Steve Cash - The Meq

“What power?”

He stopped rowing altogether and drew in the oars, crossing them over his knees. He leaned forward, closing his left eye and searching my eyes with his right, his ghost eye. “Your dreams,” he said. “You are the Stone of Dreams. Your father and six fathers behind him have carried the Stones since we left that Phoenician ship so long ago. They have all gone deep within their own dreams, but none has found what we need, none has broken through.”

“What do you need?”

“The fifth set of Stones and the Bihazanu of the one that wears them.”

“Bihazanu?”

“It is an old word, a Meq word; it means heartfear. I will tell you of this and much, much more if you go with me to your western United States, to the high desert. There are people there you should meet, people there you must meet.”

“What people?”

“Your protectors; Basque shepherds from the tribe of Vardules and others, old friends of mine.”

He smoothly slipped the oars back into the water and turned us around in an easy, practiced motion. We headed back to the dock and I noticed that all the rowing boats were painted exactly the same. Coming and going, each one, just like the other.

“Yes,” I said suddenly, “I will go with you.”

After that, events moved swiftly. Solomon arranged for us to use his private railroad car and have access to any line on any railroad in the United States; money was no object. We were to meet a man, Owen Bramley, in Denver, and he would make sure everything went according to Solomon’s wishes. Solomon said Bramley was “his man” and would handle everything with efficiency and discretion. “He is one of those damn Scottish men,” he said, “he will pay you no mind and get the job done and done right.”

Even with Ray going, which Sailor had insisted upon, we had very little luggage. I left my baseball glove with Carolina, this time with her full knowledge, but for the same reasons. We spoke very little on the way to Union Station. It was a beautiful, clear green and blue day. This parting seemed natural, expected, and we were both comfortable with it; but leaving is still leaving.

“We have done this before,” I said.

“Yes, we have.” She wore a yellow dress and carried a yellow parasol, unopened. She was sitting on a stranger’s trunk that had been left alone on the platform and she was attracting stares from a few passersby; ladies simply did not sit on trunks.

“I’m not sure why I’m leaving this time.”

“It’s not the why that concerns me, Z. It’s the where. I don’t want to lose touch with you for another twelve years. I’m not a vain woman, but even I might be too old for you by then.”

We both smiled and watched Li and Solomon conferring with the conductor.

“Write to me,” I said. “Solomon told me Owen Bramley will be able to find us anywhere.” I turned to get on the train. Sailor and Ray were already on board. “Egibizirik bilatu,” I said.

“What? What does that mean?”

“It has something to do with a long-living truth.”

“I agree,” she said, standing up and opening her parasol at the same time.

As we pulled out of the station, I waved to Solomon and he gave me the new sign he had been using for “good business”; he gave me a thumbs-up.

Sailor smiled his sly smile and gave a silent nod through the window and a kind of salute to Solomon. Ray was pacing back and forth in the railroad car anxiously looking out both sides and taking his bowler hat off and on. He was nervous about something.

“What’s the matter, Ray?” I asked.

“Nothing. Nothing’s the matter. Why?”

“You seem edgy, that’s all.”

“Well, maybe I am, a little, I don’t know. It’s just that I. I never been to the mountains. Ain’t that odd? All this time and I never been to the mountains.”

“It’s not the mountains, Ray, and you know it.” It was Sailor who spoke and he spoke in a voice we hadn’t heard him use before — a voice of authority. He was staring out of the window, but he was speaking to both of us.

I looked at Sailor and asked, “What is it then?”

He turned his head and motioned for Ray to sit down, close, so he could see Ray’s eyes. He watched him as the train settled into a steady rhythm. We were nearing the western fringe of the city, where Victorian homes and trolley cars became small farms and cornfields and cattle.

“Ray is nervous because he knows where we are going. He knows we are going to meet some people, some Giza, who not only know who we are, but protect us. Not like Carolina and Solomon. He has known others like them. These people are Basque and he has only heard of them in legend or a story his mother may have told him. This makes him afraid because he is Egipurdiko, not Egizahar. Am I right, Ray?”

Ray looked sheepish. “Am I that easy to read?”

“No, no,” Sailor said, “your anxiety is natural. It is always natural. I knew your mother, or at least I knew her family in the Azores hundreds of years ago. They and others like them have always thought these Basque tribes, if they exist, favor the Egizahar over the ‘diko.’ That somehow, if you are ‘diko,’ you will be found out and harmed. That is wrong. First of all, they do exist, and second, they make no distinction between us. Unfortunately, only we make a distinction between us. It is an old, tired practice and needs to be done away with.

“No, Ray, you have nothing to fear from these Basque we shall meet. They are good, honorable people descended from the tribe of Vardules, simple shepherds really. And they would all give their lives to save Zianno and what he wears around his neck. They always have, they always will.”

I thought this was as good a time as any to ask him what had been on my mind for some time. “Why do they protect us? And if they do, why haven’t they come to me?”

Sailor turned the ring on his forefinger, pausing, then looked me in the face. His “ghost eye” was cloudy and swirling. “The answer to that,” he said, “is older than I. I only know that they know of us, they always have. The Basque and the Meq are like sky and water — each taking credit for the other’s origin.

“There are few left; few of them and few of us. And the few who are left honor the old traditions. The first one of which is, Zianno, you come to them — they do not come to you.”

“What do they know about the Stones? Do they know what we can do?”

“Of course. The Stones are a sacred mystery to the few Basque who know of them, as they are to us.”

“What do they think of someone like you? Someone who outlives them all for countless generations and remains a kid? A boy?”

“We have worked that out,” he said. “You will find out what I mean for yourself.”

Ray got up from his seat and walked the length of the car and back. He rubbed his hands over the soft velvet of the furniture and the burl walnut finish of the cabinets. “You say they’re shepherds, is that right?”

“Yes,” Sailor answered.

“Damn.”

The trip through Missouri went too fast. Every stream was blue and every tree was in full leaf and still colored a spring green, not the deep green they would soon be. We were treated like princes by the porters and given everything we needed. By the time we hit the endless, flat prairie of Kansas, we all agreed that if you had to cross this land, this was the way to do it.

In Denver, we were surprised to find that Owen Bramley wasn’t there. After what Solomon had said about him I expected him to be opening our door before the train had stopped. He did leave a telegram for Sailor though. It was sent from San Francisco and said, “Sorry didn’t make connection STOP Am waiting for extra cargo STOP Will meet in Boise STOP Owen Bramley STOP.”