The Sixteen Burdens (25 page)

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-F
IVE

G
RAY
KNELT
NEXT
to Panchito, by the bed where Elsie was sleeping. Together they watched the candle on her nightstand. It burned, as it had all night, as Abuelita insisted it must. But the flame was weak and fickle, flickering bright one moment and fading to almost nothing the next. Gray held his breath, afraid of what the slightest movement might do.

They had taken shifts that night watching Elsie, watching the candle. Abuelita was a
curandera
, a kind of healer. She made an herbal remedy, and Elsie had surfaced into consciousness last night just long enough to drink it. After inspecting her body for broken bones, Abuelita was confident Elsie would recover as long as the candle stayed lit throughout the night.

“Where were you?” Panchito whispered, noticing Gray’s jacket.

“Just taking a walk.”

Gray didn’t want to tell Panchito what he had been doing; it would only upset him.

“I’ve been thinking about the Eye,” Panchito said. “Things we could do with it.”

“I wanna go see Howard Hughes first,” Gray said. “Get his take on it.”

Panchito hopped up from the bed.

“I’ll go with you. It’s morning now. Elsie will be fine.”

“No. Fairbanks knows where you live. You need to stay and protect her.”

Panchito clenched his jaw hard.

“So I have to babysit while you go out?”

Lulu popped her head in the bedroom, bundled in a blanket.

“Shh! She’s sleeping!”

Properly chastised by a ten-year-old, Gray and Panchito followed Lulu into the living room and shut the bedroom door.

“You’re the only one who can protect her,” Gray said. “I’d be useless if Sugar or Atlas showed up here.”

Panchito didn’t seem moved by the flattery.

“So what, you’re going to carry Newton’s Eye across town unguarded? Leave it with me.”

He held out his hand. Gray didn’t have Elsie’s talent, but he’d lived on the streets long enough to recognize hunger in someone’s eyes.

“I need to show it to Mr. Hughes,” Gray said.

Panchito’s hand closed into a fist.

“You can’t go without some kind of protection.”

Gray looked at Lulu.

“I’ll take her.”

“Her? She’s just a little girl!”

Lulu cast off her blanket, like a matador throwing off his cape.

“I am not a little girl!”

“You are,” Panchito said. “You’re only going to slow him down.”

“Maybe not,” Gray said. “Maybe she could protect me.”

He reached around his neck and removed Newton’s Eye. Every time he touched it he felt a current of energy, the same as if he were touching Panchito or Elsie. He handed it to Panchito.

“Let’s see if it works. Isn’t that what you want?”

“On her?” Panchito asked. “I don’t think she’s courage material.”

“I thought the same thing about you, pally.”

Panchito turned the Eye over in his hand.

“Fine. A test case.”

Gray knelt by Lulu.

“How would you like to become so brave that you can move things with the force of your courage?”

Lulu clapped her hands excitedly.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

It took only a few tries to figure out how to work Newton’s Eye. With both Panchito and Lulu peering into it, the device sparked like a light bulb exploding. Both of them jolted away as if poked in the eye with a needle.

“Are you OK?” Gray asked both of them.

Panchito nodded tentatively. He gently thrust a Bible off the coffee table to make sure he still had his talent.

“Everything’s normal on this end. Lulu?”

She sat on the ground in a daze.

“I feel funny,” she said.

“Think of something that really scares you,” Panchito said.

Lulu nodded.

“What are you thinking about?” Gray asked.

“Elsie dying,” she said.

She looked at Panchito.

“What do you think about?”

Panchito reddened.

“Cockroaches. But really big ones!”

Panchito went to the kitchen and got a dry pinto bean. He put it on the table.

“Think about your fear, then imagine facing it head on,” he said. “Focus that feeling on this bean.”

Lulu got her face close to the bean and glared at it like a Western showdown. She began to shake with effort. Gray finally saw a thin band of energy expand around her and thrust outward. The bean flicked across the table and tumbled over the edge.

“You did it!” Panchito said. “You’ll get better with time.”

Panchito smiled inwardly, as if formulating a plan. Lulu clapped her hands excitedly.

“You’re going to need pockets,” Gray said. “Big ones.”

Gray regretted taking Lulu ten minutes into their ride on the red car. The woman sitting in front of them scowled every time Lulu flicked a pinto bean against the back of her seat. Gray had to finally restrain the girl’s hands.

So this is what it’s like having a little sister.

The real reason Gray had brought Lulu was to keep her safe. In the event Sugar did show up at Olvera Street, Panchito would have his hands full protecting Elsie and himself. This way, Lulu, at least, would be away from danger.

Although if she flicks one more pinto bean, I may wring her neck myself.

They were headed for the Santa Monica Swimming and Beach Club, where Howard Hughes’s secretary had informed them he was lunching. Gray wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing Hughes again, but he didn’t feel like he was in any danger. He got the feeling Hughes was a man whose decisions were final.

Clouds hung heavy overhead as the red car meandered through quaint neighborhoods with small bungalows and corner grocery stores. An hour later they arrived at the final stop. There was a park across the street but no ocean.

“Where’s the beach?” Lulu asked.

“There.”

They crossed the street and the world fell before them. A sheer cliff dropped a good two hundred feet. At the bottom of it was Pacific Coast Highway, the beach, and the ocean. Tiny cars puttered north toward Malibu, their engines distant but audible. The water seemed to stretch to eternity—a dark blue curve dividing the ocean from a pale gray sky.

Lulu grabbed the wooden railing at the edge of the cliff and looked down at the people on the beach below.

“I feel so big,” she said.

Gray stared out at the endless sea of blue.

“I feel so small.”

They found a staircase built into the side of the palisade and took it down to ocean level. Across the street was the Santa Monica Swimming and Beach Club. It had high hedges and curly wrought iron gates, the kind of decorative exclusion Gray was now used to in Beverly Hills. A young guard by the gate was buffing the glossy visor of his porter hat with a cloth he seemed to keep for just that purpose.

“As we walk by, knock his hat off,” Gray said.

Gray hoisted Lulu on his shoulders and began walking toward the guard.

“Good afternoon!” the guard said.

Lulu held her hand out as if to wave, but flicked at the hat. It moved slightly, and the ocean breeze did the rest. The guard cried out as the hat hit the dirt. He snatched it up and petted it tenderly, like a cat whose tail has been stepped on. Gray and Lulu hurried inside.

They found Hughes swimming laps alone in the indoor pool while a few children appeared to be waiting for him to finish. He stopped at the edge when he saw Gray.

“I had a hunch you’d be back.”

“I bet you say that just to sound smart,” Gray said.

“I’m almost done. Wait for me at my table.”

A club employee led them outside to a table reserved for Hughes. It was on a private patch of beach shaded under a yellow-and-white striped awning. This time of year, most of the other tables were empty. A waiter immediately appeared with a pitcher of iced tea.

After a few moments, Hughes appeared with a white robe draped over his swimsuit.

“Why was no one swimming with you?” Gray asked.

“I rent out the whole pool,” Hughes said. “People are little more than germs in skin bags.”

“You don’t have many friends, do you?”

Hughes sat down and poured himself a glass of tea.

“You need my help. Where’s Chaplin?”

“In jail,” Gray said. “Don’t you read the papers?”

“I don’t read news. What about Fairbanks?”

“He’s turned on us.”

Hughes nodded knowingly, as if he had expected this.

“The most dangerous man is a coward who thinks himself a hero. Now, where is it?”

“The Eye?”

Hughes nodded.

“I assume that’s why you’ve come. You need help figuring out how to use it.”

Gray removed the Eye from around his neck.

“We know how to use it. It was easy. Lulu?”

Lulu pulled a pinto bean from her pocket and placed it on her palm. She flicked it out into the sand.

Hughes turned to her. He grabbed her arm and his eyes flashed silver. Lulu looked perturbed but she didn’t pull away.

“The Mexican boy,” Hughes said. “I see him over her. Like an overlay.”

“Chito,” Gray said.

Hughes’s eyes returned to normal. He took the Eye from Gray’s hand and inspected it, running his thumb along the smooth wooden body, the brass edging, and the glass.

“So elegant in its simplicity. If you know how to use it, then what do you want from me?”

“I want to know how to destroy it.”

Here Hughes’s eyebrow raised in surprise. Gray couldn’t help but feel gratified.

“You think it’s too powerful to exist.”

Gray nodded.

Hughes thought about this for only a moment, then seemed to reach a conclusion.

“I agree. I assume you tried to destroy it by conventional means?”

Gray nodded.

“It…ain’t normal.”

What Gray didn’t tell Panchito or anyone else was that, while they were caring for Elsie, he had taken the Eye and snuck downstairs, into the restaurant. There, in the burnt wreckage of the kitchen, he had found a meat tenderizer and tried to crack the glass on the Eye. He figured he could break the Artifact, and then trade it for his mother before anyone noticed.

But Gray quickly discovered he couldn’t break the glass, no matter how hard he pounded. In fact, he couldn’t make even a scratch in the wood or a dent in the brass, not even when he pounded it with a cast iron skillet.

“It’s invincible,” Gray said.

“Nothing is invincible,” Hughes said. “You simply have to understand how it was made. And by understanding that, you can figure out how to unmake it.”

Hughes’s eyes flashed silver again as he held the Eye in his hand. The object glowed and vibrated with energy. Hughes held it close to his face, rotating it around, as if he were looking for some hairline fracture on it.

“Isaac Newton was one of the creators,” he said. “But not the only one; John Locke was instrumental as well.”

“Who’s that?” Gray asked.

He stared at the Eye, but he also appeared to be staring through it.

“He’s my ancestor. Not by blood, by ability.”

“Who was he?”

“A good friend of Newton, and also a great philosopher and physician. His natural intuition about the role of government and the rights of man helped fuel the Enlightenment.”

He peered into the Eye, and watched it for a long time with interest, as if there were a tiny movie playing inside of it.

“How do you know this Locke fella helped create Newton’s Eye?” Gray asked.

Hughes shook the Eye like a Cracker Jack box with a prize inside.

“Because he’s inside there.”

“John Locke?”

Hughes nodded.

“A part of him, a bit of his essence. This is a powerful object, more difficult to manufacture than you could imagine. Newton’s creativity alone couldn’t do it; he had to employ Locke’s intuition of how it could be built. Working together they figured out how such an Artifact could be made, but the price was extremely high. Newton may have built the Eye, but Locke gave his life to power it.”

Gray looked at the object, which seemed so ordinary.

“He died just to create an Artifact?”

“I imagine he gave his life for the hope that such an object would spread enlightenment around the world,” Hughes said. “I gather Newton then used the Eye to replicate his own Creativity, which would help explain why that period in history was full of new ideas and inventive people.”