Steve Cash - The Meq

“I am Geaxi.”

“You’re the Spider Boy, aren’t you?” Carolina said. She didn’t even mention what had just happened or the fact that we looked just like each other, except Geaxi’s hair was cropped even closer than mine. She went on, “But you’re not a boy, you’re a girl.”

“Yes, I am a girl.”

I looked at her more closely. Around her neck was the source of the colors I’d seen reflected in the light. Hanging from a simple, braided leather necklace was the black egg-shaped rock that held the gems, what Ray had called the Stones. It was the same as mine. I was staring at it. She saw where I was staring.

“If you had yours with you, young Zezen, this would not have been necessary,” she said.

I looked up at her face. She was smiling. She turned and looked back toward the entrance to the alley.

“Tell the girls to wait for you there,” she said. “We must talk.”

I looked over at Carolina and she seemed to understand. Without being asked, she and Georgia helped each other up and walked toward the street. Carolina’s knee was bleeding badly. I watched them until they got to the entrance and leaned against the wall. I turned and looked at Geaxi. She was still smiling.

“You are surprised, no?”

I still hadn’t said a word and she went on before I could think of anything to say.

“You should always wear the Stones,” she said. “Later, as you get older, you will learn a sense of danger that will help protect you, but not like the Stones. You protect the Stones and, in turn, the Stones protect you. You are Zezen, through the tribe of Vardules, protectors of the Stone of Dreams. I knew your mother well and—”

“You knew my mama?” I blurted.

“Yes, I did. And your father and your father’s father when I was a child.”

“But you are a child,” I said.

“No, young Zezen, I am not. I am old in a child’s body. But we are great friends, myself and this body of a child. We know each other well.”

I started thinking back to something Ray had said—“Some of us were old, older than you would believe”—and now I knew he was telling the truth. I was standing next to one. I looked in her eyes. They were a child’s eyes and yet they weren’t. There was a calm and compassion not possible in the eyes of a child; an innocence drowned in experience.

“Tell me who you are,” I said.

“My deitura, my family name, is Bikis. I am Geaxi Bikis, Egizahar Meq, through the tribe of Vascos, protectors of the Stone of Will.”

“I don’t know what any of that means,” I said.

“You will learn it,” she said, smiling again.

There were so many things I wanted to ask her, so many things I needed to know. She walked over to the scaffolding and every step was purposeful and graceful with no wasted movement.

“How did you find me?” I asked. “And why?”

“I have my ways,” she said and climbed ten feet up the scaffolding in one effortless move. “You will too, in time. I had to see if the Stones were safe.”

“What about the Stones? Are there many of them?”

“There are five, at least there were five when Umla-Meq saved them in the time of Those-Who-Fled.” She climbed up ten more feet diagonally. “They were given to five separate families for protection.”

“Did you say Umla-Meq?”

“Yes, Umla-Meq.”

“One of the last things Mama said was ‘find Umla-Meq.’ ”

She was already up the scaffolding another ten feet. I could barely see her in the shadows. She shouted down at me, “Then you better get busy.”

“But where? How?” I shouted back. “And who’s Sailor?”

I could hear her laughing somewhere up in the darkness, a spider safe inside her web. Suddenly she leaned her head into a lone shaft of sunlight and looked down at Carolina and Georgia. They were leaning against each other at the entrance to the alley. She shouted to me, “Beware for that one.”

I turned and looked at the girls, then up to her and yelled, “Which one?”

Geaxi was gone, probably up and over one of the buildings, but gone. She never answered.

Georgia and I helped Carolina walk back to Sportsman’s Park. The bleeding had stopped and she balked at our helping her, but we did it anyway. We found Mrs. Bennings in our seats sitting with two of the St. Louis Browns. She was glad to see us, but several rounds of beer and the attentions of two baseball players sort of made us invisible. I told her I was taking the girls home, because Carolina had cut her knee and Mrs. Bennings thought that was a grand idea and said she’d be right behind us. Several hours later she made it home and, before she passed out, told us that the Spider Boy of the Pyrenees never showed and Corsair Bogy had been booed and showered with debris. Several fights broke out and that’s when she said she took her leave. “After all,” she said, “public brawlin’ is nothin’ but bad manners.”

That night, Carolina asked me the first of a thousand questions about what she had seen. I don’t remember my answer, but I clearly recall the dream I had later.

I was in a cave or cell made of stone. I was staring at a single opening in the wall above me. I felt desolate and defeated. I saw a spider crawl into the open space and begin to spin a web across it. Four times she spun her web only to see it break and fall. On the fifth try the web held. I reached up to touch it and the strands were razor sharp. I cut my fingers and the blood poured out and kept pouring out until it covered the floor.

I kept bleeding and the blood around me kept rising. I was sure I was going to drown in blood. Just before it reached my mouth and nose, I looked up and saw the spider, alone in the center of her web, waiting.

I awoke then and one word filled my mind — Meq.

By the dim light of a new moon, his ship slips through the dark and deadly rocks of the headlands and sails into the secret cove. He navigates by instinct and memory and every sense is alive and alert. He is familiar with the delicate balance of fear and calm. He expects the unexpected. His ship is fast and sleek and manned by a loyal crew who know their mission well. He is a smuggler, as was his father before him, and his father’s father before that. His contraband is not gold or guns or rum. He carries something else; stowed safe and warm, waiting for the swift moment of exchange, is the Dreamer. The Dreamer, who must be delivered in darkness, entrusted to another with only a silent nod and never spoken of again. He has done this before. In his dreams, he has never stopped.

For the next few months, Mrs. Bennings ran the best and most respectable boardinghouse in south St. Louis. The girls had willingly handed over to her their “welfare” money from the Browns and Billy’s fans. She used most of it on improvements to the house and a brand-new, hand-painted sign out front that read: “Mrs. Bennings’s House — A Proper Place — Visitors Welcome.” A good sign and a simple sign that reflected perfectly the character of the owner. She was a good woman, a loving woman, and I think maybe her only flaw was the hole in her heart created by the total absence of Solomon. She was haunted by it, I could tell, but still we never spoke of him.

Along with improving the state of the boardinghouse, she grew obsessed with improving the minds and manners of the girls. She bought new clothes and books and enrolled both of them in school, making sure everyone from the principal on down understood that even though Georgia was mute, “her mind was as sharp as the sting of a bee.”

For some reason, maybe something instinctual, Mrs. Bennings never mentioned the possibility of me going to school. It was not discussed, nor was the fact that the girls were changing physically and I was not. But all around me I was sensing and learning what Ray had told me—“You gotta keep movin’ when everybody’s gettin’ older and you ain’t.” I could feel the lingering stare of a neighbor or hear the unasked questions if my name was brought up among the boarders. I began to stay away from the boardinghouse more and more, especially during the day, and spent most of my time wandering through Forest Park or Henry Shaw’s gardens, alone, thinking about who I was and what I was. Carolina went with me sometimes and it was there in Forest Park on the first day of winter that I finally told her everything I knew about myself and the Meq. I told her everything, but naturally she thought I was crazy.