Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [63]
“I, of course—” Ariel marveled at how Granna’s freewheeling mind might carry them anywhere.
“Not thirteen months, twelve. Thirteen’s too many. Twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve tones in the musical scale. Twelfth night at Epiphany, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve gates of Heaven, twelve steps to sobriety. Thirteen worries me.”
If she knew the Bible, Ariel might have been able to say something apropos to interrupt this tumultuous flow. Instead, she said, “I’m surprised numerology fits in with your belief in Christianity and everything. You sure you’re not just a touch pagan, Granna?”
“You sound like your father.” She got up, opened the cabinet, retrieved her bottle of Tanqueray, waved it at Ariel who said, “No, well, why not, yes, okay, a little,” remembering she was here to find Kip, not Christ.
Let gin be wine, let pipe serve as censer. They sipped their spiked juice and wandered—as each was eminently capable of doing—from idea to idea.
“Schiller knew all about it, but then Schiller knew everything there was to know about everything.”
“Knew about what?”
“Eleven’s the number of sin. Thirteen’s the witches’ number. But heavenly Jerusalem has twelve golden gates.”
While they didn’t get drunk, they didn’t stay sober, either. Ariel weighed the reality anchor, as it were, and coursed along on a stream of affectionate ideas with her charmed wacko grandmother. Kip, Brice, Jessica, and everyone else in the world was asided, set as if on a nearby riverbank, while this two-paddle floating opera of straddling generations drifted by, free and unmoored for a few hours.
This used to be his secret boyhood sanctuary, Marcos told Kip. He and his younger sister, Elena, nicknamed Lanie during her brief life, were inseparable best friends. But Lanie refused to ride down in the lower pasture with him, much less stalk around the tumbledown fieldhouse waging gun battles with driftwood sticks culled from the rio flatbanks. She took no end of ribbing from her brother about her unfounded fears, yet always maintained a good distance between herself and the adobe. Carl and Sarah never bothered her about it, but Uncle Delfino once told the children it was an ominous place—
—What’s ominous?
—Means scary, Marcos chimed.
—a scary place, Delfino continued. —Because the last person who lived there was an ogre who had powers—Itoayemu, they called this ogre—
—What’s ogre?
—Means very scary.
—and at night, when no one was out and about except for Santo Niño, not a chap to trifle with, either, this ogre would lumber around dragging his hairy foot behind him, like this—
And Uncle Delfino gimped in circles, snorting and huffing.
—making curses on little children’s heads, especially children who hadn’t behaved themselves during the day.
—That’s enough now, Sarah interrupted. —No limping ogre with evil powers ever lived in that old fieldhouse, Lanie, unless maybe your uncle used to live down there. But you two should stay out of there anyway.
—How come? asked Marcos, his voice back then still soprano.
—Because it’s not safe.
—Not safe, you say? Delfino asked, his eyes rounded and the ravines at the corners of his lips deepening into an ironic frown. —You hear that, kids? Their uncle couldn’t help himself, —You children had better listen to your mother. Itoayemu.
Marcos remained unconvinced. For months he assured his sister there was nothing to be afraid of, that he would protect her from any evil, that he’d hung garlic on the plank doors and painted them blue to ward off spirits. Elena’s fear was stronger than Marcos’s promises, however, and though she rode with him bareback on unbroken horses far out into the adjacent plains where scorpions and yappy coyotes lived, she would not accompany him to the fieldhouse. She’d steal corn from pueblo gardens