The last light of day faded. Blackness rose from the valley on their right, and above them stars brightened in the darkening blue. When night was all around them they stopped. Without speaking they turned together and began walking back uphill, toward their home.
Libby spoke. “They’re planning to send me away,” she said. “In September.”
Nqong ached. She smelled beautiful.
“I won’t go,” she continued, and Nqong felt better. “I’ll run away.”
He ached. She smelled beautiful, and his heart raced.
“Talk to me, Nqong.”
He tried, but all he could say was, “Don’t go.”
The old hotel was dark when they returned. They stopped in front of the steps, and his body shivered.
“Are you cold?” she asked.
“No.” He could not catch his breath.
“Let’s go take a bath. Come on.” She took his hand and led him across the driveway and up the steps of the bathhouse. Inside, in the dark, they shed their clothes.
“I smell bad,” he confessed.
“You smell delicious.” She took his hand and they quietly slipped into the first bath.
He tried to relax. He quit trying to relax. He relaxed. He quit pretending. She touched him.
She said. “Mmm. Let me help you with that.”
———
Nqong’s childhood ended that spring. Libby taught him what their bodies were for, and together they explored the strong secret of ecstasy and orgasm. Warm in the bathhouse when nobody was near, they made the universe yip like a choir of happy dingos. They made love in the mountains, by the mud pool and in the water house. They made love in the carriage house and in abandoned rooms of the hotel. They turned the bathhouse into their pleasure palace. They fucked with the greedy speed of youth, then with the soft, long-lasting rhythm of wise, happy lovers. All night long, night after night, searching each other’s faces in the lamplight, full of new joy that couldn’t be stopped.
———
Until little Joley found them there on a Friday night in June. Caught them. Joley Hope, who had spent the afternoon tearing the yellow wings off beetles, his motherless whine echoing in the valley like a sour wind.
“I’m going to tell.”
“Joley,” Libby scolded, “what are you doing up at this hour? Go back to bed.”
“I’m going to tell.”
“Bugger off, Joley,” Libby told him. “And don’t you say a word, mind.”
But he did say a word, and more than a word, at dinner the following night, in front of them all: “Guess who I saw in the bathhouse, and guess what they were doing. Libby Pomeroy and the polliwog. Guess what they were doing! He had his….”
Joel Hope, Senior exploded and demanded a denial, but Libby defiantly confessed, which was fine for Libby perhaps, but it yanked the joy from Nqong’s heart and threw it out on the tablecloth for both Joel Hopes, Senior and Junior, to take turns stabbing it to death.
“Don’t you know what might have happened?” Senior shouted at the girl.
“I hope it has.”
“Well, we’ll take care of such matters right away, you can be sure of that.” Then he turned to the old man and said, “Professor Pomeroy, that settles it. You are an unfit father, and I won’t have it any longer. Libby is leaving with me tomorrow afternoon, and she’ll stay with me in Santa Barbara until I can make arrangements for her to be enrolled in an East Coast finishing school. It’s high time she became civilized.”
“I am civilized,” Libby said.
“Civilized does not mean keeping company with savages.” He turned to Nqong and said, “I’m going to have you deported.”
“No!” This from the old man, Bugs. “Nqong must stay here. No one else knows what to do!” He stuck the ends of his mustache into his mouth and began to chew furiously.
“You’re an absolute loon,” Joel Hope replied.
Nqong’s eyes met little Joley’s across the dinner table. The little blond child proffered a sweet, dangerous smile and lowered his eyelids. He slid his forefinger deep into his mouth and then withdrew it slowly, his lips caressing it as it came out, his tongue following it out his mouth and flickering like a snake’s.
———
“Nqong?” It was the middle of the night. Nqong sat up in his bed in the carriage house loft. A lamp was lit down in the parlor area. “Nqong, wake up.” It was Libby’s voice.
Nqong got out of bed and climbed down the ladder. When his feet found the floor, he turned around and was surprised to find both Livingston Pomeroys, father and daughter there, fully dressed. Nqong realized how naked he was and scampered back up the ladder to find a pair of shorts. He came back down the ladder and held Libby’s hand.
Suitcases.
Old Bugs was wandering about the laboratory, lighting lamps.
“Father, stop that,” Libby said. She said to Nqong, “We’re leaving. Tonight, Right now. Father and I. I’ve called for a taxi.”
“I’ll come with you,” Nqong said.
The old man shouted, “No!”
“Father, be quiet!”
Bugs Pomeroy strode over to Nqong and stared him in the eye. “You stay here, Nqong. You must take care of our beetles. You must. That is what you must do. You must take care of them, or it will be all over. Finish. Savvy?” The old man’s eyes were watery, his mustache quivering.
Libby said, “Father, keep your voice down.” She squeezed Nqong’s hand, then drew him into a frantic hug. “I’ll come back for you,” she told him. “As soon as I can. But right now I have to get away. Do you understand?”
An automobile growled on the driveway outside. Old Bugs shook Nqong by the shoulder, saying, “Take good care of them, boy.” Libby’s back was turned, her shoulders shaking. Nqong turned away from the both and climbed the ladder. He sat on his bed. The lamps went out. The door downstairs opened and then closed. The automobile purred away.
———
Joel Hope, Senior stormed into the carriage house in the morning and ordered Nqong down from the loft.
“They’re gone,” he said. “Fine. I never want to see them again. I had decided to give Hope Springs to her one day, but she can rot in hell. I never want to see her again. I’m taking my children and the cook and the maid, and I’m leaving this place. I never want to see this place again. I could have you arrested, you know. Thrown in jail. Thrown out. Thrown away. You’re trash. Look at you.”
Little Joley Junior came in the door and stood by his father’s side, holding his father’s hand, grinning.
Nqong finished buttoning his shirt.
“But I’m going to let you stay,” Mr. Hope said. “You’re going to live alone here and guard this place and keep it looking presentable until I sell it. I don’t know how long that will take, but you’d better do a good job. I have charge accounts in Tecolote with the grocer, the hardware store, and the garage. Do you know how to drive the truck?”
Nqong nodded.
“Okay. I’ll tell the local merchants that you can sign on my accounts. Do you know how to sign your name?”
Nqong nodded.
“They’ll send the bills to me, and they’ll also let me know if they think you’re cheating. You listening to me? The only reason I’m letting you stay on is because you know how to take care of the water. The water is the key to this place. Without the water, it’s worthless. So keep the water working well. If anything goes wrong with the water, you’ll be out on your black ass. Do you understand me?”
For the second time in only a few hours, Nqong had been asked to understand something that made no sense, first by someone he loved, and now by someone he hated. He understood nothing.
He nodded. To the Wanqong, a nod means “Wipe my arse.”
———
The last Nqong saw of the Hope family for seventeen years was little Joley’s sneer as the Packard pulled out: the child leaned from the window and grinned at Nqong, fluttered his eyelids, drew his forefinger out of
his mouth, and wiggled his tongue.
———
Nqong was alone. Really alone this time. With plenty to do: he had to figure out how to work the truck. He had to take care of the garden for his Auntie Clara, who was gone forever. He had to take care of the water for Joel Hope, Senior, who was gone for good. He had to safeguard the yellow bugs for the old man who had saved his life. Who was also gone. And he had to wait like a widowed great auk for his mate to return, knowing that she never would.
3. Yellow People
The years passed and Nqong became a man. For Auntie Clara, he maintained the buildings and the grounds and kept them painted and planted, clean and weeded. He hiked two miles up the trail into the forest every day to take care of business. For Mr. Hope, he adjusted the flow of the water daily, keeping the temperature of the baths constant throughout the year, even though nobody used the bathhouse anymore. Nqong had no use for the bathhouse. He preferred the pools in the forest: the hot sulfur pools, the cold clear pools, and the warm mud.
He gardened the high meadow and cleaned the shrine, and in the spring and summer he placed fresh-picked wildflowers in the fingers of the marble image of the lady who had called him her boyfriend.
Early every spring he nursed the beetles through their delicate larva stage and set them out into the world to grow their wings and turn the summer yellow, and early every fall he gathered their eggs from warm pools and put them to bed in jars of sulfur water for the winter.
He drove the truck to town once a month and bought what he needed, charged to Joel Hope’s accounts. He hardly ever spoke to anyone. He never heard from his employer.
Libby Pomeroy never returned to Hope Springs.
Nqong assumed old Livingston Pomeroy must have died.
The yellow beetles lived on, season after season. They were Nqong’s community.
———
In 1950 Joel Hope, Junior returned to Hope Springs. He was twenty-two years old, and full of the concept of ownership and stewardship. His father had recently died, leaving Hope Springs to the three children in a strange arrangement designed to keep the family from squabbling. Joel Hope, Junior would be in charge of the place for the next ten years. His weekend retreat.
Joley ordered Nqong off the land. Nqong, who had no citizenship, no passport, no friends, no money, no formal education, no possessions, no clothes, no white skin. “Not my problem,” Joley said. “You will be gone by the time I get here next Friday, or I’m calling the cops.”
“But the gardens.”
“I’ll hire gardeners,” Joley told him. “Professionals. People who know what they’re doing for a change.”
“What about the water?” Nqong asked.
“What about the water?” Joley answered.
“Who will care for the water? Keep it right?”
Joley laughed. “Horse shit,” he said. “Hocus pocus. Voodoo doodoo. That was my father’s hobby. I don’t give a shit if the temperature of the water goes up or down a few degrees. I’m not running a hotel here. Forget the water. I want you out. You understand me?”
Nqong nodded. Nodded vigorously.
Joley laughed at him, and Nqong nodded again.
———
Nqong disappeared up into the forest, taking with him the canvas cloths that had covered the library furniture. He lived at the source of the water, in the water house. He tended the waterworks and took care of the bugs, and he took care of the shrine and the statue of the woman who had treated him like a person. At first he missed his home in the valley, but that home now belonged to Joley, and he did not miss Joley, or any other person either. He was alone for good.
He stopped driving into town and learned to live on what the forest could provide.
He washed the canvas cloths over and over in the mineral pools and pounded them with stones until they became soft to the touch and yellow as a morning sun. He wrapped himself in yellow to sleep at night, and after his old clothes fell apart, he wore the yellow canvas as a wrap.
He piled stones on either side of the water house, which rested on a granite ledge, back against the side of the mountain, where the water left the earth. When he was done, the house was invisible from almost any angle. All but the front of Joel Hope’s water house had disappeared into the mountain, and to find the door one had to stand right in front of it, on a ledge that overlooked a sheer cliff.
It was dark in the building without windows, but Nqong didn’t need light. He knew the waterworks as well as he knew his own body.
———
In 1960 Joley turned over Hope Springs to the care of his sister Nellie. Nellie largely ignored the place. With no supervision, the gardeners let the weeds take over, the peafowl went wild into the woods, and the hotel lost its paint to the weather. Nqong didn’t care.
Another decade passed, and Nqong grew hairier and stronger and harder. He forgot the sound of human speech. He knew the taste of every bug, slug, and berry, every root and leaf. He cooked himself a rodent once or twice a week and used the drippings to oil the valves in the water house. He bathed daily and learned to stretch in thirty-six ways, and he did his stretches seven times a day. He remembered the stories of the Wanqong, but did not remember the words in any language.
One summer morning there was a knock on the door of the water house. Nqong opened the door gently, expecting to find a woodpecker looking for a handout.
There was a person standing on the ledge. A human person. A woman.
Nqong’s eyes were adjusted to the dark indoors, and the morning light was bright behind the woman, so he could not see her face clearly, but he could see that she was smiling. It was a face he knew.
She said, “I knew I’d find you.”
He answered, “I knew you’d come.” Words. Human, English.
For the first time in years, Nqong was conscious of being naked. He ducked back into the water house and wrapped a greasy yellow canvas rag about his waist, then stepped outside. His heart was pounding like a mallet.
The woman was leaning back against the front of the water house, gazing out over the valley. “It’s a long way down,” she observed. “I’ve never been up here before.”
He looked at her closely. No. She was not Libby Pomeroy. She just looked like Libby might have looked. Older than Libby used to look, but not as old as Libby would look now. She wore leather sandals and blue cotton trousers, a gaily patterned shirt, and a necklace of wooden beads. Her hair was long and straight. Her skin smelled of spices and her breath smelled like burned leaves. She turned to him and grinned, with a tentative twitch at the corners of her mouth.
Nqong’s heart settled down and his mind took over. He knew she was not there to harm him or to cast him out. He asked, “Who are you?”
The woman smiled. “I’m Karen Hope. I live in the valley.” She held out her right hand, and he took it in his left. She squeezed his fingers, and he squeezed back, gently. Her hand was as soft as a sparrow. “I’ve heard about you,” she said. “People say they’ve seen you. Some say you’ve lived up here in the mountains since the beginning of time. Is that true?”
“I don’t know,” Nqong answered. “When did time begin?”
“Wow,” she answered. “That’s a good one. Right. Listen, I live in the hotel now. With some friends. We’re a commune. We’re going to fix the old place up. We’d love to have you join us. You know. I mean for some herb tea sometime, or, you know, whatever. Since we’re neighbors, let’s be friends, right?”
She shrugged and Nqong smiled back. He said, “I would like to garden.”
“Oh, God,” she said. “The garden needs so much work.”
“Your mother loved to garden.”
“Wow,” she answered.
That evening, in the dining room of the old hotel, for the first time in more than twenty years, Nqong ate in the company of people. Karen Hope and her friends feasted by candlelight on brown rice, black beans, and curried tofu, and they toasted their woodland neighbor with red jug wine.
Nqong grinned and said, “You are good people. This is good food.” He could think of nothing else to say; he wasn’t shy, just out of practice. He gave his grin to the community members, one by one, repeating the names he had learned at the beginning of the meal:
Karen, of course. Beatrice, the big, round one. Emily, the dainty little flirt. Theresa, whose smile was half-frown. Arthur, the fat one with greasy fingers, who worked with machines. Nels, who wore a farmer’s hat to dinner. Larry, Herbert, and Will, in their paint-stained overalls. Herbert asked questions about the water, and how it was kept at a constant temperature, all year round. The little fellow, Baxter, who didn’t talk but darted nervous glares this way and that. Diana, the tall blonde with the biggest smile, the one who cooked the dinner.
After dishes were cleared away, Nqong remained at the table with Karen, drinking tea and listening to her remember the past and dream about the future. “When my father died in nineteen-fifty, he left Hope Springs to his three children: Joel, Nellie, and me. But he knew we couldn’t get along; we had never much liked each other. Joley’s a little shit, Nellie’s a glamorous Beverly Hills and Malibu playgirl, and me? I’d be the black sheep in any family. I happen to like myself, but I wouldn’t want me for a daughter or a sister. I was a beatnik in the fifties and a hippie in the sixties, and now here it is the seventies. I’m what? I’m forty years old, I’m still single, I’m mellow, I’m together. Together, that’s how I like to think of myself. I’m together with my community and with myself.
“Anyway, Father’s will stipulated that Joley would get Hope Springs for the first ten years, the fifties. Then the place would go to Nellie for ten years, the sixties. Then me. Here it is the seventies, and here I am. Me and my friends. We’re going to make something of this place. At least we’re going to fix it up. We’re not going to let it go to seed and fall apart, like Joley and Nellie did. They totally trashed this place. I’m going to make it beautiful again.”
“For what?” Nqong asked.
Hot Springs Eternal Page 4
