"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to—I didn't know. Did something happen to the ox?"
"What happen to Babe is what happen to all of us," said the Man with the Big Maul. He had a little bit of an accent, it seemed to Ethan, Russian or Polish or something like that. "Look at me. One time, I am big as slagheap. Legs like rolling mills. Heart like Bessemer converter. Now look. Tiny guy. Only six foot six, and shrinking. Use to take bath in blast furnace, melt myself down and pour myself a fresh new body from the ladle. Not no more. Steel mills gone. Everything gone."
"Whaling ships."
"Railroad crews."
"Keel boats."
"Sternwheelers jes' bursting out with pigeons for the pluckin'," said the Man with the Knife in His Boot.
"Not to mention the good old Indian fights," said the Man with the Rattlesnake Tie.
"Yeah, well, we're better off without that crap," Jennifer T. said. "Whaling ships, too. Whales are sentient beings, or didn't you know that? They are, like, smarter than people, and they have language, and myths, and histories." She turned on the Tall Man with the Pole, and for all his six-plus feet and considerable bulk, Ethan saw him take a little step backward. "And I don't know what a keel boat is exactly, but I'll bet we're better off without keelboat men too. I mean, jeez, it looks like somebody bit your ear off."
The Man with the Pole rubbed at the nub of his left ear tenderly. "Yeah," he said, with a dreamy expression. "Gouged out mah eyeball, too, but Ah stuck hit back in ag'in."
"Er, be all that as it may, Miss Rideout," said Pettipaw, stepping forward now to stand between Jennifer T. and the Man with the Pole, and tugging delicately on one of his whiskers. "While I never had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of the late ox, I do not believe that there is anyone now living in the Summerlands who has not, at one time or another, lamented the passing of the Old Days."
"Yer right, there, Pettipaw," Cinquefoil said. "These is shrunken times, indeed."
"But I confess," the wererat continued, "I do not understand why it is that you fine people believe that allowing Coyote to carry out his intentions will improve the lot of us Summerlanders."
There was a silence, and the Big Liars shuffled a little, and shifted back and forth, as if the answer were so obvious that they were embarrassed, for Pettipaw's sake, to have to answer it. Finally the Tall Man with the Harpoon struck a match, and got his pipe lit, and then looked up.
"We don't hope to improve our situation, sir," he said. "We hope to end it. We want that old Kye-oat to bring the Lodgepole down."
A gull cried, and the air went crackling through the clay pipe, and the cooling engine of Ringfinger Brown's Cadillac ticked like a clock in the sun.
"These-here folks," Ringfinger said. "They been feelin' for a while now like there wasn't much point to it all."
"But they don't get to decide," Jennifer T. said.
"They have no right to stop us from crossing that river," Thor said.
"We don't need no right, changeling boy," Annie Christmas said. She pushed back her sleeves, revealing a set of powerfully muscled brown arms. "Not to stop the likes a you."
"There is a point," Ethan said, surprising himself a little. The others all turned to look at him. "I mean, okay, I want to find my father. My dad. I need my father, and he needs me." He looked at his watch. It still read Top of the Seventh; then, as he glanced at it, the little triangular arrow flipped over and pointed down. Two innings left before the end. "So, ha, that's a point."
"There's one other point," Cinquefoil said, "and I'm shamed a ya fer fergetting it."
The Big Liars all looked blank.
"Baseball," Cinquefoil said. "Long as someplace they play baseball the old style, the Summerlands style, with patience and abandon, then there will always be a point ta it all."
This sounded nice to Ethan, and true, though he wasn't quite sure he knew what Cinquefoil meant by "abandon."
Annie Christmas turned to the Man with the Knife in His Boot.
"Honeybunch," she said. "Go on into that saloon and escort those two gennulmens back out here. We needs to indulge in some elongated palaver. No, better yet, let's go in there and get 'em. I could use a drink."
The seven Big Liars trooped off into the Jersey Lily, leaving the Shadowtails with Ringfinger Brown. They wandered down to the landing, and out a little way along the dock. The sluggish water of the Big River churned and slapped against the pilings.
"Well," Taffy said. She had been silent throughout the deliberations. Now she went to sit down at the edge of the dock, and trail her celebrated feet in the water. Her back was to the rest of them. "Looks like we've come to the end." She sounds relieved, thought Ethan.
"Even if they said we could go, well, I mean, look," said Jennifer T., pointing out across the water. "Applelawn is all the ways across that. How are we supposed to get across?"
"Yeah, and what about this Old Bottom-Cat thing? Who or what is it?"
"Ain't nobody really knows for certain," Ringfinger Brown said. "Them that have seen him nice and close up, well, they ain't come back to describe him. But he big. He very big. I knows that."
"How?"
"Because, children, he what hold up the Lodgepole. All clutched up in his tail. Just like that great big muscled-up arm you done seen back there, holdin' tight to that nine-pound Hammer. And that why some people just call him 'Slug.'"
"The Slugger," said Pettipaw, nodding. "I've heard that. The Slugger of the Bottom of the Last. And there are some that just call him'Old Cat.'"
"Some way or another, to reach Applelawn, you have to get past him."
"Yeah," Jennifer T. said. "But before that, we got to get past them"
The nine Big Liars came down from the Jersey Lily and stood on the pier, gazing out across the river that had once carried an endless cargo of stories and brags, tales and whoppers piled so high on the docks of the Big River that they had to be hinged to let the moon get past them.
"All right," said Annie Christmas. "We will play you nine innings of old-style ball, with all the abandon we capable of. And if you all win, you get to get past us, and try your luck with the Ole Cat. Because if you can beat us, then you meant to beat us, and if you meant to do somethin', well then, ipso facto you got some kind of meanin' enterin' into the situation." She turned to her strapping comrades, and Ethan could see pretty clearly who was the Boss of Old Cat Landing. "That just simple logic. Q.E.D."
Pettipaw scrambled straight up the trouser leg of Grim the Giant, hoisted himself to the little giant's shoulder, clambered onto the top of his head, and then leapt into the air, turning a back flip on his way back down. Ethan and Jennifer T. high-fived and then punched each other's fists, one two.
"Yes!" said Spider-Rose, hugging Nubakaduba tight.
But Thor stood rubbing softly at his temple.
"There's only one problem," he said. "We're eight. You're nine. We need another player."
"That your problem," said the Tall Woman with the Dice and Razor. She had changed out of her flaming red dress and into her old white flannels and baseball spikes. Across her chest, in flowing blue script, it said LIARS. "YOU got but eight, you gonna have to beat us with eight."
"I count nine," said the Tall Man with the Axe, looking at old Chiron Brown.
"Not me," said Ringfinger with a soft chuckle. "I'm a scout. I got to maintain my impartiality. What's more—" He bent down and pulled up his right trouser leg, revealing a prosthetic limb of tan plastic. It was wearing a white athletic sock. "I ain't got but one leg."
ANNIE CHRISTMAS PUT THEM UP AT HER PLACE—THE GRANDEST house on the Landing—and after they had bathed and rested, they met down in the dining room, where Annie laid out a vast spread of hog jaws, chitterlings, pork chops, turnip greens, cornbread, whippoorwill peas, macaroni salad, and sweet potato pie. She joined them for supper, of course, and ate more than anyone except for Pettipaw, who consumed several times his own weight in pork, downed frightening amounts of macaroni salad, seven and a hal
f pies, and two gallons of hand-cranked vanilla ice cream. He declared that he had met his match in the kitchen. After they had eaten, Annie sat back in her rocking chair, lit a delicate little porcelain pipe, and blew out a long trail of smoke, and said, "What you people need, if you doesn't object to accepting advice from the opposition, is to locate yourselves a ringer."
"I was thinking the same thing," said Jennifer T.
"So was I," Cinquefoil said. "There was some fine players up ta the Lost Camps. That man Oakdale, fer example. Soft hands. A natural hitter. I think we ought ta—"
"No," Grim the Giant said. "Not no local piddly-bit Sunday afternoon slugger. I mean, look at us. We're okay. We're getting better. Now and again, somebody lookin' at us, and feelin' just a tiny bit generous, might even be tempted to say we was a downright fair-to-not-so-bad ball club. But if we goin' to take all the trouble to find ourselves a ninth man, then I say that ninth man ought to be, well—"
"A champion" said Ringfinger Brown."A hero."
Grim smacked the table, and set all the plates dancing. "That's just what I'm tryin' to say!"
"Well, ain't that droll," Ringfinger said, mopping up the last of the gravy with a crumbling scrap of cornbread. "You needin' a hero, and heroes bein' my sole and proper line of business, and me turnin' up here at near onto more or less the end of the world, where you leas' expect to find me."
There was an unmistakable glint in his eye.
"Who is it, Mr. Brown?" Ethan said. "Who did you get us to play right field?"
"Well, now, I don't know as I exactly have a partic'lar person in mind, but, uh, look here. Mr. Wignutt. Why don't you get out that crazy map of yours, and fluster it all around like you do, and tell us what we might find if we was to go looking right around heres for a nice spot to leap over to the Middling."
Thor dutifully pulled out the Four-Sided Map, and pleated and scored it and turned it around until it showed green leaves and gray branches on one side and brown leaves and gray branches on the other. Then he went out into the dooryard of Annie's house, and held it up to the rays of the setting sun.
"Well, huh, I—I'm not sure. But it looks like—" He brought the map very close to his face, and held it a little higher. "Yeah, there is a spot right by here. On a very, very small little branch. On this side it says Old Cat Landing. And on the other side…it says…" He lowered the map, and looked at Ethan. "Ethan, it says Anaheim.'"
"Anaheim," Jennifer T. said. "Anaheim."
"Oh, my God," Ethan said.
"Mr. Brown," Jennifer T. said, turning to Ringfinger. "Did you scout us up Rodrigo Buendía?"
"Rodrigo Buendía," Ethan said. "Oh, my God."
IT WAS EVENING WHEN THEY LEFT THE SUMMERLANDS. THEY were standing on the ball field at Old Cat Landing, on some bluffs overlooking the river. Tall, delicate trees stood like spectators beyond the right field fence. That was the direction that Thor started walking, toward the cottonwood trees. It was just the three of them, once again: Jennifer T., Ethan, and Thor.
"I know your map shows where the spots are," Ethan said. "But how do you really find them, in the world, I mean. How do you know which way to go?"
"I…don't know," Thor said. "I just start walking along a branch until I feel it."
"Are we walking along a branch right now?" Jennifer T. said, gazing down at her feet. There was just grass there, as far as she could tell. And she couldn't feel anything apart from nervousness about the mission they were about to undertake. She tried to imagine what it would be like to be able to feel your way into another world.
"Could you find a way to Rodrigo Buendía even without the map?" she said.
Thor kept walking. The summer night, that had been soft and lit by lightning-bugs, darkened, and turned cold. Thor closed his eyes.
"I think I could probably find anyone," he said.
"Could you take us to my dad?" Ethan said.
"Uh, yeah. Maybe. It would be hard. I would need a really long time. A lot of leaping. I would probably make a lot of mistakes. We might leap into some bad places."
All at once it turned very much colder. The trees were gone. The stars were gone.
"Thor?" Jennifer T. said. "Can I ask you a question?"
"Yes," Thor said at once. He opened his eyes. "I could take you to your mother. I'll do it whenever you want."
"Okay," Jennifer T. "I'll think about it."
"Could you take me to mine?" Ethan said, with a laugh.
Then Jennifer T. took his hand, and Ethan took Thor's cold and callused one. And then Thor started walking again, and they followed him, holding hands, into the blazing mouth of day.
CHAPTER 20
Rancho Encantado
THE CRIME RATE IN RANCHO Encantado, California, pop. 27,000, is very low—"immeasurably low," as the Director of Municipal Security likes to boast. No doubt this is due, in part, to the fine work done by the men and women of the Department of Municipal Security. Another reason may be that the entire perimeter of Rancho Encantado is surrounded by twenty-four miles of electrified fence.
Within these formidable city limits there is one lovely tract of very large houses, Italian-style rather than the usual Spanish-, called Villa Borghese. This fashionable subdivision is surrounded by another wall, a more prosaic one of wood and stucco, taller than a man and topped by an array of decorative pale green iron spikes. Inside these dagger-tipped walls, the streets of Villa Borghese are patrolled not only by the Municipal Security Officers (MSOs) but also by representatives of private security firms. The houses of Villa Borghese, in which some twenty-seven hundred people live, are themselves surrounded by walls and fences, some of them also electrified. Of those eight-hundred-odd houses, all have built-in alarm systems; some have systems of closed-circuit security cameras; others are protected by mean dogs; and a few even have permanent personal bodyguards living on the premises. But only one house, in all of Villa Borghese—in all of greater Rancho Encantado—employs every one of the security measures I have described, all at once. This is the house at 234 Via Vespasiana, the home of the Cuban defector and three-time batting champion, Rodrigo Buendía.
It would have been very nice, in other words, if Thor could have found a way to leap right into the guy's living room. Maybe someday he would develop that kind of control over his talent. For now, however, they would have to settle for a spot down at the very bottom of Rodrigo Buendía's street. It was a long street that wound its way up to the very top of the hill out of which, a few years earlier, all of Villa Borghese had been carved. Buendía lived, Thor declared, in the house at the top of the hill. This time Ethan didn't ask him how he knew. They started walking up Via Vespasiana. The day was very warm. The succulent plants in the landscaping strip along the sidewalk shimmered in the heat, as did the sidewalk itself. There was absolutely no one in sight. Not even in the loneliest hollow of the Raucous Mountains had they encountered such silence, such emptiness. Only a distant lawnmower whine, and the nearby chiff-chiff-chiff of a lawn sprinkler.
When they came to the corner of Via Vespasiana and Via Aureliana, they were spotted by an MSO, sitting in his patrol car in front of 441 Via Aureliana. The MSO radioed to Central Unit to report what he had seen. Central Unit duly logged the report: three children had been observed walking up the street, at 14:13 hours, on Via Vespasiana.
"This place is strange," Jennifer T. said.
Considering where they had just spent most of the last month, Ethan thought, this was saying quite a lot. But he agreed.
"It's so quiet," Ethan said. "I can hear it when I swallow."
They passed a great big beautiful white house with a red tile roof and a green, green lawn. After so long amid the shifting hues of earth and leaf and sky in the Summerlands, the big white house looked so clean and bright to Ethan, its colors so bold, that it might have been built of Lego bricks.
"Now you got me hearing it when I swallow," said Thor.
"Yeah," Jennifer T. said. "Thanks a lot."
"Look," Ethan said.
He pointed to the house with the Lego-red, clay-tile roof. One of its upstairs rooms had a little Juliet balcony, with a pretty wrought-iron rail. On this balcony there stood a child, a girl, of about their age. She was watching them walk up the street, just standing there, holding on to the wrought-iron rail. There was no expression on her face that Ethan could see. "There's a kid."
They stopped. They had not seen another child, a little reuben, in weeks. Children were as scarce in the Lost Camps as they had been among the ferishers, and those few they had seen were like the children in old photographs, silent and rustic and ghostly, dressed in tan britches and dust-colored frocks. This girl had on a sweatshirt as pink as a spoonful of antacid.
"Hi," Jennifer T. said, with an uncertain little wave.
"Hi," said the girl on the balcony.
The MSO, who had been trailing them silently in his patrol car from an average distance of three driveways away, informed Central Unit that the children he had reported at 14:13 now seemed to have become engaged in conversation. This was duly noted in the record at Central Unit.
"Where are you going?" said the girl on the balcony.
Ethan started to tell her, but Jennifer T. stepped on his foot.
"For a walk," said Jennifer T.
The girl wrinkled her nose. "Huh," she said.
Ethan could not tell if the idea of going for a walk struck her as interesting, tiresome, or merely bizarre. After a moment she turned and went back into the house. They kept walking, and the MSO kept tailing them. When the MSO realized that they were walking up to Rodrigo Buendía's house, he informed Central Unit, who agreed that the MSO was now confronted with a CT or Credible Threat. Central Unit authorized interdiction. The MSO got out of his silvery-gray patrol vehicle. He approached the children, a hand reaching for a fearsome-looking electrical-shock pistol that he carried on his hip.