Уолтер Мосли - Blue Light

Thrombone went to a hollow below Number Three and retrieved a dozen homemade beeswax candles. The candles were thick shapeless globs encrusted with gravel. We placed them around our campsite, letting Wanita light them because Addy wouldn’t let her play with the campfire.

We all settled in on one side of the fire, with Thrombone squatting down from us on the other side.

“What will it be, Chance? What do you want me to tell?”

“Why me?” I asked. “I don’t know your stories. You could just make one up.”

“Come on, Chance,” Alacrity said. Her head in Addy’s lap, she shoved her feet under the tent of my knees. Wanita leaned on me from the other side. Addy draped a sleeping bag over our shoulders.

Juan Thrombone’s eyes were like two more candles in the night.

I was fearful that he might really answer any question I had. I was tired of knowledge and truth.

“What is the blue light?” I asked finally.

Juan Thrombone laughed and rolled on his back. He rocked on his spine while grabbing his knees and let out a howl.

“Ho-ho, Chance the gamesman. Chance the checkmater. Chance the opponent till the end.”

The children laughed and Addy smiled.

I didn’t find his childishness funny.

Thrombone rolled to a squatting position in an agile move. He looked at me for a long time before speaking again.

“You think to ask me a question you already know the answer to, hombre. You think you know how the light traveled, how it bonded and took. You think that I will just repeat the words of your dead teacher. You do not want to know anything more, but you lost the gambit and so I will tell you more.

“Your question, my friend, should have been another. Because asking about blue light is like asking about blood when you have never seen an animal. How can you know about a man’s blood, its magic, if you have never seen him laughing and you’ve never heard him cry?”

Juan Thrombone settled easily on crossed legs and held out his hands as if to say, Isn’t that true?

“You must, it is clear, ask about life and not light or blood. Because life holds them both like the canvas holds paint.”

I was completely in his spell by then. The words and their rhythm charmed me like the sunlight had that day.

“Blue light or yellow or red, it doesn’t matter. They’re all like blood. Blood that sustains you, blood that builds. But blood in a bottle, or blood on the ground, is not a man, can’t be, but only a promise without an ear to hear.”

Holding up an educating finger, he said, “All the world is music, you see. There is music in atoms and music in suns. That is the range of a scale that you can see and read. There is music in emptiness and silence between. Everything is singing all the time, all the time. Singing and calling for what is missing. Your science calls it gravity , but the gods call it dance . They dance and fornicate; they listen and sing. They call to distant flowers when buds ring out. Because, you see, it is not only atoms and suns that vibrate in tune. Rocks sing, as do water and air. The molecules that build blood and men also build the wasp; these too sing a minor note that travels throughout the stars. Greedy little ditties that repeat and repeat again and again the same silly melodies. They change, but very slowly, chattering, ‘me me me me me me me me me...’ ” He repeated the word maybe a hundred times, lowering his head to the ground as he did so. He smiled when he was finished and shook his head sadly. The next instant he was on his feet holding his hands out in the question Why?

“So much boring chatter for one so deep. Of course, the iron atom will say only his name. Water too and even granite or glass. Because iron has only one note; water two, maybe three. But you, my friend, make the violin seem simple. You are a song of the gods in the mouth of a fool. You can’t help it. So much promise in one so weak attracts disease.”

Juan Thrombone sat again and smiled. We looked at each other, and even though my head had begun to ache from the words, which seemed to go directly into my mind, I asked, “Are you saying that blue light is a sickness? That one who sees the light is sick?”

“Sick?” Thrombone said, chuckling softly. “No. But weak as kittens in a cave full of stones. They feel mighty, but there is no strength in them. Only ambition and youth. They cannot hunt or mul-ti-ply. Only can they play like the big cat who has left the den carrying their milk in her udders.”

“What do you mean? Alacrity was born from Ordé and Addy.”

“First Light,” Thrombone’s eyes filled with fondness. “Her child is rare but no different from the rest. The next generation is coming, but not yet. Maybe never. Maybe not at all.”

By then I wanted to know everything that the little madman knew.

“So this isn’t what Ordé said?” I asked. “This isn’t the beginning of the change of the world?”

“It might be some kind of start,” he answered. “But this is story-time and not school.”

“But—” I started to say.

“I have answered your question, and now you need to ask another. Not about blue light, though. With that I am through.”

“Why didn’t you want us to come here?” Alacrity asked. “Why’d you send those butterflies to hurt us?”

“Because, little one, I was afraid. I was afraid that Death would sniff at you even here and come to kill the puppy trees as he did their big mama redwood. I was afraid and so I sent my butterflies to sting you with their love.” Juan Thrombone almost lost his benign smile for a moment. “But when you fought so hard and killed so many I” — He held his palm to his lips and sucked suddenly, pulling his hand away from his mouth. This caused the same thumping in the air that had rendered the butterflies, and me, unconscious. This sound, however, wasn’t as violent as the first — “so you wouldn’t kill all of my beautiful friends.”

“What did those butterflies do to the children?” Addy asked.

Thrombone smiled again, holding up the baby finger of his left hand to the point at his left eye.

“You mean to ask,” our odd host lectured, “what are those butterflies that they could do what they did? But the answer is no story. I made water every day in a clearing of rotten wood. In a year there were wild flowers everywhere. In another year there were butterflies. From butterfly to worm, and then from the worm rose the creatures that suckled on blue.”

Thrombone smiled to himself.

“Maybe it is a story,” he said.

Wanita asked, “Then why did you let us come if you was scared? Ain’t you scared no more?”

Thrombone was looking into Addy’s eyes at that moment. She stared back while running her finger down the healing wound on her face.

“I can hear people’s dreams also, Dreamer. I can hear all living things when they dream. Dogs and trees and fish and bears. I can speak to dreamers. I spoke to all of you. I knew in our talks that you were not bad — at least, not yet. And I was lonely, but that’s not why I let you pass.”

“Why then?” Wanita asked again.

“To sleep with you, Dreamer.”

“Say what?” That was me. “Hey, man, I know you livin’ up here with the bears and shit, but down the hill, in civilization, no matter if you got blue light or Thunderbird wine, men sleeping with little girls is just not happenin’.” I was angry and used street talk like a hapless frog puffing up his throat to bluff his way.

“I’m sorry, my friend,” Juan said. If he was in any way intimidated, he hid it well. “You are right, of course. I’ve been up here so long that I forget how to talk. I don’t mean sex. I like sex. I want sex. But for Wanita, it is only her dreams I wish to share. I can hear dreams, but she — she can travel in them, she can see with them. Her dreams are the most beautiful I have ever seen.”