Terri Windling

by Borderland

  He sat facing Scooter from one of the tables in the middle of the room. He was perched on the edge of his chair as though ready to bolt at any moment. His back was board straight and did not touch the back of the chair. His hands, clasped on the table before him, were gnarled, large-veined, liver-spotted, bony-knuckled. The fingers were long, with long, ragged nails with crescents of dirt under the cuticles.

  His skin was white as milk.

  His hair was long as Scooter’s and looked coarse. It was the color of brushed aluminum. It covered his ears, but Scooter knew what they would look like if he could see them.

  His eyes, staring unwaveringly at Scooter, were the eyes of a coyote caught in the beam of headlights.

  His face . . .

  He was incredibly old.

  He leaned to whisper something to his companion, and so raptly had Scooter’s attention been held on him that it was only now that Scooter realized the old . . . man . . . had a companion.

  Scooter had been holding his breath. He released it.

  The companion was human, broad-shouldered, redfaced, with big hands but stubby fingers, curly brown hair inexpertly cut short. He whispered something back, glanced at Scooter, added something, then looked up suddenly at a tap on his shoulder.

  “How’d you get in here?” Tommy Lee asked him. “You and your friend, you—”

  Scooter leaned into the mike. “It’s okay, Tommy—I, uh, I invited ’em,” he said, thinking: Now, why did I say that?

  The companion eyed him and nodded slowly.

  The old . . . man . . . still stared at him; he hadn’t even glanced at Tommy Lee.

  Tommy Lee frowned at Scooter. “You sure . . . ?” he began, then shrugged. “Your party, Scooter,” he said, and went back to the door.

  Everyone was watching him.

  The companion slipped the knife no one had seen appear in his hand back into the sleeve of his air-force flight jacket.

  Scooter regarded them another moment, then looked down and eased the tension somewhat by launching into a mournful ode to the banana split, now gone the way of the dodo.

  When it was over he announced a beer break, not because he was thirsty but because their staring unnerved him—his hands were sweating and he’d missed a couple of notes on the last number.

  He was sure they were here for him.

  When he set the Martin on the stand beside the stool and stepped off the stage, the companion said, “Tony Frazier?”

  Scooter didn’t look at him.

  “Tony Frazier?” he said again. His accent was hard— Alabama granite or Carolina mountain, Scooter couldn’t decide which.

  Someone stage-whispered from a nearby table: “Hey, his name’s Scooter, man.”

  So the companion tried again: “Scooter?” He said the name dubiously.

  Scooter stopped and turned slowly to look at the big man, acutely conscious of the lupine stare of the other, of the eyes of his audience watching them.

  “That’s me,” he said.

  “My friend here’d like a word with you,” said the man. He held his lips tight and drawn in as he spoke, as if to prevent dentures from falling out of his mouth.

  Scooter hesitated.

  The man pointed a short, thick index finger at a chair. “Siddown. He won’t bite. An’ I won’t ’less I have to.” He sounded completely serious.

  Scooter went to the table, pulled out the chair, and sat down. “What do you want?” he asked.

  The man hooked a thumb at his friend. “His name’s Aune’wah.”

  The pale, ancient head bowed at the mention of his name.

  “He don’t speak English,” the man continued, “so I translate. I’m Grim.”

  You sure as shit are, thought Scooter. But he said nothing.

  “What does”—Scooter fumbled over the name—“ Ah-oo-nuh—”

  “Aune’wah.”

  “What does he want with me?”

  Grim leaned forward. Both elbows went onto the table, right hand resting along the edge, left hand accentuating as he talked.

  Blue eyes were tattoed on the large knuckles of his gesturing hand.

  “Aune’wah has a kid,” began Grim, and Scooter tried not to wince as he got a whiff of his breath. “A boy who hangs out on this side of the hill. The kid, he’s up on Monaghie the other day with one of his buddies, and he hears someone playin’ the guitar. Only, this fellah ain’t just playing, he’s making pictures in the air.” Grim unsnapped a sleeve cuff and reached in. Blue eyes flexed on his knuckles as he scratched his inner arm. He removed his hand from the sleeve and snapped it shut again. His gaze drifted past Scooter and something ugly formed in his pale blue eyes.

  Scooter turned to see Tammi standing behind him. “Nice set tonight, Scooter,” she said. “You want a beer?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.” And he wondered if the thanks had been for the compliment or for the offered beer.

  “You?” she asked Grim.

  His refusal was little more than a grunt.

  “How about—”

  “He don’t want nothing to drink either,” interrupted Grim. There was a happy violence in his eyes that made Scooter wish Tommy Lee was nearer.

  Tammi frowned at him. “I’ll get your beer, Scooter,” she said, and left.

  “Where was I?” asked Grim, watching her go.

  “This guy’s music was making pictures in the air.”

  Grim’s gaze followed her. Scooter looked down at the table and was fascinated by the man’s deeply ridged right thumb rubbing slow circles across blue-eyed knuckles. The larger knuckle wrinkled, winked briefly, folded, stretched, wrinkled again.

  He looked up from the hand to see Grim watching him stare.

  “Go on,” said Scooter, wondering if the sudden surge of his pulse showed in his voice.

  Grim stopped rubbing and leaned forward. His hands clasped; blue eyes peered out from a cage of fingers. “The kid, next time he’s home, he tells his old man about it. Aune’wah says he never heard of no human being who could make pictures in the air. His folk, yeah, and there ain’t even a lot of them who’ll do it. So he sent me looking for the guy who does it.” Grim splayed his interlaced fingers, a kind of shrug. “You were pretty easy to find.”

  Scooter returned the shrug. “I’m not hiding from anything,” he said.

  Grim said something to the old man in a language that seemed to be mostly vowel sounds, with a few Ls and Ns. The old man laughed—it was too high-pitched and melodious to be called a cackle—and said something back. His voice was much more pleasant than Grim’s.

  “What did he say?” asked Scooter.

  “I told him what you said, about not hiding from anything. He thought it was funny.”

  Scooter caught himself playing with his hair in a habit similar to Roxanne’s. He stopped. “What’s that supposed to—look, I got songs to play here. Why don’t you just tell me what you want.”

  Grim said something to the old man. The old man leaned forward. He narrowed his eyes and pointed a very long index finger at Scooter’s face. He began speaking.

  “He says he’s heard Aarka’an—that’s his boy—and now he’s heard you.”

  “I still don’t—” began Scooter.

  “Shut up,” said Grim. “He says you have a gift. You . . His hands separated, one going to his chin as he sought a word. “He says there’s something in your music that’s yours and only yours. He wants to know if you can do the same thing here.”

  “Here?”

  Grim folded a non-eyed index finger toward his large palm, set a thumb on top of it, and pressed. It popped loudly. “In the valley,” he said, looking at his hands.

  Tammi set a beer in front of Scooter, startling him. She walked away before he could thank her, and Scooter looked back at the strange pair sitting before him. “Answer him,” said Grim.

  “No,” said Scooter, wondering why he didn’t tell them it was none of their business, then realizing that it was because Grim scared the h
ell out of him. “No, it doesn’t work here. Only on Monaghie.”

  Grim translated Scooter’s answer. The old man nodded and said something else.

  “You ever play your guitar past there?” Grim asked. He pronounced it git-tar.

  “Are you crazy? Hell, no.” Scooter sipped from his mug. Light beer—blecch.

  The old man nodded while Grim translated, then looked thoughtful for a moment.

  “You know,” said Scooter to Grim, “it’s probably not very smart for him to come here. I mean, people don’t—”

  “He knows,” said Grim. “But he heard about something he wouldn’t believe till he saw it.

  The old man spoke again. He looked at Scooter as he spoke, not at Grim, and Scooter felt he was being scrutinized for his reactions. He tried to keep his face impassive as Grim began translating. “He says that where he’s from there’s some who do the same thing you can do. There ain’t many, and he thinks they’re either crazy, or brave, or stupid, and maybe all three. Over there, when you make music, sometimes you make something else. It’s real simple in his language, but it don’t translate well. That’s the best I can put it.”

  The old man spoke again.

  “Things are hard to control in the Borderlands,” translated Grim, “and what you’re doing is wrong. He wants to know why you don’t just stay down here to play.”

  Scooter sipped beer again, set down the mug. “I don’t know,” he said, wiping his hand dry against his denimed thigh. “I don’t know why I like to play there so much. I don’t know why I should tell you, either.”

  Grim sat back. “You’ll tell me,” he said, “because he wants to know.” He glanced at the old man. When he looked back at Scooter, the expression of quiet violence with which he had regarded Tammi had returned. “And because if you don’t, I’ll cut your guts out right here.”

  Scooter nearly laughed. People didn’t really say shit like that? But Grim had, and what kept the laugh from emerging was his certainty that not only did Grim mean it, he had done the same thing before—he liked it. He wanted Scooter to tell them to mind their own fucking business.

  He thought of the knife he wore at his back, on his belt, and knew that he would never reach it in time. “All right,” he said. “It scares me sometimes, yeah.” He stopped as Grim translated, then continued when the man finished. “But it’s like . . . like what I see there, what I make up there, is the way it looks inside me, the way I picture my music in my head. I can’t really explain it; I just like to go up there and play. Anyone who’s seen it likes it.” He sipped beer. “Why’s it wrong?”

  Grim asked the question for him, listened to the reply, and turned again to Scooter. “He won’t tell you,” he said. “You do it up there, but you don’t know how you do it, and telling you would just make it worse. He—”

  Suddenly the old man rose from his chair as if he weighed almost nothing. A long index finger made a cutting motion across his chest as he spoke in what Scooter thought was an angry tone, then curled with the other fingers into a ragged-taloned claw.

  “He came to tell you,” said Grim, “that what you make belongs to you.”

  Scooter stared from one to the other of them. The old man stared back, wrinkled white lids blinking over silver-cataracted eyes, curiously birdlike. Scooter waited for the man to say more or for Grim to translate further, but neither did.

  “That’s it?” asked Scooter. “That’s what he came across the Borderlands to tell me?”

  Grim smiled. His teeth blackened near the gums, a few of them rotted in small hollows. “Guess so.” Scooter frowned. He didn’t get it. The Borderlands,

  those hills, this city, they were dangerous. Especially to an old man, human or not. This—Aune’wah—had come through that to tell him something he might have read in a fortune cookie?

  Prease to excuse, lound ears, he thought, but what you make berong to you.

  It didn’t figure.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “I mean, there must be more than that. I mean, maybe you didn’t translate it right, or there’s more, or something. Is he bugged because it belongs to me? Does he think it ought to be his? Or he wants to hire me, is that it? To show me off to his—” “Don’t mock him, boy.” Eyed hand moved almost imperceptibly toward right sleeve.

  “I’m not mocking him, man; I’m just trying to understand. It don’t make sense to me.”

  “He thinks it’s important. Maybe he thinks you ought to think so too.”

  Scooter shook his head in confusion. He picked up his beer again, drained it, thunked the empty mug back onto the table, and watched whitewash slip toward the bottom. “Well, look,” he said, pushing back his chair and standing, “you tell him thanks, all right? Tell him I’ll remember what he said, and that . . . that I’m flattered he came all this way to ... to share his wisdom. Tell him that, okay?”

  Grim looked Scooter up and down, and for a moment Scooter thought the man was going to go for him. His fist clenched on the handle of his mug in anticipation, readying to swing it on him if need be, but Grim only finished his cold appraisal and looked up at the old man. He gestured toward Scooter and began translating.

  The old man looked at Scooter while Grim spoke. When Grim was done, the old man shook his head and laughed softly. He came around the table to Scooter and stood close to him, looking into his eyes. He was Scooter’s height, and Scooter was no midget. After a moment the old man raised a hand and set it against Scooter’s cheek. The hand was rough and callused and smelled of resin. He spoke briefly, then dropped his hand and turned away. Everyone watched him walk to the front door, but no one interfered and he stepped out into the night.

  Scooter watched him go, then glanced at Grim. “What did he say?”

  Grim looked away from the tall wooden doors. He shook his head and stared evenly into Scooter’s eyes. “It’s a saying they have. ‘Old enough to light a fire, young enough to get burned doing it.’ It’s his way of saying he thinks you’re a goddamn idiot.”

  He bicycled home after The Factory closed, his guitar case strapped to the bike’s sissy bar. He stayed close to the double yellow line—dim in the moonlight, but still visible—and thought about the strange encounter.

  What you make belongs to you. Wow, hey. I got it. Thanks for sharing that.

  He watched the shadows of figures as they ran across the moon-washed front of the old Sav-on supermarket. They slipped around the corner and disappeared into an alley.

  At Van Alden he automatically swerved to avoid the Mercedes stopped in the midst of turning off of Derrida. The chocolate-brown car was nearly invisible in the darkness, but he could have piloted around it—and the cars by the meters lining both curbs, the semi caught in the midst of pulling out of the Ralph’s grocery store entrance, the huge spray of broken glass in front of the

  Fidelity Bank, the dumpster wheeled into the road near Cafe Rive Gauche—in his sleep.

  Scene of the Crime was dark and quiet; he wheeled once around the arcade of stores before pulling in around back. Those black curtains were sure a good idea, he thought, swinging off the bike to balance on one pedal; they keep the light from—

  He braked suddenly; the front tire skidded on gravel.

  The burglar bars at the back door were open.

  They never left those bars open.

  Especially not at night.

  Heart quickening, Scooter got off the bike and lowered it to the parking lot. He pulled the knife from its sheath at his belt, the black knife that would not gleam in the darkness. He went to one wall and crept toward the door to examine the grillwork. The Kryptonite lock, unlocked, hung through the hole in the frame. The black iron bars stood open; the door was closed.

  Scooter tried the knob. It shouldn’t have, but it turned.

  Quickly he opened the door inward, slipped inside, shut it softly, and crouched.

  No lights burned.

  He moved away from the door to one wall, still crouched, and waited for his eyes to adjust.r />
  He straightened.

  After a whole, long minute, it was still nearly impossible to see.

  Knife in right hand, Scooter walked with left extended. The carpeting muffled the tread of his basketball shoes. He checked Roxanne’s workroom. The hand press was missing.

  For a moment he looked at the space on the low table where it had been, then he continued looking around.

  The old bathroom: the loaf of Mrs. Hernandez’s bread stood alone on the rack. A box of Kotex tampons that had been on a lower shelf was gone.

  The bedroom/book room: the furniture was undisturbed. The bed was made.

  The studio/tearoom: nothing he could see. The guitars and amps were still there.

  The kitchen was undisturbed.

  Back in the workroom he lit a lamp with a Lucifer match, carried it in one hand with his knife still clutched in the other. He had half expected to find the place looted. It was not, but things were still not right.

  The safe stood open in the studio. Roxanne’s trade goods—her pills, syringes, needles, tampons, everything—were gone.

  The gun was missing.

  Scooter’s clothes were still in the top three dresser drawers in the book room.

  In the bottom three, about half of Roxanne’s clothes were cleared out.

  Back in the workroom, half the matches had been taken. The boxes of paper were still there. The missing hand press had been a cumbersome, heavy thing.

  Scooter stared at the steady flame behind the clear chimney of the hurricane lamp.

  She left—she went, she’s gone, she moved out, she left me!

  No! She would have left a note; Roxanne would have left a note!

  He looked around wildly. The circle of his lamp’s light did not reach very far, and he could not tell whether a note was pinned to one of the walls. He rushed to the shelves and held up the lamp. The magnetic banana adhered to the metal, nothing held beneath it.

  The bed? He went into the bedroom. The comforter was pulled up and tucked at the pillows; the television pillow sat on top of it, leaning against the wall. No note, no piece of paper on the sheet. He lifted the television pillow. Nothing there.

  The safe?

  No.

  He looked all over their home—all over the Scene of the Crime—and found many traces of her presence, evidence that she lived (had lived?) here; here a smiling crescent-moon earring, here a pair of socks far too small to be his, here a large conch shell from Key West, souvenir from a trip taken long ago. He stared at its flesh-colored opening for what felt like a long time, then put it back on the dresser.