The Gypsy

NINE
The Old Woman and the Devil

It seems like I been on this road

Ever since I was a kid;

I could tell if I was sorry

If I remembered what I did.

"RED LIGHTS AND NEON"

The Gypsy spent the night below the freeway bridge,waking up to morning fog and a promise of more snow. He stared straight up, unmoving, and tested his memory. Yes, he was the Gypsy, a name that would do for now. And, yes, he had sworn, long ago,to bring light to the world below-Her world, if you will, because all worlds that don't have the warmth of the sun, the promise of the moon, or the beauty of the stars are Her domain. He had sworn to bring the light to a dark place, in spite of Luci; that much he remembered.

But what had She done that made the memories come and go? And what had happened so that She was now in his world? Had he ever known? Would it come back, the way his recent past was beginning to?Most of it was there: The capture by the cemetery,the knife, the Wolf Who Waited Before Striking. All that was missing were his brothers.

He pulled himself up, and breathed city air, faintly cloying with traces of exhaust and humanity. Cars and trucks roared by overhead, and he marveled that man could build bridges that would stand up to such traffic.Harsh fog from the sewers swirled before him. He called to it, "Stay, brother mist. Stay and speak to me. You who travel beneath our feet through the length and breath of the city, you who hear all we say, stay and tell me whereto find the old woman." On a sudden impulse, for no reason he knew, he threw a piece of garlic and the cord from his trousers into the mist, and was not surprised when he failed to hear them strike the ground.

The warm air swirled before him.

It was no voice that spoke out of the mists, but the Gypsy heard words saying, "You must do this no more."

"Do what?"

"Use the skills of another world in this one. This time, I can protect you, but-"

"Protect me from what?"

"Those skills have no place in this world, and your memories of this world have no place in the other. You cannot have both."

"I think I understand, but-".

"Do not forget again."

"But-"

"And you must neither eat, nor drink, nor must you sleep."

"Not eat or drink? Not sleep? That is impossible."

"Not for you."

"Why?"

"Fool! Do what I say!"

"Who are you, and how can I help you?"

"Who am I? You know who I am, you have asked the Wolf to set me free. And to help me, here, you must make a spinning wheel from the mist, and send it to me. It will keep the fair Lady from tormenting me while I do what I must."

The Gypsy began to make his hands spin, and soon the mist was spinning with them. As he did so, he said, "Is there anything you can tell me, that will help me drive the Fair Lady back to Her own realm?"

"You must find the Coachman."

"But where?"

"Where? You'll find him driving a coach, fool." The voice was very faint now. "And you must find your brothers. And you can do nothing if the Wolf eats you,and eat you he will unless you place yourself within his jaws. But only at the right time. Too early and he will devour you, too late and he won't protect you."

"How will I know the right time?" he asked.

But there was no answer. A soft breeze blew the mist away, and he was staring at a foggy street and the beginnings of the morning traffic.

I don't know why

You don't cry

For freedom.

"IF I HAD THE VOICE"

The fair Lady puts down Her knitting and frowns. The midwife glances up and says, "What is it, mistress?"

"I don't know," says the fair Lady. "Something is wrong."

The midwife, who has also been knitting, sticks her tongue out and wags it around. Perhaps she tastes the thickness of the air, perhaps the flavor of the woodsmoke."Perhaps it is the prisoner, mistress. I will check on her."

But before she can move, the nora comes scampering into the room on his hands and feet. "Mistress, mistress," he cries.

"Well, what is it?"

"The woman has gotten a piece of garlic from somewhere, and she rubs it on her breast so I can't go near her!"

The Fair Lady smiles and pats the nora's head. "Is that all? Well, that must be what I noticed. Come, I will attend to that nasty young woman."

But when she gets there. She finds that She cannot enter,for the room in which the prisoner sits has been tied shut with a piece of trouser cord.

"What do you think you're doing in there?" She cries,but there is no answer. She calls to the midwife, who sings a gentle song to the trouser cord, and at last it unties itself.When the Fair Lady enters the room. Her prisoner is still there, but she is smiling now, and with her hands she works a spinning wheel, and she is spinning, though nothing appears upon the wheel.

"Now, though I am a prisoner, you can't touch me,"says the old woman.

The Fair Lady gnashes Her teeth with anger, and stamps Her feet until the nora is afraid She will stomp them right through to Hell, but at last She is calm again. "I know who did this," She says. "And he will pay for it. And though I can't touch you, here you will remain until you fall asleep at your work, and then you will be mine again."And the Fair Lady slams the door.

After a while, She goes back to her knitting.

The Coachman smiled down at me

When he saw I was behind him.

He said, "Your brother Raven lives,

But I think you'll never find him."

"RAVEN, OWL, AND I"

"Is that what I think it is?" said Daniel.The Coachman looked up at the green-clad gypsy,who had just come back from walking around the city,and smiled.

The brothers looked somewhat alike, the Coachman decided, and some would say he looked similar,although he knew of no gypsy blood in himself. Daniel was thinner and his mustaches longer and his hair shorter, yet they could have been brothers. The Coachman strained his memory to when he had last seen the three brothers together. They had been young, then, but still the one now called Daniel had been thinner, frailer. The youngest brother was as pale as his yellow shirt, and the other brother, who wore red, was the largest. They had all the same pointed chin, though, and the same deep, dark eyes,and brows that met over the nose. The same hooked nose, for that matter, even as young men.

The Coachman nodded. "It is, indeed. Help yourself. I'm not drinking just at the moment." He passed the brandy over and Daniel took a healthy swallow,grimaced.

"You didn't pay too much for it, I hope."

The Coachman shrugged. "Didn't have much to pay. Is that a fiddle case?"

"Yes."

"Ah. The same fiddle as when we first met?"

Daniel nodded. "I've had work done on it. A new bridge, mechanical pegs, and I had a chin rest added. But it was good work. Sandi would have approved."

"Sandi?"

"He taught me to play. Back before-" Daniel's voice caught, then he turned away.

"Play something for me," said the Coachman.

Daniel hesitated. "The neighbors-"

"Can go hang." He looked around at the cheap plaster walls, the single, narrow bed, and the plywood chest of drawers. "In a place like this, one doesn't have neighbors."

Daniel shrugged, took the fiddle from its wooden case and set it to his chin. He drew forth a low, tentative, hollow sound, with just a hint of vibrato, then began one of the simplest dance tunes- The Coachman smiled and wished for a tambourine player. These gypsies, whatever else one thought of them,could play.

Daniel began another pass through the melody, this time more boldly, with surprising grace notes, and sometimes holding back the melody for a beat longer than expected. The Coachman sat back and nodded,and Daniel played through it once more, this time accenting the high, piercing notes, sometimes nearly leaving the melody behind altogether, in the improvisations of gypsy dance steps, of gypsy life, of travels through lands foreign and mundane, meeting people dangerous and friendly, harmless and cold. The Coachman wasn't aware of when the original melody had been entirely left behind, save for faint hints and echoes of phrasing; by this time he was seeing colors swirl before his eyes: Hard blue in the rumbling low notes, yellows and greens in the slow,mournful passages, vibrant reds and violets in staccato high notes.

Then it was no longer colors, but scenes and faces he saw: The roads in the Old Country he had traveled a thousand times before he had met the three gypsy boys, the passage from There to Here, the old man in the gutter asking for coins, the walls and ceiling of the hotels he had stayed in, drunk, night after night.

Then he saw that which he knew had not happened, yet might happen soon, and he sat transfixed,watching it unfold with horror and fascination, until he became aware at last that Daniel had returned,somehow, to the original, simple dance melody; the music trailed off into silence.

"Did you show me that on purpose?" he asked.

Daniel seemed startled. "I showed you something?No, I wasn't aware of it. Perhaps it was your-"

The Coachman stood. "I must go."

"Huh?"

"That you have no notion of what you said makes it no less true, my friend. If I don't return-" He shrugged. "Learn to drive a coach."

Daniel started to speak, but the Coachman was already gone, his feet fairly flying down the stairs. He took the stairs three at a time, then out the door, into the street, and through the early morning mist.

"… And Owl still watches all around

And listens more than speaks.

But he'll never understand

That it isn't you he seeks."

"RAVEN, OWL, AND I"

A lonely, middle-aged salesman had driven Raymond all the way through Ohio, and had left him off in Ashtabula County, just an hour after sunrise, less than fifty miles from his destination. They had gone through twenty-eight small towns along the lake on I-90, and seen three Highway Patrol cars.

He hadn't expected to get this far this quickly. He set down his pack, and his tambourine wrapped in an old towel, and waited for another ride. After half an hour, sixty-one trucks, and more cars than he felt like counting, a big, new Peterbilt stopped and give him a lift into Lakota.

He studied the city disinterestedly as the truck driver,an old wiry man with a few strands of grey hair sticking out from beneath his baseball cap, made conversation.

Raymond rather liked the ships he saw as they passed near the docks. The driver turned south on I-79 toward Youngstown. Raymond was pleased with the number of parks (nine), though he wished there were more trees in them.

As they passed one, near what the truck driver said was downtown, Raymond noticed a horse-drawn carriage making its way around it. He asked the driver to let him off there, and they exchanged polite goodbyes.

He walked over to one of the concrete benches and sat. In spite of his first impression, he found he wasn't comfortable in the park. It was exactly two city blocks square, with concrete walks and trees arranged just so, and it seemed as if the soil under the grass was hardly a foot deep, carefully built up for the lawn. He closed his eyes and thought of the mountain above Boulder, hard and rocky, yet thick with pines. He listened to conversations of the few birds (six) that remained this late in the season. It was growing cold.He pulled his heavy wool coat of red and black squares closer around him and wondered what to do next.

Mr. DeCruz won't you shake my hand?

Do I look too much better than what you had planned?

I been back since late last fall,

Now who you gonna call?

"BACK IN TOWN"

Nothing was going right today. He hadn't been able to fall asleep, and when he finally had, he tossed through fragmented dreams like clips from cheap horror movies. Giant chickens were scratching on his door. There was a dead dove on his coffee table and he was trying to resuscitate it. Cynthia Kacmarcik dropped in for tea, and his kettle wasn't big enough.When he finally sank deeper into a dreamless sleep,he'd overslept and still awakened with a headache worse than a hangover. Traffic had been awful, and he'd gotten to work before he remembered that he'd given Madam Moria all his cash the night before, so he didn't have a dime on him and no time to go to the bank. And now he was hurrying down the hall,trying to catch the last ten minutes of the morning's roll call, when someone behind him called out, "Oh,Step!"

He turned, feeling at once weary and impatient,Seemed like the whole precinct was calling him Step now. Fuck you very much, Durand. He tried to summon up a smile for the woman pushing a brown envelope into his hands. He couldn't even remember her name. He took the envelope numbly.

"What's this?"

"Oh, just that old case file from New Orleans- I promised Durand I'd have it by this morning, and then I missed him, but he said it was really for you anyway, so I guess I caught the right man after all,right?"

"Huh?" She'd lost him after her first few words,her voice dissolving into a chirpy cheerfulness. New Orleans. Durand. "Sure. Uh, thanks. Thanks."

"No problem, always glad to help a friend. Tell Durand I said hi. He's such a good kid, isn't he?"

"What? Uh, sure."

"Well, you're welcome. I hope it's what you're hoping for. And Step, no offense, but next time you need something, why don't you come yourself? Durand's a good kid, but he wasn't sure of the date, and he could hardly read your handwriting. Said it looked like you wrote it in the middle of the night. It would be easier for me if I got it straight from you. Speeds things up for all of us, right?"

"Aah, right. Yeah. Thanks again. Thanks." He went off down the hallway, muttering to himself. Forget the briefing, he was late anyway and he was sick of hearing about what new indignities the Basher had perpetrated on Exxon stations. He was trying to remember where he had left the scribbled notes from his conversation with Marilyn. Probably folded it up and stuffed it under the clay pencil pot Laurie had made for him when she was in kindergarten. That had always been his private, hands-off spot when he and Ed were partners. But somehow Durand had gotten the notes and gone asking for the files.

Another thing occurred to him: Ed had dropped Cynthia Kacmarcik's name last night, before he had mentioned it, and he was sure he hadn't told Ed the name of the murdered woman. Or had he?

He sat down at his desk and dropped the brown envelope in front of him. Then he slowly reached over and lifted the pencil pot. Nothing there. But maybe he hadn't left it there. Maybe he'd left it right out in the middle of the blotter, and the puppy had decided to be industrious. But forget that for now.

There wasn't much in the envelope. Fresh clean paper with long-dead facts on them. Teletype print, only it wasn't a Teletype anymore, was it? He scanned it hungrily. An August night, a card game that might have been rigged, and a dead man named Timothy DeCruz. And a great description of the killer, and two eye-witnesses, and they'd never managed to catch him. The knife even sounded familiar. There was a coroner's note about the unusual wound it left. But the killer himself had just vanished. Stepovich shuffled through redundant reports, found the eyewitness descriptions and read them slowly. The witnesses hadn't missed much. A knife scar that ran from under the left eye to just in front of the left ear. Discolored patch at left jaw hinge. Broken nose. Slight squint in left eye.

"It's him, isn't it?" Durand asked from behind. Stepovich spun to glare at him. Durand ignored it,reached past him to finger the description clear of the other papers. He picked it up. "It's our gypsy. Step. And the bastard hasn't aged a day since 1935."

"He's not a bastard," Stepovich corrected automatically. "He's a Dove."

A wanted man in New Orleans

Matches my description

Mister druggist please be kind enough

To refill my prescription.

"RED LIGHTS AND NEON"

The Gypsy sat, for a time, in the eye of the storm. He could feel the tension around him-the Wolf beginning another day's hunt, a murderer who trembled with fear and tried not to touch the weapon with which he had killed before, another who rushed, desperate to save a life that had been unknown to him moments before, another who wrestled with temptation without understanding the stakes, another who tried to bring growth out of the pain of loss.

All of these, he knew, were connected to him. And he knew that he could help some of them, if he could only find them, but to find them might mean forgetting why he had sought them. He clung to his memories as a miser to a gold coin, and sat in the eye of the storm, waiting.

Two and a half miles away, a bartender woke up much earlier than he had to, since he wasn't on until the afternoon. He glowered at the clock and lay back thinking for a while. After a time, he decided that he'd procrastinated long enough; he had to either write the letter or not. A few minutes later he got up,showered, dressed, then sat down and wrote a short note to his daughter in which he said nothing about her revelation, but that he hoped to see her over Christmas break, and they could talk then. He put his coat on and walked out to the mailbox with it, before he changed his mind.

The Gypsy sat in the eye of the storm and smiled,though he didn't know why.

This city seems so cold,

And it isn't just the wind.

It would be easy to say

I'm here because I sinned;

Well I'm here because someday

Someone will need a ride,

And I'll throw away my drink and say

"The coach awaits outside."

"NO PASSENGER"

The Coachman paused at the threshold, and listenedlistened. Thean's voice was high-pitched and sharp as needles, and, as near as he could tell from just outside the door, held no trace of fear. He was in time, then. He waited for her to finish bilking this customer. It would be soon enough afterward, to go in and warn her that-

"So, it's you," she was saying. "I must say I'm surprised. I had expected some other of Her slaves."

There was another voice, but he couldn't make out the words. The old woman's voice came again. "Slave I said, and slave I meant. Or would worm be better?Madam Moria isn't afraid of worms. Now that I see you, I'm less afraid. How does She control you,worm? Does She promise you riches? Does She come to you in your dreams? In Voices out of the night? As a fire-oh. Voices, is it? Well, that shouldn't surprise me," More muttering that he couldn't make out,then, "Oh, and you have a nice shiny toy to play with? Well, get on with it. Madam Moria has friends on the other side she hasn't seen in years, and she'll have a good laugh with them about this. But don't think your mistress will be able to hold me like She's holding Cynthia. No. I've been ready for you since yesterday, and it's too late for that. Well, what are you waiting for? Shoot if you're going to."

The Coachman stepped into the room, as the skinny, short-haired man turned, holding a gun that looked as if it were too large for him. They stared at each other for a moment, then the man with the gun stepped back so he could watch both of them.

"Who are you?" snapped the old gypsy woman.

The gun began to tremble. The Coachman ignored the gunman. "Your servant, madam. Is this fellow troubling you?"

Something like amusement came into the old eyes,and she said, "Yes. See him out, will you?"

The gun trembled more. "I'll kill you both," stammered the gunman. "I have a gun."

"So I see," said the Coachman. He reached into his back pocket, slowly, smoothly, as if it was the most natural action in the world. "I have a knife."

He opened the Nevaja with a harsh, ratcheting sound. "I have learned something from all these gypsies, you know," he said. The blade was seven inches long, the handle of glittering steel with parts of the antler of the red deer worked into the grip. Blade and handle curved into a thin and wicked shape. The Coachman held it to the side, blade in and slightly up, and he waited. The gunman pressed his lips together and raised his pistol.