Last Chants (3 page)

“Who handed what to you?”

“The gentleman with the scarf.”

I had noticed no scarves. I wondered if we were having different conversations. Like many scholars, Arthur tended to focus on fine points invisible to others.

“We should go,” I pointed out. “Keep heading toward Market.”

His face, as furrowed as a hound's, reflected my discouragement. We'd been trying to get to and across Market Street this last long hour. Instead, we'd seen the insides of several buildings and taken a dozen alley detours.

“Why don't we just talk to them, Willa?”

He'd advocated this earlier, but I'd interpreted it as a desire to surrender. It dawned on me he believed the police would accept his explanation.

“No way,” I reiterated. “They saw you take a hostage. They watched you escape. They'll never believe you.”

“I'll take the chance.” He wore the same look of naive faith I'd seen on my mother's face before her disastrous arrests.

“Well, I won't. The minute they realize we're friends, they'll label me your accomplice.”

“How can you be my accomplice? I haven't done anything.”

“You have now. You've resisted arrest. So have I.”

“But—”

I turned impatiently. “I'm a lawyer. Trust me.” Self-canceling sentences, perhaps, but Arthur took them at face value. He followed me out.

We barely got a half-block farther before another cop seemed to ogle him. This time, Arthur slipped into a building with no prompting from me. I supposed I'd made an impression; he realized he was protecting me now, too.

I waited a few minutes, then followed to give Arthur the “all clear.” We continued our parallel progress through the Financial District.

Reaching Market, we saw a police car on the corner. I looked down toward the Embarcaderos. There was another car on the next corner. I looked toward the civic center. There was a car there, too.

They were taking the gunman with a hostage seriously, that was evident.

Even south of Market, along thoroughfares of warehouses and wholesalers, the police presence was noticeable. Street people kept a low profile, lingering in doorways, casting furtive glances at the blue uniforms. I saw a cop questioning a group of men in dirt-streaked clothes.

We walked a mazelike route through a dreary neighborhood that did its business without caring who it impressed.

Eventually, it seemed safe to walk together. But even then, I looked over my shoulder so often my neck ached.

“What did you mean before, Arthur?” I endeavored to squelch my crankiness. I should have been nervously ensconced at work for the last two hours. But I'd jumped into this; it was my doing, not Arthur's. “What about the man with the scarf?”

“I've never been so surprised, Willa. Not here, at any rate. Now, when the Juavaro chief sliced off his rival's ear and used it—”

“Surprised at what?” Fascinating though rain forest etiquette might be, right now I was more interested in us. “What did he do? The man with the scarf.”

“He handed me the gun.” Arthur had stopped walking. He blinked as if I were a dense student.

“Someone
handed
you that gun?”

He nodded. “And then stuck his hands right up into the air.” He mimicked the gesture, looking as if I were mugging him.

“You're kidding. That guy”—I struggled to recall his features, his hair color, anything—“the guy with his hands in the air was the one who handed you the gun?”

“That's right. He handed it to me, put the handle part in my hand, you know. And then . . .” He raised his hands higher. “Funny.” He let his arms drop back to his sides. “I thought it must be some sort of joke, you know, because of the ululations.”

“The what?”

“Ululations.” He made a series of quiet whooping noises.

“I don't remember him doing that.” But I wasn't sure how long it had been going on before I got there.

“Not literally, of course. Not ‘woo woo woo,' but American ululations. You know, ‘Help, help, don't shoot'; that sort of thing.”

“He put the gun in your hand and started making a fuss.” I felt drained of energy. In trying to rescue Arthur, I'd let the man with a scarf get away. I wanted to cry. I am not an intervener by nature. It would be too much if it backfired on me the one time I did it so publicly and dangerously.

“Yes.” He nodded emphatically, looking professorial in his turtleneck and cardigan. “So unusual.”

“Talk about timing.” The man made his move in front of a cop. If it was a coincidence, it was a big one. “Was the man facing you when he handed you the gun?”

“No.” Arthur shrugged. “He came up behind me. He put it in my hand, and the next thing I knew he was in front of me, ululating.”

“He must have seen the policeman. He must have been following you, waiting until he saw one.” I was surprised by the authority in my tone. What did I know? I hadn't even noticed the scarf. “What kind of scarf was he wearing?”

“Wearing?” Arthur looked as if I'd suddenly begun speaking Chinese. “The man?”

“Yes.”

“Was he wearing a scarf?”

I felt trapped in a comedy routine. “You said he was.”

“No, no, not wearing it. He had the gun in it. I felt it on my hand before I felt the gun. I felt it fall away, out of my hand.”

“Did you see it?”

“Mm.” He seemed to be pondering, his thick hair shaking slightly. “Just before that, I had the feeling of an eagle.”

“A what?” A “feeling” of an eagle?

“Yes, yes. I can't see the scarf, but I can feel its silkiness, and I recall having had the feeling of an eagle.”

I picked up our pace. I had no idea what an eagle might feel like. Right now, I was more interested in a cup of coffee.

One of my biggest fears about this morning had been that Curtis & Huston, where I should be right now, made its coffee too weak. I hoped I wouldn't be so late it became a moot point. In the meantime, I could use a triple espresso.

“We'll go to my house.” I'd already blown more sensible options. “I'll phone work. We'll figure things out.”

We executed a convoluted half-circle through the Mission District, finally recrossing Market. We were north of the civic center now, with perhaps another mile to walk to the Panhandle and another half-mile to the Haight, where I lived.

I had chosen, for better or worse, to stick with Arthur. I told myself it was safer this way: I didn't trust him not to confide in the police. I didn't trust him to be paranoid, evasive, and self-protective; after all, he didn't have my legal training.

I
found my answering-machine light blinking furiously. Four of the messages were from Curtis & Huston. The first two were polite, almost apologetic: Gee, had I glanced at the clock? The third expressed concern; they had set up an appointment that I would soon miss. The fourth was curt; please call them.

There were two messages from my mother. She'd phoned Curtis & Huston to speak to me. Her squeaky voice informed me that I wasn't at my new job, and the secretary didn't know where I was, and she didn't sound happy about it. Her second message consisted of a breathless run-on: “Willa June, it's almost lunchtime; you wanted this job so much; where did you go; why didn't you call them; are you all right?”

I should have phoned work sooner, should have come up with some excuse. I just hadn't been able to think of one.

I went into the kitchen to put on water for coffee. I still
couldn't think of one. I'd overslept? Passed out? Gotten lost?

Though I had the perfect excuse for tardiness—Sorry, I was taken hostage—I couldn't use it.

I almost dropped the coffeepot when the phone rang again. I went back into my living room in time to stop Arthur from picking up. After the message beep, I heard my father's voice:

“Willa, your mother's very concerned that you didn't make it to work this morning. She's on her way over.” A pause. “We certainly hope you're all right.”

I considered picking up the receiver. I didn't want him to worry. On the other hand, I didn't see how the truth would console him, and I couldn't lie to my father. Anyone but.

“Are you there, Willa?” The worry in his tone almost persuaded me to lay my troubles at his feet.

I looked around the living room for my clock. There were newspapers strewn all over, clothes from this morning's hurried try-on session. I spotted a corner of my desk clock under some computer graphics journals. I brushed them aside. It was almost one o'clock. The digital clock on my computer—still on since last night—told me to the second how late I was. Our progress had been slower than I'd supposed.

But a woman my age should be able to “vanish” a few hours without her parents freaking out. Hadn't they joined the Peace Corps in 1976 without telling me? Hadn't they left for two years without saying good-bye? My mother could live with her worry.

My doorbell began to ring. It rang insistently for a minute, then the bell downstairs began to ring. My mother was buzzing Ben, my landlord. I listened to his bell, then mine again. Apparently, Ben wasn't home.

“We should let your mother in,” Arthur said gently. “Why, I haven't seen her since, oh my, was it before Alaska and British Columbia? I think before the hunts?”

“You went
hunting?”
This shocked me more than having seen him with a gun. I hadn't quite believed the gun, but this came from his own lips.

“No! Good lord, Willa! The Hunts—a family of Haida craftsmen and artists from the Queen Charlotte Islands. I was introduced by my assistant.” His face lit. “Ah, what a fellow he is,
what a truly magical fellow. A shaman, a woodsman, a totem carver, and the most remarkable mind! And he surpasses even Rolling Thunder and Black Elk in spirit, in my opinion. He's a blessing. Really, a blessing to me.”

“Hm.” The doorbell ringing had stopped. That was all I cared about.

I swept some clutter off the couch and invited Arthur to sit. I went back into the kitchen.

I stood over the dripping coffee cone for a few minutes. Maybe Arthur could have explained away the gun incident and maybe he couldn't. Maybe I'd done the right thing in “rescuing” him. Maybe I'd handled this wrong.

I worried about it. I left Arthur alone in my living room, and I nursed a cup of coffee. I let a hundred worries bloom.

Finally, I decided to phone work. I would offer an unspecified personal emergency as an excuse. If they fired me, they fired me. Waiting wouldn't change that.

I found Arthur reading the newspaper, which he'd stacked into a tidy pile beside him. He didn't look up.

I walked over to the phone, which was on a director's chair. My decor, a friend had pointed out, was basic freshman. I'd tried, on occasion, to become interested in my surroundings. But that meant too much cleaning and shopping, and not enough reading and aimless walking.

I started to dial Curtis & Huston. I chickened out. I told myself I should allay my parents' fears first; that I could practice my excuse-making on them.

My father picked up on the first ring. “Willa!” he said in response to my greeting. “Where are you?”

“Home.” I watched Arthur jerk back as if startled by a headline on the state news page. “It's kind of a long story . . .”

“Oh my, I wonder if we can still catch your mother?”

“Catch her? Doing what?”

“Going to the—You've got to put this in context, Willa.” His voice was ambassadorial. In recent years, he'd taken to mediating between me and my mother, trying to make my practicality less alien to her and her politics less ridiculous to me.

“Put what in context? Is she in trouble? What's she done
now?” I felt the strength drain out of me. I'd warned her till I was weary; I thought I'd made my point. “She's not getting herself arrested?”

“No. No. It's you, she's been worrying about you.”

I ran through a list of worst-case possibilities. In any context involving me, could she be picketing anyone? Trespassing? Calling a news conference? “And?”

“Because she knew how happy you were about getting this job, you know.”

“So what did she do?”

“She phoned you all morning, then she went by your place.” He was hedging, soothing.

Arthur was making strangling noises. I glanced at him. He didn't seem to be choking on anything. I put a hand over my free ear to block out the sounds.

“Cut to the chase, Daddy, would you? She's not in trouble?”

“No. But she thinks you are.”

I still didn't get it. Why was he so reluctant? “Oh, my God!” It hit me. “She's gone—”

“Well, because she was so worried. And he's the only policeman she really knows.”

“Oh, no. Please.”

Arthur's head lolled against the futon cushion, newspaper fluttering to his feet. He looked glassy-eyed. I hoped he wasn't about to fall asleep. If I understood my father, we would have to get the hell out of here very soon.

“She went to Don Surgelato.” I waited for my father to contradict me. “Did she?”

“She was worried. She thought he'd have, you know, injury reports and the like.”

I had fallen in love with San Francisco's Homicide Lieutenant once, stupidly and inappropriately. By the time I'd screwed up my courage to make a total fool of myself over him, he'd reconciled with his ex-wife. You haven't quite hit bottom until you've trekked to a man's house to declare your love and had an ex-wife in a bathrobe open the door.

I could have gone the entire rest of my life without hearing the name Don Surgelato again. “She really went there?”

“Again, Baby, context. She knew how much you wanted this job, and yet you didn't— Why didn't you go to work today? Why are you still home? You know, we called several times, but—”