Green Eyes

  Jocundra ran into the Baron on the path to the graveyard. He was standing lost in thought, twirling a yellow parasol. When he saw her, he spat.

  ‘That monkey of yours put on some kind of show at the funeral,’ he said. ‘Used a trick voice or somethin.’ Like to flip Otille out.’

  ‘Where’s Donnell now?’

  ‘You ain’t seen him?’

  ‘I saw him coming this way about a half hour ago.’

  ‘Ah, damn!’ said the Baron. ‘Let’s head on back up there.’

  Bodies were strewn among the tombstones, most unmoving, and most never stirred when the Baron prodded them. Others moaned or frowned groggily. The only person not lying down was a thin-armed, pot-bellied man wearing a bathing suit, who was sitting on top of a tombstone, his stringy brown hair blowing about his face. Static fizzed from a radio on his lap.

  ‘Look like we gonna have to talk to ol’ Captain Tomorrow,’ said the Baron. ‘Dude’s been here so long he’s fuckin’ ossified. The light’s on but nobody’s home.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘Let me do the talkin’. He liable to think you an alien or somethin’.’

  He sauntered up casually to the tombstone and said, ‘Hey, what you know, Captain?’

  ‘What I know,’ said the man, staring off at the roof of the main house emerging like a black pyramid above the treeline.

  ‘I say, “What you know, Captain?’” said the Baron, ‘and then you say back, “What I know…” What you mean by that?’

  ‘It’s not ordered knowledge,’ said Captain Tomorrow. ‘It doesn’t come in Aristotelian sequence. I’m trying to give it form, but I don’t expect you to understand.’

  Despite the pomposity of his words, the man’s manner was pathetic. His skin showed the effects of bad diet, his eyes were watery and blinking, and when he lifted his hand to scratch his neck, he did not complete the action and left his hand suspended in the air.

  ‘I’ve been dreaming about flying lately,’ he said to Jocundra.

  She remembered looking into Magnusson’s eyes, feeling sucked in, but looking at this man produced a totally opposite phenomenon. Her gaze skidded away from his, as if his eyes contained polar contradictories to the human senses.

  ‘Probably a result of my work,’ he informed her with solemnity. ‘I’ve been translating secret books of the ancient Hindus.’ He seemed to be waiting for Jocundra to respond.

  ‘I have a friend who’s compiling a Tibetan dictionary,’ she said.’ She’s working in Nepal.’

  ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead.’ He stared at her with renewed intensity. ‘Is she translating that?’

  ‘I think it’s already been done,’ said Jocundra tactfully.

  ‘Not correctly.’ He turned away. ‘Could you get me a copy of her dictionary?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Jocundra. ‘But it’ll take a long time to mail it from Nepal. More than a month.’

  ‘Time,’ said Captain Tomorrow. He found the concept amusing. ‘It’s very important I get the dictionary.’

  ‘That green-eyed fella…’ the Baron began.

  ‘No, not him.’ The Captain hugged himself and hunched his neck and shuddered.

  ‘Naw,’ agreed the Baron. ‘Naw, he ain’t worth a shit wherever he is. Good riddance to him. But whoever’s with him is probably pretty scared.’

  The Captain smiled; it was a sick, secret-keeping smile.

  “Less he’s with Simpkins. I don’t reckon Simpkins would be scared.’

  The radio on the Captain’s lap broke into faint song, then lapsed into frying noises.

  ‘Where’d they go, man?’

  ‘Going, going, gone,’ said the Captain.

  ‘Jesus!’ The Baron spun around and began trying to rouse others of the ‘friends,’ kicking them, shaking them, asking had they seen Donnell.

  ‘Here,’ said Captain Tomorrow; he pulled a plastic baggie from the front of his bathing suit and withdrew a stack of Otille’s business cards. He handed one to Jocundra. On the back was a neat, hand-lettered couplet:

  Those who cannot cope with the reality of today

  Will be literally crushed by the fantasy of tomorrow.

  It’s my motto,’ he said, slowly reintegrating his gaze with the rooftop.

  ‘Thank you.’ Jocundra pocketed the card and was on the verge of joining the Baron, when Captain Tomorrow reached out his hand toward the sun, then brought it back to his lips as if he were swallowing a mouthful of light, accepting communion.

  ‘They’re down at the riverboat,’ he said to his radio. ‘Down, down, down.’

  The hold of the sternwheeler had a resiny odor, and the wavelets slapping against the hull were edged with echoes, sounding like the ticking of a thousand clocks. Sunlight showed between the boards where caulking had worn away, and bars of light glowed beneath the hatch cover, dimming when Papa Salvatino lit a battery lamp and positioned it atop a crate. Clea and Downey stood beside him, their faces anxious. Simpkins threw a chokehold around Donnell’s neck, wrenched his arms up behind his back, and Papa came toward him, rubbing his hands.

  ‘What’s ailin’ you tonight, Brother Harrison?’ he asked, and laughed.

  He placed his hands above Donnell’s head, and Donnell had a fuzzy, dislocated feeling. A high-pitched whine switched on inside his ears.