Jonah Read online

  Run that by Frame, later, see how he likes the J.Q. version of Zion's past. Forget it. Sounds too New Agey. Frame would tease him relentlessly. Down at the Talk, wisdom squats, knees spread, day-old beard, spitting chew in a can. A wise man keeps his lacy underthoughts zipped.

  “That's not what's bothering me,” she says.

  “Care to expound?”

  “I'm worried that things might get strange.”

  By any chance, is she worried about him coming on to her? It would be strange if he didn't!

  “Could you be more specific?”

  She looks directly at him. Brightest dark blue eyes he's ever seen! But what is she telegraphing now? Checking him out blatantly. Feels like she's looking behind his eyes. Kind of uncomfortable, but he's feeling a strong attraction at the same time. Is this what people mean by bedroom eyes? He doubts it's mutual.

  “Why do you think women give up their names when they marry?”

  Why are pine trees green! He crosses a leg, grasps his knees, tries to look serious. “I never thought about it. Must be a very old custom. But I'm no history buff. What do you think?”

  “Are you familiar with the story about the fall of a certain tower in ancient Babylonia?”

  “Tower of Babel. Familiar is all. Update me.”

  “The story goes, certain men erected a tower to make names for themselves. I think this correlates to the term ‘men of renown' mentioned in other scriptures. Men who were well known, and powerful. Other translations say they were giants. The gods were unhappy with the building of the tower. They said if men could do this, they could do anything—become gods themselves. It would seem that the gods wanted no rivals, but what if the men were like people today who, caught up in self-aggrandizing pursuits, do not see the host of problems they create for the community? In any case, the gods talked it over and decided to destroy the tower, or this potential for the men to make names for themselves, which equates in the story to becoming godlike. And to ensure this would not happen again, the gods then confounded the global language everyone spoke and understood. This resulted in the scattering of peoples across the Earth.”

  “Pretty deep, Zion.”

  “You don't think it's relevant.”

  “If you feel it's relevant, it is.”

  “I just want to know why men's names predominate.”

  Jonah crosses his arms over his chest. The clouds are still gray marshmallows, the sun, still a soft yellow glow.

  This conversation is beginning to sound uncomfortably familiar. Some of the regulars down at the Talk are women who are trying to teach men they are people, too, not sex objects, or baby-making factories. You can't get to know a woman who thinks this way, Jonah has learned. A woman like this is so acutely aware of men's beastliness, she hears proof of it in every other word he utters. Is that what we have here? She's been abused; she has cause to question the kindness and integrity of all men, but is he going to bear the psychological brunt of her misfortune? He's tired of feeling like a donkey man, packing around the sins of men on his back, clopping around on all fours, ears dragging in the dirt. For once, couldn't he meet a sweet, old-fashioned girl who happens to be smart and good-looking, too?

  “We may never learn the answer to that,” he says. “It's social politics.”

  “You think it was a political decision?”

  “From what I know, which isn't much, in ancient times, politics, religion, and culture were all knit together in one seamless fabric. Today we try for separation of state, religion, and personal affairs, but we're probably all deluded. Everything is still intermeshed.”

  He just said absolutely nothing. But what's he going to do—admit that men are the superior gender?

  “I'm just trying to understand the basis for bonding between men and women on Earth,” she says. “It's part of a greater mystery I'm trying to solve.”

  He checks her out with a sidelong glance. Is she serious? Yes, she is. He wants to forbid her ever to set foot inside the Talk. The regulars will eat her alive.

  “Could sex be the basis for bonding?” He grins foolishly.

  “Not for everyone. I'm wondering not so much when or how it happened, but why did women—the carriers of life—give up their names? When I envision the tree of life, I see a majestic living entity with golden limbs and branches. I see crystal flakes for leaves, and on each leaf is etched a name for every human being born on Earth. The limbs and branches represent lineages. All are born of the womb, so the branches and limbs are marked by codes that represent the bloodlines of the mothers. Do you think there was a conspiracy to conceal the origins of some lineages? Maybe the practice of overwriting the names of women began as a protection to salvage certain lineages that would have been destroyed through genocide or assimilation by people of a breed created to supplant the children of Earth.”

  WHOA! He gets it—she means things are going to get strange.

  “This is a new one for me.”

  “You asked me to get specific. Maybe you would prefer I be less specific.”

  “Wrong. You say something new to me, I react. Don't assume that means I'm not interested or closed-minded. I'm very interested. It's just that I don't have a background on what you're talking about. I'm so used to—this place I own, the Coffee Talk—I intended to create an atmosphere for a free exchange of ideas. You know…well, maybe you don't know. I modeled it after the beatnik joints back in the early ‘60s. Place where free speech is so free, makes our founding fathers restless in their graves, wondering if they might have been hasty and overzealous. In a way, the Talk is too successful. I hear so much…strange stuff, I tend to cynicism. You say anything you want or need to. I'm shockproof. And it's good for me to hear something really new. Keeps me humble. Be as strange as you feel like. I'm not afraid of strange.”

  “I think I'm a warrior.”

  “A warrior.” He taps the arms of the lawn chair. “A warrior,” he repeats, as if trying to comprehend an alien word. A what? he thinks. Her husband smacks her, bullies her into signing away all of her rights, and this is what she does with the trauma? Why does she have to be so painfully beautiful? If she were homelier, he might feel more sympathetic.

  “Did you ever feel different?” she asks.

  “All the time.”

  “You just don't fit….”

  “That's me.”

  “I thought I was a multiple personality.”

  “Uh, not that different. I never thought that.”

  “Then I wondered if I was part alien.”

  “Definitely not that.”

  “I don't think Earth is my home of origin.”

  Jonah has not been idle down at the Coffee Talk. Might seem to be an ordinary tourist shop, a place to pause in the course of business to gulp Swiss mocha or ginseng tea, but the true essence, what really happens, is an exchange of information. He's heard of Whitley Strieber's book Communion, about those pumpkin-headed aliens, he saw the movie Intruders on television, and he heard the author, Budd Hopkins, interviewed. He even read a couple of books by Jacques Vallee. He is not a covered wagon pulled by shuttered horses, clopping across the plains of ignorance. Fairies, elves, demons, kidnappers of the fourth-dimensional kind. And now alien abductors flying around in silver ships. Something like this happens every time a millennium rolls around. He wants to yell, Read your Carl Jung! Read your Joseph Campbell! Get the crystals out of your ears.

  “So. You think you're alien.”

  “Not an ET, like people commonly think. I am a human being. I just have a very strong impression of having lived on another world. Maybe not a world as dense as this one. Maybe I'm remembering snatches from a pre-existence. Or maybe I'm crazy.”

  Jo wasn't kidding, predicting that Zion would need help. Forget his fantasies. She's never going to be Mrs. Mahoney. Spelled that out plainly enough. And maybe women do have him pegged correctly as Mr. Noncommittal. That prayer the other morning was about Coral Kay, not him. It's just that sometimes he worries there is some
thing wrong with him, never getting married. He likes women a lot, but it just seems most of them turn into bossy creatures the minute the ring is slipped on their finger. Little girls start playing house right away, pushing dolls around in buggies. Boys play king of the mountain, war, Superman, Davy Crockett, and astronaut. A woman's whole life seems to revolve around finding the right Ken for the Barbie. But did Superman ever marry Lois? And who knows Davy's wife?

  He stands up. Shoves his hands in his pockets and starts pacing.

  “Let me tell you something. About six years ago, I got some shocking news. I was living with a woman named Jessica. We knew three months into it we weren't going to be lifelong partners. But it was convenient; it worked for us. Then she turns up pregnant. I am ecstatic. Go figure. I'd always wanted kids, but I was…well, cynical about marriage. And I sure didn't want to marry Jessica. But I would have. Jessica was not only down on marriage, she did not want to give birth to our baby.

  “I don't know if it's my religious upbringing or what, but I could not be a party to abortion. That was my child in her womb. I don't care, they can argue that life begins when the baby is breathing, and maybe that's true, I just knew there was someone inside Jessica I wanted to know.

  “Make a long story shorter, I made a deal with Jessica. Give birth to our baby, I'll raise her, and I'll make it worth your while. I wasn't cash rich, but I had some property, some stocks, and other assets.

  “Jessica said, ‘Okay, it's a deal.' Those nine months were emotionally grueling. Jessica was an occasional snorter of cocaine. I worried for the baby, but if I harped on it, maybe she'd change her mind and abort. It was her body, I was fully aware. I wasn't a praying man, but I prayed every day until Coral was born.

  “I left Texas with Coral on my back and nothing else but clothes. I changed so much that year, I hardly knew myself anymore. I felt alien myself. Like I was a total stranger on Earth. And I felt like a warrior, too, because I had to fight for Coral's life; I had to protect her, a child born into a world full of dangers I was fast waking up to, now that I had a daughter to care for.

  “Maybe what you're feeling is something like I felt. It helped you to choose a new name, and Rose certainly fits you. Well, I chose a new name, too. Before I moved here, my name was John Arnold Beaumont—”

  “Oh…” Her hands come to her cheeks. “Mahogany Bow…Sanguine Arrow…and the Birdmen…”

  He stops so fast, he almost trips. “What?” A cold shiver coils around his spine. “What did you just say?”

  “Beaumont…Mahogany Bow? Arnold…some kind of bird clan—Purple Argus? I can't remember. Remnants from my history. Lost. But now and then I remember something.”

  “You mean from that cult you lived with before the Vanderbonds found you?” He rubs his upper arms, trying to erase the chilly feeling.

  “I never lived with a cult. That's the story that made everyone feel comfortable. I don't remember much, but I know I did not live with a cult. Where I lived, there was a magnificent teaching temple made of white stone and embedded with chunks of topaz. When the sun shined, it glittered like a golden castle. The thoughts of the students and teachers acted on the crystal spires, increasing their height each year. People said the spires touched the clouds in winter.”

  She's smiling, a faraway look in her blue eyes, as if she's seeing across an ocean.

  A burst of wind sweeps through the yard, swirling Zion's hair. The trees sway and a can rattles across the ground. A cat streaks across the yard on a beeline for the cottage. Hort McNalley's wanton hussy, Tuxedo, hits the studio door so hard, Jonah braces for a splatter of blood and guts. But he sees this is a practiced maneuver. The door slams open, Tuxedo flies in, and now you can hear the loudest howler on her heels, the wildest romancer in the Valley, the pride of Jo's Abode…Thunderpaws, coming in for a landing Jonah is sure will destruct all four walls.

  The racket inside the studio speaks of major rearrangements and upheavals of the most devastating kind. Bone-jarring noises and you can see tufts of fur hitting the windowpanes.

  “Tuxedo and Thunderpaws, at it again.” He sighs.

  “You have two cats?”

  Said like she has just discovered a nest of cockroaches under the sink. Which is possible.

  She laughs. Throws her head back and laughs at the sky. Jonah is feeling a little giggly himself. Life was simple before Zion Rose came to town. Life made sense. Now here in his midst is a painfully beautiful warrior who comes from a place with a topaz temple that glows like the sun. Spires higher than the clouds! But she isn't ET! She's a human being! So, what's to worry?

  The cats are making whoopee inside the studio. The wind is whipping the trees, and Zion Rose is…crying again.

  Jonah lowers to his haunches. A hundred warnings are sounding in his head against touching her. Lots of female warriors on the warpath these days, but when was it ever okay for a man to spontaneously touch a woman, even when his heart says do it? Donkey man? Hell with that. Maybe no one noticed the husky prospector with the reddish gold mane, walking alongside Old Burro. Maybe Jonah has a pick, a pan—maybe he's about to discover the mother lode.

  He takes both of her hands and covers them completely with his own.

  “A weepy warrioress?”

  She's not smiling, but she's not yanking her hands away, either. They feel like silken butterflies.

  “I don't mean to imply you were trying to impress me with a lot of provocative ideas to avoid talking about what's really troubling you. But could it be you're more upset than you're letting on? Or am I just imagining it?”

  Her eyes are moist. She trembles. “I have to be strong.”

  He squeezes her hands. “Pardon me if I sound chauvinistic, but I think that's my job. That's why Jo set things up this way. She knew someday you would need a strong shoulder to lean on.”

  “If I had any other place to go, to spare you this trouble, I would have gone there.”

  “You're not trouble, Zion! I'm glad you're here! And you don't have to stay one more night in that motel. I feel like a slug, not suggesting it yesterday. You can see it's going to take a little time to restore order to the studio. Until then, you can bunk in Jo's old room. This is your home, Zion. The house, the studio, the whole five acres.”

  “Thank you.”

  His heart is about to burst. So what, she's a little wacky? Didn't everyone say she was different?

  She needs to go settle up with that old gossipmonger, Marge Kawaski, desk clerk at the Red Flame. He helps her stand up.

  Thunderpaws is on the back steps, curled up, watching as he helps her into her car. When did Thunder and Tux exit the cottage?

  The wind has died down and the clouds over the rim seem about to part. Jonah imagines a ray of amber light sweeping down the valley north from the mighty Colorado River, south to the Blue Mountains. Maybe he's a fool for feeling so optimistic after that truly strange conversation, but maybe this woman needs a man with a fool's heart.

  He can barely stand to watch her back up the trailer. It's tricky for a man, but maybe she would be insulted if he offered to do it for her. Slowly, slowly, she makes the turn, straightens out the car, and now she's down the road.

  “Dammit!” He stamps his foot. Should have offered to drive her to the motel in his truck! What's the matter with him? The Ram is parked right out front, like some old impotent man, lost his memories, forgot how to behave like a gentleman.

  Above the rock rim that curves around the northeast boundary of the Valley, the cloud color has deepened to a charcoal hue; the sandstone mountains are amber-orange. Cool breezes snatch up dry leaves and toss them around the yard. In the swirl of dust, Jonah smells chaos gathering. Maybe it's a change in barometric pressure, but suddenly he is aware of a sunken place in the center of his ribs. He has been congenial, he has joked a lot, imagining himself as a clever Don Juan-Quixote type who wins the love of a fair damsel, after making all of her troubles float away. But what if she hates him? Hates hook noses, long hair on a
man, green eyes that stare, foul breath, overalls, an occasional cigar, dirty feet stuffed into tattered Birkies, a man with expanding waistline and flabby butt, a man limping toward forty-five.

  Coral Kay runs out of the house, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with a fist. The screen door slams with an angry whap. “Zion went away…” she howls.

  Jonah scoops her up in his arms and twirls her around. “She's coming back…she's coming back to stay”

  Father and daughter are awhirl, not exactly in the Garden of Eden, but they don't care, something new has swept into their lives, like perfumed winds from Matzatlán. One twirl in the dirt, and it's as if he twirled them into another dimension.

  Oh, no…what's this?

  Jonah sets Coral on the ground and stares.

  Chapter J (10)

  Brownie's copper-colored limousine lumbers gracefully into the backyard, pulls right up to the back step. Automatic window on the driver's side whirs down. Brownie sticks his head out. He's grinning, as usual. As usual, he's wearing a pointy hat, his trademark. Today, a green stocking cap. “Pleasant weather, isn't it, Jonah?” He climbs out of the limo.

  Brownie is about five feet, four inches tall. Curly blond hair pokes out of the stocking cap.

  “You bring me a package from UPS, Brownie?”

  The windows are tinted dark, but Jonah can see there's a passenger in the back.

  “Nope. This is an official paid-for delivery from Moon Junction. Amtrack.”

  Brownie has an enviable business, chauffeuring movie stars, developers, and other important people around the Valley; anyone to and from airports; high school kids on prom nights or special dates; weddings, funerals…Brownie gets around.

  “Your aunt is very generous.” The gnome flashes a bill, a fifty? a twenty? a hundred? Jonah has no idea. He's too stunned to focus.