Welcome to Bordertown (59 page)

His pipes groan as he fills up his bag, right elbow working the bellows.

“Have I ever told you the story of the left-handed fiddler and the goblin?” he asks.

We all shake our heads.

“It’s a good story that gave us an even better tune,” he says, “and what better way to finish off a night as grand and blessed as this?”

Then off he goes, and we all follow his words into the morning.

It seems so small a thing, so
pointless.
Just a misstep on some concrete stairs.

But it changes everything.

I don’t even see it happen. Tom and I are loading the van while Alana and Juliana are inside the hotel packing things up. Except for whatever reason, Juliana comes out to where we are, white cane in hand. On her way down the stairs outside the hotel, halfway between the hotel door and where the van is parked by the curb, she misses the bottom step and falls backward, cracking her head on the top step.

She never regains consciousness.

*   *   *

“We’ll be together forever,” she said to me last May.

We were in the camping area of the Spoutwood Faerie Festival, lying on the grass and staring up at the stars. There were a
lot
of stars, but there are always a lot of stars when you can get out of the city.

“Even when we die,” she went on. “Whichever one of us goes first will be waiting for the other.”

“I don’t like talking about stuff like that.”

“What? Romance?”

“No, dying.”

She gave me a gentle nudge with her elbow.

“It’s just another journey,” she said. “Don’t the Kikimi believe that?”

“Yeah. It’s just … I don’t know.”

I could feel her smile when she cuddled up to me, face pressed against my neck.

“You’re not sure you do,” she said.

Her breath was warm on my skin.

“I don’t know.”

“Well,
I
believe,” she said.

*   *   *

I don’t know how I get through the funeral. I can’t go to the wake. I sit outside the hall the Hills rented, off to one side on a bench under some trees, not seeing anything.

At one point Uncle Herbert sits with me for a while. He puts his hand on my shoulder but he doesn’t say anything. Tía Luba called last night but I couldn’t talk to her, either.

Whichever one of us goes first will be waiting for the other.

I want to hit something. Or someone. Instead I go to a bar down the street. I order a double whiskey. I sit staring at the amber liquid for a long time before I put some money on the bar and leave the whiskey behind, untouched.

*   *   *

Sometime later the Hills find me sitting in a park not far from the hall, staring at the ground. I have no idea what time it is, just that it’s dark. I don’t know how they found me. They sit on either side of me. For a long time we don’t speak.

“I knew her life would be short,” Alana finally says. “I didn’t know how or why, but I knew. It’s the curse of this gift of mine. Sometimes you don’t want to see things, but you do all the same. And some things you can’t change. But if Juliana’s life was going to be short, I wanted what time she had to be happy. You made her happy, Joey.”

I get a picture in my head of the first time she and Tía Luba met. Tía Luba saw it, too.

“Why did no one tell me?” I say.

“To what purpose?” Alana asks. “Could you have loved her any more than you did? Could you have treated her any better?”

I shake my head. “But now she’s gone. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

Tom nods. “But she’s waiting for us in the Summer Country. That’s what I believe.”

“The Summer Country,” I say. “That’s part of Faerieland, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s beyond Faerieland.”

“So how do you get there?”

“It’s not a place the living can visit,” Alana says.

Our conversation seems to unfold in some faraway place.

“I don’t feel like I’m living anymore,” I tell them.

“You won’t feel like that forever,” Alana says.

She doesn’t understand. None of them do. Without Juliana, the world’s gone gray. Without her, there’s just no point to anything.

*   *   *

I let them comfort me. I let them take me back to the hall. It’s almost empty now. The only ones left are the Hills’ closest friends.

“Go ahead,” I say. “Talk to them. I’ll be okay.”

I stand at the back of the hall. I’m thinking of leaving again, but then I see Seamus and I remember sitting around the coals of the campfire on the morning after Juliana and I were married. The stories. What he said.

He looks up, the gleam in those bright blue eyes of his dimmed by the loss we all share. I sit beside him.

“I’m an old man,” he says. “It doesn’t seem right that I’m still here and she’s gone.”

I nod. “I’d trade places with her in a heartbeat.”

“I know,” he says. “I felt the same way when my Emma passed on.”

“Don’t tell me it’s going to get better.”

He shakes his head. “I won’t. Because it doesn’t. The loss is always there. The hole in the world where once she was. Mine, and now yours.”

We fall silent. I look across the hall to where the remaining people are gathered in small groups, speaking softly.

“I have to go to her,” I tell Seamus. “I have to find her. Like in the old stories where the guy goes down into the underworld and brings his true love back.”

“And if she doesn’t want to come back?” he asks. “Your people speak of the wheel of life, how it turns as it must, not how we’d will it. What if she has accepted the turning of her wheel?”

“Then I’d stay with her.”

Seamus nods. “I don’t think it a worthwhile endeavor, but I understand how you feel the need of it.”

“Is it possible?”

“They say anything is possible—somewhere.”

“I thought … if I could get to Bordertown, then I’d be close to the Faerie Realm. And the Summer Country … it lies past it, doesn’t it?”

Seamus is quiet for a long moment.

“In the old days,” he finally says, “you would have been a perfect candidate for entry into Bordertown. It always welcomed those who had nothing left for them here in the fields we know. But there’s no way back to Bordertown—not that I’ve been able to find in thirteen years.”

“But if I could get there …”

“You would get no further. The Truebloods of the Realm are very strict about who can cross and who can’t. The Realm is closed to mortals, and no one can pass through Elfhaeme Gate.”

“I have to try.”

“I know you do. And I wouldn’t hold you from going. But
something is blocking the Way. Or maybe the city just doesn’t exist anymore. It isn’t mine to say.”

“I don’t understand. How can a city be destroyed and it’s not on the news?”

“I didn’t say it was destroyed. It’s … sometimes I think it’s more an idea than a place—though it was certainly real for many of us at one time.

“Bordertown has always been a paradox. You can get there if you really need to be there—or you can’t. You can stumble into it by chance—or you don’t. It could be right there”—he points at a mirror on the side of the hall—“just past our reflection. Or it isn’t. The truth is, the city’s always followed its own rules, and they can change with a shift in the wind.”

“So what do I do?”

He gives me a long, serious study.

“Here’s what I think,” he says. “The old wisdom tells us that ancient power spots and sacred sites are gateways. I believe that the true openings lie inside us. In our own hearts, minds, and lives.

“Perhaps all you need to do is set out on a journey in search of it, believing that when the journey ends you will be there. Not perhaps. Not maybe. Leave no room for doubt. Go with the understanding that the path you take will bring you there. And if it feels like you need a ritual, then make one up. But don’t make it easy. Easy doesn’t earn you anything.”

“Just like that.”

Seamus gives me a sad smile. “It’s never ‘just like that,’ Joey. Even you know that much.”

*   *   *

After my conversation with Seamus, I don’t talk to anyone about it. I go back to Baltimore with the Hills and Uncle Herbert. I go back to the rambling house, to the room I shared with my wife.
Just before dawn, I pack a knapsack and leave a note on the kitchen table:

I’m waiting outside the bank when it opens. I close my account, stash the money in a bag under my shirt, and then set off.

Where do you go when you’ve got a destination in mind but no idea how to get to it?

I do what I did when I was a kid. I ride the rails. It was tough enough when I was a kid because things had already changed from the old days when hoboes crossed the country on the freights. Things have changed even more now, but it’s not impossible. And there’s no better way to travel unnoticed.

I don’t want to be noticed.

I feel it’s important to just disappear, like it’s the first part of the ritual I have to make up. I don’t see the other pieces yet, but this first one feels right.

I eat off the land—fishing, setting snares before I go to sleep—or from fast-food outlets. I clean up in public restrooms. I take a few bad spills coming off the trains. Sprain my arm once. Dislocate my shoulder. That’s a bitch to reset, pushing myself up against a pole until the damn thing finally pops back into place.

I manage to avoid the security guards in the freight yards. I’m not always so lucky with the other guys on the road. But I grew up
fighting and it’s not something you forget. After a while word gets around and the would-be toughs stay out of the way of the crazy Indian.

Most people I meet on the rails don’t want to fight. Most of them don’t even want to talk. That’s fine with me, too, because I’ve got nothing to say.

The loss is always there
, Seamus said.
The hole in the world where once she was.

That doesn’t begin to describe the emptiness I feel.

I ride the rails.

I start carving acorns out of found pieces of wood. When one is done, I toss it from whatever train I’m on.

Seven months go by.

*   *   *

I’m on another train, sitting cross-legged in front of the empty boxcar’s door, watching the landscape. It’s desert country again. Badlands. New Mexico, maybe. It doesn’t matter. It’s just one more place where I am and she’s not.

I finish the acorn I’ve been carving. I hold it up to my eye for a long moment, studying the smoothness of the nut, the tough texture of the cap with its little stem. I toss the carving out the open door, snap my jackknife closed, and stow it back in my pocket.

“Didn’t like that one?” a voice says from behind me.

I turn and look for who spoke. I find him sitting in the shadows, an old man with a bedroll under his butt. He’s got a battered tweed cap on his head, and he’s bundled up in a greatcoat. I can see how you might want something like that when the sun goes down, but right now it’s got to be in the high eighties. He has to be melting in that thing.

“I didn’t see you there,” I tell him.

The old man smiles. “I get that a lot. Maybe I should change my name to Surprise.”

“It’s as good as any other, I suppose.”

“Think I’ll stick with Rudy. What’s yours?”

You don’t meet many talkers on the old hobo trails, and I’m not used to having conversations anymore. But we’ve got a ways to go before the train will slow down enough to jump off, and I’ve already carved my acorn for this ride.

“I’m Joey,” I tell him.

“Nice to meet you, Joey. So you like to whittle?”

I shrug. “It passes the time.”

“That’s one way of looking at it. Another might be that it’s a piece of a ritual.”

“What?”

“Did you know that when you work magic, it shows? It puts a charge in the air. How strong the charge is depends on how close you are to finishing what you started.”

“Who
are
you?”

“I already told you. My name’s Rudy. I’m like you. Just a guy riding the rails. And, like you—like every one of us living this life—I’ve got more to me than the homeless guy you see when you look my way. Come on. This can’t be anything new for you. You know none of us were born doing this. We came to it because we’ve got nothing else left. Or in your case, because it’s something you need to do to make something else happen.”

I glance out the open door, but we’re still going too fast for me to survive a jump.

“I don’t know what you think you see,” I begin, but he waves a hand to cut me off.

“And I don’t know,” he says, “what’s happened to you that makes you treat everybody as an enemy. But it doesn’t have to
be that way. I’ve got knowledge. I’ve got skills. Maybe I can help you.”

“Why would you?”

He smiles and throws my words back at me.

“It passes the time. And really, what have you got to lose?”

Nothing, I realize. So I tell him. Not what brought me here. Not about the hole in my life that can’t ever be filled.

“I’m trying to find a place called Bordertown,” I say.

“Bordertown? Yeah, now there’s a place. It can fill up your spirit and it can break your heart—sometimes both at the same time. Being in Bordertown is like mainlining a drug. Go there once, and all you’ll ever want to do is get back. Problem is, sometimes it’s just not there anymore—or at least it isn’t for you.”

“But it is real?”

“Define ‘real.’ ”

“You know what I mean.”

“Man, how would I know what
you
mean? My real’s not necessarily the same as your real. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not just being cute. The thing is, we all live in the world that we see and expect. They don’t always match up—you understand what I’m saying?”

I shake my head.

“Let me put it this way,” he says. “You look out that door and you’re seeing New Mexico go by.”

“So?”