The Holy

by Daniel Quinn

  He gave Tim a helpless shrug and they went downstairs to dinner. Over coffee, he asked the waitress if she’d ever heard of Morningstar Path.

  She shook her head. “Not that that means much,” she said. “There are lots of roads around here I don’t know. I’ve only been in Taos a year.” He asked where she was from and smiled when she told him Bloomington, Indiana—less than a hundred miles from Runnell.

  A few minutes later a wiry man dressed like a thirties gangster sauntered over to their table. He had a smug, foxy face and a mop of brick-red hair that looked like you’d need a curry comb to get through it. He didn’t introduce himself, but Ellen had known him as Nick Wolf.

  Howard distrusted him on sight.

  “Hey,” he said breezily, “I heard you asking the girl about Morningstar Path.”

  “That’s right,” Howard said.

  “Yeah, well, I know where it is.”

  “Do you?”

  The skepticism in Howard’s voice seemed to disconcert him, and he glanced at the two of them uneasily before answering. “Yeah, well, I do.”

  Howard gazed at him coldly, and Tim decided to take a hand. “Could you give us directions? Or draw us a map?”

  “Yeah! Yeah!” the man said enthusiastically. “That’s what I was gonna say! I could draw you a map! All right if I sit down?”

  “Sit down,” Tim told him, ignoring Howard’s disapproving look.

  He took out a ballpoint pen, turned over a place mat, and hesitated. “You’re not thinking of going out there tonight, though, are you?”

  “Why not?” Howard inquired aggressively.

  The man chuckled. “ ’Cause you’d lose your ass out there in the dark, that’s why.”

  “Could you find it in the dark?”

  “Well … sure, man. I know the road.”

  Howard gave him an ingenuous smile. “Then maybe we don’t need a map. Maybe you could show us the way.”

  The man stared at him, his face suddenly the color of old putty. “Hey, man, you’re being unfriendly.” The idea seemed to inflame him, and he bared his teeth. “I don’t like people being unfriendly around me.”

  Howard nodded, his curiosity satisfied. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it would be such an imposition. We’d appreciate the map, though.”

  “Oh sure, sure,” Wolf said, at once turning his attention to the place mat. “Okay. Here is where we are. This is Kit Carson Road. You gotta go back to the stoplight and turn left onto the Santa Fe Road. That’ll take you right out of town. The tricky part starts about three miles later when you turn off the highway here.” He went on to describe each branching of the road as he sketched it in. “When you get onto Morningstar—there ain’t no sign or nothing—you can’t miss, because the road ends right at the house,” he finished up.

  Howard’s lips twitched with a smile, but he frowned it away. In all his experience, he’d never been offered a chance to play this hoary trick.

  “What house?” he asked innocently. “I didn’t say anything about a house.”

  The redhead’s reaction came in three parts: blank incomprehension, alarm, and resentment. “What house?” he cried, thinking furiously. “What do you mean, what house?” Then he found the solution. “Hey, man, there ain’t nothing on Morningstar but this house! So, anybody goes to Morningstar goes to this one house, see?” He grinned in triumph, his resentment forgotten.

  “I see,” Howard said.

  “Well, I gotta go,” Wolf said, rising hastily. “You two have a nice evening.”

  “We’ll do our best,” Howard replied to his retreating back. Tim gave him a curious look.

  “Are we going out there?”

  “I suspect it would be a waste of time, Tim, even if we found it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they obviously don’t want us out there tonight. Tomorrow yes, but not tonight.”

  “I must have missed something,” Tim said with a frown.

  “The woman on the phone said she had to know where we were so she could give us directions, but as soon as I told her she hung up. Two hours later our red-headed friend strolls in and obligingly draws us a map, after making sure we won’t use it tonight. Not a very subtle message.”

  “Detective work, huh?”

  Howard chuckled. “Detective work, kindergarten level.”

  “But we could still go out there.”

  “People aren’t obliged to answer the door, Tim.”

  “True.”

  It was a little too early to think of sleeping, so they took a tour of the closed shops along Kit Carson Road. Then Howard sent Tim off to bed and went into the bar, where he had a couple of sleep-inducers and a pleasant conversation with an elderly gentleman in a baggy old cardigan sweater.

  CHAPTER 46

  Following the map on the back of the place mat, they got lost only once, guessing wrong at one turning that had been omitted—insurance, Howard thought, in case they had ventured forth the night before in defiance of the redhead’s warning. There was something about the house he didn’t like when it came into view—something beyond its weird modernist lines—but he wasn’t able to put his finger on it till later, when he was inside.

  As they pulled up into the graveled area in front of the house, two men, one of them a Native American, came through the front door carrying a long wooden crate that they shoved into the back of a pickup truck. Howard parked so as not to block their access to the road.

  They were met at the door by a striking-looking woman whose dark hair shone with copper lights. She was dressed in a simple dress of dark green jersey, belted loosely at the waist, but she wore it with a regal air.

  After listening coolly to Howard’s explanation of their presence there, she told them to come in and led the way through a vast, dark room that (if he were being polite) Howard would have described as grotesque; privately, he considered it creepy. It wasn’t properly a room at all; it was a cavern, out of all human scale, and he felt diminished and insignificant in it. He didn’t pause as they passed the ruined stone head, but he raised an eyebrow at it. As they mounted the stairs, he tried to take a peek inside the hole blasted in the mirrored wall, but it was too far away and too dark to see anything. He wondered what had gone on here to produce such devastation. The upper living room, designed for recognizably human activities, was more to his taste.

  The woman, who had introduced herself as Andrea de la Mare, settled them on a sofa at the back of the room and called out:

  “Marianne! Coffee! For three.” The last had been half a question, which she directed at Tim with her eyes.

  “I’m allowed,” Tim said, smiling. “In moderation.”

  She smiled back and sat down opposite them across a low table.

  “So,” Howard said, getting down to business, “I take it David Kennesey was here when he wrote that letter, since it was on your stationery.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “But he’s not here now?” She shook her head, smiling apologetically. “Did he leave last night, by any chance?”

  “You’re very astute, Mr. Scheim. But I’m not quite sure why I’m answering your questions. What is your interest in David?”

  Howard frowned. “None, as a personal matter. I’m asking on his son’s behalf.”

  “But his son’s right here. I’m sure he can ask his own questions.” Turning to the boy, she asked, “What is it you’d like to know, Tim?”

  At this point Marianne arrived with a tray. When they’d all been served, Tim said: “What was my father doing here?”

  “He was looking for something. When he left you and your mother, you understand it was because he was looking for something.”

  “I guess so. But what was he looking for?”

  Andrea smiled. “He wasn’t completely sure himself, Tim. That’s why he isn’t here to greet you. He would have been if he’d found what he wanted. As it happened, he had to leave, had to carry on the search elsewhere. Do you understand?”
r />   “No, not really.”

  “What I’m telling you, Tim, is that it’s time to let your father go. He’s in the midst of his journey as you’re in the midst of yours. He would have liked to have you with him, but he knew when he left that this was impossible. It was necessary for him to take a path different from yours, and now you must leave him to it.”

  “Excuse me,” Howard said harshly, “but you seem to be taking a lot on yourself here. According to Mr. Kennesey’s letter, he wanted Tim with him.”

  “What exactly did he say, Mr. Scheim?”

  Howard dug the letter out of his jacket pocket. “He says, ‘I should have brought you with me. I wish I had you with me now.’ ”

  “ ‘I wish’? It seems to me that ‘I wish’ falls far short of ‘I want,’ Mr. Scheim. If he had intended to have Tim with him, why didn’t he wait for him here?”

  “Miss de la Mare,” Howard said, “I don’t want to seem rude, but the fact is that we only have your word for any of this. For all we know …”

  “Yes?”

  “For all we know, David could be right here in the house.”

  “He isn’t, but feel free to look anywhere you like.”

  “That’s not exactly the point. The point is that we didn’t come here to have you explain David’s letter to us. We didn’t come here to hear what you think Tim should do next. We came here to get some information, and when we have it, Tim and I will decide what to do next.”

  Andrea nodded, smiling. “You make it very plain, Mr. Scheim. But of course it’s within my discretion to give you information or to send you away.”

  “I realize that. I’m not demanding information. I’m asking for it on behalf of a boy who lost both father and mother within a single week, whose whole life has been turned upside down.”

  “Very reasonably put.” Andrea turned to the boy. “Tim, you haven’t known me for very long, but will you trust me for a few minutes?”

  Tim looked up, and for a long moment they gravely searched each other’s eyes. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Let me talk to Mr. Scheim alone for a bit. We have business that’s just between the two of us.”

  The boy sent Howard a questioning look. It was answered with a nod; with Tim out of the way, Howard could deal a bit more forcefully with the situation.

  Tim stood up and looked around doubtfully.

  “Why don’t you go out onto the patio?” Andrea suggested with a smile. “You might find someone you can talk to there.”

  Out on the patio Tim quickly spotted the man in the wheelchair, off to one side. He was sitting beside a table with his back to Tim and seemed to be gazing at the distant horizon. Tim looked back at the house, but Howard and Andrea were out of sight from this angle.

  He was surprised and a little worried when the man didn’t turn as he approached, his feet crunching in the redwood chips; if he was hard-of-hearing, Tim didn’t much relish the idea of having a conversation with him. But after a few more paces he paused and a delighted frown crossed his face as he saw that the thing was a life-size dummy of some kind. He went around to the front of it and peered into its face. He jerked back, startled when its glass eyes shifted to meet his. After a clank, a whir, and the sound of a scratchy needle on a record, a squawky, muffled voice came from its chest:

  “Hello, Tim. They told me you were coming.”

  Tim gawked at it wide-eyed. “They did?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry I can’t shake hands with you. My name is Samson.”

  Not quite understanding this, Tim asked him why he couldn’t shake hands. The thing responded with a wheezing laugh that was rather ghastly to hear.

  “My arm doesn’t work that way, Tim. Do you want to see?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go around to the back of the chair. On the crosspiece at the top, you’ll find three levers. Do you see them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Pull over the top lever.”

  Samson’s right hand jerked up from his lap and dropped over the side of the chair.

  “I don’t know exactly how it works. I suppose it’s an arrangement of wires and pulleys. Now feel under my coat for a button at the point where my arm meets my back,.”

  Samson’s fingers snapped closed.

  “Now pull over the middle lever.”

  His arm rose as if presenting Tim with something he’d picked up.

  “Good. Now pull over the bottom lever.”

  His arm descended and his hand returned to his lap.

  “That’s my repertoire of arm movements, Tim.”

  “I see.” Tim moved around in front of him and sat down.

  “But yesterday I walked. No, it was the day before. I’ve never done that before. It was tremendously exciting.”

  “I’ll bet. Why don’t your lips move when you talk?”

  “Oh, I think that would spoil the effect entirely. Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’d look like a ventriloquist’s dummy.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Would you like to see how my head moves?”

  When the glass door had rumbled shut behind Tim, Andrea gave Howard a grave smile and said, “I’m sorry you’ve settled on the idea that I’m your enemy. I’m not quite sure how that happened.”

  Howard shrugged. “It’s my job to be wary.”

  “Of course it is. Nonetheless, I want you to know that you have no enemies here. We think of you as one of us.”

  “One of who?”

  Andrea smiled and shook her head. “Tell me what you think has been going on here.”

  “Where is ‘here’?”

  She smiled again. “It’s where you are. It’s where Tim is, too, obviously. But I’ll rephrase the question. What do you think all this has been about, Howard? Do you mind if I call you Howard?”

  A heavy cloud of depression seemed to sink into his brain, dimming hope and comprehension. “I’m sorry to keep sounding like a parrot,” he said huskily, “but what do you mean by all this?”

  Andrea thought for a moment. “I don’t know if the story will be familiar to you, but it’s said that, before Jesus began his ministry, he was led away by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. In one of these temptations, the devil took him to the top of a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory, saying, ‘All this will be yours if you will but fall down and do me homage.’ According to the story, Jesus replied, ‘Begone, Satan!’ But would you like to know what he really said? He said, ‘What do you mean by all this?’”

  Howard stared at her blankly, his mouth half open.

  She went to a set of built-in drawers at the side of the room, and after a brief search returned with a familiar object: a set of the Rider Tarot cards. She took them out of the box, shuffled them three times, and handed them to Howard.

  “Three times, please,” she said.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Indulge me, Howard, please. You don’t have a plane to catch.”

  He shuffled them three times and cut them. After this, he was directed to draw off the top card and turn it over between them.

  “This is you,” she said. “The King of Pentacles. The suit of pentacles is generally about work, craftsmanship, and fortune. Like this king, you’re a dark man, and you came to me over a matter of business. Turn up the next card and cover the king with it.”

  When he had done so, she said, “This is what covers you, what’s presently setting the tone of your life, what’s influencing you and will continue to influence you in the near future. It’s the Seven of Swords. As you see, it depicts a crafty fellow—a fellow just like you—sneaking away from an armed camp with five swords in his hands. But he seems to have overlooked two others lying on the ground behind him. You armed yourself for a battle but overestimated your own cleverness and underestimated the strength of your enemy. Please take the next card and lay it sideways across the Seven of Swords.”

&n
bsp; With a heavy, doomed sigh, he did so.

  “This crosses you,” Andrea went on. “This is what threatens you in your endeavor: the Two of Pentacles. It depicts a young man with a pentacle in each hand, and the pentacles are bound together in a figure eight on its side—the symbol for infinity. The pentacles therefore represent grave extremes: the beginning and the end, life and death, the infinite past and the infinite future, good and evil, light and darkness.”

  She looked up at him with a smile.

  “You might think this can’t be you, because, after all, it’s clearly a young man. But in your heart you know you’re still a young man, don’t you, Howard? Just like him, you too can dance—given the right setting and the right invitation. Isn’t that so?”

  She turned her attention to the card again. “Having grown young in heart, you’re no longer afraid to take the weighing of these grave matters into your hands. You’ve seen that the light and darkness of conventional wisdom are not so far apart when mingled in the smoke and shadow of reality.… In the background, two ships on a storm-tossed sea are trying to reach shore, but, as you can see, the dancing man is unaware of them as yet. David Kennesey and his wife had already embarked on their separate journeys, but you didn’t know anything about them at this point in the story.”

  Skimming a few cards from the top of the deck, Howard thumbed past the Eight of Cups, the Three of Wands, and the Five of Wands to produce the Page of Swords.

  “Yes,” Andrea said. “This is what lay before you: a youth striding through the countryside. Though he holds his sword aloft, he’s unarmored, defenseless, and he gazes back over his shoulder rather wistfully, as if he rather regrets having left home.”

  “Tim,” he said.

  “Of course. Three different readings offered themselves,” she added with a smile, “but only one was correct. A lost child, perhaps even an orphan, Tim would need your protection. But it was his sword you would follow, even when it led you into circumstances you couldn’t begin to comprehend.”

  Howard threw the cards down on the outlay signaling that the reading was at an end.