Уолтер Мосли - Blue Light

“She was almost dead, you know. You wouldn’t have gotten her down to the cities in time.” With that, the little madman lay next to Addy and fell into a deep slumber.

I moved next to Alacrity’s mother. The wound looked the same, only dimmer. The blood red was now brick red. The white center had turned gray. Addy opened her eyes for a moment and looked up. She smiled and said, “Where’s Julia?”

“I’m here, Mommy,” Alacrity said just as if she were still a small child.

Adelaide smiled and then fell back into unconsciousness.

Juan Thrombone snored loudly.

He slept like that, next to our campfire, burning or dead, for the next two days. Addy was up the next morning and, though weak, was well on the way back to health.

I wanted to leave, but Alacrity and Wanita said that it would be bad manners to leave Mr. Thrombone sleeping after he had saved Addy’s life. Reggie said that he had no intention of leaving the woods anyway, because it was the safest place he could imagine.

“It’s the only place that’s safe from Death right now,” Reggie said. “Anywhere else is like being out in the open where he could see us if he looked hard enough. But there’s cover here. That’s why I was lost, because Juan made it impossible for us to see or hear or feel.”

So we stayed in the deep woods that Juan Thrombone had called Treaty. And as each hour passed, I was more and more lost to the place.

The forest seemed to generate heat. It was cold enough to have to build a fire at night but not too cold. More than enough light filtered down through the leaves. The space was like a great cathedral, a place to worship and give thanks for.

I worried, though, because I didn’t know how we could survive up there.

“Mr. Thrombone live up here okay,” Wanita said.

“But he’s crazy,” I answered.

“Maybe he could show us how to be crazy like him.”

Two days later Juan Thrombone awoke from his deep slumber. He rose and stretched, yawning loudly. The girls were out exploring while I tended the fire and watched over Addy. She was still tired, and I feared, in spite of Thrombone’s treatments, that she might relapse into fever.

Reggie was behind Number Seven, masturbating. He’d grown from his early teens into manhood in less than a week. This brought on certain hormonal tensions. He went behind Number Seven nine times, and maybe more, a day to slake their pressures.

I realized what was happening when I saw that Alacrity spent much of her time climbing high into Numbers Five and Six to look down behind Seven. When I asked her what she’d been looking at, she replied, “Reggie’s trying to go to the bathroom but he can’t.”

“It’s a good morning, Last Chance,” Juan Thrombone said. He looked at Addy and added, “First Light.”

“So you’re back among the living,” I said, using exactly the words and the tones of my uncle Oscar, the only black relative I knew coming up.

“Never left you, friend. How do you like it here among your brothers, the trees?”

“It’s okay, I guess,” I said. “But how did you find this place?”

“It was waiting for me just like it was waiting for you. There’s a place for everything, you know.” He brought his hands together in front of his face as if in prayer and rose. “I have to go tend to my forest, friends. I’ll bring you some supper when I get back.”

He moved gaily into the woods across from Number Twelve and was gone.

“He’s funny,” Addy said.

“I don’t trust him.”

“He’s okay. He did save my life.”

“Maybe he did. I don’t know, Addy. I don’t know.” It was the first time we were alone, really alone and talking, in days.

“What’s wrong, Chance?”

“Nothing,” I said, actually saying much more.

Addy nodded and smiled. She reached out her hand and I moved closer to hold it. The fire threw out a brilliant heat, but there was still foggy condensation from our breath. I don’t know that I felt better then, maybe just reconciled to my fate and happy that I didn’t have to face it alone at that moment.

Reggie was coming back from behind Number Seven. I could hear the girls laughing not far away in the woods.

The golden and yellow light from the cover of leaves winked and glittered. I left myself open to the half-told tales of where they came from and where they hoped to be. Each sparkle of light entered my mind, humming a forgotten tune that my heart tried to beat for. A dance took off within me. I was swirling to the fragmentary music of light. I was soaring and stationary like the giant pillars of my new home. I was decaying and dying but still full of life. I was decomposing the lies I had always believed defined me and my skin.

The children came back around the fire to eat and talk to us. Every now and then Reggie would wander off to Number Seven. I may have heard them. I might have even said a few words now and then. But mostly my mind was in the trees, in the light in the trees, swirling and capering to melodies older than life down here. Ordé’s blood moving in mine was a refuge from all the vacant fear that had gathered in my gut, clouded in my skull cavity.

I was dizzy with meaning that I did not understand. I tried to be brave in the face of immensity that dwarfed even my wildest dreams of expanse.

I fell asleep after an hour, maybe less. I was unconscious but aware of the scent of earth and decaying foliage. I listened contentedly to the girls playing and Addy cooing to them. It was a sleep with no dreams, as refreshing and as clear as water from a cold spring after a long long walk in July.

The visions of light had started to subside. I woke up thirsty just as the sun was throwing her last rays on the ground around my body.

“So you’re back among the living,” my uncle Oscar said.

When I looked, I saw that it was Juan Thrombone mimicking my words to him.

“It’s just in time too.” The little man giggled.

The fire had been expanded to three different units, each separated by and surrounded with similar-sized oblong stones. Over each fire was a pan or a pot. There were trout simmering and mushrooms and some kind of forest green too. Everyone was sitting around the fire. The flames seemed to echo the visions of my afternoon nap.

“Time to eat,” Juan said simply. “Eat first and then to tell stories, I think. Stories are good when you live out with the trees and bears and butterflies. Here, sleepy,” he said to me. “Have some sap and water.”

He handed me a carved wooden mug that was tall and thin. Instead of a handle, it had a leafy branch sticking out from one side. The mug was filled with water that smelled of sweet sap. There were bits of branches and leaves floating about in the drink. I tasted it and then couldn’t pull the cup away from my lips. It was the best-tasting water I had ever had. It was water and also the dream of water in a thirsty man’s desert.

The fish were from a nearby stream. The mushrooms were hacked from the sides of trees with homemade wooden knives, and the greens were small leafy plants that grew in the clearing between the forest and our cathedral of trees. Everything was delicious. I felt satisfied from the back of my mind down into my toes.

When the dinner was over, Thrombone came out with honey wine for the grown-ups and honeyed water for the girls. Reggie drank his wine too quickly and got drunk. He pulled himself up and declared that he was going out to find a drum.

“Now is the time for stories, my friends,” Juan Thrombone said in a singsong voice. “Telling the tales keeps them from sneaking up on you when you’re not looking. When you’re not looking.”

The girls laughed. Alacrity held Wanita in her lap. All her heroism and command had faded now that she didn’t need it. She was our charge again, her mother’s little girl.