Mulengro, page 33
The drop was too steep, Zach thought. They might run down this Mulengro fellow, but they’d probably end up in the middle of his cottage at the same time. But he didn’t plan to argue with the big Gypsy again. He just closed his eyes.
Janfri flung the garlic into the thick of the mule, then swept the box in front of them, spraying an arc of salt that cut them in two. A weird hissing sound arose from the mule. On the crest of the hill, one of the dogs howled at the sound. The mule roiled back from Janfri as he swung the box a second time. A third time, and it was empty. He was at the bottom of the hill now, moving forward through the wet grass in a limping shuffle. Tossing the empty salt box aside, he drew one of the handguns and aimed at the man in black.
He squeezed the trigger, but the hammer fell on an empty chamber. Before he could fire again, he heard someone screaming behind him, and then the night was filled with a terrible roaring. Suddenly Mulengro was no longer there on the crest of the hill. He’d vanished into the forest like one of his mule while Yojo’s Lincoln lifted from the top of the slope like some mechanical dragon, its head-beams the metal monster’s glaring eyes.
Janfri froze for a fraction of a second, then threw himself to one side. The car left the ground. For one moment it was airborne, all four wheels off the ground. Time seemed to slow down, to not move at all. The Lincoln was suspended in the air for ages, just floating there. Then it hit the ground with a thunderous crash. At the front of the cottage, Ola and the others scattered. The car skidded, bounced once, then slewed to one side as Yojo fought the wheel. It came sideways at the cottage, wheels tearing huge gouges in the grass and wet ground. Ola saw one of her skirts get entangled in a wheel. It could have been her Then she hit the ground at the same time as the car slammed broadside into the cottage.
She could feel the impact from where she lay. The ground shook. The cottage trembled, but held, losing only the small porch over its front door. The car’s engine sputtered, then stalled. There was a dull roaring in Ola’s ears. She got slowly to her feet, staring at the car, then swung her gaze to where Mulengro had been standing. The crest of the hill was empty now. Even the dogs were gone. Through the overcast haze of the misting rain, the eastern horizon was lightening. Looking back at the car, she saw a big man with a walrus mustache emerge from the driver’s side. He turned back to the car and helped a gangly figure out.
“Oh, Zach!” Ola cried as she ran up to where Yojo was supporting the luthier. He was dirty with mud and his jacket was ripped. His hair was plastered against his head and he favored the arm that the dog had gripped with its jaws. Only the buckskin of his jacket had saved him from being hurt worse. He was still badly shaken from his ordeal.
“No way,” he said slowly to Yojo, “I’m ever going to hitch a ride with you again!”
Yojo smiled briefly then handed Zach over into Ola’s care. He looked for his prala, saw Janfri climbing the hill. He followed, reaching Janfri at the same time as Janfri topped the hill. They looked at each other, then around themselves.
“Quite an entrance,” Janfri said finally. Yojo shrugged. It was growing steadily brighter and the rain had completely let up now. Janfri looked down at the gun in his hand, then thrust it into his belt. Mulengro was gone, for now.
“I thought you were going with Big George,” Janfri added.
“I did. But Simza and I decided my place is here with you.”
Janfri was tired and sore. As he looked at Yojo, his eyes misted. “I’m glad you came,prala,” he said.
Yojo made no reply. He looked down at the ground between them, his face paling. Janfri followed his gaze and saw it then, too. A patrin scratched into the dirt. Marhime. The symbol was cut deep into the wet ground.
“He had no time to make that mark,” Janfri said. “No time....”
Yojo put his arm around Janfri’s shoulders to lead him back down to the cottage. He’d had the man in black in sight the whole time that the car was roaring towards him and hadn’t seen him make the patrin either. It would take time to cut it so deep. And it hadn’t been made long ago. But still . . .
“Perhaps he made it earlier,” Yojo said.
“Uva,” Janfri agreed. “That must be what he did.” He leaned against Yojo, gaining strength from his prala’s presence.
“Come,” Yojo said and led the way down the slope.
Halfway down, Janfri paused to look at the destruction that the night had left on Zach’s property. The Lincoln was close by the house, the small porch over the door folded over it. Ola’s clothing and other belongings were scattered across the yard. There were raw gouges in the grass where the wheels of the car had torn up the muddy sod.
The others were waiting for them by the Lincoln—as motley looking a crew as he could imagine, knowing that he looked no better himself. They were all in varying stages of dress, muddy and wet. But at least they were alive. They had survived the night. Ola was standing by the hood of the car with Boboko in her arms and Zach leaning wearily against the car beside her. Jeff had gathered the various guns, including the revolver that Janfri had dropped while trying to escape the airborne car. Jackie was trying to salvage some of Ola’s clothes that weren’t too torn and muddy.
“Who’s your friend?” Boboko asked Janfri as he and Yojo drew near. Yojo took a quick step back and stared at the cat with a stunned expression. The others, almost used to it by now, smiled wearily.
“His name is Yojo,” Janfri said.
Yojo looked from Ola to the cat. “You ...found your drabarni” he said softly to Janfri.
“Or she found me. Perhaps we should go inside.”
They trooped alongside the house to the back porch and went in. Finding seats where they could, they settled down to put their stories together while Zach and Jackie made breakfast. Outside, the drizzle began to come down once more.
forty-three
Earl Hollis sat on his front porch and watched the Rom arrive. They came in beat-up limousines and touring cars, Cadillacs, Lincolns, Plymouths, Chryslers, Chevys. There was no hiding the Gypsy presence on the farm any longer. Tents had sprung up all over his fields. The cars choked his land and yard and were lined up along the road down to the highway. By the time the last one arrived around midnight, he’d counted thirty-eight of them.
He sat and watched them come, drinking canned beer and smoking his pipe, rocking back and forth in his old wicker rocker. Big George had asked him to stay in the house tonight and, watching all these Rom arrive, Earl was happy to do just that. No matter how well-liked he was, he was still a Gajo and these Rom looked grim tonight. He didn’t know what had called them all together and figured he didn’t really want to know. Big George or one of the other rom bare would tell him if he needed to know.
At that moment Big George was sitting in front of his tent. Tshaya kept a big pot with sweetened tea on the fire, doling out the guest cups as each car unloaded its occupants. Representatives from most of the major kumpaniyi in New England, Quebec and Ontario were present here. What troubled Big George was that he hadn’t summoned them and those Rom that he had asked had simply shrugged and said the word had gone out that they should come and so here they were. By now there were over two hundred and fifty Romany chal and chi gathered, young and old, but it wasn’t until the last car arrived that Big George understood who had put out the word.
The old woman was called Pivli Gozzle, the Widow of Goose Hill. She was a thin old drabarni, with a man’s features. Some said that she was over a hundred years old. Others insisted that she’d come with the first Rom when they’d left their homeland and lived in one guise or another ever since. She wore a cloak of raven feathers that gleamed with a blue-black sheen in the light of the kerosene lamps and hung from her shoulders to her ankles. On her head was a wide-brimmed hat, shading her dark eyes, and her hair was white and thick, hanging in braids to her waist, stark like beams of moonlight in a dark wood. She was an English Lowara and because she was a drabarni, black was not considered prikaza for her.
She came to Big George’s fire, flanked on either side by two strapping lads. Big George stood at their approach and offered the old woman his chair. Pivli’s teeth gleamed white as she grinned and accepted the seat as though it was her due.
“Sarishan, rom baro Luluvo,” she said. “I have come to see the northern dilo for myself.” Big George frowned when she called him a fool, but said nothing. She was old and she was a drabarni.She could say such a thing.
“Devlesa avilan,” he replied. It is God who brought you.
“Perhaps.”
As though her arrival was a signal, the gossiping Rom drifted from all parts of the swelled encampment and stood or sat in silence in as close a circle about Big George’s tent as their numbers would allow. Pivli looked idly at the sea of Rom faces.
“I miss the features of your fiddler, Boshengro,” she remarked. “And his brother Yojo.”
Big George sighed. Now he knew why she had come.
“The danger that they face,” she said before he could speak, “they face for all Rom. I have felt the presence of the drabarno and his mule before, but he has always been like smoke—here and then gone before I could find him. But now ...now ...” Her voice trailed off. The listening Rom were as silent as an inheld breath and waited. A hunting barn owl hooted as it crossed a nearby field. Here and there, heads lifted uneasily.
“We must help them,” Pivli said. She stood and her cloak shivered as the breeze touched its feathers. “We are Rom. We have only each other. There will always be mule in the night and at noon. Martiya will walk the darkness forever and the unwary must see to their luck to stay free of that night spirit’s touch. So it will be until Moshto’s eldest son no longer creates the world anew. It is the way of things and cannot be changed. But this drabarno ...he must be dealt with.”
Again she let the silence grow thick. She looked into the faces of the nearest Rom, looked from face to face, met their dark eyes with her own dark gaze, her cloak shimmering in the lamplight.
“And this is how we will do it,” she said.
Part Three
czardas
Stanki nashti tshi arak enpe manushen shai.
—Romany saying
[Mountains do not meet but people do.]
I’m a freeborn man of the travelling people,
got no fixed abode,
with nomads I am numbered,
country lanes and byways,
were always my ways,
I never fancied being lumbered.
—from “The Travelling People”
by Ewan MacColl
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forty-four
The dawn woke Bob Gourlay.
He rolled over and stared into the lightening sky, bewildered by his surroundings and cursing the fact that for some reason he was soaked to the skin. His face and arms were swollen with mosquito bites. He sat up weakly and the events of the previous night spilled through him in a confusing tumble. It was difficult for him to sort out what had been real and what had been imagined. What had to have been imagined.
He scratched at his arm and looked slowly around himself, blinking the misting rain from his eyes. He’d gone crazy was what had happened. He nodded slowly. Stan was dead. Jeff Owen’s black whore had killed him and he owed the both of them for that. But...He blinked away the cascade of images. Stan coming to him with half his face hanging from him...the black woman forcing him from her house with some kind of weird power ...her talking cat. . . . None of that had been real. It couldn’t have been.
He got to his feet. The headache was finally gone—that had tohave been what was driving him. The pain in his head and the grief.But he was okay now. Sure. He was bruised and sore—probably raninto more than one tree in his wild flight last night—but he wasgoing to be okay. As okay as he could be on his own ...alone….
“Oh, Stan. Why’d you have to go and die on me?”
The marsh swallowed his words and gave him nothing in return. He half expected to see that ruined face peering back at him from between the reeds and willows, whispering a wet “say-hey,” but the morning lay still around him except for the steady drip of the rain. His clothes hung limply on him. The wind was cool in gusts, rattling the reeds quietly against each other. Cattails with their brown bobbin tops stirred with a slow movement as the breeze touched them. Christ, he thought, rubbing at his face. He had to get out of here.
He wasn’t all that sure exactly where “here” was. He looked around, trying to pick a direction to take. Didn’t much matter, he supposed, whether he was stuck out here in the middle of a swamp in the rain, or back at home. Nothing was going to change. Stan would still be dead, while he ...he didn’t know what he was going to do. Get back at Jeff Owen and his woman—that was for sure. But afterwards?
He couldn’t imagine life without Stan. Maybe he just shouldn’t be trying to make any plans right now, he thought as he chose a direction. First he had to get to someplace dry. He sank to his ankles in the shallow water and muck as soon as he left the hillock where he’d collapsed last night. The mud pulled at his feet as he tugged them free each step, making a wet sucking noise. If he tried to think too much right now, he’d just get that headache back and Christ knew what he’d do—or where he’d find himself. Like where the hell was he right now? He remembered driving last night—a lot of driving. So where was the pickup?
Muttering to himself, he plunged on. He cursed the drizzle, cursed even louder when he found himself back on the hillock and realized that he’d been walking in a circle. No more fucking around, he told himself. He had to get out of here. He started off again.
forty-five
Zach stared numbly at the spot where he’d seen Gord Webster’s corpse last night. There was nothing there now. Not a sign that a dead man had been lying there, his neck spewing blood all over the ground. He pushed wet hair back from his face and shook his head, confused.
“It was, like, lying right here,” he said to Janfri and Yojo who’d come with him to collect the body.
“Perhaps you only thought you saw it,” Janfri offered. “It was dark and there was a lot going on.”
“I saw it! It was as real as that dog.” He pointed to the body of the animal that Yojo had dispatched last night. The big Gypsy knelt down and studied the ground where Webster’s corpse had lain. He fingered the grass here and there and looked towards the woods.
“There was something here, prala,” he said to Janfri. “It was dragged into the forest.”
“Those other dogs,” Zach said. “They must’ve dragged it off. We’ve got to get that body. We can’t just leave him to the dogs.”
“Too dangerous,” Yojo said, standing. “Mulengro is out there waiting for us. He might not have his mule at the moment, but with those dogs . . .”
Janfri nodded in agreement. “Yojo is right, Zach. It’ll be noon before we know it and we have to prepare for Mulengro. His mule will walk for half an hour at noon. We must be ready for him.”
It didn’t seem fitting somehow, Zach thought, but he nodded wearily. The Gypsies were right. They could look for Gord’s body after—if there was an after. He led the way back to his own place, the drizzle fitting his depression. The two Gypsies followed after him, Janfri still favoring his injured leg, though the limp was not nearly as pronounced as it had been last night. When they reached the cottage, Zach went inside while Janfri and Yojo set about shifting the Lincoln from the front of the house. It required a fair amount of digging, for the tires had ploughed deep holes for themselves in the soft wet dirt. While they were working on it, Ola joined them. Yojo was still in awe of her, but Janfri nodded in a friendly fashion as he wedged a plank under one of the rear tires.
“Try it now,” he called to Yojo.
He stood aside as the Lincoln coughed into life. The wheels spun, digging deeper, and Janfri called a halt to force the board in further. He moved to where Ola was standing as Yojo tried again.
“We must do something with the Gaje,” he said. “They can’t help us against Mulengro.”
“And what can we do against him?” Ola asked.
Janfri shrugged and moved over to the car, putting his shoulder to the trunk. He braced himself with most of his weight on his good leg. Yojo rocked the car until the wheel finally grabbed the board. The car surged out of the ruts, spitting the board behind it and narrowly missing Janfri.
“Where are they now?” he asked. He returned to where Ola was standing, rubbing the dirt from his hands, seeming blithely unaware at how close he had come to almost losing his legs. Ola sighed. Romany chal would never change. There was always a swagger to everything they did—an attitude that, while it could irritate her, she realized she’d missed as well. Not that the chi were any different— especially the younger girls.
“Jackie and Jeff are sleeping in my room,” she said and had to smile at how after only a couple of days the guest room had become “hers.” She lowered her voice when Yojo shut off the Lincoln’s engine and she no longer had to talk above it. “And Zach’s out on the back porch. This has been very hard on him. He’s a gentle man. Evil and violence don’t become him.”
“They become none of us,” Janfri replied, “though some of us can adjust more quickly to what must be done than the others. We must send them home.”
“And Zach? This is his home.”
“True. Is there nowhere he can go until this is over...one way or another?”
Ola shook her head. “He has the right to remain and defend what is his.”
“Bater,” Janfri murmured. “And we must plan—against Mulengro, against his mule, against his dogs.”
“It is like a paramitsha,” Yojo said as he joined them. Paramitsha were fairy tales. Like the darane swatura, they were stories told for fun rather than the swatura that chronicled the history of the Rom. “Drabarne and wild dogs. Next we will see o kesali flitting between the trees. Remember Nonoka used to tell us about them? The forest fairies ...And there were o nivasi in the water, o phuvus who lived underground, and o urme who decided the fates of men—Rom and Gaje alike.”
