The Fifth Sacred Thing (36 page)

“What can I do?”

“You know what you’ve got to do. The instinct is to close. But you’ve got to open.”

“I don’t know how.”

“You know. First open your mouth. Then you’ll be able to open your heart again.”

Bird approached Madrone the next day, as she was carrying an armload of herbs from the garden.

“Can I talk to you?”

“Sure. Let me put these down.” She placed them in the sink and followed him into his room, sitting beside him on the bed.

He took a deep breath and began. “I know I’ve been an asshole, Madrone. I’m sorry. You’re the one who needs help right now, and I’m going to try to give you all the help I can.”

She took his hands and held them in hers. He was suddenly so dear to her. She would have given anything for the power to heal all his wounds instantly. Maybe Lily was right, maybe she was not content with her limitations.

“Bird, you can get better, you know. I mean, you can at least improve. But you’ve got to take care of yourself. Give your body a chance to heal. There’s exercises I can show you for your back, and Lou could do acupuncture for you. Maybe you should talk to Sam again too, let him go ahead and reset that hip.”

She could feel him starting to close, but then he took a deep breath, exhaled, and smiled at her.

“Okay, I’ll think about it. I’d just hate to be immobilized in a cast when the Stewards’ army marches in.”

“Maybe you’ll be out of the cast by then. You’d be surprised how soon Sam can get you walking—at least on crutches.” Madrone heard the urging in her own voice, and it sounded like whining, pleading. Wrong. She was not meeting him in what he had come to offer. But she couldn’t stop herself. “And then whatever comes down, you’d be better prepared to deal with it.”

“We’re talking about my shit again,” Bird said. “I want to know what you need that I can give you.”

“Information.”

“I’ll give you all I have.” He wrapped his arms around her and held her. “Is that all?”

He had opened to her, and she could do no less for him. “I’m scared. I’m terrified. How do I do something I’m so scared to do?”

He held her tight, wondering what words of reassurance to say when he feared for her so much himself.

“I’m scared to do the things you’ve done, and go where you’ve been,” Madrone said. “I’m scared to come back broken.”

There it was, he thought. The unspeakable thing that I felt hiding behind her kindness. She pities me, and she is afraid of becoming like me. No wonder I couldn’t open up to her. But it’s all out now, we’ve just got to let it go.

“I can’t tell you everything’s going to be all right, because that would be a lie,” Bird said. “I don’t know how it will be.”

“I don’t want you to tell me that. I want you to tell me something about fear. Everybody in this family is always so fucking brave. I feel like a misfit.”

Bird laughed and held her tighter. “No, love, you’re not a misfit. And I, for one, am not that brave. If I had known what was going to happen, I can’t say I would have gone. I was young and dumb and thought I was just going to die, which seemed romantic and inevitable if you remember the times. Everyone was dying.
Todo el mundo.”

“It seemed that way.”

“All I can say is, it’s not that the fear goes away but that it changes. When something really bad is happening, it’s just what’s happening. So you face it, because in that moment you don’t really have any choice.”

“I guess I know that,” Madrone said. “It’s like going through a difficult birth. You can’t stop it, so you just do it. But it’s now, thinking about it beforehand, that’s so hard. Weren’t you scared before you went away?”

“I was terrified.”

“I don’t want to die,” Madrone said. “I wish you were going with me. I’m scared of being alone.”

“I will be with you, in spirit as we like to say.” Bird tightened his arms around her and bent his head low. “Not a moment of any day will go by when some part of me won’t be with you.”

“I know.” They clung together, and his body felt so sweet against hers that she didn’t know how she could ever bring herself to let go.

Finally he pulled back, kissing her lightly on the forehead. “I want to give you something to take with you,” he said. “And I’ve thought and thought about it. Something you couldn’t lose, something nobody can take from you. So, I’ve made you a little song.”

“Bird!”

“I can’t really play it for you, but—come here.” He took her hand and led her over to the bench beside the upright piano, which took up one wall. “Sit here and let me sing it.”

She sat beside him on the bench, knowing what this gift had cost him. Awkwardly, his hands picked out a few key chords, a halting melody. He sang, his voice husky but still the true, resonant voice that she remembered.

The song he had made for her was a little piece of his own music, the music that came to him when he was almost dead and brought him back to life, the music that every now and then had given his own hands the power to heal. He could never do it justice; even when his hands had been whole and in the prime of their skill, at most he could have played an echo of what he heard in his mind. And now all he could do was hint at the melody with stumbling notes and sing a little of it without words. He felt embarrassed, but when he stopped she shook her head.

“Don’t stop, Bird. That’s beautiful.”

He could see in her face that she was moved, he hoped not just with pity.

“And now,” he said, making himself smile, “you have to learn it. And then it’ll be yours, and you can sing it as you hike down the coast, and when you’re afraid, and if … and if … 
Diosa
, Madrone.…” He couldn’t speak anymore; all he could do was look at her and hold her. She was warm and alive and whole in his arms, and when they were together like this he could feel himself flowing out to her, feeding her and being fed in turn. How could he bear to believe that in a little while she’d be gone?

“This is going to be a good week,” he said. “We’re just going to love each other, and be good to each other, and build up our memories. Memories are important. They’re something you can hold on to.”

He was as good as his word. He dredged his mind for every scrap of information she might find useful—descriptions of places, names of people, stories, rumors, gossip, customs. Things came back to him that he’d forgotten: scraps of conversation overheard in the prison, the taste of moldy bread, thirst. During the day while the others were working they rode gondolas around the city, laughing together, walking on the sea dikes and climbing the green hills. They went to the ceremonies of the Ohlone and Miwok and Pomo tribes who came down to the city in the autumn to offer their ancient dances as gifts. He let her massage him, digging her strong fingers into his sore ligaments; he let her questions dig into the sore places in his soul.

At night, because he knew it would please her, he opened the piano and struggled to play, although it hurt him more than he could express. In his mind, his hands were the fluid expression of what he heard inside himself; now they were clumsy, like bundles of rags tied to sticks, thumping and crashing out a few broken chords. Nevertheless he kept on, he sang, because he understood that what she really needed from him was to know how to face the unfaceable. And he could only give her that knowledge by example.

And she sat, watching him, hearing the power in his awkward, banging music, loving him so much she could hardly bear to breathe.

Much to his surprise, Bird began to notice his playing improve. It was still rough, but not quite as rough. There were movements he could make that he couldn’t before. When no one was around, he tried scales, simple runs.

He would never be the musician he once was, but still there existed the possibility that he could improve enough to let music be his vehicle. With the thought came a new dimension of fear. He had no surety that with all the work in the world he could become even that good, yet he had no excuse not to try.

They made love most of the night, but when the blue light of morning came, the others slipped out, leaving Bird and Madrone alone. She clung to him, not intending to arouse him, but just to look into his eyes, feel the precise curve of his cheeks over their bones and the soft wiry curls of his new-grown beard, and then he was hard against her and she drew him into her, wanting only to lie still and be filled with him and remember him, but there was so much love in his eyes that she shuddered under him, drinking him in.

“What are you going to do when I’m gone?” she asked when they were through.

“I’ll be a good boy,” Bird said. “I’m going to let Sam knock me apart and put me back together again. I’ll play my scales. I’ll tell cheerful lies to Maya.”

“We might never see each other again. We might never be in each other like this again,” Madrone whispered.

“We’ll see each other, alive or dead. If I die first, I’ll haunt you.”

“It’s not the same,” Madrone said.

“I’m giving you six months,” Bird said. “After that, I don’t care if I’m in six different pieces and the whole Stewards’ army is encamped in our greenhouse. I’m coming down to get you if I have to crawl.”

She left in the morning, on the back of a wagon heading back south from the weekly market. Maya had said her goodbyes in the house, too upset to speak much. She cupped Madrone’s head between her hands, looked long and deep into her eyes, memorizing them, and then let her go. Bird and Sage and Nita and Holybear walked down with her to the market and watched as the wagon lumbered down the old freeway, until it disappeared in the distance. Then they accompanied Bird to the hospital.

“Okay, Sam,” he said. “Do your dirty work. I’m yours, now.”

13

M
adrone laid another stick on her fire, watching the warm light of the sunset color the ocean waves gold and violet. If her count was correct, it was the night of the Winter Solstice. She’d been traveling for two weeks now, making her slow way down through the coastal mountains, through canyons thick with redwoods and the peeling madrones, their gray outer bark pulled back to reveal the reds and bronzes and purples of the papery inner bark and, beneath it, smooth green-gold skin. They were her talismans; she too was stripping and peeling. It had been so long since she had spent days in silence. It had been so long since she’d had no one to answer to, no one to be responsible for except herself.