The Night Walk Men (2 page)

Duty o
brother!
, Montserrat would answer.
You were borne, are borne, out of duty. With each
night, passing and flailing, you are a creature of the highest
obligation.

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And what of me? Like
Obsidion, I suppose, but in some ways
un
like Obsidion, I too am the
personification of life. I am the taker of life. And, if need be, I
am also its giver. We each are, in our own right. If you look at it
one way, I am everything to you and your humanity. Yes, yes, you
must be beleaguered--believe me that when I say I’ll answer your
questions, I will. Any and all. And I’ll tell it how it is, to be
sure.

Your curiosities are fair
and I will treat them that way but before we go any further, you
must know this: I will answer your questions. But in due time,
vice-a-verse-a, you’ll be asked to answer mine.

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Third: Obsidion

Allow me to try and put
this in terms that you may readily be familiar with. Obsidion is a
Night Walk Man, an old one, an experienced one. He has been imbued
with the lives of ten men, and He walks among you like a blur,
unseen but often sensed or smelled like pollen in the air when you
can’t see flowers -- or the tingle you get when the hairs on your
neck stand up. There is no solid-core steel door that can stop Him
when he is out to do His Work. If you’re walking home alone, down a
desolate road and your own shadow cast by the streetlights seems to
move on its own, in tandem to you but with a slightly longer gait,
that’s most likely
His
shadow. If you hear footsteps on the parched earth behind
you, or if dry autumn leaves scrape concrete with a breeze, that’s
most likely Him, walking just a little ahead or just a little
behind. If it’s dark and you climb into your car and for
once--
for no reason at
all
--wonder why you didn’t check the back
seat for strangers, He’s mostly likely back there as you drive
off.

He is everywhere at once
and nothing can stop Him. He’s Death incarnate, walking under a
long robe of blacks and chasing down the winds to read from his
discourse.

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Mistakes are made. Not by
Obsidion, at least, not yet. But from time to time things don’t go
as planned. Who makes these plans, even I cannot say. But there is
a Will and from that comes the Word. And when the Word goes astray,
the Night Walk Men are commissioned and must perform a less common
kind of duty.

I can tell you of one
instance when a mistake needed correcting. Remember this: Night
Walk Men do not only deal in death.

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Two youngsters--and I say
youngsters because I too am very old--were to expect a baby girl in
the springtime.

But due to what you would
call ‘complications’, some beyond any earthly control, the baby
girl was stillborn. She did not live to breathe fresh air outside
her mother.

But as with all things
that go to the left when they should go to the right, a Night Walk
Man was summoned to put in place a repair. You see, there are
certain things that should be. Simply
should
. And I don’t know if I can
make it any plainer than that. Word of these “Should-be’s” comes
down the chain from one in the line of Night Walkers to the next
and to the next and so on.

And so it came to
Obsidion, for these two parents-in-waiting were part of his herd,
his
flock
if you
want to think of it that way. He accepted the duty and took his
Next In Line, my brother Fallow, to begin the delicate practice of
ensuring parenthood for these two youngsters.

This man and this woman
were heartsick – as you can imagine. But they still loved each
other. Wealthy in dollars and in property and possessions, these
two had secure futures but had banked on sharing that future with a
little one. Even badly damaged for their loss, they still moved
forward through each day and into each night with one another. But
they were automatons now. Every evening, they each got into their
bed, turned their backs, said their goodnights, and tried to sleep.
Nothing was the same since their baby girl had been lost. And
neither of them could find sleep until exhaustion finally claimed
them and made them drift away.

They didn’t touch anymore.
They didn’t kiss anymore. Their sleep was restless and uneven. When
people are this badly wounded, no bandages can heal
them.

But it was in the nearly
forgotten warmth of skin against skin, that automation revolved
into a different thing. It was in the movement of a finger along a
wrist, or across a smooth leg. Unseen and unknown, Obsidion and his
young protégé descended upon the nighttime bedroom of these two.
Like wraiths in the blackness, they each maneuvered the lovers out
of their fitful sleep. It was like a wakeful dream, many months
after the doctors had said they could start trying
again...
if they wanted
.

And so, out of sleep,
brought this way and that, as if possessed body and mind by a
long-dead ghost, each of them embraced and caressed the other,
slowly at first, and then passionately, until, finally, they were
each entirely awake. They were entwined and fully engaged, neither
of them conscious of the other presences in the room.

Morning came to the two,
long after Obsidion and my brother Fallow had taken their leave.
And, in time a new baby girl was born: Gabriela. And along with
her, this blessed gift from above, there was a baby boy. Twins were
born. And the two parents were mended.

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So who am
I
, then?

Well, to begin with, I am
not the Tall Dark Figure.

My name is Sperro, thank
you for asking, and I must tell you that and I am not making any of
this up.

It’s not hearsay, either.
I was there. Or, for the most part, I was present in a kind of way
that you would not understand.

Fate willing, let us
continue.

You see, these aren’t
really
my
words
because I do not really exist. At least, not in a way that you
would be able to comprehend. But I give them to you, these words.
And now they are yours. You may do with them what you wish, you may
breathe them in and live with them, you may burn them, you may
forget them, you may tell them to the crows so that they will be
misremembered or taken to the sky on cool winds. It’s up to you
what becomes of them and up to you how they are spent and spread.
Just as these are not my words, neither are they the words of that
Tall Dark Figure you will one day come to know.

These words are yours
now.

You do what you
want.

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Fourth: Braille the
Rail

He comes on a mist, you
see, brings the cold when there is warm, the warm when there is
cold. But silence. Always silence. Never does he bring calamity. He
is the reversal of noise, the reversal of haste, the reversal of
disorder.

Obsidion, like all Night
Walk Men before him, lives above the rest of us. You don’t know
about this, and will likely forget it shortly after I tell you, but
there is a secret valley on a hidden moon called Cruithne, which
orbits past the clouds and the air over the northern magnetic pole.
True north, they call it. And back before you were born, when they
said ‘True North’ that’s what they were talking about, the valley
above the clouds: Cruithne.

There was a time when
Obsidion savoured his duty. No, he didn’t like what he had to do,
but he felt there was genuine meaning in it. He knew that it was
important Work, perhaps the most important. And so there was
salvation in that.

There isn’t down-time from
this Work, not in the same way you can imagine. Night Walk Men
don’t punch clocks or commute to a saw-mill to begin a shift and
then punch back out at the stroke of five. But there are reprieves
from Duty. And, not too long ago, it was in those short interims
where Obsidion, like anyone, could find solitude. He would come
down from the Perch of Cruithne and walk among the living,
savouring their lives, learning from them, watching them. He used
to revel in these pieces of personal time, when he could visit with
those that populated the world, and in particular with the artists
that He so much admired and that so much enthralled him. I tell you
that He was obsessed with your kind, found it hard to believe that
you could deal with so much negative and still, some among you
could remain so positive. How, He wondered, could you create works
of art out of a life of pain. It intrigued Him and He was drawn to
your ways of life.

One of the artists he so
admired and cared for was a musician, a blind sax-man who could
play better than so many more who had the full advantage of sight.
Can you believe it? A sightless man who lived alone near the train
station and could play music that would soften even the most
hardened soul. If that’s not an artist, Obsidion might have said
not too long ago, then there is no such thing as art.

Now the thing about this
sightless man at the train station is that he couldn’t see
Obsidion. No one could, right? But with him, it was a-okay. He just
assumed Obsidion was like anyone else. A frequent passenger passing
through Grand Central and paying homage with a coin tossed into his
case.

Obsidion knew his real
name, knew the real names and all the real deals of every one in
his flock. But he called the sightless sax-man by his nick-name,
out of respect and genuine friendship built by years of passing
visitations, conversations and, of course, songs. Braille the Rail,
they all called him, this heavy-set black man who would stand and
play in the station for hours straight, facing the wall because it
carried the sound of his saxophone out into the theatre of the
gates. His audience was the traversing crowds. Just men and women
moving to and fro, all of them bent on Being Somewhere Else. None
of them paid too much attention to the trials in-between their
various Somewheres. Destinations were their core and nothing else
mattered to them except for flagging comfort in the meantime. At
these middle-roads, tips to a blind man playing saxophone were
large. No one thinks their pockets hold real money out here in the
Nethers.

To Braille, all shaggy
whiskers and dark shades, Obsidion garnered his own little name.
Obo the Hobo. He was a traveler, he told Braille, a salesman who
only carried two cases. One filled by his personal belongings and
one giant rolling beast filled with his wares, musical instruments.
Brass mostly. Trumpets and clarinets, the odd obo (which Braille
wanted badly to hear played) and, of course, a saxophone or
two.

But enough about
me
, Obo the Hobo would
say
. I just sell ‘em. You actually make
‘em sing. Play me a tune, Braille, old friend, play it slow, so I
can learn the notes and remember them when I’m on the road and away
from my home.

They were long years of
steady friendship, but often the sporadic visits were short and
badly-timed. Sometimes two or three years passed between a meeting
of Obo the Hobo’s ears and Braille the Rail’s lips and the whetted
reed of a finely procured saxophone. Despite poverty, Braille the
Rail always had a flawlessly tuned and expertly shined instrument
to play, because, as Obo saw it, such raw talent should flourish
with a fine instrument in hand, and would only whither and die
otherwise. To give a second-rate gift to such an artist would be a
grave sort of sacrament. And since the conjure of most
anything--air, stone, fire, even precious metals--is second-nature
in the domain of the Night Walkers, the finest saxophone was
virtually a costless commodity. Why wouldn’t he deliver a new one
every few years to his closest friend, to his
only
friend?

But
Duty
, Montserrat would say, comes before
friendship.
O come,
Brother
, he might say to Obsidion,
Come sit with me and drink tea while I tell you
again your lot. You were borne of duty, you are duty. You must to
this attest your unflagging support. It is duty that makes
you...and makes all the rest of us carry on. Without you, there
would be no reason for anyone to live at all.

And Obo the Hobo would
have to forget his nickname when Montserrat stood before him and
handed his orders. Obo the Hobo didn’t exist while there was duty
to perform.

You should know that there
is no God, at least not in the sense that you have come to
understand since your birth and your upbringing, no matter what
faith (or lack of it) derives your wisdom. But there is a Word that
comes from a higher place down a chute and into the ears of lesser
beings. There is, as there should be in a universe that calls
itself ‘ordered’, a chain of command. I am the second last in that
chain. And Obo the Hobo, he is two links up from me. Demotion is
not an option. But punishment has happened in the past. Punishment
is final and there’s no coming back from it. His marching orders
had arrived from Montserrat, who is one link up from him, and like
all the times before, his duty spoke in volumes.