Stone Junction

When Smiling Jack showed up a month late for Christmas, Daniel asked if Seven Moons was back in prison. Smiling Jack didn’t know, but promised he’d check on Seven Moons’ whereabouts as soon as he had the chance. He cautioned Daniel it might take a while since Seven Moons wandered as he pleased – no phone, no address. Since Smiling Jack’s colossal tardiness was the result of a similar temperament, Daniel didn’t expect a speedy reply. A week after Jack’s departure, there was a letter in the P. O. box when they went into town for supplies. Smiling Jack said Seven Moons was staying near Gaulala taking care of his mother, who’d been very sick but was getting better, yet he probably wouldn’t get away until the fall. Without reason, Daniel was convinced he would never see Seven Moons again. When Annalee, concerned by his sudden and uncharacteristic moping, finally coaxed out his secret conviction, she suggested that he go visit Seven Moons in the spring.

Annalee was glad to help Daniel arrange the visit, which she hoped would last through the summer. If it could be worked out, then she’d ask Smiling Jack for a three-month vacation. She needed some unclaimed time. Running the safe house, while never unpleasant, had become increasingly boring. Daniel, with his sweet hunger for information and action, was inspiring, but he was also exhausting, and the random appearance of guests made it even more difficult for her to find and sustain a psychic rhythm of her own, an undistracted sense of herself. Annalee was particularly troubled by the recent onset of sexual desire for her son. She wasn’t sure if the desire was simply a convenient focus for the heightened eroticism that had begun with the walk in the rain or whether it was something specific between them, or between all mothers and sons at Daniel’s age, whirling in that prepubescent blur between boy and man. It didn’t help that he was tall, lanky, blue-eyed and fine-spirited. Lately, the sight of him naked unsettled and confused her. Not that she would ever act on the desire. So it wasn’t the fear of succumbing to temptation that bothered her so much as the distraction of dealing with it, and that’s why she was so eager to send Daniel off to Seven Moons’ summer camp that she used the location phone to leave Smiling Jack a message to get in touch as soon as possible.

She shouldn’t have bothered. When she and Daniel returned from San Francisco that night, Smiling Jack smiled at them from the kitchen table when they walked in. With him was a new guest, the first Jack had ever delivered, a striking man in his mid-thirties named Shamus Malloy. And everything changed.

Shamus Malloy was a professional smuggler, an alchemical metallurgist, a revolutionary thief, and – my goodness – a poet of more than modest accomplishment. At a trim six feet two he was slightly taller than Annalee, and, at thirty-six, ten years older. He had unruly hair the color of sandstone, intense blue eyes that hid nothing, and a resonant baritone voice that caressed long vowels and lightly rolled the r. What made his handsome presence unusual was the black glove he wore on his left hand.

Annalee was smitten.

Daniel was impressed and somewhat intimidated by Shamus’s magnetic quality, but not enough to squelch his curiosity about the black glove. Annalee had always told him that if you want to know something, don’t be afraid to ask, but Daniel knew by the way she was behaving – which was goofy – that she would get upset if he pressed Shamus about the glove. He had to be clever. He waited till Smiling Jack had departed and Annalee, who was sure tossing her hair out of her eyes a lot, was in the kitchen making tea, which she never drank. Then he casually inquired of Shamus, ‘How many falcons do you hunt?’

He was immediately sorry. Shamus fixed him with those direct, uncompromising blue eyes. The teakettle began a low banshee whistle in the kitchen, mounting toward a shriek before Annalee lifted it off the stove.

In the sudden silence Shamus said, ‘Daniel, what are we talking about?’ His tone was pleasant, but tinged with both irritation and challenge.

Daniel could feel his mother listening. ‘Falcons,’ he said. ‘Mom and I spent a whole year studying birds of prey. Raptors is what that class of birds is called. Raptors. Isn’t that an amazing word? Like rapture.’

It didn’t work. ‘Indeed – a lovely word. Directly from the Latin raptor, meaning snatcher, derived from the root rapere, to seize, which is also the source of both rapt and rape, seizures of two different kinds, since in one the recipient is transported into joy and in the other is violated and demeaned. But tell me, Daniel, how is this etymological exploration germane to your question about the number of falcons I hunt?’

Annalee came in from the kitchen then with the tea. The cups were on saucers. He was sunk. ‘Well,’ he began, trying for a tone of bewildered innocence, ‘that’s a falconer’s glove, isn’t it?’

‘No, Daniel, it isn’t,’ Shamus said, his voice as cold and level as a frozen lake. ‘I wear it because my hand is disfigured, scarred from a burn.’

‘How did it happen?’

‘I accidently spilled a vessel of molten silver.’

‘Do you always wear a glove?’

‘Yes. Otherwise it attracts morbid attention, or revulsion, and a pity I find far more hideous than my hand.’

‘Do you take it off when––’

‘Daniel!’ Annalee lashed. ‘That’s enough. You’ve gone from a tactless question to being plain rude.’

He used bewildered innocence again, appealing to Shamus with dismay and a hint of contrition. ‘Was I being rude?’

‘You were,’ Shamus said, then, added, ‘but I ascribed it more to cunning curiosity than thoughtlessness.’

‘Daniel wants to know everything,’ Annalee explained, her tone, Daniel noted with relief, fond and forgiving.

‘I’m sorry,’ Daniel said to Shamus. ‘Seven Moons told me it’s hard to know when to put yourself first.’

Shamus smiled, blue eyes glittering in the lamplight. ‘Your gracious and elegant apology is warmly accepted.’ He leaned forward, opening his glove hand palm up in front of Daniel. ‘I want you to understand this, Daniel. My hand is horribly disfigured. The black glove is mysterious. I would rather inspire mystery than horror in the beholder’s eye, and heart, and soul. That is my choice. If you don’t respect it, you are not a friend.’

‘But maybe it would be better to just see it instead of imagining what it looks like.’

‘Maybe so. I clearly don’t agree, given my choice.’

‘All right,’ Daniel said, leaving no doubt he meant it.