“No what. I was just askin’.”
I wasn’t sure if I liked him or not, but I was curious. So was he.
“How long have you been twelve?” he said.
“How long have I been twelve? How do you know I’m twelve?”
“Because we all are.”
I got a sudden chill. I thought it was the wind, which was still coming out of the north and bitterly cold. I turned my back to it and said, “Listen, why don’t you follow me. We can go in the boardinghouse. I’ve got my own room.” I didn’t know why I was saying this, maybe it was dangerous, but I had to know more. “It’s too cold out here, anyway,” I said.
He looked around and up at the sky nonchalantly. “Yeah, maybe, but it’ll be nice tomorrow and almost hot in three days.”
“How do you know?”
He just shrugged and laughed that same, strange laugh.
We came in the same way I had left, through the kitchen door. Solomon and Mrs. Bennings were still sitting at the big table. Solomon looked the boy over, knowing he was seeing something he’d only been told about as a child, something he thought was a tall tale told by a crazy old German rabbi. Mrs. Bennings’s mouth had dropped open and she was speechless.
If someone, anyone, had looked in my room for the next half hour, they would have thought they were just seeing two boys, maybe two brothers, talking. But it was more than that, much more.
The first thing Ray Ytuarte did was ask to see Papa’s baseball. I took it out of my pocket and tossed it to him. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him. He walked around the simple room and over to the only window. He turned the baseball over and over in his hands inspecting every stitch and the gouges my own fingernails had made. The window was completely frosted over. He blew on it and rubbed a clear circle with his fist. He stared down through the cold glass, then looked at me.
“You really don’t know anything, do you?” he said.
“No, I don’t. Why don’t you tell me. The first thing you said to me was ‘You are Meq.’ What does it mean?”
“I can only tell you what my old lady told me and she didn’t know much. It’s the word we use for ourselves, the old word. She said the Giza have called us other things, in other times; the Children, the Flock, the Enigma. I don’t know that much about that part. It’s all lost.”
“But what does it mean?” I said. My mind was racing with questions.
“Well, it means you ain’t gonna get sick. It’s in your blood. And you’re gonna heal fast if you get cut or broken. And you’ll stay twelve. You won’t get any older, at least not your body.” He blew on the glass again and this time traced a circle with his fingertip, then another circle inside that one. “It’s called Itxaron,” he said, “the Wait.”
“Can you die?”
“Yeah, you can die. If you get your head cut off or stomped beyond recognition by somethin’.”
“How old are you?”
“Older than that old man downstairs.”
“You mean Solomon?”
“Yeah, Solomon. Solomon J. Birnbaum. I seen him around years ago, but he didn’t see me.”
“You are actually older than Solomon?”
He laughed that hard laugh and blew more of his breath on the glass. He wiped the sleeve of his jacket across the circles he had made. He answered in a low monotone.
“I was born in 1783, in Vera Cruz. That’s Mexico. I turned twelve in New Orleans. Spent a lot of years there. It was easy for a kid, but not so good for my old lady. My old man was killed in a zipota match for money. Had his brains kicked in. My sister didn’t know how to stay twelve too good. She took to the brothels and slipped out somewhere. I ain’t heard a word of her since. I learned how to run gangs and that’s what I did. They called me the ‘Weatherman.’ But you gotta keep movin’ when everybody’s gettin’ older and you ain’t. You’ll learn that quick. My old lady tried to live like the Giza and got her throat cut in a fancy hotel. They never found the guy. I just made my way upriver, town to town, city to city, until I got to St. Louis. I been here to this day. In all that time I only seen a few of us and none could do what you did in that alley. My old lady told me only an Egizahar could do that. She said they’re the only ones with the Stones. I thought it was just another one of her crazy stories about us.”
He stopped talking and tossed me the baseball. I caught it and sat there in a daze.
“Where’d you get that?” he said.
“My papa made it.”
“Well, if my hunch is right and it usually is, that ain’t just a baseball. Did he tell you what to do with it?”
I looked down at the baseball, remembering Papa. “He said ‘never lose it.’ ”
“That’s because you’re Egizahar. You gotta protect the Stones.”
“What does it mean,” I said, “ ‘Egizahar’?”
“It kinda means ‘old truth.’ According to my old lady, there’s two bloodlines: the Egizahar and the Egipurdiko. ‘Diko’ for short, which kinda means ‘half-assed truth.’ The ones who Waited and the ones who didn’t. I don’t really know what it means. She was crazy, but I don’t know; I ain’t so sure now that I seen you and what you did.”
“What did I do?” I said.
“You stopped the Giza. You made them all forget, turn around, and leave. They wouldn’t — couldn’t have done that on their own. That’s old magic, old power, and for us, there ain’t nobody that can do that without the Stones. We got other things we can do, but not that.”
I still sat on the edge of the bed. I hadn’t moved. I was lost. overwhelmed. It was like one of my dreams. I felt as if I had stepped into a shallow pool only to be dragged out to sea.
He stepped away from the window and took something out of his pocket.
“Look, kid,” he said, “I know what that baseball probably means to you, but. ”
“Don’t call me kid,” I said. “It’s ridiculous. You look just like me. Why don’t you be Ray and I’ll be Z.”
He put his hand out to shake. “Deal,” he said.
I looked down at Papa’s baseball. “So, Ray, you think this baseball is magic?”
“I don’t think the baseball is magic, but I think what’s inside is.”
“Inside?”
“That’s right. I think your papa put the Stones in the middle of that ball. Why don’t you give it to me and let me cut the stitches. I got a penknife right here.”
“No,” I said, but I didn’t say it with much heart. I wanted to find out myself. I had to. I tossed him the ball.
He didn’t waste a second. Without a word, he sat down on the bed and put the baseball between us. He cut the stitches one at a time and carefully peeled back the flap of hide. He took out the coarse hair and fiber underneath and suddenly there it was. Like a single egg in a bird’s nest, there it was. In fact, it was shaped like an egg. A dark, pockmarked stone in the shape of an egg that would easily fit in the palm of your hand. And like the four points on a compass, there were four tiny gems embedded in the Stone. In the light, they all reflected a different, brilliant color. I lifted the Stone gently and it was heavier than I expected. The gems were a mystery, I had no idea what they were. But Ray did.
Ray said, “That one there at the top, that’s blue diamond. The one on the bottom is star sapphire. The other two are lapis lazuli and pearl.”
I turned it over and over in my hands. I touched the gems with my fingertips, then I put it in my palm and closed my hand over it. I shut my eyes and thought about Mama and Papa. I couldn’t touch them anymore. I couldn’t run up to them and ask them a thousand different questions. I opened my eyes and looked at the cold glass of the windowpane. The light coming through was low and faint. I turned and looked at Ray. He was putting his knife back in his pocket.
“What do I do now, Ray?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “but I got a hunch you’re gonna figure it out.”
