Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman (38 page)

“
Railwalker Academy isn’t exactly hard to find, Pa. In the five years I was there, you never had a game near New Frisco?”

“
You know I don’t do good with that ooky-spooky shit.”

“
Not even to visit your own son?”

“
Bad enough you’re all into that shit now. Sitting down with you today ain’t the easiest thing for me, just on that basis, never mind our history. I wasn’t going to walk into a whole campus full of that.”

I heard the anger in his voice and realized it was as much anger at himself, at his fears and frailties, as it was at me for having embraced the “ooky-spooky shit.” Suddenly I was looking at the man before me not as my Pa, but just as a man—an old, burnt-out gambler, probably an alcoholic, who lived with a lot of regret and struggled with his own fears and anxieties. A man who felt himself a failure.

I thought back to my youth and remembered how he’d always avoided Railwalkers, witches, and psychics, except for Patty Morris. And even his friendship with her had been an uneasy one; he’d been much closer to Bill than to Patty. It was a common enough thing amongst gamblers, as I ought to know. Most of them were intensely superstitious. They’d carry their rabbit’s foot or St. Bernardine medal, maybe mount a plastic Elvis on their dashboard. The bravest among them might visit a desert witch to get a custom luck charm. But they all avoided any active involvement with anything that smacked of the occult or the spiritual. I pulled my attention back to Pa, who was speaking again.

“
Blood will tell, they say. Guess you’d pretty much have to turn out to be either a gambler or a Railwalker. Probably Patty was right, I shoulda left you with her and Bill. You’d have had something like a normal life in Alturo. ’Cept Patty woulda probably started you down that road all the sooner.” He shook his head. “I dunno. Hell, I guess it’s better this way. At least you’re doing something helps people, contributing something to the world. Better that than turning into a drunken old gambler.”

I could see he was perched on the precipice of self-pity, and I wasn’t going to go there with him. Besides, something he’d said had stuck in my head like a burr on a coattail.

“
What did you mean, ‘blood will tell’?”

He looked at me for a long minute before replying. “Patty used to say you had the Sight. Guess she was right. You got that from your mother. She trained to be a Railwalker, you know.”

I hadn’t known. He chuckled at my expression.

“
Close your mouth, kid. You’ll be catching flies. Yeah, Irena trained at the Academy for a couple of years, but she never took the Oath or got the tattoo. She dropped out, or whatever you call it.”

I was baffled. I couldn’t imagine my father in a romance with a Railwalker trainee. Talk about “ooky-spooky shit.”

“
How did you...?”

“
Get together?” he supplied. “I started dating your Ma before she went in. Her visions and dreams and stuff were like her dirty little secret in those days. She didn’t talk about them. I didn’t know anything about it until it was too late. She already had me, hook, line, and sinker.

“
I think she wanted to forget it, leave that shit behind, but it wouldn’t let her go. Went from dreams and occasional flashes of vision to full-blown fits that would have her out of it, lost in some other world, right out in broad daylight. Things eventually got so bad she couldn’t hide it, had to talk to me about it. ’Course, I was spooked. It scared the shit out of me. But I wasn’t gonna walk on her at that point, leave her to deal with it by herself. Eventually we agreed she had to get help, had to get some kind of training to deal with it, and that’s when she decided to go to the Academy. We both thought that meant we were all done, our life together was over. I drove her to the Academy, dropped her off. Thought that was the last I’d ever see of her.”

“
And where was I during all this?”

“
You? You weren’t even a gleam in either of our eyes at that point. You were an egg that hadn’t dropped, a sperm that hadn’t swum upstream. Couple of years later, I was playing in a casino in Freno, and she comes walking up to the table. ‘Hi, Doc,’ she says. ‘You up for a different kind of game?’”

“
She’d left the Academy?”

“
Yeah, she’d left. Learned enough to get control of the shit, or so she thought. Wanted to have a life, raise a family. We were both still young enough in those days. We thought we could pull that off. I even tried getting a regular job for a while. Not that that worked out any good.”

“
So what happened?”

“
Whatdye think? Ooky-spooky shit happened. A couple of years after you were born, the visions got out of control again. She never did explain it all to me, but something she’d seen convinced her that if she stayed around, you were going to be drawn into that world, and it was gonna be bad for you. Said you’d be swallowed by the dragon, or some shit like that. She thought if she left, and I did my best to keep you away from that kind of stuff, you could have a normal life.” He shook his head. “Guess we both should have known better.

“
I never talked about this because, you know, trouble between men and women is always that he-said, she-said shit. I have my feelings and opinions, and I coulda told you what they were, but I wasn’t the person to present her point of view, and I didn’t want to poison your mind against her. She was your ma, after all.”

“
Poison my mind?”

“
I wouldn’t have done it intentionally, but when you’re a kid, you listen to what your parents say. It weighs more with you than it ought to. If I’d have told you the whole story, even if I’d tried to be fair, you’d have heard my side, but not hers.”

I was stunned. He’d never told me anything about my mother because he was afraid he’d unfairly prejudice me against her? “Look, Pop,” I said, “I’ve learned a bit about how reality looks different to different people. I think I’m a bit old to take my father’s word as absolute canon verity.”

“
Fair enough,” he said, and he sighed. Looked at the bottles behind the bar, at the door to the games room, the front door of the place, everywhere else he could before finally looking at me. “Your mother,” he said at last, “was a hard woman to love.

“
Not hard to fall in love with, y’know. That’s different. Gorgeous she was, with that soft smile and those big, luminous eyes. You’ve seen her picture. She was like some elegant DV star. You know, some women that beautiful, they develop this attitude, like they’re somehow privileged and better than everybody, because all their life people have given them everything they wanted, just because they were beautiful.”

I nodded. I’d known a few women like that.

“
Your mother was never like that. Modest, self-effacing, when I met her. Easy to fall for. But falling in love, that’s nothing. Loving, once you’re in a day-to-day relationship, that’s another thing entirely. When you’re playing partners, and things get rough, the world don’t exactly deal you all the best cards. Tension builds up. You get anxious and edgy, and you start blaming each other.

“
I knew how that went, of course, but when Irena and I started at each other, well, she could say things. Things that weren’t true, that she didn’t even believe were true. Just to hurt you, to score a point. Especially when she was drinking.”

My mother had a drinking problem? This was new to me. I mentally laughed at myself. Everything and anything about my mother was going to be new to me, since all I actually knew already was her image from that one photograph.

“
I’d been around the block a time or two even then. You’d think an old dog like me would have run into that before. But dumb as it seems, the truth was, I hadn’t. I’d known guys would lie to get the upper hand in an argument, say shit that was total lies, but never a woman who’d do that to hurt her man. I think it was that more than anything had me ready to agree, and to let go, when she decided to hit the road.”

I wondered again about the spirit I’d seen that I’d always accepted as the spirit of my mother. This didn’t sound at all like her. But what did I know? That spirit appeared now and then to pull my irons out of the fire, and then vanished again. I didn’t deal with her on a day-to-day basis, like I did with the Wolf Spirit or the Crows.

“
So why did she leave?”

He sipped from his drink and looked me up and down. “You want to know my honest opinion, she left to chase her own ambition. Washing out at the Railwalker Academy did something to her. She’d seen something there that she wanted: power, influence, authority. Oh, she gave other reasons for leaving at the time. All that stuff about a vision, a prophecy about you. Supposedly she was worried about that, trying to avoid it. You were better off without her. But you ask me, the reality was, she thought it was her was better off without you and me.

“
When the weird stuff started up again, after you were born, I could see that instead of resisting it, this time she was accepting it. She was determined to turn it to her advantage, gain herself some power. On a path like that, a gambler husband and a baby were just encumbrances. Toward the end, you could see her getting harder, nastier. Like she was trying to rid herself of compassion, empathy, softer feelings like that. Back then I thought it was the booze, but now I think the drinking was a symptom, and a tool. I think she’d come to see those kinder feelings as weakness. Drinking gave her some distance, some insulation.”

I thought about that. I’d known more than a few people like that in my time.

“
So the whole prophecy about me was a made-up excuse?”

“
Hell, no. That was a legitimate vision. I was with her when it happened. Unless she was a much better actress than I thought...” He paused. “Which I guess is a possibility.” He shook his head, denying it to himself. “No, I think that vision was real. I just don’t think it was the reason she left.”

“
So what exactly was this vision? I’d be swallowed by a dragon?”

“
Something like that. Couldn’t tell you the details.” His eyes widened at my expression, and then narrowed again as he leaned toward me. “Look, okay, I know, you and your cohorts, you pay attention to visions and prophecy and all that shit. You can’t imagine how somebody could actually forget something like that. But you gotta remember, at the time I was scared shitless of that crap, and I did my best to avoid and forget anything associated with it.”

I noticed he’d used the past tense. “So you’re easier in your mind with ‘that crap’ today?” I asked.

“
Yeah,” he said, “I am, actually. The older you get, the more you realize Old Man Death is sitting in on every hand. You tip to the fact he can collect up the pot any time he feels like it, the other weird stuff don’t seem all that scary anymore.

“
I’m sorry I forgot that prophecy. If it was today, I’d mark it down and remember it. But back then, last thing I wanted was to remember. And I’m sorry I never told you anything about Irena. That wasn’t fair. Though, truth to tell, you never actually asked.”

Once you made it clear such questions wouldn’t be answered, I thought, but I bit my tongue. What’s done is done. Instead, I said, “You know she’s dead now.”

“
You got inside information on that, or you just guessing?”

I thought about that. My heart was sure that, yes, she was dead, and I had been visited by her spirit. My head wasn’t so sure. I knew that both heart and head can be deceived, especially when you’re feeling desperate; and what could be more desperate than a young child who wants his mama? Even when—maybe especially when—he’s never known her.

“
No,” I said finally, “I don’t know for sure. I’m just guessing. Call it a feeling.”

He stood, emptied his glass. “Sorry, but I am working,” he said, nodding toward the game room. “And the cards call. Nice to see you again. Sorry to hear about your friend.”

I watched his narrow figure walk back into the game room, thinking, that’s so typical. A big revelation, a heartfelt apology, and like a switch was thrown, that’s done, good, back to business as usual, bye, seeya.

40. WOLF

I walked back slowly toward the Tower. Meeting my Pa had been weirder than any trip I’d taken to meet with the Wolf Spirit. I would have thought I’d be angry and bitter toward him. I was, but not as much as I’d have expected. Seeing him from an adult perspective changed that. I understood a lot more about people and life than when I’d last seen him over twenty years ago. When you’re a child your parents are like gods. And even though as you get older you realize they’re not, you still carry some of that with you. On some unconscious level you still expect your Pa or your Ma to be superhuman, heroic. When they prove to be merely flawed human beings, it’s like they betrayed you personally. Tonight I had looked at my father the way I’d look at any man I’d met in my travels. And while he wasn’t any paragon, he also wasn’t a monster. Just a tired old gambler, doing the best he could. It took some of the fire out of my anger.

I’d also realized that in my younger mind, Pa had suffered severely by comparison to my mother. Oh, there was anger and disappointment about her leaving us, sure. But without regular day-to-day exposure, I was able to keep my happy fantasies of what she might have been like, to build a mental image of a perfect goddess. Her occasional appearance as a spirit, ghost, vision, or whatever the hell she was, did nothing to tarnish that image. You might think my Pa’s account of her having attended the Academy might have polished that image even further, but the truth was, it brought her down to earth for me. She hadn’t finished her course at the Academy, had never taken the tats or been granted the coat and the sword. She’d dropped out—to have a family, sure, but apparently when she abandoned us, she didn’t go back to it. And if Pa was to be believed, she was a drinker, and could be cruel sometimes.