Tapping the Dream Tree (19 page)

They're simple sketches, but they're good, too. I can tell. The lines have character as I put them down.

That evening our walk takes Fritzie and me to Jilly's studio where she and Wendy are sitting on the sofa, taking turns reading to each other from a new fairy tale picture book loosely based on
A Midsummer Night's Dream
that's going to be published in the fall. It's something Wendy's supposed to review for
In the City,
which is why they have this advance copy of it. Wendy's particularly chuffed since she and the book's illustrator share the same first name.

Fritzie immediately makes himself comfortable on the Murphy bed, which I don't think I've ever seen folded back into the wall. I pull a chair over by the sofa.

“I'm so jealous,” Jilly says when I tell them my story and pull out my sketches.

I blink in surprise.

“Oh, not of these,” she says, tapping the sketches with a paint-stained nail. “Which are wonderful. I told you that you still had it, didn't I just?”

“So you're jealous because … ?”

“That you got to go to Mabon. I've been wanting to go there for simply forever ...”

Wendy nods in agreement.

“But we're glad you got to go,” Jilly adds.

“And at least I've got a great new story for my tree,” Wendy says.

Wendy has an oak tree that she secretly planted in Fitzhenry Park and feeds with stories. I told you they were like fairy tale people. Who else would accept my story at face value?

“What was it like seeing Gina again?” Jilly asks.

“Weird,” I tell her. “It's hard to explain. Mostly it was like we were just taking up from before—as though her death had never come in between. But then every once in a while I'd get this sudden, sharp ache in my heart and I'd remember. But before it could really take root, Gina would sweep it away with something outrageous or sweet or simply thoughtful.”

“You're going back, right?” Wendy says.

“I'm certainly going to try.”

But whatever magic let me slip up on it sideways and take me away doesn't come back. At least not for me. But I know Fritzie's making regular trips to Mabon. I guess it's not hard for him, being a true dreamer.

I finally log back on to the Wordwood site and get it to drop down a list of links on how to make a dog speak. There are well over three hundred entries, from the cauldron business that Holly told me about to this really convoluted process that wakes up the diluted animal blood many of us are supposed to have running through our veins, none of them really practical, or workable. Most of them are the kind of thing that you have to slip up on from the side, which isn't very easy for a put-things-in-their-box person like me.

Holly doesn't really seem surprised when I tell her where the Word-wood's URL leads.

“But don't you think it's amazing?” I ask her.

She grins. “Of course it's amazing. But then everything about the Wordwood is pretty much unbelievable and amazing.”

“Can a person be jaded by that sort of thing?”

“I suppose,” she says. “But wouldn't that be sad?”

I nod in agreement.

I don't expect Sophie to be able to help me get back to Mabon, and she can't, though it's not from a lack of desire on her part.

“I'd love to have all my friends there,” she says, “but I don't make the rules.” Then she laughs. “I don't even know if there are rules. I mean, why do some people see ghosts and fairies, while other people don't? Or can't?”

“Maybe some people are just gifted,” I say. “Or more observant.”

She grins. “I suppose. Or maybe they're crazier.”

But I know what I'll do if I do get back. I'll find a travel agent and see if I can pick up the Mabon version of a rail pass, something that'll let me travel back and forth at will, the way a rail pass lets you take any train you want. I mention this to whatever the entity is that talks to me from the Wordwood. We've struck up an e-mail correspondence. The reply I get reads:

Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 08:10:20-0400

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Rail passes and boxes

Why not? It seems worth a try. And boxes and magic aren't mutually exclusive. After all, look at me.

The Wordwood

http://www.thewordwood.com/

I suppose that's true. Anything can be categorized. But then I think of what Gina told me, about embracing one's ignorance of the universe, and I think maybe that's true as well. We can categorize what we know, put everything into its box as it fits. But we also have to leave our minds open to embrace the great mystery of the world—all those things we know nothing about. Because if we do that with an open and generous enough heart, we might find the mystery embracing us back.

I still miss Gina.

I heard a dog speak once.

I've been to the magical dream city of Mabon.

I'm drawing more and that's sharpening my observational skills, because when I pay attention to the detail I can see, it reminds me about all the other detail that I can't. At least not yet.

I think Robert Nathan was wrong about one thing. Trees and rocks
do
have their own fairy tales and legends. Everything does. The trouble is, we only ever understand our own. And so long as that's all we do, we're putting ourselves in a box that doesn't simply categorize what we know, but also shuts us away from all we don't.

Fritzie dreams well—I can tell by the way his tail beats against the comforter when he's sleeping. Maybe tonight I'll lie down beside him. We'll be like a couple of spoons and my dreaming eyes will see how the world looks when viewed from between his ears.

It's the last thing I expect
to find hanging on the wall of my apartment when I get home. I haven't seen that costume in ten years, not since I left New Orleans. Back then it was hooked up in a place of honor on another wall, the one in Lawrence Boudreaux's front room.

Larry died last year. I would've made it back for the funeral but I only heard about it afterward, when it was too late to go.

I drop my jacket and purse on the sofa now and slowly walk up to where that plumed extravaganza hangs. The colors are so bright they dull everything in my living room and I'm not exactly known for my good taste. The lime-green bust of Elvis sitting on top of my TV is perhaps the subtlest thing I own. What can I say? I like kitsch.

But this costume …

When I lift a hand to touch one of the plumes, the whole thing fades away before my fingers can make contact. It figures. I've been looking for years for a miracle to clear up the mess of my life, but when the impossible does come my way, this is what I get: a moment of special effects.

I stare at the wall where the costume was hanging. Thinking of it, of Chief Larry, wakes a flood of old memories that take me back to when I was a runaway, a little white girl looking for her black roots among the Black Indian tribes that rule the Mardi Gras.

“You'll like this,” Wendy said. “Marley says she's got a ghost in her apartment.”

Jilly looked up from her canvas to where Wendy sat on the Murphy bed at the other end of the studio, her blonde curls pressed up against the headboard, legs splayed out in front of her on the comforter.

“Who's Marley?” Jilly asked.

“The art director's new assistant at
In the City.
You met her at that party at Alan's a couple of weeks ago.”

“I remember. She was the one with the bright red buzz cut and the pierced eyebrow, right?”

“That's her.”

“But she's not exactly the happiest camper, is she?” Jilly went on. “I remember being struck by how she seemed so outgoing, but there was all this other stuff going on behind her eyes.”

“Sounds like you're describing yourself,” Wendy said.

Jilly laughed, but Wendy caught the momentary empathy that flickered in her friend's sparkling blue eyes.

“So what kind of ghost does she have?” Jilly asked.

Wendy had to grin. “The ghost of a Big Chief's Mardi Gras costume.”

Jilly put down her brush and came over to the bed.

“A what?” she asked.

“You know, one of those huge feather and sparkle affairs they wear in the parades.”

“Except it's the
ghost
of it?”

“Mm-hmm,” Wendy said. “Except, how can an inanimate object even have a ghost? You'd think it'd have to be alive first… so that it could die and become a ghost, I mean.”

Jilly shook her head. “Everything has spirit.”

“Even a costume?”

“Maybe especially a costume. It's already made to be a secret, isn't it?”

“Or to hide one.”

Jilly got a dreamy look in her eyes. “The ghost of costume. I love it. Do you think she'd let us see it?”

“I'll have to ask.”

“A long time ago,” the old black man says. “Back when we were slaves. The only ones who welcomed us here were the Indians. That's why we respect them like we do, why we call up their spirits with the drumming and parades.”

He was brought up in one of those Black Indian tribes in New Orleans: a Flagboy, running information from the Spyboys to the Second Chiefs; a Wildman with the buffalo horns poking out of his headdress, scattering the crowds when they got too close to the chiefs and could maybe mess up the ornate costumes; finally a Big Chief, Chief Larry of the Wild Eagles, squaring off against the other chiefs, spasm band setting up a polyrhythmic racket at his back while he strutted his stuff.

I can't keep my gaze off the outfit where it's hooked up on the wall of his home—a spirit guide, he tells me. An altar and a personal shield, a reflection of his soul.

It boggles my mind. I can't imagine how much it cost to put that fantastic explosion of flash and thunder together. It's a masterpiece of dyed plumes, papier-mache and broken glass, peacock and turkey feathers, glass beads, eggshells, sequins and fish scales, velvet and sparkles and lord knows what else. The headdress rises three feet above the top of his head when he puts it on and the whole costume has to weigh a hundred or so pounds, but he can carry it like it has no weight at all.

Tired as he was last night, he didn't let that stop him. He was up the whole night before, sewing and helping others in the tribe with their suits. He marched twenty or thirty miles through the city yesterday, carried his tribe through over a dozen confrontations with other tribes, drank straight vinegar to cut the cramps, but he was still so swollen when he got home last night that they had to cut him out of his suit.

Yeah, he's something, Chief Larry, but he's still got time to talk to a street kid like me.

“Thing is,” he says, “people forget this wasn't always a show. Time was we governed the neighborhoods. We kept the music and spirit alive—hell, we were priest and police, all in one. Masking Indian was just a little piece of what the tribes were all about. We were like the spiritual churches then—we looked after the souls of our people.”

“What happened?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Progress happened.”

He says the word “progress” like it's an epithet. I guess for him it is.

I don't know why he ever took to me. Maybe he felt sorry for me. Maybe he just liked the idea of helping a little white runaway connect with the black blood that she got from her great-grandpa, blood so thin it doesn't show any more than the winter coat of a hare against a snowdrift. But he lets me hang around the Wild Eagles' practices. I sit in the back and bang away on a cowbell, adding my own little clangs to the throbbing, primal rhythm of bass and snare drums, tambourines, congas, percussion sticks, pebble gourds, bucket drums and anything that can make a noise and fill out the beat.

The tempo just keeps building until everything seems like total pandemonium, but Chief Larry's actually exercising a strict spiritual and physical control over the proceedings. Comes a moment when everything feels transcendent, like we're plugging straight into the heart of some deep, old, primal magic. When we're one, all the Wild Eagles, everybody in that room.

It's better than crack, but just as addictive.

“Sometimes,” he tells me, “people ought to just leave well enough alone. Everything's moving too fast these days. We're so busy, we can't see what's in front of our noses anymore. We don't need to know everything that's happening, every place in the world, every damn second of the day.”

He pauses to look at me, to make sure he's got my attention.

“What we need,” he goes on, “is to connect to what's around us and the spirit that moves through it. Our families, our neighbors, the neighborhood.”

“The tribe,” I say.

“Same difference.”

Marley Butler was on the computer when Wendy arrived at the
In the City
offices the next morning. She was working on a collage to illustrate an article on the upcoming festivities organized by the Good Serpent Club at the end of Lent. Every year they put on a kind of a mini-Mardi Gras, more block party than parade. A half-dozen streets in Upper Foxville were closed off and people from all over the city gathered to listen to live bands, sample Cajun and other Louisiana-style cooking, and march around in costumes and masks. The only gathering as colorful was in July when the Gay Pride Parade finished up a week of celebrations, but for that they closed off Williamson Street all the way from Kelly Street to the lake.

Marley was using scans from photos taken during previous years' Mardi Gras festivals, combining them in such a manner that the individual photos were still recognizable, but taken as a whole, they became a masked face.

“That's pretty cool,” Wendy said, looking over Marley's shoulder.

“Thanks.”

Wendy slid into a seat beside the computer desk, and popped the lid on her coffee.

“So ... do you still have your ghost?” she asked and took a sip.

Marley gave her a wary look. “Why?”

“Well, I was telling Jilly about it last night and she was wondering if we could come over and see it.”

“You're making fun of me.”

Wendy shook her head. “No, really. I swear I'm not. We just like weird stuff.”

“Weird stuff,” Marley repeated, obviously dubious.

“Look, I've told you about Jilly—how she's really into this kind of thing.”

Marley gave a slow nod. “And you?”

“I just like a good story.”

“You're not telling me something,” Marley said.

Wendy hesitated. How did she explain this without coming off as a complete flake?

But, “Okay,” she said. “Fair's fair. See, I've got this tree that grows on stories. I raised it from an acorn and ever since it's been the tiniest thing, I've given it stories. It's huge now—way bigger than it could possibly be if it wasn't a magical tree—but I still give it new stories whenever I can.”

Marley said nothing. Her gaze held Wendy's, but Wendy couldn't figure out what the other woman was thinking.

Wendy tried on a smile. “So now you can make fun of me,” she added.

“You've got a tree that grows on stories,” Marley finally said.

Wendy nodded. “A Tree of Tales.”

“Where is it?”

“I transplanted it to Fitzhenry Park when it got too big for the pot I was keeping it in. You should see it. It's already huge.”

“So do you find it cathartic, feeding it your stories?”

Wendy shrugged. “I guess. Depends on the story. Why do you ask?”

“Because I've got a story I'd like to tell it.”

“I remember a time,” Chief Larry tells me one day, “when things really meant something. Everything had a meaning. The difference now is, things only seem to have a meaning if we give it to them. But it shouldn't be that way. Is the crawdad any less of a crawdad if we're not there to acknowledge it?”

I like that he tells me this kind of stuff. Growing up, all I ever heard was, “Shut up. No one's talking to you.”

“It's like a Zen thing, right?” I say.

I read about this once when I was hiding out in the public library from the truant officer. Let me tell you, that's the last place they'll come looking for you. I've learned about more stuff skipping school than I ever did in the classroom.

“You know,” I add by way of explanation. “Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if no one's there to hear it?”

“ ‘Course it makes a sound. That's the whole point of what I'm telling you.”

“But what about quantum physics and this whole business about observable phenomena that scientists are studying now? They're saying that things like quarks only take on a discernible identity when they're being observed.”

“I don't know quarks from farts,” Larry says. “I just know the world doesn't need us to give it meaning. Just like nothing was put here for our use. If we're caretakers, it's only to leave things a little better than when we got here. Me, I think we're just one more animal, messier and more mean-spirited than most.”

“It's not always here,” Marley said as she unlocked the door of her apartment.

She's worried we're going to think she made it all up, Wendy thought, but Jilly was nodding beside her.

“That's the way these things work,” Jilly said. “If they were predictable, they wouldn't be very mysterious, would they?”

Marley gave her a grateful look.

“It's funny,” she said as she ushered them in. “I never once stopped to wonder if I was crazy. I just knew it was really there, even if it fades away whenever I try to touch it.”

Her guests made no reply. Marley's hallway let straight into her living room and there, hooked up on the wall, was the costume, an extravaganza of reds and pinks so vibrant that it seemed to pulse. Jilly moved forward, Wendy trailing behind her, until they were both standing directly in front of it.

“Oh my,” Jilly said.

Neither of them tried to touch it, though Wendy was sorely tempted.

“What's it doing here?” she said.

“Just being gorgeous,” Jilly told her. “It doesn't have to be doing anything. That's what I like best about this sort of thing. It just is.”

“No, I meant why would it appear here?”

“I used to know the guy who owned it,” Marley told them. “It showed up about a week or so after I found out he'd died.”

“Were you close to him?” Jilly asked.

Marley nodded. “Once upon a time. It was years ago, back in New Orleans.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Me, too. I should've gone back to see him, but I always thought, there'll be time. But there never is, is there?”