The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(35)

It was then I realized that the question I’d been asking—How did we get here?—was painfully inadequate. Suddenly it was almost irrelevant that I couldn’t remember what happened that last day in Wheeler, between the frantic sprint toward Albuquerque, the flashing lights in the rearview and waking up in that bed upstairs.

This wasn’t just a matter of recall.

It was a matter of here itself.

My stomach heaved and my knees buckled. I slid down the doorjamb, pushing off to land on a ladder that was lying along the barn wall. I closed my eyes and sucked in deep breaths, willing every particle to be very, very still.

“Gettin’ a handle on the moment?”

I blinked up at Olin, standing over me in the doorway, his head quirked. His fingers worked a leaf of rolling paper packed with a line of loose tobacco, deftly snugging it into a cigarette. He licked the seal closed, stuck one end in his mouth and pulled a matchbook from his shirt pocket. When the cigarette was lit, he puffed twice as he slid the matches back into place. Then he offered me his hand.

“Join me outside,” he said.

He eased me up and led me from the barn to the trestle table. As we sat, I barely noticed or cared that its benches were still soaked from the rain. Olin watched me for a long moment over his cigarette. He seemed expectant.

“Stew for supper,” he said finally. “If you can eat.”

I shook my head. I started to say something, then stopped. Words had become meaningless.

“Or,” Olin continued, “we could just sit here and talk about the weather.”

I stared at him and he gazed back, placid as ever. His lines never wavered, never shifted out of focus. It gave me encouragement.

“I thought it was me,” I said. “With the Mountain. The way it pulls at me. Almost . . . talks to me. But it isn’t me, is it?”

Olin took a drag on his cigarette, the tip flaring cherry red in the gathering dusk, mirroring pinpoints of light in his eyes. The smoke when he exhaled smelled sweet. He waited for me to continue.

“And you and Jessie—you’re not just old-fashioned, are you? I can’t explain it, but you’re . . . somehow you’re out of time and place.”

If I expected Olin to be offended, he wasn’t. Nor did he protest. Instead, he smiled indulgently.

I glanced at the western sky as the first stars sparked into place, much like the lights in the farmhouse. There was no trace of storm clouds left.

“And that thunderstorm. Deny it if you want, but . . .” I hesitated. The evening air wasn’t cool, but I was starting to shiver.

“Go on,” Olin urged.

“I think . . . I think you made it. Called it down. Whatever. And Jessie and the sisters—” I shook my head again as if to clear it. “Somehow they busted it up right over us, didn’t they? Stopped it smack in its tracks. So they could have their bee. Jessie said they always have their bee outside.”

“They surely do.”

“Rain or shine, right? Only it never rains. At least not where they are. Olin, what is this place? You have to tell me. And tell me like I’m four years old, because that’s about all I can handle right now.”

He bent his head and flicked ash off the tip of his cigarette. He scraped his thumbnail thoughtfully along his chin, as if considering how best to approach the subject. I watched him in fascination and fear, hardly daring to breathe.

“A while ago,” Olin began slowly, “we had a fella come through, said he was a rabbi. From Brooklyn, he said. And him and me, we got to talkin’. He told me about this place by the name of Olam HaEmet. A ‘Place of Truth,’ he called it. He said there comes a time when you go to this Place of Truth, and you stay put till you figure things out. Reflect on all the things you did in your life. Or maybe on all the things you should’ve done but didn’t. He said that’s where he was headed.”

I started to laugh, but it snagged in my throat. A rabbi? Olin in a tête-à-tête with a rabbi—a tallit slung over his shoulders and tefillin boxes strapped to his head? But overriding the sense of the surreal was the gist of Olin’s words. And even more, the meaning between them. I wanted him to fill in those gaps for me unbidden. At the same time, I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs for him to stop. I tried to lick my lips, but my tongue was as dry as dust.

“And this place, where do you find it?” I asked.

“Not so much where,” Olin said gently, “as how.”