The Adventures of Flash Jackson (24 page)

“How old are you?”

She snorted, gumming her pipe—which was empty for the moment.

“Alt,”
said. Old.

“How old?”

She shrugged.

“How did you get to be zo alt? I mean, so old?”

She smiled, her leathery face wrinkling even more.

“Prektiss,” she said. Practice. I stared at her uncomprehendingly until I realized that for the first time in memory she was making a joke.

“That's a good one,” I said. “Here's another one. Is my mother your daughter?”

Grandma stared back at me, one arm wrapped around her middle, her other elbow resting on it as she held her pipe.

“Vat iss daughter?” she asked.

“What?”

“Vat,” she repeated, “iss daughter?”

She was throwing the question back at me, asking me what I meant by “daughter.” I understood. She was trying to tell me there was more to the meaning of the word than just the sense of a biological child,
that there were other ways in which one could be someone's daughter. Fine. I got that. But if she hadn't given birth to my mother, then who had?

“Nicht k'no for certain,” she said. “She come leetle.”

Meaning she had arrived when she was very small, perhaps even still a baby.

“Did someone give her to you?” I asked.

Grandma nodded.

“Why?”

“To teach,” she said. “To grow.”

“They wanted you to raise her? To teach her?”

She nodded again.

“But why?”

Grandma laughed once more, a wheezy rattle.

“Because I know and they don't!” she said triumphantly, which was the longest speech I'd ever heard her make in English.

I was beginning to get a clearer picture now of what had really happened. Some parents, long ago, had decided they couldn't raise their baby girl by themselves. Maybe they were too poor, or too sick, or too something—who knew? So they left her with someone they thought would be able to give her some advantages in life. It didn't seem so strange when you considered that lots of other kids ended up in orphanages, or convents, or even stranger places. It was a shocker, though. It meant I didn't really know who my real grandmother was after all. It meant we weren't the people I thought we were. Or were we?

“Does my mother know this?” I asked. “Did you tell her when she got older?”

“I tell,” she said. She began to pack her pipe, though whether with tobacco or marijuana I couldn't see. “She don't like. She make forget. Then she leef.”

She pretended it wasn't true, and then she left. Was
that
why she left? Maybe she no longer felt constrained by the ties of family when she learned there were none. Maybe she no longer felt duty bound.
Maybe she'd always hated it out here, and that was the excuse she needed to leave—you're not my
real
mother, I could hear her saying. I don't have to listen to you!

But why would her parents have chosen to leave her with someone they must have known to be a witch? Because, I presumed, that was precisely why they chose Grandma in the first place. They must have wanted their daughter to learn the old ways that weren't being taught anymore. They wanted their daughter to be a legithata, too. Maybe there was nothing wrong with them at all—maybe they were perfectly healthy and capable of raising children, but they decided to sacrifice her to the Old Lady of the Woods as part of some weird deal they'd made. That thought gave me the creeps. Maybe they owed Grandma their souls! Cold chills crept over me as I sat head-to-head with this ancient and mysterious crone, and for the first time ever I was seriously afraid of her.

“Who are you?” I asked, very politely.

She smiled, as warmly as it was possibly for her to smile, sending up little thunderstorms from her pipe.

“Alt laty,” she said. “Very alt laty.”

“You're not really my grandmother?”

She shook her head. “More alt den dat,” she said. “But—same blut.” Same blood.

“So we are related?”

Nod of the head.

“So the people who gave you my mother—they were related to you too? Not strangers? Descendants of yours?”

Once more, a nod of the head.

“Grandma,” I whispered. “How old are you?”

She didn't smile this time. She just kept puffing on that pipe. I knew there must have been at least a little of the green stuff in there, because I was starting to get kind of drowsy. It was a fragrant smoke, feeling almost like fingers on my face, and I felt like stretching out just for a minute while she thought of an answer. I lay down, trying hard to
keep my eyes open. I could hear her start talking, sounding as though she was very far away. She was explaining things to me in a way that made complete sense, though I understood little of what she actually said…her accent, her voice blending with the smoke from her pipe and from the stove, the warm, close air of the shack all conspired to befuddle me.

She had come from far away, as a young girl, I heard her say. Yes, even she was young once! And she had been chased from her village because of the secrets she knew. They weren't her secrets—she'd learned them from her mother, and she from her mother, and so on. But people had grown uneasy about it, for some reason, although things were not always so. Once, her line had been respected. They had had a role in the daily rhythm of life. But things changed, as things always change. So she'd fled, rather than be burned at the stake—which was the fate that had befallen her mother—and had walked for many months, until she came to the ocean. It was not an easy journey, but it was made less harsh by the fact that she knew how to keep herself from being seen, and that there were all kinds of good things to eat growing all around. Once at the coast—she didn't even know where she was, only that she'd walked south and west—she waited until she met men she knew she could trust, small, dark-skinned, bright-eyed fishermen who told her of a place far out to sea where they could catch cod by the barrelful with almost no effort, and beyond that was more land.

This was the New World, they said. None of them had set foot on it, but they knew it was there. They had learned of its existence from the blond-haired giants to the north, who had already been sailing there every year in their boats with dragon's heads. The small, dark fishermen would take the girl there, they said—if she would keep them safe on the journey. For she had let them know what kind of person she was, and they knew she could help them with her magic. And she knew this New World was the place she had to go. It was calling her. Why, she didn't know—but it didn't matter. Why is not always
important at the beginnings of things. It usually only becomes clear at the ends.

And so she'd landed, some weeks or months later, on a strange shore where no European had yet set foot, and continued her journey southward and westward. There were people already there, also dark, people whose skin was the color of trees, but they understood that she was in search of something and meant them no harm, so they let her alone. She'd walked west and south as though pulled in that direction like a magnet, until she found the place she was looking for—a secret place, filled with some kind of energy, some kind of power. It had drawn her like a promise. She had always dreamed of such a place. You could do wonderful things with this energy, if only you learned how. So she would learn how to use it. And it would be her job to pass that knowledge on to whoever came to her in earnest, asking to know her secrets. And she knew that, while it wouldn't make her live forever, she would be able to live a very, very long time, with the power of this place sustaining her—though she also knew this meant she could never leave.

It was an old story. Who knew how many people had heard it before me? And I wasn't the same person when I opened my eyes, and let them slowly focus on the ceiling. Something in me had changed. Had I been asleep? No, Grandma was still sitting there, smoke still spilling from the bowl of her pipe.

She kept talking. Sometime long ago, Grandma had had a child, a girl. The identity of the father didn't matter now. She didn't even remember who it was. Grandma—I would keep calling her that, though now it seemed like a woefully inadequate term—had trained that girl, and that girl had gone out in the world. Whether she was supposed to go, or whether Grandma had meant for her to stay, I don't know. I couldn't tell whether it had disappointed her or not. Then that girl had had a daughter, maybe only one, maybe many, maybe some sons too—and
that
girl had come back to the woods to be trained. Then she in turn had sent
her
daughter, and so on and so on. And this was
the way it had been done, with the old lady creating a circle of slow time around her, drawing her life out as gently and slowly as possible. She was not a secret—she was only there for those who wanted her to be there, who needed her. The rest of the world need not concern themselves with what was going on in the woods. And she did not concern herself with the rest of the world, either.

The only question which remained in my mind now was this: What, exactly, was she teaching? And how did I fit into this line?

 

As if she had worn herself out by talking too much, Grandma once again fell silent, and remained silent for days, and then weeks. That was fine with me. I had plenty to think about, and I didn't want to distract myself with conversation. With our food already provided for us, and the weather growing steadily worse, I had nothing to do but sit and ponder and watch her. Entire days passed when I scarcely left the shack at all. Snow fell almost every day, gradually sealing us into our little mud cave. Grandma had developed the art of meditation to the point where she could remain immobile for hours, eyes shut, back stiff, hardly breathing—it was as if she put herself into a state of suspended animation, sleeping when the earth slept and waiting patiently for it to wake up one more time. I tried to do it too, but it was hard. I got better at it with time, but remaining immobile for so long hurt my back muscles, and sometimes my mind would race frantically, spinning its wheels like a car stuck in mud. At these moments I would grow almost insane with boredom. Then I would look at her again, and the sight of her would calm me—
If she can do it
, I would think,
then that means it's possible, and I can do it too
. The only sounds were the steady rhythm of Grandma's breathing, and the occasional pop as a knotty piece of wood exploded in the stove. Our appetites seemed to decrease with our level of activity, so that on some days I would take only a few mouthfuls of food, other days none at all—only a little water. Chester Burgess had brought a lot of canned goods, fruit and vegetables and so on, and we heated these up by setting them on the stove until they were warm
and ate them with spoons. I ate hardly anything, and yet I was never very hungry. Something else was nourishing me, almost from the inside, as it were. Something about where I was was keeping me alive.

We really were hibernating. And even in this kind of silence and stillness, I was learning. Just by watching her be, I learned.

After more weeks passed, we developed a different rhythm. Grandma appeared to rouse herself from her constant trances, as though all that sitting still had been a preparation for something, and we fell into another routine. She would explain things to me, about this or that herb, this or that flower—more of the same things I'd learned with her that fall. Gradually, these lessons in simple botany and herbalism gave way to conversations of a much more mystical nature. Grandma knew secrets.

Here is where I have to draw the curtain—since I also made a promise that I would not teach anything to anyone who was not ready to be initiated, who had not given me clear signs that she was ready to study the natural arts. These things are none of anyone's business. What I can say about them is this: There is such a thing as magic in the world, and if you don't know that, it's because you've decided not to know, not because you haven't seen it. You have seen it—all of us have seen it. Maybe you just didn't believe it because it scared you. Entirely possible. Nobody's fault.

Yet the one thing I still didn't understand was what it was about the place that was special. Grandma never explained it to me. She freely admitted that the power of this place wasn't hers to keep—it was not something that could be transported. Maybe it was the water, she said. Maybe it was the rocks. When she had come here, the “Tree People”—whom I took to be Indians—had a ceremonial site near this very place. So they had known about it, too.

Come to think of it, she said, it probably was the trees themselves. That was why the people named themselves after the trees. If the trees were to be cut down, the place would lose its power. But she didn't worry about that happening. Grandma knew that all around her, civi
lization had encroached on almost every quiet spot. She knew cities had sprung up all over the place, that entire forests had disappeared, never to be replaced. But she said that this place would never be raped of its solitude. No people would ever come here except those who were seeking it out. Not even the “bad boys” who pillaged her marijuana patch from time to time were here to rob this place of its essence; they were not intentionally desecrating it. They were looking for something too, only they didn't know it, and they were too busy daring each other into acts of foolish bravery to pay attention to what their hearts already knew: that they were walking on holy ground.

“Bet boys,” said Grandma, shaking her head. “Bet, bet boys. But dey look for somesink. Dey vant to learn. Someday—maybe. Maybe no. Maybe dey stay bet.” She shrugged, pulling her mouth down into a frown, the line of her lips becoming indistinguishable from the crevices that ran across her face like fault lines.

Winter, usually the slowest season of all, passed purposefully along. I hardly stirred from the shack except to do my business outside and to gather snow for water. When I did exit, I stood for a long while with my eyes shut, adjusting to the glare, taking deep breaths of the clear air. It may sound strange, but I was getting better at breathing; I mean breathing like I meant it, aware of every molecule of blessed air that passed into my lungs, mixing with my blood and coursing through my body. Just this simple act could occupy my attention for an hour.