Peter Beagle - The Folk Of The Air

For Colleen J. McElroy

without whose aid, advice, comfort, cocoa at midnight, and maddening refusal to understand that some books just don’t get finished, this book would never have been finished.

Ferrell arrived in Avicenna at four-thirty in the morning, driving a very old Volkswagen bus named Madame Schumann-Heink. The rain had just stopped. Two blocks from the freeway, on Gonzales, he pulled to the curb and leaned his elbows on the steering wheel. His passenger woke up with a sad little cry and grabbed his knee.

“It’s all right,” Farrell said. “We’re here.”

“Here?” his passenger asked, still dazed, peering ahead down the street at railroad tracks and truck bodies. He was nineteen or twenty, brown-haired and pink-cheeked, neat as a new ice-cream cone. Farrell had picked him up in Arizona, near Pima, taking the sight of a V-neck pullover, tobacco-tan loafers and white Exeter windbreaker hitchhiking across the San Carlos Indian Reservation as an unquestionable sign from heaven. After two days and nights of more or less continuous driving, the boy was no whit damper or grubbier than before, and Farrell was no nearer to remembering whether his name was Pierce Harlow or Harlow Pierce. He called Farrell mister with remoreseless courtesy and kept asking him earnestly what it had been like to hear Eleanor Rigby and Day Tripper for the first time.

“Avicenna, California,” Farrell announced, grinning at him. “Museum of my twisted youth, vault of my dearest and most disgusting memories.” He rolled down his window and yawned happily. “That good stink, smell it, that’s the Bay. Must be low tide.”

Pierce/Harlow sniffed as instructed. “Uh-huh. Yes, I see. Really nice.” He ran his hands through his hair, which promptly sprang back into one sculpted piece, polished and seamless. “How long did you say it’s been?”

“Nine years,” Farrell said. “Almost ten. Since I made the mistake of actually graduating. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking of that morning. Just got careless, I guess.”

The boy chuckled politely, turning away to rummage in his Eddie Bauer knapsack. “I’ve got the address of the place I’m supposed to go in here somewhere. It’s right up near the campus. I can just wait.” In the smudgy pre-dawn light, the nape of his neck looked as thin and vulnerable as a child’s.

The sky was the color of mercury, mushy as a bruise. Farrell said, “Usually you can see the whole north campus from here, the bell tower and everything. I don’t remember it getting this foggy.” He stretched until he ached, locking his hands behind his head and feeling stiff muscles crackle and sigh and mumble to themselves. “Well, I can’t go rouse up my buddy yet, it’s way too early. Might find ourselves some breakfast—there used to be an all-night place on Gould.” One bright little sparkle of pain remained when he relaxed, and he glanced down to see Pierce/Harlow smiling diffidently and holding a switchblade knife against his side, just above the belt.

“I’m really sorry, sir,” Pierce/Harlow said. “Please don’t do anything dumb.”

Farrell stared at him so long and so blankly that the boy began to fidget, tensing every time a car hissed by. “Just put your wallet down on the seat and get out. I don’t want any trouble.”

“I guess we can assume you didn’t go to Exeter,” Farrell said at last. Pierce/Harlow shook his head. Farrell said, “No point even asking about the programmer trainee job.”

“Mr. Farrell,” Pierce/Harlow said in a flat, gentle voice, “you think I won’t really hurt you. Please don’t think that.” On the last word the knife dug harder into Farrell’s side, twisting through his shirt.

Farrell sighed and drew in his legs, still resting one arm on the wheel as he reached slowly for his wallet. “Shit, this is embarrassing. You know, I’ve never been held up before. All those years in New York, walking around at night, everywhere, taking the subway, and I never got robbed.” Not in New York, at any rate, and not by an amateur who doesn’t even know where you’re supposed to hold the knife . He made himself breathe as deeply and quietly as he could.

Pierce/Harlow smiled again, beckoning graciously with his free hand. “Well, you were due then, weren’t you? It’s just an occupational hazard, no big deal.”

Farrell had the wallet out now, his upper body turned to face the boy, feeling the knife’s pressure lessen slightly. He said, “You should have pulled this back in Arizona, you realize. I had more money then. Not having had to buy meals for two people up to that point.”

“I hate driving a stick shift,” Pierce/Harlow said cheerfully. “Anyway, come on, I bought gas a couple of times.”

“Seven dollars’ worth in Flagstaff,” Farrell snorted. “Be still, my heart.”

“Hey, don’t, don’t get snotty with me.” Pierce/Harlow was suddenly trembling alarmingly, blushing in the dimness, stuttering wet-lipped, crisp consonants turning mealy. “What about all that gas I bought in Barstow? What about that?”

Halfway down the block a young couple came jogging toward them, perfectly matched in their jouncing plumpness, their green sweat suits, and their huffing clockwork pace. Farrell said, “No, you didn’t. Barstow? You sure?” Is this a clever plan? What do we do if this is not a clever plan ?

“Damn right, I’m sure,” Pierce/Harlow snapped. He sat up very straight, the knife licking snaky ellipses in the air between them. Farrell stared over his shoulder, hoping to catch the woman’s attention without angering him any further. She did turn her head in passing and actually halted, holding her companion’s arm. Farrell widened his eyes and flared his nostrils discreetly, trying earnestly to look distressed. The couple looked at each other and huffed on past the bus, out of step for only an instant. Pierce/Harlow said, “And it was nine-eighty-three in Flagstaff. Just so we have that clear, Mr. Farrell.” He snapped his fingers for the wallet.

Farrell shrugged resignedly. “Dumb argument, anyway.” Oh lord, here goes baby . He tossed the wallet so that it bounced off Pierce/Harlow’s right knee, falling between the seat and the door. The boy reached for it instinctively, his concentration flickering just for a moment, and in that moment Farrell struck. That was, at least, the verb he preferred to remember, although lunged , clawed , and scrabbled also presented themselves. He had been sighting on the knife wrist, but got the hand instead as Pierce/Harlow pulled away, crushing the boy’s fingers against the switchblade’s rough bone handle. Pierce/Harlow gasped and snarled and kicked Farrell’s shin, yanking his hand free. Farrell let go as soon as he felt the blade sliding moon-cold through his own fingers, then heard it worrying his shirtsleeve far away. There was no pain, no blood, only coldness and Pierce/Harlow’s mouth opening and closing. This was not a clever plan .

Unfortunately, it was the only one he had. His natural gift for fallback positions and emergency exits never showed up for work before seven o’clock; absolutely all he could think of at this hour was to duck away from Pierce/Harlow’s frantically menacing flourish of the knife and throw Madame Schumann-Heink into gear, with some vague vision of driving her into an all-night laundromat on the corner. As an afterthought, he also screamed “ Kreegaaahh !” at the top of his lungs, for the first time since he was eleven years old, jumping off his parents’ bed, which was the bank of the Limpopo River, onto his cousin Mary Margaret Louise, who was a crocodile.