following day as if they were fortune cookies. They plotted their relative accuracy and the day’s weather data on a wall chart that had become a mural by winter solstice. On New Year’s Eve, a few minutes before midnight, they ceremoniously rolled the mural up, tied it with a sky-blue ribbon, and stored it like a precious scroll in a fishing-rod case.
The toughest subject for them both had been plants. They’d worked hard, but the subject was simply too large. The living room worktable was usually covered with sprays of specimens and stacks of well-thumbed botanical keys. Wildflowers and trees weren’t too difficult, but the fungi were tough, and the grasses proved impossible.
Paradoxically, playing permanent hooky provided Daniel with a healthy diversity of teachers. Not all the safe- house guests took an interest in Daniel’s education, but most found his eagerness and aptitude irresistible.
He studied penmanship with Annie Crashaw, a forger of considerable renown. Sandra XY, a revolutionary witch, instructed him in the delicate arts of subversion and sabotage, stressing the importance of analyzing whole systems for points of vulnerability, seeing not only the parts but how they were connected. The delicacy of Sandra XY’s art stemmed from her commitment to nonviolent means, a conviction somewhat lost on Daniel. His only examples of violence had been supplied by nature and he was neither attracted nor repelled. Violence was a fact of life. When he pressed the point, Sandra XY said, ‘Fine. As long as you eat what you kill.’
He received detailed lessons in structural engineering from Bobby ‘Boom-Boom’ Funtman, who’d developed his knowledge on the subject as a necessary adjunct to his passion for precision and efficiency in explosions. Boom- Boom knew whereof he spoke, for it was widely claimed that he could do more damage with a single stick of dynamite than a squadron of B-52s. ‘It’s not the size of the charge,’ Boom-Boom constantly reiterated, ‘it’s the placement.’
A young poet named Andy Hawkins, a draft resister on the run, echoed Boom-Boom’s lesson when he introduced Daniel to Japanese poetry, particularly the ephemeral density of haiku. Daniel’s studies in Oriental verse were often frustrated by the absence of his teacher, who was in bed with his mother. She had seduced young Andy about three minutes after he walked in the door. She’d never slept with a guest before. When Annalee had said, ‘Good night sweetie, I’m going down to the guest house and sleep with Andy,’ Daniel was shocked, jealous, frightened, bereft, confused, and utterly delighted by his mother’s clear happiness.
Daniel’s favorite teacher among the forty or so who’d been guests was Johnny Seven Moons. Johnny Seven Moons was the closest Daniel had come to a father. Johnny Seven Moons was also the only guest who’d ever come back for a purely social call, though a few of the more incorrigible offenders had returned on business, the continuing thermal exchange of hot and cool.
Johnny Seven Moons was an old Pomo Indian who fervently believed that one of the highest spiritual pleasures available to human beings was blowing up dams. Early in March, just before Daniel had turned seven, he went out to feed the chickens and found Johnny Seven Moons sitting on the porch, comfortable, self-contained, as if he’d materialized with the sunrise. For both of them, it was love at first sight.
The old claim that great teachers have no subject was certainly the case with Johnny Seven Moons. Another pedagogical assertion – ‘The great teachers don’t teach’ – also applied. Seven Moons just did things with Daniel – make a bow and arrows, build fish traps, paint the guest house, gather mushrooms, cook and clean – taking what the day offered and Daniel’s thriving curiosity suggested. Like Annalee, Johnny Seven Moons treated Daniel more as a companion than a charge. Seven Moons, to Daniel’s initial disappointment, didn’t pass on much Indian lore. As he explained to Daniel, he didn’t know a whole lot, having attended missionary schools. His hitch in the army had given him advanced training in demolition. After his discharge, he’d spent time in prison for applying his military training to man-made impediments of natural flows, such as dams, irrigation canals, and aqueducts. ‘But don’t worry,’ he told Daniel, ‘I know some Indian stuff. You see, I have the Indian mind, but not all the little details.’
If it was sunny Daniel and Seven Moons did something outside. Rainy days were devoted to marathon games of chess, played with a small set Seven Moons had carved from elk horn. The white pieces were done in the likeness of cowboys, the reddish-brown pieces as Indians. However, according to Seven Moons, when you played Indian chess, the dark pieces always move first, and only Indians can play the dark pieces – though in Daniel’s case he made a magnanimous exception. Seven Moons played shrewdly and without mercy, exploiting every blunder Daniel made, and crowing with glee as he did.
The most memorable lesson for both Daniel and Annalee occurred on a warm May afternoon. All three of them were cleaning the pantry, item number nine on Annalee’s list of spring chores, when the sky suddenly darkened with a mass of clouds. Within minutes rain began falling. Johnny Seven Moons went to the open door, inhaled deeply, and started stripping off his clothes. Daniel and Annalee exchanged anxious glances. ‘You going swimming?’ Daniel joked.
‘No,’ Seven Moons said, hopping out of his pants and tossing them aside, ‘I’m going for a walk in the warm spring rain. Join me if you like. Walking naked in warm spring rain is one of the highest spiritual pleasures available to human creatures.’
Annalee was already wiggling out of her jeans, but Daniel had a question: ‘Is it a higher pleasure than blowing up dams?’
Seven Moons shut his eyes and almost immediately opened them. ‘That’s a tough one, but I think they’d have to be the same. You see, if I didn’t blow up dams and keep rivers where they’re supposed to be, in not very long there would be no warm spring rain to walk naked in.’
It was splendid. Hands joined, Daniel in the middle, they walked naked across the flat and up the oak-studded knoll where, deliriously drenched, they sang ‘Old Man River’ to the clearing sky. The sun burned through minutes later. By the time they walked back to the house through the wraiths of mist lifting from the soaked grass, everything but their feet and hair had dried.
Annalee and Daniel recalled that walk with Seven Moons often, but they never talked about what had really moved them. Annalee had been so overwhelmed by the rain on her flesh that she was afraid she was going to come, to collapse in the wet grass. She felt constrained. It was difficult to shift her attention away from her body and back to them, even though they brought their own sweet joy.
Daniel remembered a moment as they’d started up the knoll, when he looked at his mother, so beautiful, her skin shining with rain, and then he’d looked at Seven Moons, strong and wise and brave, feeling their large hands in his and the rain splattering on his shoulders, feeling for just a moment that the world was perfect.
They both remembered yet never mentioned what Johnny Seven Moons had said when they reached the top of the knoll. He’d tilted his head back and groaned out, ‘Oh, blowing up dams is a
Seven Moons stayed seven months that first time, and visited for a week or two about four times a year after that. When eight months had passed since his last visit, Daniel began to worry.
