Summerland

by Michael Chabon

  "Hey," he said. "Hey, you kids."

  They turned around. Then the girl and the smaller of the two boys looked at the bigger one, and they joined hands, and ran up the driveway of Rodrigo Buendía's house. They ran—the word that came to the MSO's mind was scampered—straight through the garage door, which must, after all, have been open, even though the MSO felt certain, and indicated in his subsequent report, that at the time the children approached it, it had definitely seemed to be closed.

  THERE WERE TWO CARS IN THE GARAGE—A LARGE BMW SEDAN and a Land Rover, with space for two more—but it looked as if the house was abandoned. They ran through a series of large, high white rooms with bare wood floors and no furniture. Ethan could hear the crackle of the policeman's radio from outside the house, harsh and angry-sounding. His vague idea of their throwing themselves on the mercy of the great Buendía faded with the emptiness of the house; they were simple trespassers, now. They would be arrested, and imprisoned. But then they fell into the kitchen, a great expanse of white cabinetry and steel appliances, in the midst of which there lay a heap of empty yellow cans of black beans. The cans tumbled over the side of a steel counter and down onto the floor. They were crusted with black ooze and there was something almost vandalistic about the mess they made. The labels were in Spanish: FRIJOLES NEGROS. On the stove there was a huge black pot, like a cauldron in a witch's kitchen, and when Ethan looked inside it he saw clinging to its side a brownish skin, with here and there a pristine grain of rice.

  "He's here," he whispered.

  "I know he's here," Thor replied, in his ordinary voice. Was it Ethan's imagination, or was there a trace of TW03 flatness to his tone? "Otherwise I wouldn't have—"

  The doorbell rang, a long time, playing a series of churchy tones like a carillon. They froze, looking at each other. Then Jennifer T. crept over to a tall, narrow door by the refrigerator, and opened it. It was a broom closet, equipped with mops and dustpans. There was just enough room for one of them. Jennifer T. motioned for Ethan to climb in. He shook his head.

  "You," he whispered. "If they get us, at least you—"

  "They are not going to get us," said Thor. "We can just scamper out."

  The doorbell rang again. Then the policeman began to knock, firmly and loud, and for a long time, as if somehow he knew that his persistence would be rewarded. At last they heard, somewhere off in the far reaches of the house, the sound of a man's voice, deep and grumbling. Buendía. The floors resounded with a thunderous tread, a big man pounding down a flight of steps to the front door. He was talking, either to the policeman or to himself, in Spanish. Whatever he was saying, it did not sound particularly kind.

  "I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Buendía," the policeman began, but after that his voice fell, and they couldn't catch what he was saying, nor any of Rodrigo Buendía's muttered replies. It did not sound, however, as if he was particularly interested in what the policeman had to tell him. Ethan crept toward the kitchen door, so that he could hear better—they were in the house of Rodrigo Buendía! that voice, muttering and thick, was the voice of the great Buendía!—and as he did so, his foot kicked one of the cans of beans. He winced, and whipped around to find his friends scowling at him for the idiot he was. The voices by the door fell silent, and then there they were, the strange police officer in his tight black coverall, and Buendía, El Gran Oso, the Big Bear, tall, dark and shambling, with the tiniest white terry-cloth bathrobe yanked carelessly around him. His hair was all mashed on one side, and under the robe he wore only a pair of tight blue underpants and one sock. But he was glaring right at Ethan, over the top of the policeman's head, and he looked, almost in spite of himself, very much awake.

  Ethan knew that he had to say something, that instant, and that what he said had to be a kind of grammer, a series of words that were the right words, the only words, to dissolve the bonds of the ordinary world that were about to be tied tightly around them.

  "Chiron Brown sent us," he said, ignoring the policeman entirely, aiming his desperate little grammer directly at the ears, at the big, strong, heroical heart of Rodrigo Buendía.

  Buendía, however, seemed not to have heard the magic words. He blinked once, slowly, and then pursed his lips, and looked down at the policeman.

  "Get them out of here," he said.

  THE POLICEMAN, OR MSO, AS THEY HEARD HIM REFER TO HIMSELF in his communications with Central Unit, put them into the back of his patrol car and drove them downtown. Ethan looked over at Thor, every so often, but Thor just shook his head. At the Municipal Security building, a kind of Lego fortress in a sun-splashed plaza with a fountain, they gave their names to a pleasant woman wearing a headset telephone. Then their MSO led them into a small room, silent, carpeted, furnished with toys that were much too young for them. There were mirrors on the walls that Ethan suspected must be one-way. No doubt the whole place was bugged. They sat down in three chairs of molded black plastic, side by side. They kicked their feet. A clock on the wall hummed, and occasionally clicked as its minute hand lurched forward. Ethan looked at his watch. It was the Top of the Eighth Inning. Ordinarily he would have informed his friends of this terrible fact, but they were already upset enough.

  "'Chiron Brown sent us,'" Jennifer T. said, shaking her head. "Way to go, Feld."

  "Well, he did," Ethan said. "I thought he knew Buendía. It sounded like he did."

  "He's from Cuba," Jennifer T. said. "How could Mr. Brown have scouted him there?"

  "Chiron Brown's territory is very big," Thor said flatly. "And I think he's known them all."

  Ethan looked over at him, on the other side of Jennifer T., staring down at a red plastic fire truck on the ground.

  "Can I ask you a question?" Ethan said. "Who are you, right now, Thor?"

  Thor looked thoughtful. He seemed to know just what Ethan had meant by his question: Was he still Thor, the ferisher changeling with the blood and body of a reuben, or had he somehow reverted, now, to TW03, the boy who believed himself to be an android who was trying desperately to be a boy?

  "I may never know the answer to that question," he said at last. He looked pretty sad as he said it, and for a second—just for a second—Ethan thought he might be about to cry.

  "Let me ask you another question," Jennifer T. said gently. "Can you get us out of here?"

  "Sure," Thor said. "I couldn't do it the car because—well, it's hard to explain. I could scamper with a moving car, but not out of one. It has to do with momentum, I think." He knelt down beside the fire truck and pushed it with one hand. "See, we'd be moving this way, but I would be trying to scamper us away from the car." He grabbed one of the plastic fire fighters and pulled it to one side. "But our bodies would still be going forward, because of the car." He tossed the little firefighter over his shoulder and it smacked against a wall. "I wouldn't be able to control our momentum. And I really didn't think we wanted that police guy scampering with us."

  He stood up, and walked over to one corner of the room. He took a deep breath. Ethan went over and turned out the lights, in case anyone was watching from the other side of the mirrored glass.

  "Okay, then," he said. "Back to Old Cat Landing. We'll have to tell them—"

  "No," Jennifer T. said. "Not to Old Cat Landing. Back to Burger Village or whatever it was called."

  "But he—"

  "I don't care what he said, Feld," said Jennifer T. "I'm not going back without him."

  And that, as was always the case when Jennifer T. had made up her mind, put an end to the discussion.

  THEY FOUND HIM IN BED, STILL WEARING ONLY BLUE SKIVVIES AND a sock, snoring with all the ferocity that his nickname would have led you to expect. He was on his back, one arm cradled under his head, the other fallen over the side of the mattress and clutching the extinct remains of a fat cigar. The room stank of cigar, and cold beans, and unwashed large ballplayer. They knew from their search of the house that this was the only one of its seventeen rooms, aside from the kitchen, that showed signs of hum
an habitation. In addition to the bed there was a nightstand, a dresser topped with scattered coins and unwrapped cigars, and an enormous television with a flat screen. The television was tuned to the Fauna Channel, with the sound off. On the screen a big-eyed little furry creature with dexterous paws helped himself to a nice sticky pawful of tree gum.

  "A bushbaby," Ethan said, and suddenly the memory of his lost father, steering their car along the Clam Island Highway, was like a cold, heavy stone in the pit of his stomach. What was going on, there in the world that Padfoot's dark glasses could no longer show him? What if something terrible had happened? What if his father was dead?

  Buendía snuffled, and coughed, and then sprang up to a sitting position. He stared at them, eyes wide and uncomprehending, then at the digital clock on his nightstand—it was 3:12 in the afternoon—then back at the children. Recollection flooded his expression, and he fell backward on the bed, and groaned.

  "I should know this will be happen," he said. And then he let off a string of Spanish curses, which I could transcribe but had better simply characterize as foul and imaginative. They ended, unmistakably, with the words "Chiron Brown," which Buendía pronounced "keeROAN BRON."

  "You do know him," Jennifer T. said.

  "Yes, I know that man. Since I was smaller than you." He sounded disgusted, Ethan thought, as if he wanted them to know that he was fed up, for some reason, with Ringfinger Brown. But looking around at the smelly, empty house, at the squalor in which he lived, it was hard for Ethan not to think that maybe Buendía was just disgusted with himself. He was having, Ethan knew, a terrible year. This was his second season with the Angels. He had played almost all of his career since his defection to the United States in the National League, first for the Phillies, and then for the Mets. He had played center field, and then as his legs gave out and the surgeries mounted he switched to right; but since coming to the American League he had played nothing but designated hitter, never taking the field, spending the whole game on the bench until his turn to bat came around. Sometimes an aging player can flourish as the DH, smacking home runs at a decent clip and stretching his career by a couple of years. But hitting, though he did it magnificently, had always been only one part of Rodrigo Buendía's game. As a younger player he had been one of the top outfielders in the game, covering vast distances, making legendary catches, throwing out runners at home plate from deep in the outfield grass. He had not been moved to the DH position, so much as reduced to it.

  Ethan knew a lot about Rodrigo Buendía, who was one of Mr. Feld's favorite players. He knew that Buendía had escaped from Cuba on a small boat, and that during the journey to Florida he had supposedly saved the lives of three people. He knew that Buendía was the first player to win the Triple Crown in batting—highest average, most home runs, and most runs batted in—since Mr. Feld himself had been a boy. He knew, from having watched a Barbara Walters TV special about Buendía, that Rodrigo Buendía had a pretty blond wife, and a daughter, a girl whose name, he suddenly recalled, was Jennifer. And he knew that at some point in the past couple of years it had been in the newspapers and on TV that Buendía had, as it turned out, not saved anybody during the crossing from Cuba. Not that he'd let them drown. Just that there weren't any such people at all.

  "Where is everyone?" Ethan said. "Where's Jennifer?"

  Buendía had thrown an arm over his face.

  "Gone. Gone, gone, they all gone. Lawyers. Psychologists. Judges." One of his big hands strayed down to his knee. It was notched and seamed with an impressively hideous array of scars. "Now that damn scout Bron. I told him already two time. Buendía's already enough a hero. So I din't save no two womens and a baby from the Gulf of the Mexico. I got the Triple Crown. I got lifetime three hundred ninety-six home runs. Career average three-fifteen. That pretty good, I think. Ought to get that damn BRON off my ass. Because, I tell you what, Buendía goes out someplace, the peoples coming up to him, everybody say, Rodrigo, you my hero"

  He sat up now, and with a glance at Jennifer T. tugged the bed-clothes up over himself. He looked at the cigar butt in his hand and brought it to his lips, drawing on it as if some spark remained. Then he set it down on the corner of his night table.

  "Now, Buendía, he done being a hero. Buendía came to this country with something big inside him, something Mr. Keeroan BRON maybe was the only person to notice it, back in the day, give him credit for that. But now, look at Buendía. Look at him, dude. In this all-white house. With all these white people all around him. In this white country." He pointed toward the long blue ribbon of bedroom windows. From atop the pile of white houses that had once been a desert hill, alive with lizards, there was a view of all Rancho Encantado, and below it, separated by electric fence and by powerful grammers of wealth and privilege invisible to the human eye, the endless grayish-white grid of Greater Anaheim. You could see the false mountains of Disneyland, and beyond them another mountain of glass, and beyond all that still, the shining white band of the sea. And you could see the stadium where the Angels played, with its scaffolding of lights. "Buendía is tired, dude. That something big inside is all little now. My wife, my daughter, they knew it. They saw it. They saw it because—" Here his voice cracked, and his big, sweet-natured face crumpled. "Because, I showed them."

  And he covered his face with his big brown hands.

  "Mr. Buendía," Ethan said. "If you come with us, I promise you, you won't be so tired anymore. I think it would be really good for you, don't you guys?"

  "Definitely," Jennifer T. said. "Rejuvenating."

  Buendía peered out from behind his hands. "Where is it?" he said, and his voice sounded pitifully small.

  "I think you may have been there before," Thor said. "A long, long time ago."

  Buendía stared at him. His expression was pretty close to the usual expression that Thor Wignutt's behavior elicited from adults.

  "I been there," he said. "A long—" He closed his mouth, and afterward they agreed they had all seen the memory seep into his face. "Huh," he said, and for another moment his thoughts wandered again into the light and shade of the Summerlands. Then he picked up his cigar butt again. He studied it for a moment, then looked up, sharply, at Jennifer T. "What's your name, girl?"

  Jennifer T. hesitated a moment, glancing at Ethan. Then she answered. Ethan could see how much it cost her to say the word.

  "Jennifer," she said, snipping it off before the T. with a visible wince. Then, to make sure the point was not lost, she added, "Just like your daughter."

  "Yeah? That true?" He nodded, and rubbed at the back of his head. "Okay, Jennifer, hija, run get me one of those cigars from the dresser there."

  "No way," she said. "First of all, they give you oral cancer. Second of all, they give you lung cancer. Third of all, they stink. Maybe if you didn't smoke so many cigars, you wouldn't be all old and sad and broken down."

  Ethan thought she had pushed it a little bit too far with that last remark, but to his surprise, Buendía smiled.

  "Maybe not," he said. "But I can tell you right now, no way is Buendía going into that crazy place with you without no damn cigar."

  RINGFINGER BROWN WAS WAITING FOR THEM, ON THE BALL FIELD on the bluffs above Old Cat Landing, when Rodrigo Buendía returned to the Summerlands for the first time since he was seven years old. As so many children who carry a deep grief into a lonely place seem to stray into the galls and magic places of the Worlds, on that day thirty years before he had left the little house in the Zapata Marshes outside the town of Trinidad, running from the news that his abuela, who had raised him, was dead. That was the day, perhaps, that he had first come to the attention of Chiron Brown, who haunted the places where the branches of the Tree were pleached together, looking for hot prospects in the joyous and heartbreaking Game of Worlds. On this day of his return, at the age of thirty-seven, divorced, alone, broke-kneed and stuck playing DH in the bottom of the American League West, only Rodrigo Buendía knew all the things that he was running from. Or per
haps it was only one big thing: the burden and pain of being Buendía, the Great Bear, El Gran Oso. He stepped into the green field on the bluff, carrying a bag with a change of clothes, two bats, a mitt, and a box of El Rey del Mundo cigars. When he saw Chiron Brown, in a plain white suit, with a white Panama hat, standing on the edge of the grass along the third-base line, he stopped, and dropped his duffel. He walked, half stumbling, over to the ancient man. They shook hands. Then Buendía sank to his broken old knees in the grass.

  "Lo siento," he said.

  "What you sorry for, bear cub?"

  "I'm sorry I didn't turn out the way you wanted. I know you had more in mind for me than just being a ballplayer. I'm sorry I didn't save nobody's life."

  "Shoot, Rodrigo," Ringfinger said, and with one hand, without seeming to strain at all, he dragged the big man to his feet. "It don't matter. Some peoples, they just gets off to a late start."

  CHAPTER 21

  Jennifer T. and the Wormhole

  SO FAR ALL THE GAMES PLAYED by the Shadowtails had been more or less private affairs. Though accounts and box scores were duly filed, in time, with Professor Alkabetz and his crack team of baseball gnomes at the Society for Universal Baseball Research, they were played under no official auspices or sponsorship. They were wildcat games, unscheduled and largely unwitnessed.

  But the night before the game between the Big Liars of Old Cat Landing and Big Chief Cinquefoil's Traveling Shadowtails All-Star Baseball Club, they came down from the hills. They came from all over the Far Territories of the Summerlands, inuquillits from the snow country, ferishers from the riverbottom mud hills. There were waterknockers, whole families of them, poling into town on their waterlily rafts. Wereotters lolled about the riverdocks, drinking shocking quantities of beer and then getting into quarrels with the stolid werebeavers. The beavermen were teetotalers, for the most part, and between the two families of riverine werebeasts there was certainly no love lost.