I blink my eyes. My back is supported by a soft covering on a hard surface.
My fingers reach out and feel. Grass. The sky above me is solid turquoise. In one corner of my vision, a bright light coming from a yellow ball. Something licks my cheek. I'm stunned. So, at first, it has free reign on my face for at least five solid licks before I'm able to raise my arms and shoo it away. Damn dog. The boy laughs at me. I sit up. My back is on fire, as though I'd laid here with a rock in my pocket for a week. I reach into my pocket, pull out my watch. It is broken. I look at the boy. He just looks me in the eye and shrugs. Kids.
I look around. We are sitting on the bank of the river. The trees nearby are in blossom still, though decidedly fewer flowers. I sniff the air. The smell is of endless spring on the verge of crashing into unyielding summer.
The boy says, welcome back retard. The dog whines. She was worried about you, he says.
Well, Puedes, you didn't let her sleep with me, did you?
She wouldn't leave your side, he says. She brought you water while you slept. I held you up and she drank from the river and spit it in your mouth. You drank it. Your body wanted to live.
Gross, I say. I've been hydrated with dog vomit?
I guess, he says.
Where is everyone else? Why didn't they move me inside and cover me with a blanket or something?
That's not how it works. If we moved your body, your spirit wouldn't have been able to find it when it returned from the journey, he says.
I just look at him. My face I'm sure is stuck in a kind of dumbstruck impotent aggravation. That's what it feels like. Noticing this, I soften the edges of my eyes and let my mouth go slack. It feels better that way. What the hell is happening to me? I ask the boy.
Well, a couple of years ago, one of the people of our village experienced exploding in rainbows. Was it like that? he says, his tone so nonchalant, I am sure he is fucking with me.
No, it was like a hologram though.
Lights?
Well, yeah. But I, we were inside them and they were like a sculpture that was alive. I don't know how to describe it, Puedes. That's not really my thing.
So, you saw the projection of consciousness at the beginning of time?
I shoulda taken a picture, then I could just show you.
You can't take a picture in the spirit realm, he said, as if I didn't know that. I made a retard face at him.
Do you know what a kaleidoscope is? I say.
Yeah.
How do you know what a kaleidoscope is?
The beekeeper has one, and I can see it in your mind.
Why don't you just look in my mind and see the thing I saw then?
Because it's better if you tell me that sort of thing.
Well, it was a baby, made out of a kaleidoscope.
Yeah, you saw the rainbow explosion thing, he said.
This whole time he's been finding rocks in the grass and throwing them over his shoulder into the river. The dog watching him looks puzzled. Damned dog and its facial expressions.
Do you want to see Chet again?
Last time it didn't go very well, I say.
Yeah, but, he says.
I know, I say. Lead the way, Puedes.
Okay retard, he says with so much compassion in his voice I have to laugh. He gives me a dirty look. The dog looks back and forth between us. Her face inscrutable for once. He leads me through the grove. Its trees look ancient and thick. The flowers tremble in the sunshine, white five-pointed stars constellating in a galaxy map. Each one a sun home to multiple planets. Each one sending out waves of sweet aromatic cologne. I smell something else over the blossoms. It pricks my nose up and makes me look around.
I see the old man sitting in his wicker chair, smoking a pipe. The smoke curls out and hangs low, drifting across the grove. Bees are swarming in the wake and flying through it taking big gulps, growing lazy and content from the haze. He sees us and lifts his pipe in salute. Who is that? I ask the boy.
That is the beekeeper, he says as if it should have been obvious.
I met him before I came here, I say. He doesn't respond to me, but waves at the old man. His determination to get us back to the village swiftly shows in his gait. We do not slow down or take a detour to see the man, and after my first interaction with him, I'm glad. He tricked me into eating coyote guts, I say. The dog looks at me and whines.
You tricked yourself, retard. He only tried to help you. He may seem wise, but he doesn't understand everything. He understands bees real good, and portals. He's really good with portals.
Portals? I ask.
Don't ask stupid questions, he says, staring straight ahead into the long straight path. He's the only other person besides you who talks about the rainbow explosion. We walk for about an hour before coming back to the village outskirts where we find the saddest looking little hut has been transformed. The sunlight is on it, it looks warm. The boy shouts through the door. Once again, the old man inside calls for us to come in.
He is sitting in one of those lemon branch shaker chairs. His table is also a tree trunk. He's smiling, not like a madman or a fanatic, just kind of peaceful. I remember last time he hadn't been so pleasant looking, nor had he been able to get out of bed. Not dead yet? I ask, before considering my words too carefully.
No, I'm quite well today. The girls just brought me some lemon tea with honey, he says.
Look, about last time.
You wanna touch my pecker still?
That's not funny.
It is to an old man. Look, I know what you're gonna say.
No, you don't, that's ridiculous. I just wanted to say I'm sorry.
I knew it
Sure, you did.
I'm sorry too, he says. I'm sorry for the way I treated you last time. It was very emotional for me, and at my age, emotions are extra strong. I don't hate you. The man who came out here fifty years ago hated the man who set foot in that lemon grove two weeks ago, but neither one of us is either of those people anymore. I've had fifty years to forgive you, and I balked at the first opportunity.
Forgive me?
Yeah, dad, that's funny, an old fucker like me calling a young man like you dad. Dad, you were a terrible father. Most men of our time were though. And I can see you've changed. Whether that's an effect of my troubled eyesight or a fact, doesn't really matter at this moment. Do you know why?
I guess fifty years goes by and you don't really worry about the same things you used to, I say, fumbling.
More or less, but the answer I was thinking is that I've changed. When I came here, I was a boy of nearly thirty. I was desperate for something I could never have and without realizing it I was depriving myself of everything that I did have. I wanted your approval dad.
But you had it, the whole time, I love you so much.
No, the fact is, you can't give it to me. I want it from the version of you that lives inside my head, for the version of me that lives inside my head.
I think fifty years in a lemon grove has given you some kind of way of saying things.
Probably. The point is, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you came.
I'm glad I'm here too, Chet. I can feel tears weeping down my cheeks.
He says, don't cry pussy. Then he stands up, walks toward me and embraces me. We both cry. The boy and the dog look at each other and roll eyes. Now, he says, I'm old and my bowel movements are infrequent. I feel one coming and I'm not about to ignore the signs. I did that a few weeks ago and spent an hour in the river afterwards. I was pretty sure I'd come out reborn as a Jesus lizard or some kind of iguana, but I was returned to my body, just a little cleaner.
Yeah, that river.
Yeah, get out. I'll see you later, dad. He shoes us out the door and totters off down the path to the latrine with his hand over his rear end. I look at the boy. He is smiling.
Better? he asks.
I'd like to see Abuela.
You mean Katrina?
Sure, I say.
He motions and I follow him. The dog stays at my side and when I look down at her she pushes her wet nose into my hand until I scratch her behind the ears. She does this several times. We walk past jars of lemons, juice in various stages of processes that will turn it into liquor, cleaning fluid, lemon oil for lanterns and medicinal use. There are stacks of lemon cookies fresh from an earthen oven cooling under the shade of an awning. There are jars of lemon rinds preserved like candy.
Katrina meets us at the door and ushers us inside. She has a fresh pot of tea waiting for us. We sit around her table and sip tea and eat biscuits. We talk about the history of the grove, how it goes back far further than the miracle of the village. Thousands of years ago this grove was the home to a people who knew how to heal all human ills and could travel to the stars with their minds. When the Spanish colonials came, it was obvious to the star people, the portent of war to come that would be wrought across the earth like an iron cage. They recognized the limits of their own powers. They saw the face of the human ills there was no cure for, greed, anger, bloodlust, power. The elders got together and in the largest ceremony they had ever performed, they cast seven spells.
The first one blessed the soil. This dirt will always be fertile ground, not just for trees, but for spiritual growth.
The second spell blessed the rains, that even though infrequently falling from the sky, the river would always come down the mountain, even in the driest weather.
The third spell blessed travelers through this land, that they would be safe and find things here in themselves that they didn't know about, like strength and courage. Not the courage to do battle, but the courage to make peace.
The fourth spell was to make this place a spiritual crossroads. Many people here are not what they seem. There are spirits of long dead folk, interstellar travelers, and minor deities walking the paths in harmony with the descendants of the first post-world group. This place is a portal hub.
The fifth spell told the coyotes they were to evolve and to become useful to the people who traveled here. They were not to be a menace. I took minor issue with this spell but, I digressed after the dog looked at me and whined.
The sixth spell was that of a general blessing for the planet. With the seventh, they all completely disappeared. Traveled somewhere no conquistador nor European after them could follow. They left behind artifacts, but no written history. The story of these people was passed down by the few who stayed behind to care-take the planet and the sacred portal land. Should a time come in the future when it was safe to return, they thought they might. These descendants lived among the American Indian tribes for hundreds more years, many were killed alongside their new tribesmen in the slaughters that followed the initial colonization, but a few survived. They carried their history with them and passed it on like a weight to their children, most of whom are here in this village today. They have rejoined the magic of their ancestors, who will never return, now they are sure of that.
I listen with rapt attention like I never have listened to a story before. The boy even jokes that I act now more like a child than him. Katrina then asks me, who do you think blew up the world outside?
I guess it was probably the government doing some fool thing in conflict over some resource, I say. Perhaps some artificial intelligence took over and bombed the shit out of us. Maybe it was aliens, came and wiped us out to take our resources. I haven't even heard what it looks like out there. No one will really tell me anything. Is it a wasteland? Is it all grown over with weeds and brush? Are there grizzly bears roaming the streets of downtown Manhattan?
This land is blessed, remember. The rest of the planet, none of us has seen it in person. Sometimes it is visible to us in astral projection. It is doing much better without us. So, we've decided to leave it that way.
It wasn't the government, she says. Not the drones or the machines. Not a lone madman or an environmental coup. We all did it in one way or another. It was that we believed we deserved retribution. All the atrocity, the wars, disease, and the eventual collapse of civilization into a bleeding screaming nightmare, was because we wanted it to happen. Nothing could have held us back. When eight billion people decide that things aren't okay all at once, and everyone gets an idea of how to make their little section of the planet okay for them, it's not war.
It's anarchy, I say.
No, anarchy is reality. Even selfishness can be used for good or harm. Fear is what leads to the mice eating the shoes.
Not this again, I say.
They won't eat your shoes anymore dear. You've seen the inside. It may take a little while for you to grow into it, but you will. I think your son will be a big help.
Chet does seem to be warming up to me.
My heart breaks for your love, but I'm not talking about that son, she says. I'm talking about Mani.
Who? I ask. The boy kicks me and points at his chest with his thumb.
Me, retard, he says.
I look at him. His face had become so familiar I had not recognized him when he was born at the bottom of the ocean, all glowing rainbows. Hadn't seen that the collapse of the time stream came upon the birth of his twin sister, the dog, as her infant howl had toppled the bubble of finite structure that had surrounded us. Oh, Puedes, I say.