Theo (7 page)

Did you ever fight my dad.

Colin laughed, turning off the gas on the big stove, the kitchen blurry with smoke from the skillet. Your dad and I have had our strong disagreements and possibly wrestled a little. Certainly he’s a hard-headed sod and stubborn as any human that ever drew the breath of life. Part of my portfolio is whispering to the king that he’s mortal. At least I feel that’s part of my job. Others may disagree. I can tell you, I’ve been on his
team a couple of times when others have come at us. He can hold his own, your dad.

Why don’t you like my mom.

What makes you think that.

I’m not stupid.

Very true, my friend.

Colin padded barefoot across the tiles to the heavy table at which Theo leaned on his elbows over an empty plate. Colin stuck a long fork into the pan and pulled out a slab and poked it onto Theo’s plate.

Here now, get some life into you, put some flesh on your bones. We don’t want anyone to think you’re getting mistreated. It’s more your mom not liking me.

Why.

Theo leaned his head on his hand and picked up the meat with his other hand but then dropped it: still too hot.

Christ. Silverware. Like a bleeding animal.

Colin yanked open a heavy old drawer and scooped a fistful of forks and spoons and can openers and a couple of knives and spilled them on the table. Choose your weapon.

Theo sat for an instant staring at the dull gleams, then grabbed a fork and jumped up from his chair and yelled, running at Colin. Colin jumped out of the way, holding cigarette and frying pan away on each side: zounds, a barbarian sneak attack. You will pay for your perfidy.

Theo came at him again, poking, growling.

Dropping the pan clattering on the stove and grabbing a long wooden spoon from a countertop, Colin whacked Theo on the top of his head, then started feinting with the spoon, and dancing around the kitchen, forward and backward, knocking over Theo’s chair. Is that the best you can do. Come on, soldier.

Theo suddenly was angry and really poking with the fork, slashing. Colin laughed and dodged, whacked Theo again, and danced behind the table.

Theo threw down his fork and walked out into the ballroom and toward the door, washed in sadness in the bright early light, in the silent house. Colin called from behind, his voice echoing around the big kitchen.

Hey, you can’t depart the field of battle yet, we aren’t finished.

Colin knew more about his dad than Theo did. It’s not fair, Theo yelled walking away.

Fair. Whoever said anything about fair – first rule of fighting.

Now down the stairs and at the first floor, his mother’s hugging smell still in his nose, Theo hears clacking and buzzing, with a regular rhythmic beat, and some high whirring notes also, and beeps. He turns and follows the noise to what used to be a library, floor to ceiling shelves like ladders, built into the walls in dark wood. Some shelves still hold books but too high for Theo to see titles. The letters are dull gold, on fire when the sun’s right. At the room’s center on an altar of overturned metal buckets, to amplify sound, sits a fax machine, linked by a long taut beige cord and a new orange extension cord to a brass outlet across the room. The cord hangs in midair and has flags and rags and police tape ribboning from it. The machine trembles on the bucket tower. Something is slowly being printed into its tray. Incoming, Colin usually yells, when he hears the machine begin to tremble and whine.

The paper warm and smelling like chemicals. Theo lifts the slick paper and runs with it back out and down the hall, toward the rear of the house. Because it’s from his dad, and Colin’s disappeared somewhere, Theo decides to bring it to his grandfather.

Theo runs: he’s a fast runner, and he’s dodging things, feet slapping on cool marble, tile, wood, each a different feeling. Then he’s on the terrace stone and bursting into the full sun now lighting the back lawn all the way downslope to the tree line. Gus’s chair is empty.

Theo stops. He runs his hand through his hair, rubs his head hard, his fingers catching in his hair. It started hurting to comb so he stopped. Colin says they are shipwrecked, like Robinson Crusoe: no need to fret over personal hygiene, must survive, Colin says. Gus frowns when Colin says things like that. Gus is neat, he even lines his belt buckle up with his shirt buttons, which bulge over his big stomach; even when he’s wearing shorts, which he wears with regular leather shoes and black socks. Gus tries to get Theo to wash and comb his hair, but Theo knows that if he waits long enough Gus stops talking about it.

Theo is brown everywhere except where his shorts are, the skin across his nose pink and peeling. His palms are much paler than the backs of his hands.

Mingus once said Theo was black, held out his own huge hands,
pink-palmed, and Theo’s next to them. We look the same. You and me.

Then once when Mingus was wearing one of his costumes that had a visor over his face, he said, from inside, boy, you got so much you don’t even know how much you got.

How much what.

What I mean is, I want to be on your planet. Help me get this fastened in back.

What do I do.

See the loops. Put the wooden toggles into the loops.

On one side were small brown wood football-shaped buttons, and Theo threaded them into loops strung down the other side. Mingus grunted, and began making sounds.

Mingus sometimes appeared in costume talking only in his made-up language. Theo sort of understood, sometimes, but generally didn’t. When he was in a costume or talking his own language, he was not Mingus anymore, and people around him acted like he was someone else and they didn’t laugh or make fun of him. After a few times Theo did too. He thought about how his parents were different people at different times and that surprised him. He saw new expressions on their faces, like strangers’ faces: maybe everyone is like that. But he felt pretty much the same all the time. He wondered if that was normal.

Okay: Mingus was talking English again. I need to collect some artifacts – you want to help me.

Usually once he appeared in costume you couldn’t talk to him, you had to wait until Mingus reappeared. But he flipped up the visor, which was a curved piece of gray plastic attached to ear pieces taken from a pair of sunglasses and glued to a bicycle helmet like an apricot pit or a brain or an insect head.

Okay.

The thready carpet at Mingus’s room door reminded Theo of birds, how if you looked closely in the trees you could spot nests because of the red, blue, green they’d pulled from the old garden furniture. Theo felt calm when he watched birds, reminded of something he had forgotten, but something he didn’t need to think about. He could just watch. There wasn’t much like that.

Theo hummed, started whispering a story to himself, as Mingus fussed with his clothes and a plastic bucket.

Okay so the path goes through that swamp and we know there are monsters in there. Yeah but how can we get the treasure. We can try the magic salt again, it helped the last time. But
.

We’re not telling Colin about this, I just want to make a clean getaway.

Theo spent a lot of his time figuring out which of the directions given to him by adults to follow, as he frequently found himself told two things that couldn’t both be true or both be done at the same time. He had learned to base his decisions on consequences: which adult would be most unhappy if Theo followed the other adult’s instructions, and how would that unhappiness be expressed. Here Theo figured Colin was the bigger problem, although Theo was, as usual, uncomfortable making the decision.

I have to tell him. He’ll be upset.

Mingus shrugged, a massive movement, and stared with his goggle eyes. It’s your world, baby. I’m gonna keep walking, though. I need to get out there before the good shit’s gone. Sorry, I mean stuff. Mingus shuffled toward the front hall.

Theo wanted to know what the good stuff was but that would have to wait. He followed the noise, toward the ballroom. He stopped in the dark back of the house. He waited for a gap
in the gonging sounds coming from Colin’s room, and yelled Colin, I’m going to the beach with Mingus come and find us. Then he ran.

See, words have power, and if you control words you can control the world.

As they walked the beach, Mingus kept his plastic cartoon eyes fixed on the sand and his head not moving while the rest of his body jiggled and staggered, kicked up grains: he looked the way the dogs looked when they scented something. The only other time Theo saw similar expressions, not exactly the same but the same in the way it felt watching them, was when Theo watched people playing music. Some musicians managed to look goofy at the same time they looked like they were following a strong scent, as their faces twitched or tightened and loosened and tongues went in and out, or they chewed or made mouth shapes, the mouths disconnected from bodies and even from the music sometimes. Getting something out musically meant squeezing something big through a small hole, it seemed. It looked painful, but Theo knew that couldn’t be true.

Mingus jabbed down quick as a bird and plucked up something raining sand. It was a faded plastic green V, with little black magnets on the long parts of the V. Every morning in his class at the school in the city, one student was picked to spell out the day’s weather and a quote from a famous writer on a white magnetic board that sat on an easel, using letters like this one, except smaller: the teacher seemed to think they were little kids. Mingus grinned, sweating.

Certain letters are the most powerful of all, and one day they’re going to rise up and liberate themselves from the
European languages. The ones that go back to Greece and Egypt are just biding their time, waiting for people who understand to free them. Then their power can be unleashed for real, and they can change the world.

The letters – Theo asked, peering up at Mingus, who’d plunked the letter into the bucket and now shuffled off, his massive calves crusted with sand looking like the Snack Shack’s breaded chicken drumsticks in the village. Colin ate them two at a time, one in each hand.

Yeah, the letters. I have to be careful – the government knows I know about this, and they’d like to steal what I’m doing. They want to turn these letters into weapons. They might just try to turn me into a weapon, or force me to work for them – Mingus wiped at his nose, churning forward – the beach is good because you got things let loose by the water that could be from anywhere, could have traveled thousands of miles, could have been floating for centuries, or just risen up from something sunk, just seeing the light again for the first time. But you have to get out early, cause there are lots of eyes on this stuff. Mingus pointed up.

Theo looked up –

No man, don’t look. Satellites right now can see us. The eye follows everything. Then they swoop in.

Who does. Theo was half-running to keep up with Mingus, the sun hot on his back, his stomach growling, the low-tide ocean curling and hurling itself against the sand about thirty yards away. A couple of striped beach tents rippled nearer the water, and a stream of walkers moved there, all old.

Can we walk closer to the water, I’m hot, Theo said.

Mingus stopped and scanned things, big as a lighthouse. Okay.

They headed straight for the water. Is Mingus your real name, Theo asked.

No, it’s a nickname because I look like a famous musician named Mingus. My real name is the same name as a line of kings of Egypt. My people. My dad wanted a powerful name for me.

You’re from Egypt.

No. But, real Egyptians, the first Egyptians, were black. The Greeks stole everything from us – all the shit they’re famous for. The science and philosophy. Stole it from the first kingdom, my kingdom. Later white people came along and called the place Egypt but that’s not the real name.

What’s the real name.

Can’t tell you, little man. Names are really powerful, and that name’s too powerful still, even after five thousand years, still radioactive. It could blow up in your face.

How come I never heard of this in school.

Mingus started laughing, then coughing, still kicking toward the ocean, getting further away rather than closer: We don’t have enough time for me to tell you why that is. Let’s just see what’s to see on this damn beach.

Theo now walked in Mingus’s shadow, easier and cooler than trying to navigate beside him. Talking up at the giant.

How tall are you.

Six feet six and three-quarter inches.

How much do you weigh.

A billion pounds. I am the heaviest cat on this beach, baby.

I weigh ninety-six pounds.

Well, damn, you are the second-heaviest cat on the beach. Congratulations.

Mingus was huffing as he trolled through the sand, gleaming.
Theo thought of whales and the fact that they breathe, just like people, and sometimes you can hear them, in a boat; sailors that hunted them said you could hear them breathing, and Theo realized right then: if you held them underwater long enough, they’d drown. He’d heard the dogs breathing, but he hadn’t ever heard any other animal breathing. Did birds breathe. Squirrels. What does a snake sound like. He hadn’t ever heard his mother breathe.

Are you an artist, Theo asked Mingus, standing now next to Mingus’s bucket and staring down at the dry faded V.

Yeah. I make stuff. I play music.

That’s not art.

The hell it’s not. Why do you say that.

Art’s pictures.

No, man. Art is ideas – everything else is just details, which tool you choose to use. And the ideas, they’re monsters stalking us, drooling on us when we think it’s raining. You have to pay attention. It’s some crazy sh – stuff.

It’s okay. You can say the bad words. I know them.

So you’re dad ain’t an artist.