Watching my feet follow Pepsi's I wondered if the same kind of shock had set in in me. I was wary of our precarious future, but not so afraid now. Was that because I had grown up some; got stronger along the way to the fifth Bone of the Moon? Or was this new unruffled me a result of knowing Jack Chili had both Pepsi and I by the nose, and there was little we could do now beside watch ourselves be destroyed? Shock, or a transcendent bravery I had never experienced in myself before?
The Dead Handwriting stopped suddenly although the rock face, bare of anything but nature's streaks and scratches, continued. The path was very narrow and kept us walking in tight single file, Carmesia leading the way. The stones under our feet were smooth and flat and made for a lot of slipping and sliding if you didn't watch where you were going. After a while it dawned on me what the «stones» were – bottle glass, all of them the same color as the piece I had found on the beach in Greece.
While walking, I somehow started thinking about the trams in Milan; how I had always loved the names of their destinations: Greece, Brazil, Tirana. If there was nothing to do on a sunny day, I used to climb aboard one, sit dowrn and – closing my eyes – tell myself I was off to Brazil. Just like that! Later, if I was meeting Danny at our favorite cafй across from the Castello Sforzesco, he would inevitably see a certain look in my eye and ask, «Where did you go today, Captain?» And I would be able to say, «Hungary.»
From our apartment near the Castello, we could hear the busy clank/clack of them passing all day and deep into the night. I loved them. Somehow their loud welcome sound always said to me, «This is Europe. We live only in Europe.»
The bottle-glass path turned a sharp corner and directly ahead were six glowing orange shoes, two stories high at the very least. They were men's Oxford shoes and were connected to tweed-covered legs as thick and high as California redwood trees that climbed up and through the clouds. None of these legs moved. I should have been afraid of them, but I wasn't. The zebra and the lion?
The heat from the glowing shoes increased as we got closer. When Carmesia stopped, Pepsi reached into his knapsack and brought out the third and fourth Bones. He handed me the third.
«Hold it very tight against your chest when we pass them, Mom. It'll protect you.»
Carmesia stood between us. «I have to go back now, Pepsi.»
Pepsi reached down and picked up the negnug. For the first time I realized the boy understood their language as well. When we'd first met the little animals by the Sea of Brynn, he hadn't been able to do so.
«Carmesia, be sure to tell Mr. Tracy that the shoes aren't moving. That'll make him feel better. But also tell him we got this far and everything's okay from what I've seen. Good-bye. Thank you!» He kissed the thing on the top of its head and put it gently down on the ground. It gave a stiff military salute and then skittered away back up the trail. It moved so fast that it was gone in no time at all.
Touching the fourth Bone to his chest, Pepsi gestured with his head for me to follow. The crack of rocks moving around underfoot followed us as we moved toward the Shoes – the Shoes that radiated like some kind of big, cockamamie spaceship from Planet Foot.
Holding the Bone hard against my chest, I still felt the heat of the Shoes, but only distantly, as if they were somehow much further off. As we got closer to them, the glass stones beneath our feet glowed all kinds of different fiery colors.
When we were almost all the way past the Hot Shoes, Pepsi dropped his Bone down the front of his shirt and to my horror, walked straight over to the last of these orange Goliaths. Climbing slowly up over its perforated toe, he made his way to the top by grabbing sections of the laces and putting his feet in the brass lace-holes at the sides. If watching that wasn't enough to bring on a heart attack, once he reached the top of the Shoe he climbed on to the sock and made his way vertically up its fuzzy, sheer face. I kept squinting my eyes so that I wouldn't have to see everything so clearly. Once when he lost his handhold and almost fell, I turned away . . . but not for long.
The worst moment came when, after climbing out and over the cuff of one pants leg, he actually disappeared down inside it. At that point, all six of the Shoes sent off a flare of molten orange light which blinded me momentarily. Oh, God! Eyes gone, I started screaming for Pepsi. By the time my eyesight had fully returned, I saw him scampering down the Shoe again with a smile a yard wide on his face.
«What were you _doing_?»
He came up and hugged me tightly; his head came to the bottom of my waist. «I can't tell you yet, Mom. Wait till later.»
And then we were off again on what turned out to be the last part of our journey. Eliot would have called it our quest.
We sat on a bottle-glass boulder and watched fog float gloomily across the valley below. Gloomy was the word for everyone at the moment, because on the other side of that partially hidden valley was the Cafй Deutschland, Jack Chili, etcetera. We were waiting for the fog to lift because a few miles back, the path had turned steep and quirky in its twists and illogical turns. Neither of us needed a sprained ankle or twisted knee right then.
There was a part of me that wanted to ask Pepsi what _he_ thought would happen when we met up with our adversary over there. But this quiet moment together promised to be one of our last for a long time. Why spoil it by bringing up ugly, ominous questions that led only to threatening answers. Like: «How do you think he'll eat us, Pepsi? With a knife and fork? Or maybe just dip us headfirst into the mustard like Vienna sausages?»
«No, I don't think it'll be like that, Mom. He's already shown us he can be mean. I think he'll do something else.»
«So, now _you_ can read my mind too?»
He looked embarrassed before he nodded.
«How often do you _do_ it, young man?»
«Only when you looked worried or real scared, Mom. I promise that's the only time.»
«Hmm. Your mother does _not_ appreciate having her mind read, thank you very much.»
I gave him the last of the Sidney Bean sandwiches which had been given to us before we left the meadow. Nice as that sounds, it wasn't an entirely selfless gesture on my part because I hadn't been hungry in ages. I must have eaten at times, but I certainly didn't remember where or when.
«Let's go, Mom. It looks like the fog's going away.» Like any kid, he ate his sandwich all the way down the hill and straight into the roiling fog.
We walked for some time before coming to the first of the children. The fog had done a good job of keeping them hidden from us.
Delicate sand-colored wicker chairs were placed by the side of the path about every two feet or so. The children sat in them. Some had smeared, ruined features – the result of either nature's worst pranks or mad, sadistic surgeons. Black, dead-blood bruises and livid yellow and brown railway-tracklike scars covered this wrecked human landscape. Some of the children looked like impossible survivors of accidents where they should have been allowed to die quickly if there was any mercy in the world. Every bit of them seemed to be either bandages, brutally exposed, or bleeding freely. A number of these shattered, blasted «children» had apparently been propped-up, because many of them fell slowly over as we walked past.
There was no sound. No cries or screams or groans came from any of them. What made it worse was a soft, smoky-white fog which hung everywhere around us and blotted out any background that might have lessened the immediacy of the scene.
Pepsi held my hand and led me through this hell of pink-and-powder-blue pajamas, stained gauze bandages small bodies which should have been on swings, in sandboxes, on little bicycles that still had training wheels on the back.
«Who _are_ they?»
«I think they're from the Cafй, Mom. Come on, keep going.»
The line of them went on and on and a moment came when I knew I couldn't stand the sight of another child, so I closed my eyes and let Pepsi lead me. But as soon as I did that, the sound of their voices and their pain came from everywhere. They called for their mothers, their fathers,
for water. They wanted their brothers, their toys, the pain to stop. Everything is bigger for children, so what must their pain have been like? I kept stumbling, but that did not make me open my eyes again. Blind, my mind magnified the sound of the children's cries, but nothing was worse than actually seeing them. _Nothing_.
«The fog is going away, Mom. I can see way up the path.»
«How much further is there to go?»
«I don't know. There's a hill coming up that we have to take. I think it's the one that leads to the Cafй.»
Stumbling again, I felt the ground begin its move upward. I squeezed Pepsi's hand and he squeezed back.
«Now it's all gone, Mom. Do you want to look?»
«No, I don't want to see the children.»
Their cries increased as the hill grew under my feet. I could feel gravity or whatever pull us backward. How I wanted to obey that pull! Go backward a thousand . . . a million miles until all of this was gone.
The fear and revulsion I had been so proud of conquering returned . I wondered if it was my blood that had begun to hurt everywhere inside me. But that was stupid; I hurt because I knew I was beginning to give way to panic. I hurt because I hated that; because I knew it would win. I began shaking all over my body and even my son's magical hand in mine did nothing to stop this.
«Damn it! Oh, goddamn it!» I tightened all of my muscles, then relaxed them, hoping that would help. But it didn't.
Pepsi stopped.
«What's the matter? What's wrong?»
No answer. He still didn't move. His hand had gone completely limp in mine; I had to look.
The Cafй Deutschland was still far away up the path, but I recognized it instantly. At first I thought its reality in front of us was what had stopped Pepsi, but that wasn't it.
Excited, but also frightened by our proximity to the infamous building, it took me some time to stop staring at it and to look again at the children. That was why Pepsi had stopped.
None of their heads was bandaged anymore, although their wounds were no less horrendous. What's more, all of the bared faces were the same – Pepsi James. Pepsi without eyes, black-tumored or gouged – or the pale green of the beaten, the jaundiced. All of them were Pepsi, all the hideous possibilities of death and almost-death on that beloved, still-recognizable face.
I was enraged. It was too much. Chili had no right to do this. It was impossible.
«You _bastard_! Come on, Pepsi. It's not real. Run and don't look at them. Take my hand!»
We ran as hard and as fast as we could. There was nothing else to do but run toward the Cafй.
Twenty feet away we slowed and clearly saw what was there.
Mae and I were there. I held her in my arms although we were both dead. Shining steel spikes had been driven through my forehead, my arms, and Mae as I held her. One spike went through my pants at the vagina, two through my legs at the ankles. One went through Mae's temple, on and through my chest. We were recognizable, but the burst puckered flesh made us completely obscene, beyond humanity.
«Not that! No!» I dropped Pepsi's hand and bent to throw up.
When I was empty, I was just able to scratch out, «Use the Bone, Pepsi! For God's sake, Pepsi, get us out of here, please!»
Looking up, I saw him moving away from me toward the door to the Cafй.
«Don't!»
He was there and I couldn't stop him from reaching behind our bodies for the doorknob. A second passed before it swung open, the bodies going with it in a slow heavy arc.
«Look, Mom!»
I couldn't see, but my son was speaking and I went to him. I followed him through the door of the Cafй Deutschland.
On to 90th Street and Third Avenue in New York City! My street, the street where I had lived with Danny and Mae and my life in the real world. The sight was as shocking and chilling as the wounded children, or seeing lack Chili's face over the sky.
«Pepsi, do you know where we are?»
He turned and looked at me, all quiet eyes.
«Near your home, right, Mom?»
«But why?» I grabbed his arm much too tightly. «What's here? How can we be here? What's going on?»
«Because Jack Chili is waiting for us in your house, Mom.»
My heart was so tired. Rubbing my hands against my sides, I wondered how far Rondua could go. How far was a dream allowed to trespass into real life, before it was caught and sent back to its proper place? Could it go haywire and take over everything you knew? Was it permitted to live wherever it wanted? Or had I alone reached a point where laws and distinctions, rules of the game, had disappeared? A point where everything in my mind, in my life, was up for grabs?
Dizzied and numb, I walked down the street with my son. I had no way to judge time, but it felt like midafternoon. The sun was moving toward buildings in the west, a breeze blew that had no freshness in it. Things were silent, no noise or people or signs of life anywhere. That was completely wrong and made me think this was some other 90th Street – a figment of some clever but incomplete imagination. Normally my street buzzed and bustled and honked and couldn't keep still, much less stay quiet for a whole minute. It was a set for a film about to be shot: a postcard picture that looked familiar but then very wrong when you examined it more closely.
Pepsi walked slowly, taking in everything. The expression on his face went from tension to awe, to something I had never seen there before.
«Is this where you buy food, Mom?» It wasn't a question so much as a lament.
«Yes.»
«Are any of these cars yours?»
«No.»
The door to our apartment building was open and we walked in together. Another large mistake – you always, _always_ needed a key to get in.
But a close friendly, _known_ smell in the foyer downstairs said beyond a doubt that this was our home. Danny liked to say it was the smell of a bus station in the morning.
Danny. Oh, my Danny!
I moved quickly for the stairs, but Pepsi took my arm and shook his head. «Go slow, Mom. I want to see your house. I want to see everything.»
Graffiti on the wall beside the bashed-in mailboxes said, «You think this is hot? Call Barry for the real thing!» Another hand had written beneath it, «I called, Barry, but you weren't home.»
On the second floor, I saw Eliot's door and wondered where he was in all of this. And Danny. And Mae.
At the top of the next flight of stairs, ten feet away from our door, I stopped and bit my lip. I felt the skin on my scalp tighten and move backward on its own. I felt my heart beating all over my body – in both armpits, my throat, behind my knees, in my stomach.
Pepsi came up the last step and moved around me on to the landing. «Are we close? Why did you stop?»
«That's our apartment, the one on the corner.»
He walked to the door and waited for me to come. I touched the doorknob. It was warm, as if someone had just rested their hand there before going in. I gave it a slight push and the door swung open, giving one metallic creak halfway that was as familiar as anything I knew. Everything was familiar, yet everything was so completely, totally wrong.
Three steps through the hallway. There was the blue rug Danny had brought home one snowy night as a surprise. The Robert Munford print of lions on the walls that I looked at every day, because I liked it so much; it was one of the first things I had ever bought when I moved to New York. There was Danny's ratty old plaid umbrella that never went up right, and my green rubber raincoat – hanging next to each other on the wooden coatrack. Danny's fat black winter galoshes, one on top of the other, were on the floor. I couldn't help reaching out and touching the umbrella. It was real, it was Danny's. I was home.
Sitting on the couch in the living room – dressed in a gray suit, white shirt and black tie – was Jack Chili, lifesize this time. He was all smiles.
«Welcome home, Mrs. James.» That beautiful feathery voice which I had first heard coming from the sky seemed totally obscene here.
/> «Don't you like my voice, Mrs. James? How about something more down-home? 'It's a song, Cullen.'»
Just like Danny the first time we had ever made love.
«No? Can't I be sexy too? Isn't that allowed? All right, let me think: 'Oh, light your cigarette with it, Cullen.'»
Eliot!
«Stop it! Those aren't your voices! You can pretend, but they're not yours.»
«_Everything_ is mine, dear.» A small smile. «All right, all right, I'll stop. Pepsi, don't you want to have a good look around before we get started? You might not get another chance later. Don't you want to see how your Mom lives? That's your sister's crib over there; that's where she sleeps.»
«Stop it!»
Without acknowledging me, he kept talking to Pepsi: «Will you look at those little balloons on her sheets, Pepsi! Aren't they great? What do you think of that stuffed dog? His name is Odie and he's from a cartoon. Look at that terrific bed! Who'd want to grow up if they had a bed like that to sleep in? What a great place to grow up in! This is the perfect place for a kid.»
Pepsi held the top bar of Mae's crib with two tight hands and kept looking into it with sad, lost eyes,
«Why don't you fix your son a snack, Cullen? Get him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich – that's his favorite. Can't you see the boy's hungry?»
Pepsi walked around the room taking it all in. He picked up a picture of Danny and me; he ran his hand over a copy of Eliot's newspaper, smiled at a white rubber dragon Mae had left on the floor. When he walked out into the hall, I made no effort to follow him. I wasn't even afraid of Jack Chili. Everything else hurt too much for there to be room inside for that. Chili and I sat there in separate silences, listening to Pepsi's feet moving slowly and quietly through the rest of our apartment.
Bones of The Moon Page 19
