Jonah Page 15

  “Hop in Thunder!” Coral yells, usually cue for the Paws to run for the bushes. Instead he yowls again. Behavior as weird as his performance Sunday night, when he went ballistic, seconds before Zion screamed.

  The woman suffering amnesia, the green light, the yowling cat, three lines in a triangular mystery as inscrutable as the Sphinx. Jonah needs time out on the desert, and that is where he is going, come cat or high waters.

  Thunder sits tall and sullen on the driveway, as Jonah climbs into his truck. The cat's yellow eyes promise Jonah devastations for failing to heed his message. His cattle and sheep will be slaughtered, his palace will burn to the ground, and his harem will run away with his enemies.

  “Time out—” he yells out the window. “On the desert—I need it. Try to understand!”

  The day Frame Swenson showed him Star Rock, Jonah knew he was one of the elect, part of an inner circle composed of real men who dare to hang around a rock where some have disappeared. Star Rock, sandstone blackboard, site of ancient carvings, weird symbolic petroglyphs, a lot of nonsense, Jonah thought. Star Rock, a porthole to another dimension, the symbols marking entry points. Horseshit, Jonah thought the day Swenson showed him the rock and told him the myth.

  The sky is icy blue, adorned with a few gray clouds, leftovers from the front that took the Valley by surprise last night, announcing winter. Jonah sticks a Willie Nelson tape in the machine, turns up the volume and wails along with Willie as he glides down the road, lifting a hello finger when he sees locals pass on the way to town.

  Eastward, the mountains are capped with snow, angel-white frosting on blue peaks. If he had such powers, he couldn't have designed a more splendid backdrop for Star Rock. He's only halfway there, and already he feels the weight across his shoulders begin to ease.

  No sign marks the dirt road turnoff up to Star Rock, and if the men have their way, never will be one. The road is rough, requiring four-wheel-drive, and farther up, even if your vehicle is so equipped, it had better be in mint condition. Trucks flying off cliffs would logically explain the legendary disappearances of several old-timers, if not for the fact that in every case the vehicles were found intact. Or so the stories go.

  Jo's uncle, Oscar, was the last person reported to have been swallowed by Star Rock. It is a fact that Oscar's late-model, paid-for Chevrolet truck was found parked next to Star Rock. Oscar's billfold and a pastrami sandwich wrapped in cellophane were found on the front seat, next to a Thermos full of warm coffee. Others are sure old Oscar was gay like his niece, but was too ashamed to admit it openly. So he disappeared himself to a gay community in San Francisco. No way! Jo protested. Oscar was damn near angelic, not a gay bone in his body.

  Whatever his sexual proclivities, a man has to have a powerful need to visit Star Rock, if his patience is to sustain him over the crags, gullies, and washouts that challenge the best equipment. The first few miles up the old prospector's trail are easy enough to maneuver, but once you begin to push your vehicle over Dead Man's Bridge, if you are not a praying man, you will convert.

  The scene below rivals Grand Canyon country, but the terrain near Star Rock is anything but pretty. Barren boulder-strewn hills, sagebrush, cacti. Desolate is the word that comes to mind. But Jonah doesn't come here to see anything. He comes to feel something.

  He parks where he always does, next to an old gnarled dwarf cedar tree, too proud to die. Why should it? No tree should have rooted here in the first place. No real dirt up here, just a veneer of red sand the wind rearranges to create some whimsical earthen art scheme for the pleasure of the inhabitants of this region, the toads, snakes, lizards, birds, deer, elk, bats, and bobcats.

  Stepping out of the truck, Jonah flips up the hood of his parka. The cold front dropped a powdering of snow that is still visible in rock crevices and across the tops of knolls. The wind is so cold, his parka feels as thin as gauze. He sticks his hands in gloves. Spotting the small stone monument beneath the cedar tree, Jonah salutes it. R.I.P. John Arnold Beaumont. A formal good-bye to his former life. But now it kind of gives him the creeps, thinking about it. Sometimes he literally feels like a different man from who he was in Texas…like erecting the small tombstone was more than a whimsy; it marked a significant passage in his life. Oh, right, he thinks; now he sounds like one of those New Agers who say something elusive is guiding your life—your soul, higher self, God…if you're bird enough. Bird enough? The high altitude is affecting his brain!

  Jonah zips the thought. If he keeps thinking along these lines, he'll ruin the whole trip.

  He always follows a ritual on his visits up here. First he stands in front of his truck, and gazes at the rock. Rock singular is a misnomer. There are four tall, asymmetrical pillarlike slabs of red stone, sort of leaning against each other. The tallest is about twenty feet high, and all are crudely rectangular. No idea why the rocks were named Star. Only a warped imagination would see a star in the convergence of stones. Maybe the man who discovered it saw a shooting star.

  Next, as always, Jonah silently asks Star Rock for permission to approach. He feels no negative vibes, so he trudges up to the most prominent monolith on the southern end. He looks over its fancy petroglyphs. Carved by the ancient Anasazi is the most popular theory. Slipping his right hand free of his glove, he runs his fingers over the etchings. The stone is cold. All of the symbols have something in common. They are pairs, each seeming to be inside-out depictions of concepts known only to the makers.

  Phase Three he calls in plain talk, sitting and thinking. This is his ninth visit to Star Rock. As he has done eight times before, he plunks his butt down on the ground at the base of the most prominent slab, pulls up his knees, clutches his legs, and pretends to take in the grand view to the west. Actually he's soaking up vibes. When he's down below, he doesn't believe it, but up here he knows rocks are alive. He would never admit this to the men, but several times he has felt as if he merged with the rock, a kind of swarming convergence of molecules, like a mystic might feel on top of his sacred mountain.

  Every time he comes here, the experience is different, and today is no exception. The first time he gazed at the valley stretching from the Colorado River north, south to the Blue Mountains, the scene choked him up. But times two through eight, he took the view for granted. Today the sight more than chokes him up. Alligator tears slide down his cheeks. He feels such love for Mama Earth, he thinks he might upchuck the hairy ball of emotion in his chest. Maybe last night, making love to Zion Rose, his heart chakra was opened up, as New Agers say. That or he's coming down with the flu.

  He finds a wad of tissues in an inner pocket, wipes away his tears, and blows his honker. There's wisdom in coming alone to Star Rock. A man has his moments.

  Just for the hell of it, Jonah lets out a wild scream. Back to business. Time to mull over whatever caused him to make the climb. Today his mind is a hornets' nest of thoughts, featuring a woman with satiny black hair and star-blue eyes. A dream comes true; a beautiful woman falls through his door and into his arms. And tomorrow the apple tree is sure to sprout hundred-dollar bills.

  “It was that damn green light that scared me,” he says, not too loud. (Coral saw it? Or did he dream that?) Scared Zion, too, he's sure, though she acted stoic, as if seeing a green light in her room was an everyday occurrence. Natural for a man and a woman to jump in the sack following an event that scares them stiff. Shades of old romantic war stories, men and women diving into bed when the air raid sirens start blaring. When death rides by, thrashing his sickle, mortals jump into foxholes and the brave and sexy make hay. Balancing acts of nature, death claiming some while others proliferate.

  So much for his rationalization for bedding a woman two days after her husband plows her face. If it's natural for a man to abandon his morals to quell his fears, it must be a law that when the real or imagined danger is past, reality steps up and blats a horn.

  “She won't ever want to do it again,” is the second thing he says out loud. He pictures returning to
an empty house. No Zion, no sign she has been there. Maybe a note on the table. Dear Foul Breath, this is moving too fast for me, I need space, I need time, and by the way, I need my whole house.

  He broods.

  This is the real story of man. He opens himself to soar in one moment of ecstasy before he is slammed back to Earth again. This is why man locks himself up. The pain you feel one step past the fleeting joy. You grasp the golden cup and it crumbles in your hand, dust to dust. What a fool he is, thinks he's such a lover, his passion will electrify her mission. Requires a veil that probably doesn't even exist. But he is real, and he really is ready to give himself to her. But will he be content to be her charioteer, her knight, her messenger boy? Get real. He's king or he's no one, just another man panting to hold her hand. Take that hand, slip a ring on her finger, bind her to him. Does he cage the bird in her heart, never to fly? Can a man and a woman bond and achieve the mystical union sages say will set them free? How can a man forge his will on the blades of a paradox? Listen to him. Poets never get the beautiful women. A man has to have gold, build her a castle, a moat to protect against enemies.

  Words are dreams, pretty tales told under a tree to fools who stop for reverie, while real men are off slaying dragons, bringing home the gold. Heroes do, and poets sing their deeds to warriors brave enough to churn and burn the soil for new trees. Round and round the wheel spins, now and then a man grabs the ring. Could be an ordinary man. Could be him. If someone would just show him the ring, he would grab it, he would!

  So much for high poetics. Now what about all the weirdness coming down since Zion showed up? The night before she came, he had a nightmare. Next day, his cactus is gone, and his overalls are hot, as if irradiated. We like to forget these things, don't we? Well, you can't, sitting under Star Rock. And what about the rose tattoo?…He rubs his arm. Reminds him of stories about so-called alien abductions. Lulu Greystone is convinced she's an abductee. Shows off a big scoop mark to anyone who can bear to gaze at her hairy leg. Jo believed her. Claimed Lulu and thousands of people all over the globe are routinely abducted to harvest eggs and sperm for a new breed of humans who will take our places, because we're going to become sterile after we push the planet to the limits, severely damaging the ecosphere. There's some truth to the last, Jonah has to admit, but he gets tired of hearing the extreme opinions of the granola crowd. Half of them are “Trustafarians,” people living on trust funds, come to the desert to grow organic foods, braid their hair into dreadlocks, string beads, and sell bumper stickers that say things like the Chief Seattle quote, “The Earth Does Not Belong to Us, We Belong to the Earth.” Zion might fit right in that crowd. She tells them she OBEs to Uruguay, they don't even blink. They tell stories about being on spaceships. Well, now, he has something might raise their eyebrows. Not just an ordinary run of the mill scoop mark, he's got a rose tattoo! Forget it. No one would believe it just appeared on his arm. People will say he paid a tattoo artist. And he has nothing close to a story to tell. Just some bizarre activity since Zion showed up. Maybe in her traumatized state, her energies got out of balance, as Lulu Greystone and Jo used to talk. Somehow Zion might trigger psychic phenomena. Nothing he can't live with…if only she will remember they made love!

  He tries to puzzle out the mystery, mulling over conversations with Zion, recalling everything Jo said about her, sorting through the fast-paced changes and events of the past three days, like a farmer trying to box up cucumbers, corn, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, carrots, all dumped into one heap. His mind turns away, juts its chin, folds its arms over its chest, refusing to look, much less talk. This is his heart, wringing its hands, and whining. It is futile to try to talk sense to a heart, his mind knows, abandoning him to just feel the pain.

  Sometimes Phase Three is very short.

  Phase Four. Smoke a bud. A hole with a small rock for a plug near the base of Star Rock's northernmost slab is where he keeps his stash. He bends down, extracts the rock, and reaches in for the plastic bag, roll papers, and box of matches. Touching something else, his hand recoils. He crouches, peers inside, pokes in his hand, draws out the alien thing. An American Native quartz knife, pale rose color, finely honed to a point. A find of a man's life, but it's not his find. Belongs to the asshole who put it here in exchange for his bud.

  “Frame—you asshole!” His anger echoes back. Not that Frame would forfeit a genuine Anasazi knife for weed he can obtain easily, so Jonah is suspicious that what he holds in his hand is a fake. Stutter Jenkins, owns a hock shop, could tell him in one glance of the knife's fakery or authenticity, but that doesn't help him now. Naturally, now he feels a desperate need for a smoke.

  “Shit,” is the fourth thing Jonah says out loud on his ninth visit to Star Rock.

  He inspects the knife. Appears to be the real thing. Fits his hand perfectly.

  The wind is whistling around him like witches' breath. He stands a moment of truth. Will he do the right thing? Put the knife back and forget it? Or will he do the unthinkable? Will he deface this sacred rock? Someone stole his stash and left in its place a tool that may have been used to carve these symbols on this rock. Is it unnatural for him to envision leaving his own symbol here? Maybe he will initiate a new trend. From now on, every man who visits Star Rock will leave his mark, as the ancients did. He won't mess with the sacred carvings; he'll carve his mark on the north slab. The fact that it's free of etchings almost cries out for him to do this.

  Hefting the knife, he thinks about what he will carve. Silly schoolboy that he is, he wants to carve a heart enclosing J.Q. + Z.R., but he would never live that down. No, it should be a symbol like the others.

  Got it. Zion is as Jewish as parmesan cheese, but he has been inspired with a symbol that will make him think of her each time he comes here, no matter what the outcome of their night of passion. She isn't Jewish, but Rose might be a Hebrew derivative. So he sets to carving a Star of David on the north slab of Star Rock.

  As the wind tries to whip off his hair, he stands back to survey his artwork. It's a thing of beauty, but it lacks something. It's too modern. He decides to add something that will make it look more mysterious, more like the other symbols. Punch a hole in the middle of the star. Carving the lines was easy, but he's going to have to finesse the knife to make a smooth round hole that does not flake at the edges. He presses the knife into the heart of the star. Turns it clockwise, counterclockwise…

  The rock moves. Jonah jumps back, his heart pounding. “Whoa, steady,” he says, with a laugh, his arm outstretched but not quite touching the rock, because what if it did move?

  The ground feels like jelly under his feet. Earthquake! A loud noise like a ball shot from a cannon cracks the air.

  Jonah's impulse is to run, but he can't move! He's paralyzed, can't even pull in his outstretched hand.

  A noise like a thousand buzzing bees explodes in the air all around him. Star Rock is a blur of shimmering multicolored light waves. Pressure is building up. Jonah feels like his body might implode, and he still can't move! His eyes are drawn up to see in the sky something at once so ridiculous and terrifying, he ought to scream but he says, “Oh, no…”

  A huge gunmetal gray Ferris wheel is spinning on its side above the ground where Star Rock used to stand.

  The air around Jonah rages with the sound of buzzing bees. It feels as if his eyeballs are rolling inside his sockets, his arms are separating from his shoulders, his legs are drifting away from his torso.

  Twirled off the ground like a rag doll, he hears a wind of a thousand voices shout,

  “GRAB THE RING, JONAH!”

  Part III

  In the BELLY of STAR ROCK

  When I cried out in shock at the sight of my fishlike body, the whales and dolphins answered in a keening cacophony that disturbingly sounded like laughter. And then came the voice of a whale calling himself Rolphtaphearson, his voice sounding like the blat of a French horn, but in eloquent English, announcing that, verily I was not dead…I had split, and t
his pitiful body was the “closest amphibious form nature allows for a man in Morlwurl.”

  Well, I thought…if that isn't dead, what the hell is?

  Chapter Q (17)

  (Q-1.) EARTHSIDE

  Beatrice Mary Mahoney—lately Mendelheusen—was not born yesterday, thank the Universe. Old age has its rewards. For one thing, she's pretty sure she won't be suffering the miseries of love again—not like she has seen going on in this house. She ought to recognize the signs…but never mind her colorful past—ribald past, some said—good for sparking conversation in beauty parlors and taxicabs, but less astonishing to live than it sounded.

  Triss loved Maurice Mendelheusen, the dearest man of the lot, but now at last, she can be her own woman—the old brat she always imagined she would be. And her first mischief will be meddling in the affairs of the good people she was sent to help. She could have gone to stay with Theodore Carlotti's children in Ohio, and lived well. Her fourth husband's kids loved her, and she, them—but Ohio? She felt no call to Ohio. This is where she belongs.

  Triss sized up the situation before her bags were unpacked. Romance was only the half of it. Something very strange is going on in this household; she saw it the first day.

  Zion Rose—not her true name, Triss is sure—is the most auric person she has ever met, and Triss has met some doozies. Energy practically sizzles around Zion. Not that she had remarkable abilities to discern a person's character, not in the usual way people size each other up. Simply, her gift is she can feel a person's spiritual power. But some people (she learned from Ramon) can project strong auras and still be rapscallions. Live and learn.