Last Chants (15 page)

It was Don Surgelato, saying, “So no calls, no letters, no nothing?”

“Not since last time,” Edward answered cheerfully.

“And that stuff in your car? It's for who, again?”

“You don't have to take my word on that, Lieutenant,” Edward responded. “Ask anybody in town: I spent the day shopping with a young lady named Alice. I hope to reap the benefits this evening.”

The lanterns weren't headed toward me; they were defining an arc closer (I thought) to the cabin.

“I still don't get why you'd look for her here,” Edward said.

“I'm out of other places to look.”

“So she didn't show up at work: She's not exactly career-oriented. She probably blew it off. She's probably off at some neo-hippie-yippie-ban-the-Republicans commune.”

Surgelato's next statement wasn't audible.

“This wouldn't be the first time she played hooky.” Edward's voice carried. “Ask Judge Shanna.”

The last comment was maddeningly unfair—it was Edward who'd screwed up my clerkship with his “favor.”

I remained there long after their voices and lanterns faded. Good thing, too. As I prepared to stand and stretch, I heard them again.

They'd circled back toward the cabin.

Edward was saying, “So what's the deal really? Between you two.”

“There's no deal.”

Edward's voice quieted to a confidential hush. I couldn't hear him anymore.

It took all my self-control not to jump out of concealment and pummel an apology out of Edward. Discussing my business, my private life . . . Long after I couldn't see the lanterns or hear the men, I fumed.

Eventually the night air cooled more than my anger. I wondered if I remembered the direction to the road. I wondered if Edward would come shouting for me after Surgelato left.

Minor concerns came at me like a Greek chorus. Without visual distractions, my brain had time to amplify them.

For starters, where was Arthur? He obviously hadn't been at the cabin; neither Surgelato nor Edward had given the least hint of it. That left a hell of a lot of other places he might be. For all I knew, he was aboard a spaceship with Pan at the helm.

Most of the rest of my worries involved either insects or mad woodsmen. I wavered about which I feared most. I itched. I imagined loutish footsteps.

I alternated being scared and being bored. I wondered if this was one of those experiences where you think you've been out for hours and are annoyed to learn it's only been minutes.

I gave up on Edward finding me.

I walked cautiously, I hoped toward the road. A heavy overcast screened moonlight that had helped me last night.

I broke branches and tripped over a log. By the time I'd fallen a few more times, I knew it was a stupid idea. I picked myself up and sat on a stump, feeling welts rise on my scraped flesh.

I heard twigs crack, leaves rustle. After so many false alarms, I was rationing my adrenaline. But the sounds continued. Someone was out here.

I inhaled a scream.

To my shock, I heard the dark shape say, “Willa.”

“Arthur! Oh God, thank God, you're the cat!”

He clapped my back awkwardly as I embraced him. “The cat?”

“You know, in horror movies? When the heroine goes to check out a noise and something jumps on her?”

“And it turns out to be the cat, yes yes; so it does.” Then, more concerned, “You're all right? Are you lost?”

“Maybe a little. Have you been out here all day, Arthur?”

“No. I was back for quite a long spell, but I saw a car coming—not Edward's. I thought you'd want me to leave. I was on my way back when I heard noises and saw you out here.”

“The car was Surgelato's—same cop as at my apartment. I'm not sure if he's gone yet.”

“Do you think we'd better wait awhile longer, then?” He disentangled himself from my needy embrace.

“No.” I wanted to be inside. “Yes, we probably should.” I didn't want to be inside with Surgelato, after all. “You want part of my stump?”

I sat down, leaving room for Arthur.

“You heard the piping?” Arthur's voice was agitated, boyish. “Wasn't it a miracle? Pitch perfect, flawless breathwork, a heartrending tune.”

“You mean tonight? You heard him tonight?”

“A short time ago. You didn't hear?”

“No.”

“I've been wandering about,”—his voice was hushed with the thrill—“hoping to encounter him.”

“You wouldn't even be able to see him, not tonight.”

“Oh, but I have a pocket light.”

“You have a flashlight? Jesus, Arthur, let's use it.”

“Certainly.” He aimed a thin beam across the duff.

I looked at his hand. He was holding a tiny keychain light.

“I found it in a cupboard. I didn't want to waste the battery,” he explained. “But perhaps my night vision's better than yours.”

“It must be—you saw me, but I only heard you.” I vowed to eat more carrots.

“I was given the gift of night vision by my spirit animal many years ago,” he explained matter-of-factly.

I didn't even want to know the details. “Maybe you'd better
turn the light off.” I hated to do it, but, “We should wait here awhile longer; make sure Surgelato's gone. Then we'll turn it on and find the road.”

“Fine.”

The night seemed even blacker after the brief luxury of light.

“Oh, Jesus!” I grabbed his arm. The piping had begun.

“We'll signal!” Arthur sounded breathless, beyond excited.

I nearly crushed the hand that held the penlight. “No! No, Arthur, it's a man, not a demigod!”

“A man who's manifested here for at least three centuries?”

“Maybe something has. But not this guy. I've seen him.”

“Listen to the phrasing,” Arthur insisted. “We must speak to him.”

“Please, Arthur—no!”

He wrenched his hand free, shooting a beam of light through the trees.

Immediately, the piping stopped. I thought I'd been frightened last night. Tonight took the trophy.

I heard twigs snapping, duff crunching. I heard footsteps too swift to be anything but a person running.

Arthur pointed the beam in their direction.

Oh please, let it be Edward, I prayed. Please oh please oh please.

I was drenched with sweat, heartbeats hammering my eardrums.

Even Surgelato. Let it be Surgelato. I'd take prison over massacre by a naked demigod.

A figure came into view: broad, muscular, unbelievably hairy, totally nude, carrying only panpipes and a leafy tree limb.

Arthur had gotten his wish. Except for one detail: “Pan” had human legs.

A
rthur's light froze on the legs. They were as thick as pine trunks, carpeted in curly fur that glowed red in the light. Though they assured me he was human, his legs told me nothing about his mood or intentions.

I grabbed Arthur's arm, jerking it upward.

In the instant before the light hit his face, I absorbed an impression of a very short man with a barrel chest and a lot of muscle.

His face was framed with matted brown hair, mostly shoulder length. He was dirt-streaked and ugly, with an overhanging forehead, a nose that had obviously been broken many times, and a reddish beard with bits of leaf caught in it.

But he didn't look murderous. He didn't look angry.

I kept the light on his face. I held my breath listening to him; listening for his first hint of movement or aggression.

He simply stood there, brows relaxed over his bent, flattened nose. His lips parted but he didn't speak.

He held a huge leafy branch as tall as he was, braced on the ground like a staff. His other arm, massive with undefined muscle, hung limp at his side, panpipes dangling.

“Who are you?” Arthur's voice was surprisingly commanding. He sounded like a much younger, stronger man. Or maybe I just hoped so.

I expected the man to grunt, he looked so primitive. Naked, hairy, filthy, he looked almost Neanderthal. But the noise he made was not primitive. In fact, he had a British accent.

He answered, “I am Pan.”

I almost got the giggles. He certainly wasn't carrying any ID.

I let go of Arthur's arm. The beam of light dropped again to the man's legs. But Arthur brought it back to his face.

“Pan?” Arthur repeated. His tone said he'd need to see goat legs before believing it.

“Pan.”

“You”—Arthur sounded bewildered—“you play very beautifully, sir; very beautifully, indeed.”

Pan nodded. He cast a glance at his pipes. “Shall I tell you what they wrote about me?” His accent was clearly British, but not English, maybe Irish. I didn't know my accents well enough to guess. But it was toney, for sure. Educated, precise, well-modulated.

“What they wrote?” Arthur's voice sounded calm, which calmed me, too. “About Pan?”

“Yes.” Pan nodded his head. His neck was as thick as some men's legs. “I repeat it but rarely. Very. Very. Rarely.”

I'd have tried to find an excuse—train to catch, car to wash—anything to leave now. But I was no anthropologist. To me, naked strangers meant trouble.

Arthur answered quickly, perhaps to forestall me. “Why, yes. We'd be honored.”

A scream gurgled up my throat as Pan stepped toward us, his gait distinctly King of Siam. But the smell of him, as ripe as a musk ox, seemed to kill my vocal chords.

Arthur moved aside, shining his light on the stump. “Please take our seat,” he said.

Pan nodded regally. Seeing him up close—a short, ugly man
with no sign of hostility in his movements or gestures—I began to relax.

When Arthur sat cross-legged on the ground, I joined him, feeling a bit like a kid in a fairy tale: We'd found a troll, and he'd promised us a fable.

“We'd be very pleased to hear your story,” Arthur reiterated.

I just wished he were upwind from us. I guess my reluctance was apparent to Arthur.

He nudged me.

I wasn't quite sure about this. If Pan went berserk, he looked strong enough to knock over a tree. But the light on his face showed a very tranquil demigod.

“Wouldn't we be very pleased, Willa?”

Arthur nudged me again. Maybe he thought it best to humor Pan. Maybe the anthropologist in him was curious. Maybe he thought Pan could tell us something about Billy Seawuit.

“Yes,” I said, tepidly.

“You'll tell us how you came to be in this place?” Arthur suggested. “What you've observed here?”

“I would tell no one the truth, no one my very own story, because there is no one left in heaven or on earth entitled to hear it. But I will tell you what they wrote about me. I will relate to you verbatim the best account by a man.”

“Ah,” said Arthur, “we're to hear a recitation, then?”

“And perhaps afterward, I'll play for you,” Pan promised.

The weak light from Arthur's penlight lit Pan's face like the glow from a dying campfire. I felt like a kid at camp about to hear spooky stories from a counselor. An unclothed, delusional counselor.

But Pan's voice was a soothing baritone, and it's somehow easier to trust a British accent.

He began sonorously: “The man ran naked down the tangled slope.” He sounded like a poet reading Joyce. “His hirsute form broke a path in the tall, wildflower-dappled grass. He ran swiftly, chest heaving, brown hair whipped free of its natural curl, slanting eyes half-closed.”

Pan's voice grew hushed, he leaned forward, picking up momentum. “His lips curled in wicked anticipation.

“Stationary the man might have seemed ordinary, even ugly. He was too broad for his height and tanned to swarthiness. His sunburnt skin stretched taut along the planes of his wide cheeks, and his nose was large and bent, perhaps by well-deserved blows. The hair on his body and even on his arms and back was too thick, a wiry weave of golden and russet that softened his powerful chest and flanks to wooliness.

“But in motion,” Pan continued, “the man rippled like a cheetah, sprang like an ibex over the land.”

He paused for effect.

“The land: clearings of wild radish and grasses blowing to seed, mixed forest of live oak and fir and madrone in flower, cool pine summits, fairy rings of redwoods tall in their bark like dowagers in mink, and here and there, tucked in creaking groves and sunny clearings on the slopes, a few rough houses, built without government sanction by men who did not care to be governed.”

I heard Arthur's, “Ah.”

“And from the occasional peak,” Pan's voice swelled, “from the rare clearing, there, away to the west, catching the sheen of afternoon sky like silver lamè, the Pacific Ocean.

“The man stopped, tensed to stillness. He sensed that the woman was near, and he inhaled slowly. Among the meadow smells—beaten grass warming in the sun, the faint perfume of nearby manzanita blossoms, of distant pines and salt sea—among the meadow smells there lingered a sense of her, not precisely her scent, but the merest inkling. The man's shoulders drooped, and he lifted a short-fingered hand to his eyes.”

Mimicking the man of the story, Pan lifted his (indeed short-fingered) hand to his eyes. He kept it there for a few more sentences:

“Behind the hand, thick straight brows knotted and drew close together. His mind's eye saw another meadow, far away, shimmering under a turquoise sky. At the meadow's foot there rustled a glade fed by a hyacinth-bordered brook.”

He dropped his hand from in front of his face. He leaned forward, voice heavy with feeling. “In that meadow, Syrinx squatted over a rabbit hole in earnest expectation, slingshot braced
against her bent knee. From a leather thong attached to her girdle hung two unfortunate relations of the rabbit pausing just beneath her in his tunnel.”

Pan smiled suddenly, then continued.