“Maybe ‘cause we’re like them and you’re not. Or maybe they just don’t wanna see history repeat on itself.”
He gives me this long look, then pokes his pistol into my neck again. “Talk to them.”
I shrug and turn my attention to the courtyard, which is beginning to be a very scary place for people who don’t believe in ghosts. The fog is moving, changing, clumping up around the winnebagoes and other places I suspect aliens are hiding.
“Ohlone!” I say loudly. “John Makepeace wants you to cease and desist as you are interfering with his plans to turn the Gam Saan into a tourist trap and make oodles-o-bucks. Now, I figure since you are the landlords of this chunk-o-real estate and it’s up to you who you’d rather rent to — ”
John Makepeace stops me with another jab of his ray gun.
“Cut it out,” he says. “Just tell them to leave.”
“John Makepeace wants you to leave,” I say. “Now. What d’you say?”
The Mission holds its breath for just a moment, then things go from weird to worse. The foggy shapes are suddenly legitimate wraiths — totally Lost-Arkian. They are as fully-formed as they were in the Lodge; I can make out faces and arms and legs. They move, too, not on the ground but above it. Not swiftly, ni dong, but in that slow, inexorable way that ghouls do in those old movies (which makes you wonder how they ever catch anybody).
These wraiths go right for the hiders. Winnebago doors crash open, laser bolts fly and human forms dart among the ex-human ones.
As for John and me, we are forced to go to ground, and all the shouting he does about holding fire does squiddle.
It doesn’t take long before the aliens lose track of each other in the swirl of fog and spirit. There are screams of pain as their lightning starts striking random targets.
“Shit!” says John Makepeace. “They’re going to massacre each other! Shit!”
And he moves, dragging me backward through the doors of the sanctuary. The pistol goes to my head and I hear it click and whine.
“Give me one reason I shouldn’t blast a neat little hole through your head.”
“Because I don’t think you really want history to repeat on itself, either,” I say. “’Cause that’d make for really bad karma. And maybe ‘cause you know we didn’t do anything to you. You chose to come here. We just tried to hang on to our lives and our home. And now our home is trying to hang on to us. That’s the core of it, John — even if you kill me, the Gam Saan will still fight back.”
Outside, a winnebago engine roars to life. Then another and another. John Makepeace freezes.
This seems like an auspicious moment to give him some travel information.
“By the way,” I tell him, "you can’t get back across the Bay Bridge. The Islanders blew it up again. You might want to go south.”
“Shit,” he says again. Funny how fear reduces the vocabulary.
He gives me a hard look in the face, then pulls off his belt and knots it around my feet, which he yanks out from under me.
When I manage to struggle into a half-sitting position, John Makepeace has disappeared out into the Dolores fog, leaving me on the hard, cold floor and the doors swinging open on their freshly oiled hinges.
The shooting is dwindling now, and out in the courtyard is a regular winnebago chorus. There is a vast rumbling as they pull out. There are some crashes, too, but eventually, the rampage of metal elephants stops, their bellows fade and the place goes quiet.
I peer from the doors and see the shabu dong has stilled and begun to clear — except for this one, lone swirl of fog and sun-motes that’s doing a dance right in front of me. It thickens, slows and becomes Pedro, sitting cross-legged across from a fire pit that is and isn’t there.
I have the weird sensation of being in the Ohlone Lodge and the Californio sanctuary at the same time. I can almost feel the warmth of the spirit fire on my face.
Pedro smiles at me. At least, I think he’s smiling.
“The first aliens met the shaman when they climbed the mountain,” he says. “They have met him again. They will tell their people you are their Devil.”
“So, history repeated on itself after all,” I say.
“The first aliens didn’t go home,” he says.
He stands up, or maybe rises is a better word, and turns to the open church doorway. I can see right through him; the graveyard’s ragged, leaning headstones, the rocky grotto, the devil/saint. There are no more ghosts.
“When I told the Indian agent I was the last one,” Pedro says, “I was more wrong than I knew. Now I see that the spirit of my people has never left this place — will never leave it.”
“So that’s why?” I ask. “That’s why you came back to help us?”
He begins to fade; I can see sunlight washing the graveyard.
“And because you are right in what you said to John Makepeace.”
“That we’re like you? Or that you didn’t want history to repeat?”
But he’s gone and I’m still tied up like a fat duck in the Gee Gah. In the videos, they untie you. Sometimes life isn’t a whole lot like the videos.
I settle back and watch sunlight play across the grey and white and weathered brown of the graveyard. Eventually, Firescape will come for me. She always does. And I’m sure she’ll know right where to find me.
And now I’m thinking about our son who will soon be in this world, and I’m thinking that his name will be Pedro. Pedro Delmar Flannigan. Well, Pedro Delmar Flannigan whatever-his-mother-eats-or-sees-or-hears-at-the-moment-of-his-birth. That’s tradition. And, I think, it’s something the spirits of this place will understand.
Appendix 1: A Chinglish Vocabulary
It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.
— Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
playwright, author.
Lord Henry, in The Picture of Dorian Gray
Term Meaning
alcaldé — a king or ruler
bao — a steamed bun filled with meat and/or vegetables
bueno — good, nice, cool
Bu hao! — No good! That's bad! That stinks!
chen — vast, great
Chun jie — Spring Festival
Coolies — from kuli—bitter toil
Deadjim — Really, truly dead
Duanwu jie — Dragon Boat Festival, late May, early June
Du Pon Gai — DuPont Street, the site of an open air market
fanguan — a noodle shop
Gam Saan — Golden Mountain, San Francisco
ha gow — wrapped shrimp
Hao — good, okay, fine
ho — the good
howin — a loyal swallow
Jin — gold; also, spirit
jingbing — crazy, silly, nuts
Jink — to mess with something or someone, to play games with someone’s head
jinked — messed up, screwy
Liko — Bhuddist nun
loco — mad as a hatter
Luz — light
mushu — a crepe filled with vegetables and meat
muy — very, much
napoleon — severely egomaniacal
nen — primordial waters
Neon — really, truly cool
ni dong — you understand, you know
number one jade — the best imaginable
Wo dong! — I understand! I get it!
shen — (Egyptian Book of the Dead) amulet placed at the feet of the dead
siu mai — pork with shrimp
shining — mad, over-the-edge, crazy
smeagol — a spy
Suti — (EBD) god who carries away the soul, Guardian of Darkness
wu — fog
Yuanxiao jie — culmination of Chinese New Year in February
Zhangqui jie — Moon Festival, full moon in late September, early October. Celebrants watch the moon and eat moon-shaped cookies
>
Zhou! — Hurry! Scram!
Zhende? — Really? You don't say?
Appendix 2: An Index to Varieties of Fog
Drop down, O fleecy Fog and hide
Her skeptic sneer, and all her pride!
— Francis Bret Harte (1836–1902)
U.S. author, journalist, poet.
San Francisco from the Sea.
Publication information
Taco Del
and the
Fabled Tree of Destiny
Copyright © 2008 by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Visit Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff’s website:
www.mysticfig.com
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