The Knights of the Cornerstone (7 page)

That was the problem, though. So far there had been no
convincing
talk about anything. He wouldn’t say that anyone owed him an explanation, but surely he couldn’t be blamed for
looking
for one.

He stopped just outside the window, where he glanced around, looking back toward the bridge and the trailer park
and then out toward the river again. He was entirely alone, and it would be the work of a moment to have one small peek through the window, just so he would know what the lurking boatman had been up to. If nothing was going on except beer and skittles and the mystery of the secret fez, he would go home to bed and sleep it off. Tomorrow he could live the carefree life of the unwitting tourist. On the other hand, if the man at the window had seen something that would put the Knights at risk, then Uncle Lymon would want to know, delicate as the whole matter would be. Half convinced by this rationalization, he peered in through the blinds.

There were six people inside, including his uncle. All of them wore hats, although not the typical fez sort of hat, but something that looked more like a helmet from an old suit of armor, fish-scaled with silver circles the size of dimes. The people were girded with beaded sashes, and wore white tunics with the red cross on the chest. He recognized Whitey someone, who had an unmistakably large nose and bald head, as well as a portly man in suspenders with wildly bushy eyebrows, a retired college professor whom he remembered as Miles Taber. Two of the people in the room, he realized abruptly, were women—something that had been obscured by the costumes and low light and by the fact that he wouldn’t have expected any women in the Knights. It was difficult to tell their ages, but one was old enough to be his mother, and the other was slightly younger, with bright red nail polish—something that looked incongruous to him under the circumstances.

The six of them stood around an old wooden table built on a base of slender, gnarled tree limbs topped with rough-hewn planks. Oddly, there were authentic-looking leaves sprouting from the table legs, as if the legs were alive and
rooted in the earth. On the table sat the cardboard box that Shirley Fowler had given him. His uncle pushed aside his tunic to reach into his pocket, coming up with a pocket-knife with which he carefully slit the tape on the veil box.

He shut the knife and returned it to his pocket before opening the flaps and then removing several layers of folded bubble wrap and drawing out the veil that lay beneath it—a piece of yellowed and tattered muslin-looking cloth. Even from Calvin’s perspective it looked to be more like a thousand years old than a hundred. There was a charcoal-like smudge on it that resolved itself unmistakably into a human face as the veil was unfolded, a face that didn’t look anything like anyone’s Aunt Iris. It was the craggy shadow of a man’s visage, seen straight on, as if someone, or the shadow of someone, were looking through the veil from the other side.

Calvin glanced away, consumed by the feeling that the image was an actual physical presence, and that it had looked straight into his eyes. He peered up at the starry sky, and he knew that he had no business being there, that something was going on that he was unprepared to witness, or was disallowed from witnessing. But the feeling was overcome by a stronger curiosity, fueled by the certain knowledge that he had been taken in lock, stock, and barrel by the Aunt Iris myth, which had sounded preposterous even when Hosmer was relating it to him.

He peered back in through the window. The two people standing next to his uncle had edged away, as if out of fear or respect, and everyone in the room seemed to relax visibly when his uncle returned the veil to its box and then put the box away in the open cabinet behind them. Lymon returned to the table carrying a basket holding a loaf of bread, a glass goblet, and a clear, doughnut-shaped glass
decanter, flattened on the bottom so that it would stand up. Like the veil, the decanter appeared to be as old as Methuselah. It was half filled with red wine—or what Calvin assumed was wine—and was corked with a red glass stopper in the shape of an equal-armed cross. The company cast their eyes downward, and Uncle Lymon began intoning a prayer. “Amen,” Lymon said finally, and the rest of them repeated it, and then after a respectful moment he broke the bread into pieces and handed around the basket, then poured two inches of wine into the glass.

The six of them took the bread and consumed it, drank from the glass, and then Lymon set the glass back onto the table. Then each of them put both hands on the table in front of them and bowed their heads again. Calvin became aware then of a creaking noise, like the lid of an old trunk being raised, or a heavy cellar door swinging ponderously open. He thought he could make out a deep, sonorous music underlying it, and he was struck with a sudden onset of vertigo, as if he were looking down from a height at moving water. The music seemed to occupy the air around him, leaking up from deep within the rocks that formed the Temple Bar. The ground shook then, mildly at first, and then with an abrupt lurch.

Earthquake!
Calvin thought, and he clutched even more tightly at the windowsill and set his feet. His heart pounded. Rocks on the mound behind him tumbled loose and clattered downhill. The six inside were riding out the quake by steadying themselves against the table, still with their heads bowed, as if this were part of the ceremony and not an interruption. The circular decanter toppled over, and Calvin nearly shouted a warning. But none of them let go of the table, and the goblet fell to the floor with the muted but unmistakable sound of glass shattering.

The earthquake stopped, the night was silent, and then, as if a tension had been suddenly relaxed, the six began chatting in normal tones, stepping away from the broken glass as if unconcerned with it. Calvin could see a shard of what had been the decanter lying near the leg of the table in a pool of spilled wine. Miles Taber walked across to the open wooden wardrobe cabinet, took out a silver plate, and returned to the table, where he bent over and picked up the piece of glass with his fingertips, laying it on the plate and then picking up other pieces hidden from Calvin’s view. He set the cross-shaped stopper among the pieces and straightened up, glancing in the direction of the window and pausing briefly before turning back toward the wardrobe. After a couple of steps he turned his head sharply and looked at the window again.

Calvin ducked away, shoving in among the willows, certain that he had been seen.
What an embarrassment
, he thought wretchedly. What could he possibly say to his uncle that would explain his being there? The crazy idea of swimming for it came into his mind—just sliding into the water and letting the river carry him safely down to Needles where he could take a Greyhound back to Eagle Rock, disconnect his phone, change his name, and retire from the world for good and all.

But nobody came out of the Temple. The night was as dark and silent as it had been. He gave it another minute and then set out hurriedly toward the bridge, keeping to the dark verge of the island, away from the parking lot lights. When he was near the bridge, he turned around and walked backward, which seemed cunning to him. If they came out and saw him now, he would reverse his step and head back again toward the island, and it would appear as if he was just then coming down from the trailer park—coming
instead of going. But no one came out, and, feeling foolish and shameful, he turned around and headed home, going straight into the guest bedroom, where he put on a pair of pajamas and climbed into bed, switching off the bedside lamp and calling it a night.

Soon the house and the night outside were perfectly still—a vast silence that was almost like a mass of undifferentiated noises. Lying in the darkness, Calvin listened, unable to fall asleep, and after a time it seemed to him that he could hear a faint pounding in the far distance, from up in the mountains, perhaps, or up in the sky somewhere—Thor with his hammer, maybe, knocking together another thunderstorm. The noise wasn’t regular, but would start up and then fade away and then start up again, and there was a ringing quality to it, like a hammer against an anvil. When he finally drifted into sleep, the hammering became more pronounced. Not louder, but as if the ringing blows had multiplied—dwarfs in a mine, perhaps, knocking jewels out of rock walls with pickaxes, the sounds echoing backward through time …

He awakened later to the sound of his uncle coming in. He heard the tread of his uncle’s feet moving down the hallway, and then heard the soft click of the doorknob turning. Calvin lay still, feigning sleep, the entire thing reminding him unpleasantly of his childhood. It was past two—strangely late for the old man still to be up and about. Calvin lay awake for a time thinking curious and troubled thoughts before finally descending again into sleep.

I
n the morning he awoke to the smell of coffee, with none of the confusion of finding himself in a strange place. On the contrary, he knew exactly where he was. All night long he had dreamed of earthquakes and of ring-shaped decanters tumbling to the floor in slow motion and breaking, and of walking through a stone cavern deep beneath the river, with the sound of rock hammers keeping time with his heartbeat. But as soon as he became aware of the morning sun through the window, the dream images fled and the waking memory of last night’s activity replaced them like the same size shoe. It had seemed uncannily mysterious out there in the darkness on the Temple Bar, but now in the light of day it was perfectly clear to him that what he had witnessed had been a small Communion service and a coincidental earthquake. Interesting, but nothing to lose his mind over.

Then it came into his head once again that the six
Knights in the bar had seemed to
expect
the earthquake, that they had been ready for it. But there was nothing he could do with that thought other than to file it away in his mind with all the rest of yesterday’s unfathomables.

It was early, and through the bedroom window he could see past the cottonwoods to an empty stretch of river that glowed in the morning sunshine. The Dead Mountains were golden with it. Yesterday had been never-ending, what with the long drive out into the desert and all the rest of the tomfoolery. Today he owed it to himself to do nothing, and perhaps tomorrow, too. His aunt had absolutely the right idea, sitting in a lawn chair and watching the river tumble past. Maybe he would go out onto the bridge and play Poohsticks. Maybe he’d take a nap.

He pulled on his pants and shirt, ran his hands through his hair, and went out to greet the day. In the kitchen there was hot coffee in the pot next to a note that read “Help yourself.”

“I will,” he said out loud, and poured coffee into a mug. Then he found his aunt, already sitting outside in her chair, looking at the water. She had a mug of coffee in a cup holder cut into the plastic arm of the chair.

“Good morning,” he said, stepping out into the daylight.

She turned and smiled at him, looking sharper and fresher than she had yesterday evening, which was a relief. He opened a chair that was leaning against the side of the house and sat down next to her. “Need a refill?” he asked.

“I’m all right,” she said, and they remained for a time in silence, sipping coffee and letting the river eddy over their feet. The low morning sun, looking right at them from over the hills in the east, was already heating up, and Calvin was grateful for the shade. “I’m wondering about joining
the Knights,” he said without thinking about it first. It was only about 10 percent true, but the day had a what-the-heck quality about it that made it perfect for speculation.

His aunt nodded. “I had a suspicion you’d come around,” she said. His aunt seemed perfectly sane to him now—sharp, even. If she was bothered by some variety of dementia, it had taken the morning off.

“What do the Knights do, mainly? They’re a service organization?”

“Well, the Knights serve a higher power,” she said. “They do good works whenever they can, like the Bible recommends. And I mean good
work
, too—up and walking good. That’s the main part of the equation, you see. When Jesus turned water into wine out at the wedding, it was
good
wine; so the Bible says. The Knights don’t bother with halfway measures.”

“I seem to recall that most New Cyprus folks are members.”

“Pretty nearly all of them are, or have been. Some fall away, lose interest, take a breather, but they’re still on the list until they take themselves off, which doesn’t happen too often. It was a rule from the first, back after they brought the Cornerstone in from the East and set it up beneath the Bar. In those days it was just a rocky hill in the desert. That was before the earthquake changed the river’s course and revealed what lay beneath the island. Hugh Blankfort was Grand Master then. He figured that the land where he planted New Cyprus was neither here nor there once the river swerved out of its bed, but was in between, perfect homestead land. He goes way back, Blankfort does.”

“Further back than you and Uncle Lymon?”

“Oh my, yes.
Way
back, his family. Traces his roots back to France in the earliest days. Family had the French
spelling, with a
q
, but no one could pronounce it, so they simplified it some when they came out West. Blankfort and the Knights brought the stone out on a flatcar, overland from New Rochelle, right after the turn of the century. That’s when the waters parted, and the river turned out of its bed. That’s how they knew this was the place. If you ask me, God made the river turn aside, just like in the time of Moses, although you can believe what you want about that. They found a holy place waiting for them right out there beneath the Temple Bar, and they built over the top of it. That’s the Fourth Secret. I tell you that because that’s why you came out here, at least partly. You’ll learn the particulars soon enough when you’re a Knight.”

“
What
was it they brought out on the flatcar?” he asked.

“The Cornerstone. There was no way to transport a stone that size except by rail, all the way out from New Rochelle. Forty-mule team couldn’t do it. They still ran mule teams in those days.”