The Grey Pilgrim Page 5

  Fuck it, she thought. She wrote rum under chocolate and underlined it three times. Lots of rum. She didn’t even notice what it did to the flow of Dr. Sherwood’s lecture.

  Who Could Forget

  J.D. had spent most of the intervening time back in the library. He’d even found a couple of articles on the Papago. By the time he set out for his dinner engagement he knew the rudiments to the manufacturing process of Papago baskets and the gist of a couple of their songs. He didn’t think Sinatra needed to feel threatened.

  The Spencers lived in a neighborhood west of the university, most of which hadn’t existed half a century before. It was a mixed bag, ranging from expensive to modest middle class. There were lots of grassy yards filled with shade trees and flowering plants, and the houses were of a style that made you think you were only a couple of miles from a Southern California beach. Their home was one of the nice ones. The boat-tailed Auburn roadster sitting in the driveway indicated that academic excellence and scholarships weren’t all the Spencers had going for them. Somebody’s mommy and daddy had money.

  J.D. went up a shady walk between flowering shrubs and climbed the steps to a generous porch. It was an ideal spot for rocking chairs and long summer evenings. He rang the bell. Mary Spencer answered it and he remembered her after all. Who could forget?

  She was tall and slender, with all her curves in the right places. If that wasn’t enough, she topped it off with a classically beautiful face. Helen of Troy should have looked like Mary Spencer. Maybe she had. J.D. would have launched a ship for her.

  She was wearing a pair of slacks and a blouse, both too large, and no make up. She seemed to be trying to hide, rather than accentuate, what nature had given. It didn’t work. She was just too spectacular, regardless of disguise.

  He’d met her at a party and noticed the ring before anybody got around to making it formal and telling him her name had a Mrs. tacked on the front of it. J.D. hadn’t been involved in a serious relationship with a woman since before Spain and he made it a practice not to fool around with other men’s wives, even when only physical needs were involved. He didn’t let it matter even if they were bored or beautiful, so he’d simply written her off. She was great to look at but he hadn’t bothered getting to know her. He didn’t remember her in connection with the boy archaeologist, but he certainly hadn’t forgotten her. Women who look like that inspire masculine recall. And she was also intelligent enough to be working on a graduate degree. Beauty and brains could be a very dangerous combination.

  “Hello, J.D.,” she said. “You probably don’t remember me. I’m Mary.”

  “Oh, I remember you all right,” he said, then decided he’d done so too enthusiastically. It wouldn’t be a good idea to tell her he remembered her because she was easily the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. It would have sounded like a corny line even if she was single, and she wasn’t. He didn’t want it to sound like a come on.

  “At the Gibson’s, I think,” he said. “Some middle-aged professor of classics decked out in tweeds, bow tie, and an affected accent was pontificating on the situation in Europe. He said something about how, if Hitler was persecuting the Jews, it was because they’re so cliquish, so rigidly incapable of blending into the culture where they live. They were bringing most of their troubles on themselves. You straightened him out. Made him realize, probably for the first time, how equally out of place in Tucson’s culture he was. I seem to recall a colorful phrase or two that you used.”

  “Oh fuck!” she said. It came out involuntarily and she blushed.

  “That was one of them,” J.D. agreed, accelerating the process.

  She rolled her eyes. “Time for the cake,” she muttered. J.D. heard, but didn’t understand. Before he could ask for a clarification she went on. “So much for my sweet and innocent image.”

  She smiled. It lit up the world. J.D. hadn’t realized how dark it had been until then. He stood there and felt foolish and awkward, like he’d suddenly returned to puberty. He expected his face to start breaking out again. He brushed a hand at a cowlick he’d tamed in his mid-teens. Cut it out, he told himself, simultaneously delivering a swift mental kick to the seat of his pants. She’s married. You can’t have her.

  “If being in the presence of a woman with a sailor’s fondness for expressive vocabulary won’t offend you too much, come in. I promise I’ll try to watch my language.”

  She took his hat, gave it to a maple hall tree, and led him inside. The living room was large and comfortable with more than its share of overfilled bookshelves. Colorful Indian pots stood on the mantel, and blankets and intricate baskets hung where you would have expected to find reproductions of the masters or originals of those who never would be. He followed her, surprised to find his feet still worked and that he could nod and make appropriate, if simple, responses in her presence. He rather expected to fall down and maybe drool a little.

  “Larry’s out back, burning some otherwise perfectly good steaks on his grill,” she explained. J.D. hadn’t even started to miss him. “I let him ruin the meat because it makes what I fix seem so much better by comparison. Also, it keeps him out of my way when I’m in the kitchen.”

  She continued with the casual banter. Somehow, he filled in his parts. She got him a drink, the preference for which he could not remember having expressed, then ushered him back down the hall, across a narrow back porch, and onto a shaded patio where the boy archaeologist was sacrificing something on an altar of flame.

  “Hi, J.D.,” he said, giving the marshal’s hand another enthusiastic workout while the girl disappeared back into the house. J.D. tried to disengage himself and turn the kid’s attention back to the steaks. The fire looked ready to spread to a pair of nearby elms.

  We, the People

  Supper was over, but J.D. couldn’t have told you exactly what he’d eaten. He could tell you what color Mary’s eyes were though, and had nearly determined just what shade of mahogany most closely matched her hair.

  The meal had been accompanied by small talk, most of which involved J.D. trying to avoid Larry’s none too subtle probing about Spain. But with dessert finished, and Larry briefly away from the table freshening drinks, J.D. prodded himself out of his sudden return to adolescence and asked her to tell him about the Papago. It wasn’t the conversation Larry wanted to rejoin, but he listened quietly while J.D. tried to concentrate on what she was saying and not how she looked, or how strongly he was drawn to her.

  “Their culture was outwardly simple, even at the time of Spanish contact and it’s not so very different today, for all their forced coexistence with a civilized world. If there’s been any significant acculturation, most of it occurred among the river people, not their desert kin.”

  He’d heard that eyes could glow with excitement, but this was the first time he’d witnessed it. The topic was obviously one she was enthusiastic about and her wide eyes seemed to catch and reflect light from every available source. A man could get lost in those eyes.

  “Actually, the Pima and Papago are a single people, split by limited opportunities to exploit river valley environments. In the Southern Arizona and Upper Sonoran Desert there are only so many places where there could be river people. Excess population had no choice.

  “Both branches of the tribe call themselves O’odham which means ‘the people.’ You may have noticed that primitive peoples almost always call themselves by words that translate that way, but remember our own Constitution begins with the phrase, ‘We, the people….’ Each of us may further categorize ourselves, as in the American People or the Mexican People, but in the end, ‘the people’ is all any of us ever are.”

  She had these great dimples when she smiled. J.D. had never seen dimples that were quite so cute.

  “The Pima called themselves the A’akimel O’odham or ‘River People’ and the Papago were the Tohono O’odham or ‘Desert People.’ We named the Pima because of their habit of answering questions put to them in a language they didn’t und
erstand with the natural reply, ‘I don’t know’ which is pimatc. We couldn’t reproduce the click of the ‘tc’ sound at the end of the word, so we just called them Pima.”

  And perfect teeth that gleamed as she demonstrated the alien syllable.

  “Papago is about as close as we could come to saying Papavi O’odham, or ‘Bean People,’ which is kind of an insult since it hints that someone on such a diet might fart a lot.”

  J.D. wasn’t really hearing most of what she was saying. He was wondering if Larry might have some mysterious and fatal disease to which he would shortly succumb. He was wondering what her lips would taste like. He was wondering if he shouldn’t excuse himself and go home and take a cold shower.

  Emotions and logic mix about as well as fire and water and about the only way J.D. would have gotten into a cold shower just then was if Mary accompanied him. He was caught in the magic of her spell, unintentionally cast or not. For a timeless while, she talked and he listened, but her words were only part of what he heard.

  It was well past midnight before Larry’s rattling of ice cubes and jaw-stretching yawns finally caught his attention and J.D. guiltily said his goodbyes, got in the Ford, and aimed it homeward. His conscience was starting to nag him and he knew he should make himself see as little of Mary as possible. He also knew he wasn’t going to do that. Benny Goodman was playing “Somebody Stole My Gal” on the car radio. J.D. reached out, shut it off, and finished the drive in silence.

  A Conqueror’s Reward

  The town lay on the bank of a lethargic river. A hard wind had blown out of the west for days and yellow dust from the Gobi covered this desolate region of Northern China and tinted the sky a pallid green.

  Most of the city was on the far bank. If they had defended or destroyed the bridges, Sasaki’s advance would have been difficult. But they didn’t. There was only token resistance in spite of the strong garrison that had been quartered there. Before his troops entered the place, its defenders streamed out into the hills beyond, followed by most of the citizenry.

  Sasaki inherited a town with its population more than halved. Only the old, the infirm, and a few women and children remained—those to whom leaving seemed a greater risk than staying.

  It was common policy for the Imperial Japanese Army to allow its soldiers a conqueror’s reward, letting them loot and plunder the places they took. Sasaki had refused to let his troops enjoy the practice. Until now. He was becoming desperate, anxious he would never encounter an enemy capable of offering meaningful resistance. Perhaps he could provoke it, incite his foe into magnificent battle. He gave his men their reward and to the Chinese who stayed behind, cause to regret their decision.

  By dusk, much of the city was in flames, mixing its sooty cloud with the sickly twilight. A shroud of smoke cloaked the place. The screams of the tortured and brutalized must have carried to the hills where those who had held the place ran. Sasaki ordered no precautions against counterattack. His invitation to the Chinese army was an open one, addressed in the agony of those they’d left behind, printed on the ruin of their homes. He did not understand how anyone could ignore it.

  The night passed and they did not come.

  It was balmy, as inappropriate to the season as the enemy’s lack of response to wanton brutality. Unable to sleep for the sounds of the dying city, confused by a people who tolerated what he allowed, Sasaki wandered the streets alone. They weren’t safe for anyone. The streets no longer belonged to humans. Beasts, rabid with blood lust, caught up in an orgy of destruction for its own sake, had claimed them. His men were as drunk on violence as on what they had plundered from the wine merchants.

  It was in the Street of Cloth Sellers that Sasaki encountered his first citizen of the place not already dead or dying. He was an old man. His robes were made of good material, but frayed and worn. Fortune had turned against him before the Japanese arrived. He sat in the remains of a ribbon stall at a corner of two avenues. His stall had been casually destroyed, torn apart without purpose. Ribbons were hardly the stuff that soldiers looted. Someone had tried to set fire to the place and some of the wares were charred. The rest had been tossed about, trampled, crumpled into the dust of the street. The merchant sat cross-legged in the center of the ruin, rocking slowly back and forth. His hands were burned, perhaps from extinguishing the flames that consumed his livelihood, but he was oblivious to their state. He picked up the soiled, wrinkled remnants, carefully wound them onto their spools, and restacked them on a broken shelf. Each spool rolled along its canted length and tumbled into the street. Several had unwound their contents as they rolled across the intersection, leaving bright fingers of ruined silk pointing out the tragedy of one man’s life.

  “Ribbons,” he called in soft Mandarin. “All colors,” he chanted. “Ribbons, most reasonable.”

  There was no truly wealthy section to the town, though it had more than its share of slums. There was less to steal than Sasaki’s men might have wished, but plenty to burn, plenty to kill. The Street of Rewarded Merits was as close to a prosperous residential avenue as the town contained. Along its length, small broken lions guarded shattered red gates. Patched, crumbling walls and peeling paint revealed that merits here had not been rewarded generously.

  As Sasaki passed one of the gates, something caught his attention. He turned in, stepping over one splintered half and around where the remainder hung precariously from broken hinges. The red spirit wall just inside was undamaged. Perhaps it continued to block the passage of evil spirits, whom the Chinese believed able to travel only in a straight line, but it hadn’t slowed the Japanese soldiers within. The three pavilions of the house flanked a paved courtyard and were linked by low verandas with blue tiled roofs. There were four soldiers. Three of them sat on the steps of the veranda on the right, passing a wine jar back and forth and making bawdy comments, heavily slurred, on the attempts of their companion to rape the woman who lay on the stones of the courtyard. She was motionless under him, moved only by his clumsy thrusts. But for her ragged sobbing, Sasaki would have thought her dead. The soldier had drunk too much. He stroked at her for a moment, then lay still, as though he had forgotten where he was and what he was doing there, then the jeers of his fellows would rouse him and he would begin again.

  In addition to the woman, there were two other Chinese there. On the floor of the yard near the woman and her attacker, a boy, perhaps six, clawed his way up the wall against which he appeared to have been hurled. He had probably lain there, unconscious, for some time. Awake again, he fought back to his feet, clutching a shard of shattered tile to his narrow chest. From the way his left leg twisted, Sasaki was sure it must be broken. The boy made no sounds as he struggled to rise. The soldiers were too drunk to notice.

  The piece of tile was an unintentional gift of the adult Chinese male who clung to the roof of the veranda above. Sasaki wondered if he had hidden there while the woman and child were attacked, or had only crawled to the spot moments before, on his way to exact vengeance. Perhaps this was evidence that the behavior he sought was not alien to the Chinese. Sasaki stood in the shadows, unmoving. None of them had seen him.

  The man on the roof had something with him. It might be a club or a sword, perhaps even a rifle. From the way he clutched it Sasaki knew it was a weapon. He and the man on the roof watched the child rise and begin a tortured journey to where the woman and soldier lay. Each time the boy put weight on his injured leg he let out a small gasp, but even that was insufficient to attract the attention of the soldiers. If the man on the roof intended to attack, his victims could hardly have been less alert.

  At last the boy reached the coupled figures. He raised the jagged tile in tiny fists and brought it down with all his might. He was too young to understand mortality, his own or his enemy’s. To the neck and the blow might have caused a serious wound, maybe even a fatal one. To the back and it was only painful, but it succeeded in gaining the soldiers’ notice at last.

  The rapist jerked with a spas
m born of pain instead of pleasure and cried out. He swung out behind him in reflex. The blow tumbled the boy across the stones to where he struggled faintly but did not rise again. The tile protruded from the man’s back and he roared and stumbled to his feet and awkwardly tried to reach it. His companions doubled over in drunken merriment, grabbing their sides at the humor of his plight. Two of them actually fell off the veranda and lay on the ground, wheezing besotted laughter into the stones of the courtyard floor. The third clambered unsteadily to his feet and weaved to the woman. He clumsily began to unbutton his trousers so that he might take up where his friend had left off.

  The wounded man finally jerked the bloody tile from his back. He turned with a curse and flung it at the boy. His aim was wild and it skittered to Sasaki’s feet. The man didn’t notice. He wobbled to the small form of his attacker, muttering curses as he felt for the knife that should have been at his belt, if he wore a belt, or any part of his uniform but his socks and cap. The man on the roof would never have a better chance. Two of his enemies lay helpless with wine and mirth. The wounded one had his back to the roof and was naked and unarmed. The last had dropped his pants to his knees and was focusing his attention elsewhere. The man on the roof clutched his weapon and watched, unmoving.

  The injured soldier picked up the child and threw him head first against the nearest wall. Once would have been sufficient. The first time obviously broke the boy’s neck. After that he was dead, but the man repeated the process several times, then contented himself with kicking the little body around the courtyard.