Green Eyes

  ‘I can’t see what I’m doin’ like you, brother,’ said Papa. ‘I got to work by touch, and sometimes… sometimes I slip up.’

  All the strength suddenly drained from Donnell’s body; the weakness was so severe and shocking that his gorge rose, and he would have vomited if Simpkins had not been choking him. Then, as Simpkins released his hold, he sagged to the floor.

  ‘I can make you bleed,’ said Papa. ‘You won’t like it at all.’

  ‘Talk to us, brother,’ said Simpkins.

  Donnell was silent a moment, and Simpkins kicked him; but Donnell’s silence was not due to recalcitrance. He had had and continued to have an impression of Jocundra moving around above him, now standing somewhere near the prow. The impression seemed to be compounded of the smell of her hair, the color of her eyes, her warmth, a thousand different impressions, yet its character was unified, an irreducible distillate of these things. He rubbed his throat and pretended to be straining for air.

  ‘About what?’ he gasped. ‘Talk about what?’

  ‘Tell us what you did to them birds,’ Clea twanged; her voice trembled, and she stood half-hidden behind Downey, who was chewing on his thumbnail. Despite his masterful pose, belly out, thumbs couched behind his lapels, Papa was also exhibiting signs of unease. Even Simpkins’ smile looked out of true. Donnell’s sunglasses had slipped down onto his nose, and he let them fall, turning away from the lantern so his eyes would show to advantage in the dark.

  ‘Remember, brother,’ said Papa. ‘You ain’t hidin’ out behind Otille’s skirts no more. You down in dirt alley with the dogs howlin’ for your bones.’ He drew forth a hunting knife and let light dazzle the blade.

  ‘Just take it from the beginning,’ said Simpkins. ‘We got all kinds of time.’

  Maybe not, thought Donnell; Jocundra was moving again, stopping, moving, stopping, and there was a purposefulness to her actions.

  ‘The beginning’s not the place to start,’ he said, surprised to hear himself speak because he had been concentrating on Jocundra. Then he realized it had been his alter ego who had spoken, and this time he welcomed it. ‘I saw a man die once. He was shot, lying on a restaurant floor. His heart had quit, his blood was everywhere, and yet he still wasn’t dead. That’s the place to start.’

He told them about the gros bon ange, about their specific incarnations of it, about his origins in the laboratories of Tulane, and was satisfied to see Downey and Clea exchange worried glances. The hunting knife hung loose in Papa Salvatino’s hand, and his breath was ragged. Simpkins’ Adam’s apple bobbed. They were already nine-tenths convinced of the supernatural, and his account was serving to confirm their belief. He pitched his voice low and menacing to suit the mood created by the creaking timbers of the boat and began - again, to his surprise - to tell them of the world of Moselantja and the purple sun, the world of the gros bon ange. It was, he told them, a world whose every life had its counterpart in this one, joined to each other the way dreams are joined, winds merge and waters flow together; and whose every action also had its counterpart, though these did not always occur simultaneously due to the twisty interface between the worlds. And there were many worlds thus joined. In all of them the Yoalo had made inroads.

  ‘To become Yoalo one must be gifted with the necessary psychic ability to integrate with the suits of black energy,’ he said. ‘And all here rank high in the cadres, servitors to one or another of the Invisible Ones, the rulers of Moselantja. Legba, Ogoun, Kalfu, Simbi, Damballa, Ghede or Baron Samedi, Erzulie, Aziyan. Men and women grown through much use of power to stand in relation to ordinary men as stone is to clay.’

  The story he told did not come to him as invention, but as the memory of a legend ingrained from childhood, and in the manner of Yoalo balladeers - a manner he recalled vividly - he gestured with his right hand to illustrate matters of fact, with his left to embellish and indicate things beyond his knowledge. It was with a left-handed delivery, then, that he had begun to speak of his mission on behalf of the cadre of Ogoun, when Clea broke for the stairs.

  ‘Where you goin,’ sister?’ Simpkins caught her by the arm.

  ‘I ain’t havin’ nothin’ to do with this,’ she said, struggling.

  ‘Me, either,’ said Downey, moving toward the hatch.

  ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ said Papa. ‘You know he ain’t walkin’ away from here.’

  ‘He’ll come back,’ said Clea, her voice rising to a squeak. ‘He’s already done it once.’

  ‘In the cadre of Ogoun,’ said Donnell, wondering with half his mind what Jocundra could be doing behind him, ‘there is a song we call “The Song of Returning.” Hear me, for it bears upon this moment.