Steve Cash - The Meq

I stood motionless and breathed in as much of the faint smell of sea as I could. There was no time to remember Captain Woodget now, but I promised myself I would find Caitlin’s old path to Land’s End and walk to where I could look out over the sea and remember everything about him.

“Z,” Nova said softly. “I don’t want to bury Mama here. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I’ll have Willie take care of it. Don’t worry.”

Just then, Daphne drove the milk truck out of the garage and opened the door for Nova. She jumped up and in, holding her bowler by the brim. Star was in the middle and leaned out of the window as I shut the door.

“Come here,” Star shouted over the noise of the old engine.

I had to step up on the running board to get near the window. Then she leaned out farther and kissed me on the cheek.

“I have no choice, Z. I must think of Caine. If he was to get sick here—”

“I know, I understand.”

“Willie knows where we will be,” Daphne yelled across the seat. “Tell him to come and get us if there is no quarantine. My goodness, let us hope that is the case.”

I hopped off the running board and Daphne hit the throttle. The milk truck sputtered through the gate and slowly climbed up the narrow road that led to Penzance. Everything seemed absurd and backward. If Caitlin’s Ruby was now under quarantine, that meant the only ones quarantined were Geaxi, Opari, and me — two girls and a boy who couldn’t get sick if they tried.

I turned and started back toward the house. Halfway down the path I was overcome with images of things dissolving, falling apart, coming unraveled. I stopped to catch my breath and my eye caught something on the ground, wedged between the gravel path and the heather. I recognized it immediately, but it took a second to reason why it was there. Then I remembered Star almost running to the garage, spilling everything and trying to retrieve it all, while holding on to Caine. She must have dropped what I now found in the process. I walked over and picked it up slowly, sliding one hand inside and pounding the pocket with the other. It was Mama’s glove, and as I walked the rest of the way into the house, I tried to remember the last time I’d had it on my hand. I couldn’t do it.

I entered the living room through the kitchen and Opari and Geaxi were waiting for me. It was more evening than afternoon, but they were just waking up. I envied their yawns and puffy eyes.

“What was that noise?” Opari asked.

“A milk truck,” I said, then told her what had happened and why. Opari disagreed vehemently with Daphne’s conclusion, insisting that they were much safer where they were and should not have left. I told her we were stuck; it was too late. We would have to wait for Willie’s return before anything could be changed.

I felt I was in a kind of trance. I looked at Geaxi and watched her folding her blanket and placing it neatly in a corner chair. She was unnaturally quiet. Opari walked over and touched my temples with her fingertips, making featherlight circles and then kissing the places she had touched.

“You are nekagarri, my love.”

“Yes. I am.”

“Come,” Geaxi said suddenly. “We will lose all light if we do not leave now.”

“I want you to sleep,” Opari told me. “Geaxi is taking me somewhere, somewhere she wants to go, somewhere on this land. You must sleep while we are away, Z. You must sleep and dream deeply if you can.”

I glanced at Geaxi and she was ignoring me, preparing to leave.

“Will you do this? Please?” Opari asked.

“I will do this. I promise.”

Geaxi tossed a heavy coat and wool cap over to Opari. She put her own beret in place and started toward the door, then stopped and looked at me. We hadn’t spoken a word to each other since Eder had died. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I chose silence and hoped she was all right. Then she began to laugh — hard — as if she couldn’t help it. It wasn’t cynical, bitter, hollow, angry, or anything else. It was just a laugh and when Opari joined in I knew it was on me.

“Someday, Zezen,” Geaxi said, “you must teach me to play.”

It was then that I realized I still had Mama’s glove on my hand. I pounded my fist in the pocket and joined in the laughter. “I will,” I told her. “I will do this.”

Geaxi reached in the pocket of her vest and removed a simple gold ring. It was slightly scratched and big enough to be a man’s ring. Without her saying so, I knew whose it was. She had slipped it off his finger the night before while we were wrapping the body. She gave it to me without a word, then turned and opened the door for Opari.

“Now or never,” she said.

They were through the door and disappearing up a path heading north within minutes. From a distance they looked a little like two schoolgirls out for a walk in the country, followed by a few stray cats. They were each and all anything but that.

For a few moments, I stood there with Mama’s glove on one hand and Nicholas’s wedding ring between the thumb and forefinger of the other. Silent, inanimate, haunting — they were only things, things made by hand and fashioned to fit another hand for a simple, specific purpose, and yet, what lives they had led; what secrets, dreams, fears, and hopes they held just because they were made and given to another. I slipped the ring over my thumb, the only digit that would hold it, and threw Mama’s glove on the big couch in front of the fireplace. I put a few logs on the dying fire and fell back on the couch, stretching out and using Mama’s glove as a pillow. The fire caught quickly and the flames looked like birds taking flight. I watched and wondered at what I knew and what I didn’t. I turned the ring around and around and around and fell asleep.

I slept for what felt like only seconds, then woke to discover I’d been out for hours. The fire had burned down to embers and the whole house was dark and empty. I listened for anyone moving and heard nothing, then sat up and listened deeper, using my “ability.” I could only hear the wind swirling outside and the old house straining against it.

Suddenly the hair stood up on my arms and I shivered from head to foot. It happened again, then again and again, like waves, until I had to shout out loud to make it stop. I was not frightened — the Meq cannot afford superstition — and I was not cold. Still, something or someone had made the hair stand up on my arms.

I went to the fireplace and stirred the embers, adding new logs and waiting for the flames to catch. I felt off balance, out of breath, and something else I couldn’t quite define. I knew I was awake, but everything seemed to be taking place in a slightly altered state and time — a dream time.

Then, far away and barely audible, I heard the sound of tires on gravel, the sound of someone turning down the drive into Caitlin’s Ruby and approaching the house.

I started to move toward the door and found I couldn’t do it without tremendous effort. My legs and feet seemed long and thick, my hands and fingers useless and unnecessary. I tried to think and couldn’t concentrate on any line of thought or single image. I wasn’t spinning, but I felt weightless and weighed down at the same time, as if I would begin to spin, if I only knew how.

The fire popped and cracked and the new wood began to catch. It sent shafts of light across the room and cast shadows of the furniture on the walls and windows. The shadows became dangerous cliffs on a dark coastline and I was being drawn toward them. I was adrift at sea and I was going to crash for certain. The cliffs danced and beckoned. I knew it wasn’t real, but I was losing all perspective. One reality was slipping easily into the other and I didn’t know which was which or even care. I was weightless, inside and out. A beam of light swept back and forth across the cliffs or the walls, I couldn’t decide, and the lighthouse kept moving and coming closer. I could also hear it and it sounded like a car, but that didn’t make sense at sea, or did it? I couldn’t decide and it was so hard to think.