“There now, Fearg,” I gasp. “Colm’s here with you.”
He shakes his head, his throat working convulsively, his eyes locked on the forest behind us where crimson flashes lace through billowing black smoke.
“They’re butchering the lot,” he croaks.
I clutch his arm as he gathers himself to run. “No, we’re holding firm, Fearghus. We need you.”
Flecks of cottony foam spray from his mouth. “Let me be, Colm!”
“They’ll call you coward all your days!” I try to leech the anger from my voice. “Come back with me, Fearg, I’ll see you through.”
“I’ll not.” It is half-sobbed.“Come, old lad.”
“No.”
I tug at him. He wrenches free with a violent twist and pulls his service Colt from his belt.
“Look at you with your damned flag . . . always gotten eveything.”
I move toward him. . . .
“I hate you.” His voice is choked.
I reach out, crooning, “Old Fearg . . .”
“Let me be!” It is high-pitched, keening.
“Til help, Fearg.”
The Colt rises.
“Fearg . . .”
Flame shoots through my chest and there is a spear of light in my brain. I careen back through the trees, the banner trailing over me. A solitary shaft of sunlight stabs through the greenery. I hear a bird’s sweet, cooing note. And the earth rises like a solid wave. . . .
O’Donovan’s finger was tightening on the trigger.
“No! Jesus, no!” screamed Johnny.
I grabbed frantically at my pocket for the derringer.
The sky darkened as throbbing wings closed on my shoulder again, lifting and thrusting me at O’Donovan. Face contorted, he tried to steady the pistol. A shape rushed at him—not Johnny, but a shadow in dark uniform. It seemed to merge with O’Donovan as the gun fired. Terrible noise split my body and hurled me to the ground halfway over the bluff’s edge.
O’Donovan lurched forward as if dragged, his heels dug in. He leaned back desperately, his mouth a rictus of terror, and was drawn inexorably toward the cliff.
“COLM!” he shrieked.
His feet thudded against me. I saw his staring eyes fixed on the precipice. He plunged forward.
And disappeared over the edge.
Soon after, cradled in supporting arms, I felt myself floating slowly after him. A shadowy face near mine. Blue tunic, brass buttons.
I don’t know whether he answered any of my questions. Possibly he did. In the end they seemed of little urgency.
We were together.
Moving backward. Accelerating. The bay a narrow river on the other side of which stood a knot of people. We raised our arms in salute, moving faster, air speeding through my chest.
Before the darkness came I looked back, just once.
Johnny bent over me, his yellow cat eyes gazing tearfully into mine.
I heard Cait whisper my name.
And I was gone.
Epilogue
When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.
MARK TWAIN, Autobiography
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them . . .
T. S. ELIOT, Four Quartets
The rumbling came from earth and sky, broken by a rhythmic beeping. My eyes focused on an ant moving across blacktop. I tried to raise my head. My face was stuck. Fearing I’d melted into the blacktop, I raised an arm and triggered a spasm of pain in my chest. Then I remembered the wind-raked bluff, O’Donovan’s maniacal eyes, the flame from his gun.
I inched my hand upward. My beard was matted to the asphalt. I worked it loose with my fingertips. Things were gooey farther in. I raised my head a few millimeters and shuddered.
The sickening pain and gashed cheek, yes, the station outside Mansfield . . . but beeping? . . . the black locomotive had rumbled and hissed. . . .
A fearsome noise split the universe. I turned my head a few degrees and saw a vapor trail white against the azure sky. At its point sped a dart with tiny swept-back feathers.
Navy jet, I thought, heading for Alameda.
And then I thought: Oh, no. Oh . . . no.
The shock lifted me. The ground swam. In awkward stages I climbed to my feet. I noticed the breast pocket of my coat bulging oddly, then saw a small, blood-crusted hole in the fabric. Jesus. I tried to think . . . nothing. Breathe. Don’t give in.
Shaky steps along the blacktop path stirred sediments of pain. I couldn’t lift my head. Pine boughs swayed beyond the ivy, a faint whispering in the pervasive rumble. I stood before what looked like a bronze plaque. The words came slowly into focus.
INA COOLBRITH
First Poet Laureate of California
1841-1928
I thought it was a coded message. I stared at the 1928 and decided I couldn’t decode it just then.
I tried a few steps uphill to my left. Too hard. I turned around. The beeping—shrill spikes of sound—drove into my brain.
Just do it, I urged myself. Lift your head.
I looked up, very slowly.
The asphalt path skirted a rocky outcropping. I was on Russian Hill. But the dirt bluff had been transformed—terraced now with beds of blooms. A flowering hedge stood where O’Donovan had plummeted.
I lifted my eyes all the way. Above a curtain of conifers rose the Transamerica pyramid. In the distance to its left, the Bay Bridge stretched eastward into a sprawl of glistening cities. Coit Tower stood once again on Telegraph Hill.
A roar below. A motorcycle streaking past at terrifying speed. A gridwork of streets. Traffic lights winking. Cars and pedestrians alternately moving and stopping. All bewilderingly fast. Wedged between the streets were masses of stucco and metal that hid the lines of the hills. The wooden buildings I could see were gaudy with bright paintwork; they looked tacky, It all looked tacky. The rumbling, I realized, was merely the city’s normal commerce. A knot of emotions twisted in me. I couldn’t have begun to sort them out.
I moved laboriously to a wire fence and looked northward. Where there
