DROUGHT

by

Eliot Fintushel

 

hree dark men visited Will Fontaine.  He didn't like their looks: double‑breasted business suits too heavy for the summer heat, with hats out of a 1950's Life Magazine and patent leather shoes.  Maybe they were Jehovah's Witnesses.  One was a hunchback: under the herringbone, scapulae like breaching whales.  Don't look there.  The men were tired and thirsty though; he couldn't find a good reason to turn them away.

And he felt a little guilty about the heat.

The hunchback had a broad forehead and sparkling blue eyes.  Was he smiling?  Hard to tell.  Skin of stained parchment.  Another of the men had a weasel's face, nearly conical, with eyes like slash pockets, slightly open.  He had a smart briefcase made of the skins of eels or snakes or fish.  The third man, an African, shorter than the others, was the black of burnt clay.  He moved slowly.  His face was wrinkled as by long laughter.

They had a smell.  Alfalfa?  Lavender?  Something nice.  Will thought, Thank you, Lord Buddha, I must have some good in my heart.

The one with the hump closed the door behind them, and Will sat them down at the kitchen table.  The weasel‑faced man offered his briefcase to the old African to sit on, and that brought him neatly to table height.

Will got one of the bell jars from the refrigerator and plunked it on the board.  "Well water's bad.  Bacteria count's up.  Don't take too much, okay?"  He still gave explanations like that, real world causality, and pretended to himself that people believed him.  He narrowed his eyes at them, daring them to question.  It's not my fault.  He almost believed it himself.

The three watched him like blind men or like folks taking in a sunset, their faces placid.  It unnerved him.  He got three little teacups from the drainer‑-tumblers would invite them to pour too much‑-and he gave one to each of the men.  "Help yourselves."  But they just looked at him, and he figured he was in for trouble.

"We're Buddhists here," Will said.  "This is a Zen center, see?  We're not looking for another religion."  Ever since the Naked Lunch, the mountain had been swarming with folks like this, door‑‑to‑door men, each with his own gospel, and you couldn't tell which folks were real.

They heard him, but they kept quiet.  That funny stare.  Finally, the weasel‑faced man said, "We don't know how to drink.  Will you show us?"  When Will cocked his head at them, the three men nodded to one another.  Then the hunchback edged away from the table and removed his jacket:

Downy, pink wings.

The wind they made unfolding ruffled Will's hair.  He hid his face.  His eyes teared, and he used the sound of rushing air to hide his sobbing‑-as in the solitude of his Dodge when he pounded the dashboard and yowled.  It isn't fair.  That wind brought the old feeling back: moles tunneling just under his skin.  However he stomped them, there were always more.  He couldn't hide them, because he was always naked.  That's how he felt‑-naked, infested, ashamed.  He pulled out his collar and peeked down like a young girl checking for breasts.  There were no moles in there really, at least not yet.  He'd had to be sure.

He pretended to adjust a collar button. These clothes didn't feel like real clothes, not like the clothes he should be wearing, an abbot's clothes.  This checkered shirt, these jeans, the broad cowhide belt, and the sneakers, for heaven's sake.  These clothes wouldn't hide mole hills.  Oh, for the days when body and mind were two things, the days before erg bleeds and winged visitors who needed eating lessons, when a water shortage just meant you were short on water and not that you were short on character.  He had not been happy, true, but he had been abbot.

I used to have wings.  Will rubbed and rubbed his chest, longing for the feel of the rakusu, his ceremonial shawl with the ring of bone.  It was just a checkered shirt, fifty percent acrylic.  Shana's the one who has wings now.

 

hana was out back in the port‑a‑shed, blasting in.  Will grabbed the door handle and pressed his heels against the sill.  He had to grunt the thing open against the pressure of Shana's descent.  He sneaked one shoulder in, and the vacuum sucked him through the crack.  The door slammed shut, catching one sandal and ripping it off his foot as he somersaulted onto the mat, knocking Shana sideways.  She yelped, and the vacuum dissolved.  The port‑a‑shed door clattered open.

Shana righted herself on the meditation cushion, tidied her rakusu, and tugged plumb the ring of bone.  She was a small‑boned woman, face of polished jade.  "I hate when you do that, Will."

"There's a man with wings,"‑-on all fours, looking for his sandal and not finding it‑-"and they don't know how to eat."

"Tsk!  You came in here to give me Zen riddles?  I was just blasting in.  Do you think you're the only one who counts around here?  This is my meditation, Will.  We bought this shed with my money from the erg bleed.  This is supposed to be my place to be."

"He's got wings, Shana.  They just came in off the road."

"Well, what do you want me to do about it?"

Will shrugged and pulled on the sandal.  She sighed, clapped her small hands onto her thighs, stood up, and strode to the house without him.  He scrambled to his feet and ran after her.  Maybe they would hurt her.  Even so, he couldn't help stopping to touch the concavity of one wall deformed over time by Shana's morning meditations.  Sitting meditation used to be such a subtle business.  Have to fix that wall.

 

hey had found the erg bleed by the sink.  The weasel‑faced man held the feeder tube, while the black man and the wingback examined the transmitter housing and meters.  It was a matte black aluminum box‑-Made in Germany‑-with rounded corners and a nipple on one side where the antenna snaked out in response to body heat.  The meters were small perfect circles with needle‑thin hands and, along the rims, bold red numbers sans serif.  The feeder tube, two feet of flexible red tubing with a sort of suction cup at the end, contained an affect‑sensitive bi‑metal resonator.  The weasel‑faced man uncoiled the tube.  The antenna telescoped out.  He touched the suction cup to his breastbone.

Shana threw open the door.  Will, right behind her, stopped at the threshold and peeked over her shoulder.  The three dark men turned to face them‑-and the erg bleed exploded.  It sounded like a roll of caps.  Sparks showered.  They blackened the weasel man's lapels.  The stink of ozone and burnt oil. He dropped the box to the floor‑-hot!‑-and Will saw the charred bloodless hole through the man's shirt, skin, muscle, and ribs.  It made a little cave with the heart inside pulsing.

Seeing Will and Shana stare, the weasel man buttoned up his jacket.  He bowed slightly.  "It's nothing."

The black one picked up the smoking erg bleed.  "I'm sure we can fix it."  He laughed,‑-why?  The wingback laughed too, and then, in spite of himself, Will found himself laughing rat laughter, startled hiccups, jerking his head this way and that and trying to look everywhere at once, till Shana stopped him.

"Shut up, Will."  She wouldn't take her eyes off the three strangers.  "I know what this is.  I read about this in the Surangama Sutra.  This kind of vision happens when your meditation deepens like mine has."

"How come it's happening to me too?" Will whispered.

"Because you're my husband.  How am I supposed to know?"  To the three dark men, Shana said: "No problem.  No problem at all.  Will told me you don't know how to eat.  Would you like me to show you?"

Yanking her elbow: "Are you crazy?  Get them out of here.  Get rid of them.  Goddam your meditation, Shana.  You ruined the shed, and now this.  Wings.  The man has wings, Shana."

"Shut up, Will.  When the water starts flowing again, then you can talk."  Will's head fell to his chest as if a string holding it up had been sliced. He couldn't hide the tremble in his breath.  "Every being is a form of the Buddha, Will."

The bitch‑-I used to say that to her.  A cupboard door swung open, and a cup that had been leaning against it fell to the counter and broke.  Shana gave Will an accusing look.

She turned to the three men:  "Please sit down, won't you?"  They sat at the table again.  The angel sat at the edge of his seat so as not to crush his wings against the back of the chair.  The old African continued to blow on the erg bleed and fiddle with the exposed wiring as he settled into his chair.  He adjusted the briefcase under his buttocks.  The weasel man stroked his chest underneath the jacket.

But when Shana joined them at the table, they gave their attention to her completely, like the surface of a pond untroubling itself after a breeze.  Will stayed at the door, ready to run for help if need be.

With a slow steady breath, Shana collected herself, perfectly straightening her spine.  She tucked her chin in to prevent wandering of the mind.  "Give me your cups."

Will watched.  He nodded each time a teacup was half-full and winced when she kept on filling it to the rim.  The three dark men sat like very small children, taking back their cups with two hands, and waiting for Shana's next word.

"Open your mouths."

The water was nearly gone.  They'd have to buy more bottled water at the grocery store down at the bottom of the mountain, and what was there to pay for it with?  What was there to pay for anything with?  Will was damned if he'd go off their budget because Shana was teaching her hallucinations how to drink water.  It was ten days till the next scheduled withdrawal from their retirement savings, and he wasn't going to touch a penny till then.  Let Shana use her erg bleed money.  Yeah, well, of course, she wouldn't do that.

"Stop it, Will.  It's getting dark."  It startled the gloom out of him, and the room lightened.

She smiled at the three men.  "Now lift the cup so that the edge is against your lower lip, and just hold it there like that while you tilt your head back.  No, tilt the cup along with your head.  That's it.  Don't cough.  It's okay.  When the water goes in, just relax, and let whatever happens happen."

The three dark men were amazed.  "Give us something else to eat."  Shana brought out soda crackers on a small plate‑-Will counted six double crackers, of which two might be able to be put back‑-and she taught them how to chew.  They were very pleased.  They wrinkled noses at one another and giggled.  Shana giggled too, in spite of Will's throat‑clearing.

Will couldn't take it any more.  He strode to the table and grabbed a cracker, even though he wasn't hungry, just because it was his.  "You're gonna fix the erg bleed before you go, right, guys?"

The weasel man turned to the wingback, and the wingback stood.  His feathers whispered together as they pulled away from the ribs of his chair.  He warmed first Shana, then Will, with his sky‑blue eyes.  He whispered to the old African:  "Show them."

The old African handed the erg bleed to Will.  There was no sign of the damage.  Then he swung the briefcase up from his chair onto the table, popped the latches and opened it.  "This is what you lack."

Will threw himself across the table.  His forearms hit the briefcase and slammed it shut.  His legs struck Shana's chair, overturning it and tumbling Shana‑-"This is good for my meditation.  This is good for my meditation."‑-to the floor.  Teacup shards in Will's broad belt, water pooling on the floor and table and in the three dark men's laps, Will looked up into the old African's eyes, an inch away from his own eyes as he lay there, chest and forearms on the shut case.

Silence.  Water dripping.

"Please excuse Will."  Shana stood, tidied herself and righted the chair.  To her husband: "It's just a hallucination, a third skandha hallucination.  For heaven's sake, Will.  There's nothing real in there.  It doesn't matter.  Get hold of yourself.  And get off the table."

"I won't get off the table.  I don't want to see any more.  I want to be abbot again.  I want my disciples back.  I want people to bow to me again.  To me, not to you."

"And I want water for the garden."

The old African's large, heart‑shaped, blue‑black lips almost kissed the tip of Will's nose.  "It is the Naked Lunch.  You have suffered terribly since then, Will Fontaine.  You want everything to be invisible again, don't you?"

"It's not my fault there's a drought."

"Yes it is," the African sighed.

The wingback: "Of course it is."

The weasel:  "It is, Will."

Ridiculously, still lying across the table, Will wept.

"It isn't enough to cry, Will," Shana said.  Where she touched him it burned.

The weasel man stood away from the table.  His natty pants steamed themselves dry in an instant, Will wept to see.  While the wingback leaned over Will, cheek to cheek with the old African, peering into Will's face with a look of motherly concern, the weasel man laid his arm over Shana's shoulders.  "He wants things to be the way they were.  He wants to be able to cross his legs and face the wall, to think about women and be called a saint.  After all, it's not so much to ask."

Shana nodded.  "But the Naked Lunch."

"Ah."

Will moaned.  "Stop saying that.  I don't want to hear that phrase ever again."

Shana: "Naked Lunch.  Naked Lunch.  It was you who called it that first.  After the Burroughs line: ' . . . when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.'"

"Shut up.  Shut up.  It was those shooting stars.  I wish they'd shoot right back to where they came from."

"They won't, Will.  And it's not just up here on the mountain any more.  It's everywhere.  Everything is turning visible.  You can't hide what you're thinking any more.  You can see everybody's meditation just like it really is.  You can't hide in robes any more."

"I was just sitting there, like always . . . "

Shana rolled her eyes and leaned in toward the weasel man.  "Here he goes again.  'I was just sitting there like always, at the right of the altar, the seventh night of Rohatsu . . . '"

" . . . at the right of the altar, the seventh night of Rohatsu, just like always . . . "

"' . . . just like always, when there was this big crash . . . '"

" . . . a big crash, Shana, and stop making fun of me.  We thought it was an earthquake.  We ran outside and the sky was streaked with falling stars."

"That was my samadhi," said Shana.

"It wasn't," Will said.  "It was Mara, the Evil One, the Master of Illusions.  When we went back into the meditation hall, everything was different.  Suddenly, the guy across from me had a naked girl in his lap.  Somebody else had a pile of doughnuts from her knee to the rafters."

"It was actually very funny."

"It was not funny."  Will pulled his knees up into fetal position, lying on the table, holding the briefcase to his chest with both arms.  "My attendant was beating up an old man who was sitting beside him."

"His dead father."

"Probably.  I don't know."

Shana smiled at the weasel man.  "I had stars all around my brow.  There was a nimbus roiling behind me, and you could see forty thousand worlds in my lap, each one with forty thousand Bodhisattvas bowing toward me and waiting reverently for my teaching."

"It was noisy.  You couldn't meditate in there any more."

"Will was covered with slugs."

"I wasn't.  Stop it."

"It's nothing to be ashamed of, Will," Shana cooed.  "Every being is a form of the Buddha, Will."

"Shut up.  They all ran out screaming.  They got in their cars and left the mountain."

"But they dribbled back in twos and threes over time, to see me."

"Her.  I'm supposed to be the teacher, not her."

"Everybody can see what you are now, dear."

"She can say whatever she wants.  She doesn't even need my money any more.  Do you, Shana?"

"No, dear.  I have the erg bleed."

"Ah," said the weasel man.

"Ah," said the wingback and the old African.  "The erg bleed.  Yes.  An interesting device."

Shana laughed, "They pay me for my feelings.  I just feel into it, and the utility company pays me.  They convert it to electricity.  I light up most of the township on the south side of the mountain.  They don't know it's me, exactly.  I have a DBA: Mountain Power.  That's how they make out the checks.  It's my Buddhist name."

Will muttered into the popped latches: "Wait till they find out it's all a hallucination."

"Everything is a hallucination, Will, fundamentally."

"Damn you, I used to say that."

Outside the front door: a shifting of feet.  Shana peeked.  There was a line of a dozen people snaked down the steps and out around the parched lawn.  "For heaven's sake, Will, let go of the briefcase and get off the table.  My students are here to see me.  These gentlemen probably have other things to get on to as well."

"Stop it.  I can't take it any more.  Things don't happen this way.  Thoughts aren't things.  They don't just pop out of you for everybody to see."

The weasel man shook his head and sighed.  He pointed to the wingback.  "You tell them."

The wingback gathered in his broad, downy feathers.  "Will Fontaine, Shana, you're going to have a baby."

The three dark men opened the door: "Excuse me.  Excuse me.  Excuse me."  They threaded past the students and away down to the road.  Shana, laughing, shut the door: "I'll be with you people in a moment."  Will swung his legs over the edge of the table and sat up with the briefcase in his lap.

"You've got to go, Will.  The students want to see me."

"Are you really pregnant?"

"Yes, I feel it‑-are you gonna fix the port‑a‑shed wall?"

"Sure, Shana."  Under crossed arms he hugged the briefcase to his chest.  "I can't take it any longer, Shana."

"Yes you can, Will.  You've got to bring the water back, remember."  She lowered her gaze toward the briefcase and began to say something more, but Will wouldn't have it.  Face tight as a clutched rag, he squinted her down.  She rolled her eyes and left him.

There were moles peeking up out of his shirt collar.  He had an urge to pull them off, to throw them to the floor and stomp them to death, but he let them be.  Every being is a form of the Buddha.  He went out the back way and over to the tool shed to look for a ball peen hammer.

 

he baby was a real one.  Will had to change it, because Shana was always too busy with her students.  It crapped and crapped.  Will used the cloth kind anyway.  Will soaked the diapers in the toilet and washed them himself with lots of bleach.  It took water.

"It's good for your meditation, Will."

"I used to say that to you."

"So buy paper ones."

"Give me some erg bleed money."

"No.  That's for the Zen center, Will.  You know that."

"Damn the Zen center."

"It's getting dark, Will."

They named the baby Hus, Sanskrit for laugh, brighten, or bloom, but that first year Will called him Hud, which is Sanskrit for crap.

"Will, the carpet you laid in my port‑a‑shed is very nice, but please don't let Hussy poop there."

In the bassinet, Hus giggled.  The room glittered as if the air had turned to tinsel, and sprites peeked in through the blinds.  Will closed them.  "Shush.  And don't splash.  This takes water."  But Will felt his face change, his touch soften.  He smiled sometimes, but he knew it was the baby doing it, the baby's seeing him that way, the baby's perception made visible. Still, he couldn't help feeling glad.  He sighed and melted as the gladness seeped inward.  "I'm not happy.  I don't feel good."  He tickled Hus's tiny belly.

Uncle Wingback dropped by every week or so at first to smalltalk with Shana and bring the baby gifts.  There was a rattle that had no sound of its own but made the mockingbirds sing in the dead garden.  There was the mobile for Hus's crib; when it twirled, the sun rose and set so quickly that it seemed like a band of bright light flashing across the southern sky, wobbling with the seasons like a tired spun penny.  But even the ordinary things the wingback brought and the ones that came in the mail from Uncle Weasel and Uncle Old, the balls and blocks and colored rings, jumped to life under Hus's gaze.  They would fly to Will when he entered the baby's room, roll up his legs and play under his arms, while Hus laughed.

"Shush.  It isn't funny."

"It is funny, Will."  Shana squeezed past him to get a box of special incense for yet another New Students' Ceremony.  "You'd better change your attitude, or this drought will drive us all from the mountain."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"It's not doing, Will.  It's being."  Shana straightened her robe in the mirror, blew a kiss to the baby, then scooted past Will on her way out to the meditation hall.  "But you could start by opening up that briefcase."

"I won't, Shana."

Will would not go near the meditation hall any more.  It was a zoo in there.  Shana had found a way to keep the sexual fantasies to a minimum‑-it took water‑-but the violent comeuppances with bosses and husbands, the doctored childhood memories, and the I Love Lucy reruns, not to mention third skandha hell visions, teemed among the silent sitters, to vanish at the tinkle of abbot Shana's 'fog bell.'

"Return to your breath.  Let thoughts come in and go out.  Don't cling to them.  Don't run away from them either.  Work hard.  If you want some motivation, look at my husband, Will."  Ding!  Ding!  Ding!

One day Will shot the breeze with Fred and Ethel Mertz for a quarter hour at the kitchen door before one of Shana's meditators returned to his breath‑-Ding!  Ding!  Ding!‑-and the Mertzes simply disappeared.  Fred had been doing an end‑man gag:  "A weak back, you say?  Why, since when have you had a weak back?"

"Since about a week back, Fred."  Will stared through Fred's fading bowler at the dry stream bed and the rusted pump.  "Everybody knows that old chestnut."

Hus lolled on Will's shoulder, talking to angels.  He had that familiar smell.  Will didn't want a poopy baby on his shoulder; he wanted a rakusu there, the special blue one he used to wear when he was abbot.  Hus stank.  Life stank.  It was getting cold.  It was getting dark.

The old African came into view, tramping up the dry stream bed.  Will shifted the baby to his chest and held him there with both arms; it kept the two of them warm.  He could feel Hus's heart beat against his chest, and a small happiness flexed its wings inside the cocoon of his own heart.  "It's the baby's feeling, not mine."

Uncle Old was wore a tie‑dyed dashiki and a skullcap brightly embroidered with images of magical fish.  He scraped the bottoms of his bare feet against his calves.  Sand and pebbles flew from between his toes.  "It's bad, Will Fontaine.  At the bottom of the mountain, the people are angry.  The vineyards are brown.  The cattle are thirsty.  They are starting to think that the drought has a cause . . . How is my little, sweet, darling baby?"‑-smelling Hus before he saw him.

"I won't open the briefcase, if that's what you mean."

"You must accept The Naked Lunch.  Goo goo googly goo, Hussy‑poo!"

"Uh uh.  It stays buried."

"It's pitch dark.  May I come in?  Kootchie kootchie kootchie kootchie!"

"No.  It's not my fault."

The old African shrugged and gave Will a diaper that solved all his poop problems.  Hus turned his head to watch Uncle Old go away. A shell of light illumined the dark man's way up the dry stream bed as long as the baby looked.

Hus slept face down on Will's belly. The baby's dreams, like shapes in a lava lamp, undulated in the dark.  Hus's love tucked around Will like a warm blanket, but Will kept one eye open.  At the window, Shana's Bodhisattvas paraded by, gaudily attired, each with a train of ten thousand Pratyeka Buddhas, all coming to be near Shana.  Shana herself stayed in the meditation hall all night long to inspire her Zen students.  They peeked up through clouds of sewer gas, dark birds, broken and disordered thoughts‑-all visible.  Occasionally, they remembered to meditate.  Ding!  Ding!  Ding!

Just before dawn‑-there were still dawns, hazy ones, even through Will Fontaine's darkest moods‑-Will was awakened by frantic pounding at the kitchen door.  "Open!  Open!"

The baby slept.  Will lifted little Hus from his belly and laid him on the bed beside him, holding Hus the whole time as close as could be.  Will curled his head down so Hus's cheek slid against his cheek; he held Hus's head steady with the palm of his left hand.  He tucked the blanket in around Hus and got up to answer the door.

"Open!  Quick!"  It was Uncle Old.  He was panting, bare headed, on his knees, the dashiki ripped to shreds.  "They are just behind me.  They jumped me in the redwood grove.  They do not know that I am Shana's third skandha hallucination."

"Who did this?"  Will helped him in, his arm looped under Uncle Old's arms, and sat him down by the kitchen table.

"The people from below, vintners and cattlemen.  They know you are holding back the water."

"I'm not.  Where are the other two angels?"

"Shana has stopped thinking them.  Her mind is elsewhere.  She is a famous teacher now."

The window shattered.  A stone the size of Hus's head landed on the floor by the table.  A mob was gathering in the dead garden.  Will sprang into the bedroom to get the baby.

Uncle Old limped in after him.  "Save yourself.  Release the water."  He stroked Hus's chin.  "Goo googly goo sweet babykins Hussy!"

"I can't."

"We brought you something, Will Fontaine.  Use it.  Oo widdow honey pie!"

"I won't dig it up.  I won't open it.  I won't let anybody see."

"Do you smell smoke?"

It was pretty smoke, because Hus saw it, and seeing it, changed it in his special way, but it was no less noxious for that.  Will tucked Hus under his arm, precious football, and made for the back door.  Uncle Old, on all fours now, ducked below the smoke and crawled after them, coughing.

The mob was still massing in front, brimming like black water about to spill.  "Tightwad!  Pig!"  They were burning down his house with their hatred‑-and with the firebrand one of them had thrown in through the broken window.

"Why do they hate me?"  Out back, in the baby's starlight, Will helped Uncle Old to his feet.

"We'd better not stand here, Will Fontaine.  Let's hide in the meditation hall.  Boody boodly boo!"

"I can't go in there.  I'd rather burn."  Will's eyes darted over the hillside, uphill and north to the meditation hall, northwest through the bay laurels and eucalyptus to Shana's port‑a‑shed, west to the tool shed and the pond, a shallow swamp now, brown and stinking.  "Are they real people?  Or are they my bad mind?"

"Real or not, they can kill you, Will Fontaine.  What about Shana's port‑a‑shed?"

"No."  Hoarse shouts and heavy footsteps neared.  Still, "Not there."  He let Uncle Old huddle closer to shield the baby.  "All right."  And Will ducked into the narrow fragrant passage to the port‑a‑shed, shepherding Uncle Old along beside him.

The dent was still there where Shana's meditation had blasted it.  The day of the three angels' first visit, Will had meant to pound it out, but the more he thought about that briefcase, the more he wanted it buried, and quick.  With a screwdriver and the ball peen hammer, blow by blow, he chiseled out a rectangle, two feet by two, in the floor of the port‑a‑shed.  He dug down one foot with a garden spade, a nice little trench with square plumb walls.  That's where the briefcase went.

While Shana counseled a young man in what used to be Will's study, he filled in around the angels' gift.  He replaced the metal rectangle, pounding flat the edges that the screwdriver had curled.  He stretched old carpet across the whole port‑a‑shed floor while Shana interviewed her students.  Later she thanked him: it was nice.  It was good for his practice to have laid carpet there.  Next day she remembered to wonder about the gone briefcase.

Uncle Old rested his bones on Shana's meditation cushion while Will latched the door.  It was perfectly dark inside, except where Hus looked: A tinkerbell of light floated about the carpet and walls, focussing now on a Kamakura Buddha, now on a string of 108 sandalwood beads, now on the peanut butter tub Shana used for a chamber pot.

Ding!  Ding!  Ding!  Will, Hus, and Uncle Old could hear it drifting all the way from the meditation hall, but the mob still came, fanning out over the temple grounds, thinking beef and champagne versus scrawny cows and withered vines drooping into the poison oak.  "Let go our water."

"Does babykins wanna widdle kissie‑poo?" said Uncle Old.

Will pulled Hus away from Old's tickle.  "What if they burn down the meditation hall?  Shana will probably think they're a makyo, a third skandha hallucination."

"Like me.  Yes, Will Fontaine, she probably will."

Ding!  Ding!  Ding!  "I'm no good, Uncle Old."  Where Will's tears struck Hus, they turned to crystal.  "My mind is no good.  Everybody sees what I am."

"It is the Naked Lunch."  Old peek‑a‑booed the baby.

"The Naked Lunch.  My heart is dried out.  My soul is empty.  People see right through me."  Will couldn't go on, because Hus was playing with Will's lower lip.  Hus's fingers were in Will's mouth.  Hus laughed‑-and pooped, but the new diaper took care of that.

Ding!  Ding!  Ding!  The metal walls of the port‑a‑shed creaked and popped with the rapid change in temperature.  Both men sweated, though the baby cooed.  "You and Shana made Hus, Will Fontaine.  Hus popped out of you both for everyone to see, didn't oo, oo kyootie‑pootie?  Not so bad, Will Fontaine."

"What are you doing?"

Uncle Old pulled up an edge of the carpet and rolled it toward the middle, pushing cushion, Buddha, and chamber pot aside.  "Don't deny yourself this, Will Fontaine.  It is your gift."

"You knew it was there."

"It's getting very hot."

"It's not mine.  It's Shana's."  Ding!  Ding!  Ding!  "It's the baby's, really . . . I don't know whose it is.  I've got nothing to do with it.  Please stop."  Smoke curled in through a small puncture in one wall.  Hus lolled on Will's shoulder, warm and sweet.

The old African clawed away the last bits of clay.  There was the briefcase, its wood frame collapsed and rotting, worm tracks in the black, vinyl cover.  He stood, and Will yielded Hus into Uncle Old's skinny arms.  "Ahh.  Shh.  Sweepy widdow feller."

"Do I have to open it?"

"You closed it."

Ding!  Ding!  Ding! Crowbars pried at the door.  "We know you're in there."  Will knelt down to lift out the briefcase‑-or to bury it deeper . . .

Maybe burning up wasn't so bad, and crowbars might be kinder than the sort of secret that three angels bring you in a briefcase‑-but not kinder for Hus.  If death was in the briefcase, it was Will's death.  Crowbars and fire would kill them both.

He popped one latch.

Wait.  Why believe that opening it would save them, anyway?  It could be just another humiliation in there, start to finish, like the rest.  Will lingered at the second latch.  His shoulder and chest were still warm where Hus had lain.  How could he have been so foolish as to sire a child in this degenerate age?  How could he have been so foolish as to begin anything at all?  Will touched two fingers to his lips, and then to little Hus's.  Hus sucked on the whorl of his fingertip.

 

"Not so bad, Will Fontaine."

 

He opened the briefcase.

It had not been just bottled water dripping from the kitchen table, pooling on the floor and in the three dark men's laps.  It had been fresh water from Crater Lake, from Skaneateles, from Lake Chad, from Nabalega Falls, from the insides of cacti, from lost rivers and abandoned quarries, from sweating tankards and dewy mountainsides thick with trillium, iceplant, and clover.  It had streamed, rushed, gathered, swelled, seethed from the hidden source of everything fluid and was brimming past the edge of the angels' briefcase when Will, unknowing, slammed it shut.

Ding!  It flooded the port‑a‑shed, frothing and sloshing, ankle‑high, knee‑high, navel‑high, and rising still.  Ding!  Carp leapt.  Minnows swarmed.  Seaweed draped Will's hips.  A fishing line with hook and sinker momentarily appeared‑-Ding!‑-a speckled trout took the bait and was yanked back into the briefcase.

The old African lifted Hus, asleep, over his head, clear of the water.  Will smiled his own smile.  A carp smacked the corrugated plastic roof, brightening with the sky.  The moon sank below the western mopboard, puckered across the bottom of the world, and blew the sun up in the east.  Will opened the door.  He flooded and greened the mountain.  He washed the vintners and cattlemen, cheering, clear down to the road and home.

Uncle Old pressed little Hus back into Will's arms‑-"Googly goo!"‑-and vanished.  Ding!  Ding!  Ding!  The baby was a real one; he stank, and the new diaper no longer worked.

Shana stood at the port‑a‑shed door in her squeaking wet Tai Chi slippers.  "Everything's covered up again.  I was about to blast in, there was a sucking sound, like the last of a soda up the straw, and one by one, my students' delusions seeped back inside their heads.  It was disgusting to see how happy it made them‑-they can all pretend to be saints again.

"I sent them home, Will.  I hate this job."  She lowered her head and pulled off the rakusu.

"I opened the briefcase, Shana."

"Don't I know it.  And there's no more erg bleed to pay for the damage.  But it's about time.  It's good for our meditation, Will.  Now you can be abbot again."

"I don't want to be.  I'm happy, Shana."  It amazed him.

Hus talked to angels.  The baby's glee seemed so incongruous in the ruined shed that Will laughed a big belly laugh.  Shana too.

Then she sniffed.  "Give me Hus.  He stinks.  I'll change his diaper.  The Naked Lunch is over.  Kootchie kootchie, Hussy hunny!"

Was it Uncle Old, snuck into the meditation hall, pinging Shana's fog bell?  Ding!  Ding!  Ding!