The Meq Read online

  “What about the Stones? Are there many of them?”

  “There are five, at least there were five when Umla-Meq saved them in the time of Those-Who-Fled.” She climbed up ten more feet diagonally. “They were given to five separate families for protection.”

  “Did you say Umla-Meq?”

  “Yes, Umla-Meq.”

  “One of the last things Mama said was ‘find Umla-Meq.’ ”

  She was already up the scaffolding another ten feet. I could barely see her in the shadows. She shouted down at me, “Then you better get busy.”

  “But where? How?” I shouted back. “And who’s Sailor?”

  I could hear her laughing somewhere up in the darkness, a spider safe inside her web. Suddenly she leaned her head into a lone shaft of sunlight and looked down at Carolina and Georgia. They were leaning against each other at the entrance to the alley. She shouted to me, “Beware for that one.”

  I turned and looked at the girls, then up to her and yelled, “Which one?”

  Geaxi was gone, probably up and over one of the buildings, but gone. She never answered.

  Georgia and I helped Carolina walk back to Sportsman’s Park. The bleeding had stopped and she balked at our helping her, but we did it anyway. We found Mrs. Bennings in our seats sitting with two of the St. Louis Browns. She was glad to see us, but several rounds of beer and the attentions of two baseball players sort of made us invisible. I told her I was taking the girls home, because Carolina had cut her knee and Mrs. Bennings thought that was a grand idea and said she’d be right behind us. Several hours later she made it home and, before she passed out, told us that the Spider Boy of the Pyrenees never showed and Corsair Bogy had been booed and showered with debris. Several fights broke out and that’s when she said she took her leave. “After all,” she said, “public brawlin’ is nothin’ but bad manners.”

  That night, Carolina asked me the first of a thousand questions about what she had seen. I don’t remember my answer, but I clearly recall the dream I had later.

  I was in a cave or cell made of stone. I was staring at a single opening in the wall above me. I felt desolate and defeated. I saw a spider crawl into the open space and begin to spin a web across it. Four times she spun her web only to see it break and fall. On the fifth try the web held. I reached up to touch it and the strands were razor sharp. I cut my fingers and the blood poured out and kept pouring out until it covered the floor.

  I kept bleeding and the blood around me kept rising. I was sure I was going to drown in blood. Just before it reached my mouth and nose, I looked up and saw the spider, alone in the center of her web, waiting.

  I awoke then and one word filled my mind—Meq.

  4

  MUGALARI

  (SMUGGLER)

  By the dim light of a new moon, his ship slips through the dark and deadly rocks of the headlands and sails into the secret cove. He navigates by instinct and memory and every sense is alive and alert. He is familiar with the delicate balance of fear and calm. He expects the unexpected. His ship is fast and sleek and manned by a loyal crew who know their mission well. He is a smuggler, as was his father before him, and his father’s father before that. His contraband is not gold or guns or rum. He carries something else; stowed safe and warm, waiting for the swift moment of exchange, is the Dreamer. The Dreamer, who must be delivered in darkness, entrusted to another with only a silent nod and never spoken of again. He has done this before. In his dreams, he has never stopped.

  F or the next few months, Mrs. Bennings ran the best and most respectable boardinghouse in south St. Louis. The girls had willingly handed over to her their “welfare” money from the Browns and Billy’s fans. She used most of it on improvements to the house and a brand-new, hand-painted sign out front that read: “Mrs. Bennings’s House—A Proper Place—Visitors Welcome.” A good sign and a simple sign that reflected perfectly the character of the owner. She was a good woman, a loving woman, and I think maybe her only flaw was the hole in her heart created by the total absence of Solomon. She was haunted by it, I could tell, but still we never spoke of him.

  Along with improving the state of the boardinghouse, she grew obsessed with improving the minds and manners of the girls. She bought new clothes and books and enrolled both of them in school, making sure everyone from the principal on down understood that even though Georgia was mute, “her mind was as sharp as the sting of a bee.”

  For some reason, maybe something instinctual, Mrs. Bennings never mentioned the possibility of me going to school. It was not discussed, nor was the fact that the girls were changing physically and I was not. But all around me I was sensing and learning what Ray had told me—“You gotta keep movin’ when everybody’s gettin’ older and you ain’t.” I could feel the lingering stare of a neighbor or hear the unasked questions if my name was brought up among the boarders. I began to stay away from the boardinghouse more and more, especially during the day, and spent most of my time wandering through Forest Park or Henry Shaw’s gardens, alone, thinking about who I was and what I was. Carolina went with me sometimes and it was there in Forest Park on the first day of winter that I finally told her everything I knew about myself and the Meq. I told her everything, but naturally she thought I was crazy.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said, “something like that just can’t be.”

  “Well, it is,” I said.

  We were walking in the heart of the park, not along the laid-out paths, but through and around the trees, kicking dead leaves as we went. She stopped and looked at me, waiting for me to explain. I couldn’t.

  “You mean you’re just going to stay twelve and that’s it?” she asked.

  “I guess so. I don’t know.” I wanted to tell her more and make it clear for her. She was my best friend and we shared everything, but I knew I couldn’t. She was Giza, I was Meq, and I was learning the difference.

  “How do you know any of that stuff is true,” she said, “and how do you know what we saw that girl do in the alley wasn’t just some trick?”

  “Because I know.”

  “But how?”

  I took off my jacket and rolled up one of my shirtsleeves. I reached into my trousers and pulled out my penknife. I opened the blade and held it up in front of her. Sunlight glinted off the steel blade. She started to speak, but I made a motion for her to keep quiet. I slowly dragged the sharp edge of the blade across my forearm. Carolina jumped back.

  “No, Z, what are you doing?” she screamed.

  She put her hands to her mouth and looked at me wild-eyed. I stared back at her with as steady a gaze as I could hold. The knife blade hurt.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “Now I know you’re crazy,” Carolina hissed with real anger.

  We both watched as the blood poured out of the cut and down my arm. A minute passed, then Carolina said, “Please, Z, stop this now. Let me put something around that.”

  “Wait,” I said again.

  In less than three minutes the bleeding had stopped and the wound began to close. Carolina stared in fascination. In another minute there was only a dark red line where there had been an open wound. I knew that even that would be gone by the next day.

  “You see,” I said, “I’m not like you, Carolina. I’m something different . . . something else.”

  Carolina stood still and straight, barely breathing. I watched her face. She had a band of freckles that crossed her cheeks and nose and were barely visible unless she was flushed. Right then, I could count every one of them. She was still angry, but confused and amazed at the same time.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said, “I saw it, but I don’t believe it. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know it doesn’t make sense. That’s why I’ve got to find some things out,” I said.

  “But, Z, that’s a miracle. It’s something out of the Bible.”

  “It’s not out of the Bible,” I said. “It’s in my blood.”

  She reached down and grabbed a handf
ul of leaves, then walked over to me. “Give me your arm,” she said. I let her take my arm and she wiped the last traces of blood off my skin with the leaves. “Is that girl, Geaxi, like you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “and a lot older. I’ve got to find out some of what she knows. My mama said to find Sailor and I’ve got to do it. I don’t know how yet, but I’ve got to do it.”

  I looked into Carolina’s eyes. They were a gray-blue with little flecks of gold reflecting sunlight. She took my hand in hers.

  “I’d go with you,” she said, “if Georgia wasn’t so happy here.”

  “Well, I don’t know if I’m going anywhere yet.”

  We started walking toward home, kicking leaves again.

  “You’ll go,” she said.

  She was right. Not six weeks later Mrs. Bennings and a lady friend of hers, who introduced herself only as Natalie, came home late one night accompanied by two men. I should say that although Mrs. Bennings was running a successful and respectable boardinghouse at the time, she was becoming more and more drawn to a life after dark, a life of saloons and whiskey and men. Georgia was troubled by this and always stayed up late, waiting for her, ready to brush her hair and help her to bed. Carolina and I were up with her that night, sitting by candlelight at the long kitchen table when the foursome arrived, loud and drunk.

  Mrs. Bennings led the way, almost crashing through the door, arm in arm with a skinny man I’d seen before, but couldn’t place. Behind them and laughing like hyenas were Natalie and a shortish, red-faced man with a full beard and wearing a tam-o’-shanter tilted at an angle.

  “Hush now, darlin’s, we’ll wake the boarders,” Mrs. Bennings said to the others. She was trying to put her finger in front of her mouth, but she was swaying too much to find it.

  “Let the buggers wake up and piss themselves!” the skinny man yelled.

  I recognized that voice. I looked closer at the man’s face. I remembered the slicked-back hair and the gaunt, sunken cheeks. I was sure of it—he was Corsair Bogy, the promoter who had brought Geaxi to St. Louis only to be booed and humiliated when Geaxi disappeared.

  Mrs. Bennings said, “Shhh! I’ll not be hearin’ that kind of talk. I’ll have you know, we don’t—” But she never finished her sentence. Instead, she stumbled into the kitchen table and suddenly saw the three of us. “Children!” she said.

  Corsair Bogy was drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and looked at us. He smiled at the girls . . . then he noticed me. Suddenly all his features narrowed into a look of fierce rage.

  “Why, you little son of a bitch,” he snarled, “I don’t believe you got the nerve to come back around here.”

  The other man and Natalie stopped laughing. Mrs. Bennings looked at Corsair Bogy, completely baffled. I stared straight into his bloodshot eyes. He went on. “Well, Spider Boy, I think you owe me about five hundred dollars.” He turned to the other man and said, “Ain’t that right, Mr. Woodget?”

  I glanced at the other man. He was looking hard at me, but said nothing. I unconsciously moved my hand up and grabbed hold of the Stones, which I now wore all the time, around my neck and under my shirt, just like Geaxi.

  “Or maybe I’ll just take it out in pleasure,” he said, taking a step toward me and smashing the whiskey bottle on the edge of the table.

  Mrs. Bennings tried to cut him off, but she tripped and fell on the floor between us. Georgia and Natalie both rushed over to her. She looked up and said, “No, no, he ain’t no Spider Boy. He’s Zianno.”

  Corsair Bogy held the neck of the broken whiskey bottle in one hand and with the other he took hold of Mrs. Bennings’s arm and tried to jerk her out of the way.

  “I’ll decide who’s who,” he said. “Now, out of my way!”

  I glanced quickly at Carolina. Her eyes were wide open and scared. I held the Stones tighter. “Stop right there,” I said. “You will leave this place now and you will harm no one.”

  My voice was steady and firm. Corsair Bogy looked at me as if he were looking at a blank wall; no more, no less. He gently placed the broken bottle on the table and stared at it, as though he had no idea why he’d picked it up in the first place, then turned and walked out of the door, paying no attention whatsoever to anyone else in the room.

  After the door shut behind him, there was nothing but silence, then Natalie said, “Why, Mrs. Bennings has passed out.” She looked at Georgia and said, “Help me take her to her room, will you, missy?” They got her to her feet and she murmured something, then they half dragged, half walked her out of the kitchen and up the stairs. The room was empty except for Carolina, me, and the other man, Mr. Woodget.

  I looked over at him. He was still red-faced and his eyes were bloodshot, but they were staring directly at me, steady and focused. I wondered what he thought about what he’d seen. It was the first time I had knowingly used the Stones.

  Then, still without saying a word, he bent down and started picking up pieces of broken glass, stacking them neatly in a pile on the table. He pushed the pile to one side and sat down slowly, deliberately.

  “That was a close call, eh, boy?” he said, pulling out a long-stemmed pipe and lighting it. He glanced up at me.

  “Yes, it was,” I said.

  I watched him. Carolina watched him. He took two long pulls on his pipe and exhaled. He was in no hurry.

  “The name’s Woodget, Caleb Woodget,” he said, “and in twenty-five years at sea, I have only seen what I just saw twice, both in the last year. And both times, the parties involved that did what they did were children, children that looked so much alike they could be twins. Now why do you suppose that is? Eh?”

  “I couldn’t tell you, Mr. Woodget.” I tried not to show concern or give away anything. “But could you tell me the name of that other child? Was it Sailor?”

  “No, no, it wasn’t. I never got the name,” he said, “but Bogy called him the Spider Boy. Only thing was, he was no boy. He was as female as that one there,” he said, pointing toward Carolina with his pipe.

  I looked at Carolina. She was twirling a strand of hair between her fingers.

  “Why was she with you?” I asked.

  He tapped his pipe on the table, refilled it with tobacco, and lit a match.

  “I smuggled her into the country for Bogy. Picked her up in Port-au-Prince and slipped her in through Biloxi,” he said. “Easy job, good money, but it was in the harbor at Havana that I saw her do something I have never seen before or since. Until tonight. You want to tell me what it is, boy?”

  “I can’t do that, Mr. Woodget. Why don’t you tell me what she did.”

  He sat back in his chair and looked at me. I could tell he wasn’t sure whether to go on or not. He took several long pulls on his pipe.

  Finally, he said, “I am captain of a fine and fast clipper ship, the Clover. Twelve years I have been her skipper now. A smuggler I am and proud of it, but that day we were taking on a legal load; cane sugar, it was. Next to us in the harbor was a ragged old ship I had never seen nor heard of before called the Pisces. I was busy with the load-in and not paying much attention, but on board the Pisces there was a mean and sinful thing taking place: a flogging. If you have ever seen one, you will never want to see one again. The unfortunate man receiving the lash was stripped to the waist and bound to the rigging, hands tied above his head, legs spread apart, and ankles secured. The boatswain’s mate wielded the cat-o’-nine-tails. I could hear the dull whacks followed by the poor fellow’s low moans.

  “I should have done something, maybe called out the captain or stopped it myself, but I did nothing. Flogging has been outlawed since the sixties and I knew it, but still, in my business, you often lend a mute conscience as well as a deaf ear and a blind eye.

  “But to the point. That Spider Boy, who I soon found out was a girl by the sound of her voice, had somehow sneaked up my own mizzenmast and was dangling there in the rigging, looking down on the Pisces and the flogging. No
one saw her but me and I don’t think anyone else heard her issue instructions to the boatswain to put down that cat-o’-nine-tails and walk away, even though he was a good sixty feet away and had no way of hearing her. She said it nice and steady, just like you, and in a low voice that was more a chant than anything else. But put it down he did, and walk away he did also, knowing, I suppose, that his own captain would probably have him flogged for doing it. After that, the Spider Boy—what did you say her name was?”

  “I didn’t say, but her name is Geaxi,” I said.

  “Yes, well,” he went on, “she looked down at me and, I swear by Neptune, she knew I had been listening and watching, but we never spoke of it and I delivered her safely to Bogy in Biloxi.”

  He looked down at his pipe, saw that it had burned out, and tapped it again on the table. Whether it was the circumstances or he could just handle his liquor, I didn’t know, but he now seemed completely sober. He was a patient man, I could tell, and he was going to wait until doomsday for a response.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked.

  He looked me squarely in the face and leaned forward.

  “Can I speak openly in front of her?” he said, nodding toward Carolina.

  “Yes.”

  “I want to hire you, boy. I want you to come and work for me. I will take you on as an apprentice, so you don’t have to bunk with the crew and you can do what you do, however you do it, when I need it. I need your power, or whatever it is, to protect me. There are a great many scoundrels in my profession, let me tell you. I will show you the high seas and a fine life of adventure. You will not regret it.”

  I looked at Carolina. A million things were going through my mind. Was this it? Was this my chance to do what Mama said and find Sailor? Carolina was tight-lipped, but she was nodding, as if to say, “Yes, yes, do it. This is your chance.”

  I looked back at this odd man in his tam-o’-shanter, holding his long-stemmed pipe. He wasn’t going to say another word or persuade me in any way and, in that respect, reminded me of Solomon. I liked him for that.