A Dirge for the Temporal (12 page)

  Philippe entered. He found the man lying on his back on the cave floor, eyes unseeing, chest unmoving, lips still. The other was there, in his dark niche, gemstone eyes gazing down on Philippe. The boy’s instinct was to flee, but his feet would not move until Morzine dropped from his perch onto the stone, beckoning him with a cold finger. And then they moved in the wrong direction.

~

  Michele and his friends were splashing in the waterfall’s pool under the moonlight when a shape materialized out of the surrounding foliage. The visitor quickly issued a greeting, which eased their alarm somewhat, but there was more to answer for than his unexpected appearance. Crouching on his left shoulder was what appeared to be a monkey, though who could tell with only outlines visible.

  Peering through the dark, Michele said, “What
is
that?”

  “
Who
would be the better word,” said Philippe. “And his name is Merl. Have you by chance heard of Merl?”

Eyes of Hazel, Kiss the Earth

I
t was supposed to have been a simple deal. I was there to get something from him. He was there to get something from me. It was the sort of transaction I had been involved in a dozen times before. The trouble was, he wanted more from me than was in our arrangement. He wanted not just the baby; he wanted me to deliver the seven-week-old package to a different spot, and on a different night. He had the money, which he gave to me, but he didn’t have the means to see after the infant right now. Tomorrow night was better.

  The means to see after it? What was that supposed to mean?

  “Then why did I bring it along?” I asked, feeling uncomfortable beneath his discerning stare.

  “It” was a boy. In this business you lose sight of such things…on purpose.

  “I had to make sure it was healthy.”

  I didn't care how discerning he was, how the hell was he going to know that by looking at the infant? That particular episode of that particular prime time TV series which shall remain particularly nameless had shown us all that. Business dropped like a lead balloon for three months because of that show.

  I didn’t bother avoiding such issues anymore; I showed them the papers, I charged them half of what I once did, the rest was their concern. Now, don’t get me wrong, mine was a legitimate business—any of my clients would have told you that—it’s just that you can’t ever be too sure, can you? I did all I could do at my end, even had my own pediatrician, to whom I gave a generous cut. No, the reason I got out of the business had nothing to do with baggage. It had to do with this gentleman standing
here in front of me, although I’d no idea then I was headed for the unem
ployment line.

  I voiced the thought. “How are you going to know if the baby’s healthy by looking at it?”

  “Oh, you know,” he said, “...whether it’s plump, colored, that sort of thing.”

  That should have been a dead giveaway. In fact I remember thinking—not for the first time in my dealings with this gentleman—that although he didn't have the
slick
of some of the lawyers with whom I'd crossed paths, there was still this hard-to-define, even askew something about him. Never mind that when he laid his judgmental eyes on me, he was accusing me less of unsavory practices than of being a lost soul. As far as I was concerned, righteousness itself had a funny smell to it. I asked myself a question I had asked myself more than once before. What did I know about the quality of the home into which the child was going? What about
their
health? Were they a plump couple? Were they colored? Were they
that sort of thing
? It’s a beast, the living, no doubt about it. The questions abound, but the answers are scarce.

  I eyed him, perhaps as openly as he eyed me. But in the end, one concern
prevailed. What was I going to do with the baby for the next twenty-four hours?

  I bade the gentleman goodnight and took my package home with me. I had nowhere else to take the little guy. The parents of the teenage girl, apparently of some status in the community, had told me quite plainly that they wanted to sever all contact now. I was to do as discussed with the money, and that was that. We did not know each other. We had never had any relations of any kind.

  I phoned the doctor in my employ and asked him what I would need for the baby. I’m ashamed to say I was ignorant in that regard. I realize how unprofessional that must sound, considering the line of work I was in, but I was unmarried, an only child, and simply had never had to do the part before. The doctor told me not to be concerned; at that age the baby would be no trouble. He was kind enough to pick up the essentials and bring them to me, so I wouldn’t have to drag the infant back out. I learned changing diapers, preparing formula, burping, a whole new discipline
that evening.

  My guest woke only once during the night. I held him for a while, singing what songs I could recall from my own weehood, telling him how I wished he had a name. His mother’s parents had advised her against naming the baby. Which was understandable, I suppose, but it left me with this plump, pink baby with hazel eyes and no identity. I don’t know, can a seven-week-old have an identity?

  After spending the whole next day with him, I felt this little guy did. To the extent that when eight o’clock rolled around, I didn’t want to take him to meet Mr. Doe. I had grown sort of used to him. He hardly ever cried, and spit up on me only a time or two. I was forced to remind myself that, although the service provided was a winner for all involved, the baby remained a product, and it was best not to lose sight of that fact.

  We drove out to the designated spot, “Little Guy” nestled over there in his seat, quiet as you please. The church was in a more well-to-do neighborhood, where you might, in fact, expect to find a couple with means enough to purchase a baby boy. When I wheeled around behind the structure, I found that Mr. Doe hadn’t arrived yet. Shutting off the engine, I said to my passenger, “Well, Little Guy, I guess we’ll have to wait.” But I was uneasy.

  As I remember it, far worse than the nervousness of waiting in the darkness behind a church in that neighborhood was the discomforting silence that had settled over the interior of the car. It had the flavor of that thing that follows a spat with your date. Cry, I wished at the baby.
Goo
.
Gurgle
.
Babble
.
Do something
. I would have preferred he had been asleep, then I wouldn’t have had to face those knowing hazel eyes.

  Gratefully, less than five minutes after our arrival, a knock came at the rear passenger window. Mr. Doe’s face looked in. With his thumb he motioned I unlock the door.

  “What are you doing?” I said as he got in.

  “Drive,” he said. And pointed a handgun at my head.

  Glancing over at the baby, I began, “I don’t know what y—”

  “Drive.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll let you know."

  I turned the key, put it in gear and drove. We pulled left out of the church parking lot. A mile down we turned left again. In a few minutes he indicated a dirt road to the right. Though I took it slow, it was rough going, and Little Guy started crying.

  “Yes, he does seem to be a healthy one,” Mr. Doe said from the back seat.

  I silently wished him a
rot in hell
as we bounced around a bend and the road came to an abrupt end at the edge of a field.

  There must have been a hundred of them in the field, many with torches, all cloaked. They were material in the flash of the headlights, shadows as I shut the beams off at Mr. Doe’s command. The night was young but deep. We were in that strange territory between the suburbs and the country, just beyond the fringes of the artificial light but not so far out that the land was cast in the unfiltered radiation of the starry sky. We were in that sightless territory where babies had no names and adults draped in dark garments bartered for them like packaged meats.

  He had given me two commands. Shut off the lights. Shut off the engine. I obeyed only one. The little guy, you know. It was the little guy’s party, no question about that, but no one had bothered to ask if he could make it. As his temporary guardian, I said uh-uh, he could not
make it. Whatever these people were up to—ritual sacrifice, cannibalism,
God only knew—they would have to go somewhere else for their plump, colored infant.

  I threw the shifter in reverse, floored the pedal. The car surged but a huge weight resisted its going anywhere, as though the most functional emergency brake ever made were engaged. I pushed the pedal so hard, it’s a wonder the thing didn’t go through the floor. Then it was over. I’d had only as much time as it took for Mr. Doe to recover from the initial lurch of the vehicle, and that was mere seconds. He now had the nose of his gun against the top of the baby’s wailing head, right there where I knew Little Guy’s soft spot to be.

  “Shut the fucking engine off!” he yelled.

  I did.

  “The keys,” he ordered, gesturing with his free hand. As I handed him the ring, I saw faces staring in at me from all three of the back windows. The car fell. In my adrenaline storm, I hadn’t even realized its rear wheels had been lifted off the ground. Needless to say, I have never owned another rear wheel drive vehicle.

  “Out of the car!” Mr. Doe ordered.

  I obeyed. They met me, torchlight flickering, distorted faces peering from deep within cowls. The déjà vu crawled over me like hairy spiders. I’d felt the first twinge when I saw their robes in the headlights, now was immersed in it. What in God’s name were they going to do with the little fellow? I felt I should already know, that I had drifted through some amorphous foretelling of this nightmare…

  The passenger door opened. Seconds passed as the straps were removed, then the bundle came up in the light for a moment before being gathered in to a chest. The crying weakened and died. As we moved across the field, I watched them pass the baby from one to another. I noticed how gingerly they handled it, how tenderly they touched those streaked cheeks—and not just the women but the men as well, as they passed their torches to their neighbors so they could experience the child personally.

  I was pushed along in the tide of bodies, remaining unmolested otherwise. I wondered what would become of me but rather suspected I knew the answer. The how was the real question. As we approached the middle of the field, I felt the current slowing. We formed a circle around a spot where I presumed they had taken the baby. Gently, and by many hands, I was ushered through the bodies to the circle’s center. Mr. Doe was there. So was the baby. He held the bundle up in his hands, up towards the heathen night sky. The baby was silent as he kissed it and brought it down to his chest again. He held out his hand to one of the figures nearby. I saw a glint of metal as the implement was placed in his hand. I rushed forward, unrestrained, unsure of what to do when I got there.

  “But it’s only a spade. See,” he said, holding it up in the torchlight.

  “W-what are you going to do with it?” I stammered.

  “No, my friend,” he laughed. “What are you going to do with it?”

  I took a step back, shaking my head, the déjà vu bristling in my flesh, the sweat starting to twitch from my pores. “I won’t. I won’t.”

  “Have no fear,” said Mr. Doe. “It’s an
act
, that’s all.”

  “An act?!”

  “Only an act. Here, take the baby. I’ll show you where.”

  Yes, the baby. Give me the baby. Let me touch it again before you do it.

  He handed the bundle to me. I pulled back a bit of cloth, looked at its little—

  “What have you done to it!” I cried.

  Even as Little Guy gazed up at me, his eyes lost the last of their whites to the expanding, saturating pigment of their irises. The orbs were now entirely hazel.

  “It’s not
I
who have done it,” said Mr. Doe. “The child’s body knows it has found its way home.”

  “I don’t want it!” I shrieked, holding the bundle out at arm’s length. Towards him, the next person, anyone…

  “Come. Come here to the spot.” He put his boot on what looked like a random point in the grass. With a motion of his wrist, he flung the spade into the ground.

  “Right there,” he said. “That’s where.”

  Although I saw the spot he had marked, although I had watched the blade pierce the earth, it was far from my focus. I continued to hold the baby out from my body, repulsed by it, terrified of it, and yet unable to drop it or to throw it at one of them for fear I would do it injury.

  “I can help you,” came a calm masculine voice. “Give me the baby.”

  It was the one who had supplied the spade.

  I gave it willingly. He would not hurt the baby. I sensed he would not hurt him.

  His hood got in the way as he bent to the baby. He removed it. The baby issued a sound, a cooing, affectionate sound. The young man issued a sound of his own. I could see the side of his head but little more as he gazed at the baby. I demanded he turn and look at me.

  He did, and what I thought I had seen by the fragmented light was now confirmed. His face was only barely recognizable as the face of a
man. It was gray in the torchlight, its texture rough, creased, even
knotted
.
His hair—which I had at first thought to be a ritual wig, a prop of some kind—was not hair at all but a wild Gorgonian confusion of vine and earth and leaves.

  I whirled, eyes darting around the circle, from figure to figure, hood to hood. Darkness stared back at me from within the cowls.

  “Show yourselves,” I demanded. “Drop the hoods. What in Christ’s name
are you
?!”

  One by one they began to remove their hoods. But the faces that were revealed were as normal as my own, each and every one of them, none even vaguely resembling the grotesque features of the young man or the baby.

  I turned back to him. As terrified as I was, I found it within me to form words.

  “What is the baby to you?”

  “He is my son.”

  “But the girl...his mother?”

  “When I am away from this hallowed place and walking among you, I am a handsome young man.”

  “What
are
you?” It was a whisper.

  As he smiled, dry cracks formed at the corners of his mouth, threatening to spider web across his gray bark-like skin.

  “I am not a god. I am a liaison.”

  “But…what do you want from me?”

  He gestured. My eyes went there, but I didn’t understand.

  Mr. Doe retrieved the spade from the earth. “We want you,” he said, “to dig.”

  I did not want to dig. Above all…
don’t make me dig.
Sometimes, you see, on those rarest of occasions, you remember the déjà vu before the
déjà vu remembers you. You recall the smell of the soil before you break it with the shovel. You glimpse, for the merest second, why you are here. And then it’s gone, leaving only the knowledge that you are a baby merchant.

  I accepted it from Mr. Doe in a hand that shook uncontrollably. I knelt down and began to dig.

  “How deep?” As I threw the first scoop.

  “Deep enough to plant a sapling,” said Mr. Doe.

  That at least I could fix on. It had substance to it. I dug until I thought the hole of adequate depth for the potted tree I pictured in my mind.

  “Now?” I said.

  “Keep digging.”

  I continued, rounding the hole out a certain way. A stroke here, a stroke there, another few inches in depth. That terrible knowledge I had glimpsed as he held the spade out to me still hovered, poised to descend on me. I paused, wiping my brow with the back of my hand. I was per
spiring profusely, though it was only a spade. And a hole big enough to bury your cat in.