Blue Light (31 page)

“Last Chance,” Bones said. It sounded more like a warning than a greeting that morning.

“Bones.”

“You remember that job I told you about?”

“About growing more singing trees?” I asked, trying to stave off the pressure in my mind, the pressure I always felt when Bones’s attention was on me alone. “I was wondering when you’d get around to that. I mean, sometimes I think I hear the bellowing sequoias in my dreams. And if I can hear them, maybe someone else can.”

He smiled and nodded. “Up high in the mountains. Near a stream in a clearing. There’s a place to make woody songs about just plain old trees. Just cell and seed and decay.”

I winced. “And you want me to go there with you?”

“You,” said Thrombone, “and one or two others. Those who need magic that makes things, magic that you can see.”

“Are we gonna have to talk a lot?” I asked the little woodsmaster. “ ’Cause, I swear, if you talk to me much longer, every blood vessel in my head’s gonna pop.”

Bones brought his finger to his lips, winked, and turned to walk away — I followed.

It was a pleasant summer’s day. Down out of the mountains it would have been hot. But where we were was just perfect. White clouds, blue sky, and the dappled shadows of the sun winked around us as we made it down the tree-covered path that had been blazed by bear and deer and Juan Thrombone. My second sight never worked well in Bones’s presence, but my human senses were good enough on that day.

After a while we came to a small hollow. Therein we found Gerin Reed, Mackie Allitar, and Miles Barber. I thought at the time that it must have been an important moment. A gathering of men with no law but themselves. Each one of us had been exposed indirectly to blue light. Each one of us was crazy in his own way. Here and there in the surrounding woods were singing trees, the trees designed by Juan Thrombone to hide the blue music that emanated from the great bellowing sequoias and the human Blues who lived in our forest hideaway.

Mackie was pacing back and forth across the rough circle of the clearing. Gerin was crouched down, examining a line of large black ants as they followed their tiny destinies. The ex-detective was the only one of the three seated. He was applying pressure with a small twig to various points on his neck and face that Nesta had shown him to ease his constant pain.

When Juan and I entered the circle, they turned their attention to us. Juan raised his hands, and we all came together around him in a tight arc. It was a kind of attention and proximity that I hadn’t felt since my days with the Close Congregation.

“You are more than you think, and we are less,” said Juan Thrombone, a bit more earnest than usual for him — maybe that’s why he stopped and giggled. “We can tote and drop, burn and build, laugh and even war — together. You will all find what you are missing and give what you have taken and save the precious seconds that you throw away on pain.

“Not you, Slender Reed,” he said to Gerin. “All I need from you is what help you can give. But for the man who hurts and the man who cries and the one who guards the doorway but has never seen the throne room. From all of you I want help, and I will give you in return space and time.”

I had no idea what he meant or which of us suffered which affliction, but I was convinced that he wanted to help me, and I wanted that help.

Bones turned abruptly and began a quick march through the thick woods. We all followed. Nobody talked. After a half an hour or so I had a pretty good idea of our destination. I didn’t know many places in the woods of Treaty, but the path to the Bellowing Trees of Earth was burned into my memory.

Sometimes at night I would lie awake listening for the rumble of the throne tree in the ground. I’d promise myself that once I heard it, I would go back to the throne and plunge my body into its depths. It would be my “Thanatopsis,” my becoming a part of the earth and sky, root and bark. And the rumble would come, but only in my sleep. When I awoke, ready to heed the bass call, there would be nothing but clicks of night insects and the rustle of the breeze through the shingles above my head.

We marched for another couple of hours before entering a grove of singing trees. Their vibrations were like laughter, like the tittering of small children just beyond sight in the woods.

“No longer the siren’s call,” Juan Thrombone said to Gerin Reed, just ahead of me.

“Now they’re laughing at Papa Shortribs,” Gerin replied. He loved making fun of Bones only slightly more than Juan liked being made fun of.

The white firs seemed to gather around us. Behind us the wall of trees was impassable while ahead was always open and even beckoning.

And then we were in the open grove of the young sequoias. The first deep note of the Bellowing Trees sounded. All of us half-lights, even Gerin Reed, were struck still. Bones smiled and indicated with his hands that we should sit.

No one complained. We’d been walking for a long time, and that deep note had taken what little energy we had left. Bones passed around a water bag that was made from deerskin and filled with a tea brewed from the leaves of the singing trees. It was the best thing I had ever tasted, clear, sweet, and somehow dense. Juan’s teas always brought vigor and a sense of well-being.

“Today is the day that your lives begin,” Juan Thrombone intoned.

These words combined with the power of his thoughts and the high-pitched laughter of the white firs behind us. Then came the reverberations in the damp and grassy earth. It was far beyond any lecture Ordé preached. Those were ideas held in a voice that captivated and elated. But Bones’s talk was a symphony that by turns amazed and frightened us. No one of his audience of four could sit still. We couldn’t stop fidgeting there on the ground; every now and then one of us would grunt or laugh.

He retold the story of blue light, saying that it was “no more than a seed in the history of a forest.” He told the story of the great redwood and her death. About how he saved her seedlings so that the world would still have music.

“And now we must begin the work of the world,” Bones said in a hushed tone. Everything else went quiet too: the trees, the earth, even the low continual chatter of my senses and the history of my life inside my mind. All that was left was me hearing his words.

“In Dreamer’s dreaming the world falls apart,” he said. “But of faith and future there is no clear sign, only the blunt clubs of death and love, of fire and freezing, and the highest and lowest animal — man.”

A low moan issued from my chest. My three companions also sang.

He had stopped talking, but I listened still. His words washed over me again and again. The words turned to images. Fires and men who walked like dogs, slithered like snakes, who killed for death and not survival. I saw an army of trees holding back the tides of killing man-animals. And I heard the music of death in the ears of Grey Redstar, and I almost laughed his laugh and felt his glee.

“Rise” came a voice.

Whether it was Bones or one of his puppy trees, whether it was word or thought, I was not sure. But I stood along with the murderer, the one-eyed ex-detective, and the cuckold. We walked together into the presence of the greatest creatures the world has ever known.

They welcomed us with deep bass notes that trailed off into one another. A different color was set off in my mind with each note, and the ground, which was flat, seemed to undulate beneath my feet. We were all staggering and squinting at Bones, who led us.

I realized then that these trees of Juan Thrombone’s were a company of gods. They were only whispering right then so as not to demolish our small group. Bones was one of them. I had become so familiar with his laughter and jokes that I’d half forgotten his true nature.

The journey between the trunks of those trees was like walking through an earthquake. Halfway through I was sure that I wouldn’t make it, that I would fall and be consumed by the roots I could feel reaching up and tickling the soles of my boots.

Then we were on the other side, and it was over.

Out of the presence of divinity and onto a grassy field about a hundred yards in diameter. A plateau looking out over a panorama of California forest. The sky was completely covered in high clouds, and a breeze was the only sound.

My heart was thumping and sweat poured down my face.

We were all silent and scared.

“Damn!” Mackie said at last. “What was that?”

“The heart,” said Juan Thrombone. He held up both hands, clenching them into fists and releasing again and again in way of instruction. “The throbbing heart of life. Where the blood of our souls goes for cleansing before the day begins.”

“Why did you bring us?” I asked.

“I’ve already told you.”

“But there aren’t any trees here to tend.”

Instead of answering, the little man walked to the right, all the way to the edge of the field. We followed.

Down the slope there was another clearing that was at the base of a small waterfall. The fall was no more than a trickle, its water slapping down dark mossy rocks into a large stone cistern.

“It’s like a big bucket,” Gerin Reed said.

“What’s it for?” asked Miles Barber in a rare show of curiosity.

A herd of white-tailed deer wandered around the field beneath the stone water tower. A few were licking the water spilling down the sides.

“Gather your buckets,” Bones said to us. He pointed to a small patch of bushes a few feet away.

I was the closest. Nestled under the bushes were four rough-hewn wooden buckets fitted with covers made from a thicker version of the fabric Addy made for our clothes and with handles made from the same material. There was also a long pole, maybe eight feet long, that had a flat wooden disk attached to one end with wooden dowels.

“Come on, come on,” Bones urged.

We each grabbed a heavy bucket and followed Bones down the steep slope toward the deer and water tower.

One or two were startled to see us approaching, but they didn’t bolt. When Bones stepped down among them they took turns nuzzling him with their snouts in greeting. He scratched ears and thumped on their sides. He crooned to them and they seemed pleased.

When the greeting was over, Bones rummaged around behind the water tower and came out with a ladder made from tree-fabric rope and thick branches. He set it up against the side of the stone container.

“Ho, Last Chance,” he cried. “Climb up there and make yourself useful.”

As I scaled the rickety ladder, the deer became agitated. They ran back and forth with excitement. Some even reared on their hind legs with anticipation.

Upon reaching the last rung, I could see down into the big container. It was at least nine feet deep. The sides were blackened, but the water was crystal-clear.

“Pass up the first bucket, Miles and Miles,” Thrombone said.

The deer were running back and forth across the small clearing, stopping at the end of each circuit at the cistern before dashing away again.

The heavy bucket was passed up, and I removed the thick green fabric cover. It had certainly been used as a chamber pot, but it also contained tree needles, bark, and fist-sized globs of thick golden tree sap.

“Pour it in,” Bones said. “Pour it all in.”

I emptied the contents as well as I could into the water and then I submerged the bucket, washing out whatever was stuck to the sides.

“Now hand it back down! Come on! We don’t have all year!”

I was passed up all four buckets in succession. After they were all emptied, I was given the long pole and told to agitate the water as though churning butter. I’d never used a churn before, but I’d seen it done on TV.

We each took a turn mixing the concoction, and then we each took another turn.

I was afraid that the deer would lick the foul substance from the sides of the cistern, but they did not. They kept up their running, though more slowly after a while.

After a couple hours of churning, Juan climbed up the ladder to examine our work. He nodded and told us to pass up the buckets one at a time. He filled each one and passed them back down to us.

We carried the buckets to the upper clearing, spilling a good deal along the way. Juan led us to a spot near the edge of the plateau. He took from his pouch a tiny seed and a small twig, maybe eight inches long. He poked a hole in the soft earth and dropped in the seed. Then he stuck the twig in the ground to mark the planting.

“Keep pouring until I tell you to stop.”

It was hard work carrying buckets of water from the lower to the upper clearing. While we did, Bones planted more seeds and marked them. Each seed was planted about fifteen feet from its nearest neighbor. After about two hours we’d poured twelve buckets of water on each seed.

“Aren’t we going to drown them?” Gerin Reed asked.

“Can you drown a mackerel with the sea?” Thrombone replied.

A half-moon crowned the night by the time we were through. Bones had made a fire that was hot and bright from some tarlike substance that I didn’t recognize. We were all glad to sit after our exertions of the day.

“I have your salaries, gentlemen,” Bones announced.

During that whole day of work not one real discussion occurred between us. There was no feeling between us. Just separate bodies and solitary minds going through the motions of our lives. No one knew what we were doing there, or anywhere.

Then Juan Thrombone produced four small tree-cloth pouches from his larger one. He handed us each a pouch.

Inside mine I found a small dark stone that was cold and slightly moist to the touch. An orange lichen or fungus of some sort was growing along one side.

“A drop or two of water each week and keep it in the pouch. When the moss covers the whole of the stone, scrape it into a bottle of water and let it sit for at least a year.” He pulled out his canteen made from hide and continued, “And then this strong brew have you.”

He passed the bottle around, admonishing us to take only a mouthful. He needn’t have bothered with the warning, though. It had to be at least 150 proof. It was so potent that I had a hard time keeping it down.