into which the Jade Dragon figured it would one day step when it grew up.

  Now, you gotta understand that the average age in the Jade Dragon was about thirteen, which I guess makes it a Tong-ette, and that these were just kids who, like yours truly, didn’t have family or probably even a cat. I guess I escaped getting sucked into something like the Jade Dragon by virtue of not fitting in. All things considered and in retrospect, I’m muy grateful for that mercy, as wretched as it seemed at the time.

  It is a function of a gang like the Jade Dragon, that it eats its own tail. What I mean is, it don’t allow for ideas or much of anything else to come in from the outside, so it sort of lives on itself — recycling old ideas and attitudes and trying to make everything outside the gang fit inside that old stuff instead of the other way around.

  What that meant, mostly, was that members of the Jade Dragon stole when they didn’t have to and fought for turf that wasn’t particularly in dispute or even worth having. That way, they could recycle the attitude that they survived against all odds in a cruel and terrible world that didn’t give them squiddle, and that they had to fight for everything they needed, and that life, dammit, just plain sucks.

  Comes a day I am trekking through the streets with a book on window box gardens under one arm, chewing on a lunch of dried fruit prepared by the loving hands of Kaymart. I am heading back to the Farm where Bags has hopes of using the book (checked out of the Wiz on his authority) to get some new techniques for farming rooftop veggies and fruits
.

  As I traverse the Slot, I am set upon by the aforementioned Jade Dragon, who knock me sideways, down, back, and over and then pounce to see what they’ve taken.

  Not much, they decide. (Did I mention that the Jade Dragon isn’t too sharp about picking targets?) But they are very keen on my little pouch of dried fruit, which they have never seen anything like, and quickly devour so as to be unlikely to see anything like in future.

  When they have eaten my lunch for me, they gather around and demand more.

  “Sorry,” I say, quaking and clutching my book. “I don’t have any more on me.”

  “Then show us where you got it,” says the oldest of them — a tall, stringy kid with waist-length black hair.

  I admire his hair, which, unlike mine, is board straight, and ask, “You really want to know?”

  They do, and I really want to get back to the safety of the Farm, so I grovel a little and whine and finally tell them to follow me.

  They are bewoggled as they walk amongst the giants, and just about all drop their teeth when Kaymart’s big old glass house comes in to view. Bags, bless him, is out in front, working away at a mulch pile. And it is to him that I point and say, “This is where I got it. From that old dude, there.”

  Then I run...straight to the old dude.

  I trip all over myself trying to tell him what happened — the Jade Dragon knocked me down and stole my lunch, and look, there’s even a scratch in the cover of the book he sent me for and woe is me, etc..

  Well, Bags, he looks up and over to where the Jade Dragon is sort of eddying around under a tree trying to figure if they can take the two of us, and he waves them in.

  “Come on, boys!” he calls and then says to me, “Taco, run into the house and get some bags of fruit jerky outta the pantry.”

  “But why?” I ask, agog.

  “’Cause these boys are hungry, that’s why.”

  I go, confused as hell, and when I get back, I see that the Jade Dragon has joined Bags in the orchard where he is giving them a taste of his wares. I drag the fruit over there and hand it over, to which he responds by handing it over in turn to the Jade Dragon.

  “Now, boys,” he tells them. “If ever you want some more of this stuff, you just come on up to the house over there and ask me or Kaymart — she’s my wife — or Taco, here. That ain’t gonna keep you fed all the time, but it’ll help.”

  The littlest Dragons start to go for the bag, immediate, but their Head Dragon — the tall one with the cool hair — stops them.

  “You givin' us this stuff, old man?” he asks. “’Cause we don’t take charity.”

  The littler Dragons pinched little faces say that they’d most certainly make an exception to the charity clause in their Tong-hood just this once, but the Dragon Head is adamant.

  “Not charity,” says Bags. “It’s a reward for not breaking my kid in two.” And he pats me on the shoulder.

  The Dragons look from one to the other like they’re wondering what planet they’re on, then dive into the biggest bag of fruit and start stuffing their mouths most prodigiously.

  That’s when Bags spies the book on box farms, which I still got under my arm. He snags it.

  “Wanna see something?” he asks, and waits for no reply. He plops the book open and shows the Tong-ette a double-page spread on window box veggies that just about pops their eyes out of their heads.

  “What is that?” asks the Dragon Head.

  “L’ks like veg’t’bles,” says another kid, his mouth still full of dried figs.

  He draws a glare from the Dragon Head, who, I think, is supposed to do the speaking and thinking for the whole Dragon.

  “They are vegetables,” confirms Bags.

  “Growing in a window sill?” asks Dragon Head.

  “Window sill, fire escape, rooftop — whatever you got.”

  “How’d you do that? Magic?”

  Bags smiles and listens to them all chew for a moment, then says, “Yep. Magic. And....” He glances around and leans in toward Dragon Head as if he’s got some grand secret. “I can show you guys how to do it. That’ll give you the magic to grow your own food. It’s powerful magic,” he adds.

  “We don’t take charity,” repeats the Dragon Head. “We make our own way in the world. We’re the Jade Dragon.”

  The other kids nod and puff out their scrawny little chests and gnaw chunks off their fruit. They look like pint-size pirates, chawing jerky.

  Bags looks surprised. “I told you, I ain’t offering any charity. What you take me for, a Tong? I’m offering a deal. You leave my kid alone and I’ll show you some magic to keep your bellies full.”

  The Jade Dragon chews and studies the picture and smells the orchard and tastes the sweet fruit.

  Me, I hold my breath. What the hell is Bags up to?

  “Yeah,” says the Dragon Head, at last. “Yeah. You teach us the magic and we’ll maybe leave your kid alone.”

  Bags smiles. “Good. Now, first, why don’t you all go over to that tree there and get yourself a nice juicy peach? I’ll be right along.”

  He turns back and finds me gawping at him.

  “Now, Taco,” he says, “I want you to go get Juk and Fircone and have them scare up some big sacks to put earth in and then....” He squints at me. “What is it?”

  “Why’d you do that?” I demand. “They were gonna steal from you. They did steal from me. And you’re just gonna give away magic to ‘em?”

  “Tell me something, Taco. Why’d they eat your lunch?”

  “’Cause they’re tin-plated gangsters with delusions of dragonhood!”

  “’Cause they’re hungry.” He bends a bit so he can look me in the face and pokes a grubby, stubby finger into my solar plexus. “Give a man fruit jerky and one man will get one meal. Teach him to make fruit jerky and he’ll feed hisself and maybe others till there’s no more dirt and water. And he won’t need to steal anybody’s lunch. You get me? These little dragons are a parasite, Taco. We got to teach ‘em symbiosis. Now, get on after Juk and Fircone, pronto.”

  Well, I do, but I have some serious misgivings about what my old man has done. I even foster dire predictions of what will happen because of his jingbing idea. Such as that now, the creepy little jakes will start up a black market fruit and vegetable business and gouge their fellow street-monkeys for food.

  I share these predictions with Kaymart and Juk and Fircone, which only increases my acute embarrassment when reality refuses to match said predictions for direness.

  First, the Dragon Head and two of his cohorts go on to study agriculture at the Wiz and the Jade Dragon becomes the Jade Dragon Co-op which does reasonably fair barter for produce and farming supplies among its fellow Tong-ettes. It also becomes a halfway house for street-monkeys with too much time on their hands and a fondness for loot and pillage.

  The punishment for pillaging the Co-ops gardens is apprenticeship to Bags or Farmer Felicidad of the Presidio; the net result of this that both end up with more apprentices than you can shake a stick at. They train the kids up and send them back into the ‘hoods to start rooftop farms.

  So, I guess you could say that because Taco Del lost his lunch, the Tenderloin is now a prime agricultural district. Go figure.

  All of the above is why when Doug proposes to me a preposterous idea for something heroic we can do for the Potreros, I neither scoff nor sneeze him off.

  It is about a week and a half after the Great Embarrassment. We are in the Wiz — Doug and Firescape and me — helping to clean up the mess and sort the books and videos when he sends me a whiff of firry perfume from where he sits in the sun on a reading table.

  “Taco Del,” he says to me, though not in so many words, ni dong. “Taco Del, Potrero needs educating.” And a little later, he hits me with this outrageous idea: “Del,” he says, “find a way to share the magic.”

  Well, let me tell you, this knocks me six ways from Sunday. Not just the thought of selling Hismajesty on a Potreran literacy
campaign (which makes my guts jiggle), but the idea of selling the Potreros on it.

  I already know what Bags will think of the idea, so I consult with my lovely wife of one week, Jade Berengaria Firescape, who thinks it’s a great thing to help the Potreros.

  “You know if the children could be taught to read,” she tells me, “they could teach the grown-ups. And then we could do vocational rehab.”

  Yeah, if. Big IF.

  But I know it’s not as easy as all that. Even if His M would go for it, Lord E wouldn’t. I mean, first of all, knowledge isn’t food. I mean, of course, knowledge is food, but it doesn’t make your belly stop growling right away. You gotta apply it first. So, while it’d be easy to get the Potreros to take our food, it ain’t gonna be similarly easy to get them to take our wisdom. ‘Cause there’s a Wall between Embarcadero and Potrero-Taraval — and I don’t mean the one along the Border made of old junk. Well, this one’s made of old junk, too, I guess, but it’s a different kind of junk. It’s inside junk. Like I said before — it’s the inside stuff that makes the outside stuff bad.

  One big thing I learned from seeing Lord E and his guys in the Wiz: We don’t think the same. And the difference is... well, I guess it’s this: Lord E thinks magic is about having things; in Embar, we know it’s about knowing things.

  I admit I also realize that there could be certain benefits to bringing Enlightenment to Potrero-Taraval. Not only will it improve the lot of those miserable Potreros, cause Elvis to consider Hismajesty an ally instead of an enemy, and bring down the Wall between their kingdoms, but will allow a certain merlin to visit the Mission Dolores without fear for his life.

  Now, lest anyone think my motives are ulterior, I must say that I do truly and urgently care about the miserable Potreros, and feel real sorry for them, but I got a memory of the Mission and the fog that wasn’t fog, and voices that are yammering at me like crazy in any unguarded moment. I think they are trying to tell me something different now — something about fire.

  It is Firescape who gives me a clue about how to handle our King. She tells me that the best way to get to Hismajesty is through Hermajesty. I know this, of course, ‘cause that’s what landed us in this mess in the first place: His M being scared for Her M.