Quicksilver(69)

“But?” I asked.

Panthea said, “But I do not want to die.”

After we rode in silence for a minute or so, I said, “Well, you know, maybe we can put an end to him and the Oasis without dying. Maybe we haven’t been brought into the world and then been brought together only to die on our first mission.”

“Yes,” Panthea said, “isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Bridget said nothing, nor did she glance at me. She stared straight ahead, following the gravel lane to a dirt track, the track to a paved road, seeking the place where we would go to ground for the night. The moon was high, yet the desert remained shrouded in gloom. In that wasteland, it seemed we might be traveling backward in time, searching for a lost Eden to which no paved or unpaved road would ever bring us.





|?29?|

In a solemn and weary silence, we passed under the interstate near where the San Pedro River, swollen with storm water, raced sullen and untamed and intractable toward Mexico. Putting distance between ourselves and Peptoe, leaving the ISA to search Graham and Gila Counties, we followed a state highway south toward the town of Tombstone in Cochise County, but then we took a second highway west toward Nogales and soon turned south onto a third. We continued to Sierra Vista, a small city on the eastern slopes of the Huachuca Mountains. Psychic magnetism drew us to a motel where four rooms were available and cash was acceptable. The license plate number of the Mountaineer was the only ID required. Shortly before midnight, we were ensconced in our rooms, having agreed to set out for the Oasis after breakfast.

This time, Winston chose to bunk with me, as though confirming that he was aware that a strange new connection had formed between us. I fell asleep with him lying beside me, his head resting on my chest.

In my nightmare, three Nihilim trapped me in a room and sought to devour me alive, requiring no condiments or beverages. When I woke, Winston’s head was no longer on my chest, but he remained beside me, crying fearfully in a dream of his own, which might have been the same one from which I’d awakened. I smoothed one hand along his flank until gradually he quieted, and his breathing confirmed that his anxiety had abated.

I was reminded of Rafael, the golden retriever that had been the pride of the orphanage. Annie Piper, who enthralled us with both stories she’d written and stories she read by others, had been his primary caretaker, under the supervision of Sister Margaret. A girl named Keiko Ishiguro assisted in his care and took over when Annie went away to college. Keiko had been sweet and shy, a slip of a girl with large, beautiful ink-black eyes. When I was thirteen and Keiko was seventeen, Rafael had to be put to sleep because a fast-moving cancer ravaged him. Keiko was in tears for days and, according to her roommate, wept even in her sleep.

The death of Rafael moved me, too, not least of all because, when I was eleven and in deep depression over the murder of Litton Ormond, Rafael had often come to my room at night and slept by my side, though he had never done so before. If his presence did not soothe my anguish, I believe he did medicate my anxiety, because gradually I worried less that I, like Litton, would meet an early and senseless death.

Sister Theresa, psychologist and determined teacher, had said that dogs might be the only species on the planet, other than human beings, to mourn the loss of a loved one. Dogs had been known to grieve for months and even years, going so far as to journey on their own to a distant cemetery to lie on a master’s grave. One could understand, then, that a dog might sense the grief of a boy who had lost his best friend.

Keiko had been gone from the orphanage for four years by the time I started working for Arizona! magazine. She’d moved to Austin, Texas, because she discovered a cousin, Ichiro Sugimura, resided there; he was her only living relative. Six months later, she sent the good sisters a letter announcing her impending marriage to a gentleman named Malik Maimon. I thought that there might be a good human-interest story in Rafael, the orphanage dog, so I tried to contact Keiko but failed to find her, though neither Ishiguro nor Maimon was such a common name that the search should have been difficult. Neither could I locate Ichiro Sugimura.

Considering how close we orphans were to one another, bonded by loss and by the uncertainty of our future, it seemed that we should remain part of one another’s lives throughout our days on Earth, no matter how far we journeyed from Mater Misericordi?. But time and desire—longing for what we have not and seeking for whom we might prefer to become—spirals nearly everyone away from even those they once loved. Only family has the power to keep people connected to a place and a heritage and the communal meaning of linked generations, though even many families are less tightly knit than needed to fill that role. And in my failure to find Keiko, I’d had to come to terms with the truth that a collection of orphans, brought together by necessity, was not the family that for so long I had wanted to believe that it was.

Now, while darkness still lay upon Sierra Vista, I showered and dressed. I clipped Winston’s leash to his collar and took him for a walk as dawn broke. We found a park and stood for a while under a spreading oak, watching sunshine flood the San Pedro River valley and shadows slowly shrink eastward as the light came west.

When Winston and I returned to the motel, our companions were ready for the day. We gathered at a restaurant on the far side of the highway, where dogs were welcome on the patio. We drank mimosas with our food and took our time at breakfast. Considering the evil that we’d been promised would confront us at the Oasis, Bridget and Panthea and I didn’t want to go where we had to go, didn’t want to be what we were born to be. We wanted to rebel against the mystery of our existence, refuse to act until all was explained. However, the master of that mystery, having endured two previous rebellions of historic nature and being averse to explaining His intentions other than through prophets sane and prophets mad, wasn’t likely to take our little rebellion seriously enough to part the morning as if it were a curtain and welcome us backstage for a tour. Indeed, that didn’t happen, and we hit the road.