Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [166]
“Me too. But I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”
“Do you think I can go up in the treehouse anyway?”
“Sure, sure. No one will mind. Go check it out. Don’t fall out.”
“Dad, please.”
“Well. Be careful.”
Off went Nick. It was all working out very well.
Charlie walked down to the big suspended awning, his heart pounding with trepidation.
Joe was standing in the middle of a circle of elderly Khembalis, looking around curiously. Sucandra was the youngest one there; Qang was chanting, her voice lower than most men’s. Joe nodded as if keeping time to her chant. White smoke billowed out of giant censers and bowls set around a low candle-covered table, on which stood a big statue of the Adamantine Buddha, the stern one with his hand outstretched like a traffic cop.
The candle flames danced on some breeze that Charlie could not feel. An old man on the opposite side of the circle from Qang shouted something. Joe, however, did not seem to notice the shout. He was staring at Qang and the others around her with the same absorption he displayed when watching one of his favorite truck videos. He raised a hand, and seemed to conduct Qang in her singing. She stared fiercely at him, cross-eyed and looking a bit mad. Charlie wondered if she were possessed by the spirit in question.
Finally she took some saffron powder from a bowl held before her by the man on her right, and held it out for Joe’s inspection. He put his finger in it, regarded the tip of his finger, sniffed it. Qang barked something and he looked up at her, held his hand out toward her. She nodded formally, theatrically, and took up a bowl of flower petals from the woman on the other side of her. She held the bowl out to Joe, and he took a fistful of pink flower petals, staining them saffron with his finger. The circle of elderly Khembalis joined the chanting, and began shuffling in a clump-footed dance around Joe, punctuating their chant with rhythmic short exclamations, somewhat like the “HAs!” that Rudra had shouted in Joe’s face the previous year. Some of them smacked their hand cymbals together, then held the vibrating little disks over their heads. Joe began a little two-step, hands clasped behind his back, reminding Charlie of the dance of the Munchkins welcoming Dorothy to Oz. Then as the chanting rose to a peak, Qang stepped forward and put her hand on Joe’s head. He stilled under it. The woman beside Qang put the rest of the flower petals on the back of Qang’s hand, and Qang flicked them into the air when she moved her hand away.
Joe sat down on his butt as if his hamstrings had been cut. Charlie rushed to his side, cutting through the dancers.
“Joe! Joe, are you okay?”
Joe looked up at him. His eyes were round, they bugged out like the eyes of the demon masks up at the farmhouse. Wordlessly he struggled to his feet, ignoring Charlie’s outstretched hand offering help. He took a swipe at Charlie:
“No, Da! Do it MY SELF. Wanna GO OUT! Wanna go!”
“Okay!” Charlie exclaimed. Instantly he worried that Anna would be concerned by this linguistic regression. But it happened sometimes to young kids, and surely it wouldn’t last for long. “Hey there, Joe. Good to see you buddy. Let’s go outside and play.”
He glanced up at Qang, who nodded briefly at him before she returned her gaze to Joe. She seemed herself again.
“Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Come! ON!”
“Okay sure! Let’s go! Let’s see if we can find Nick up in the treehouse, shall we? Treehouse? What do you say?”
“Treehouse? Good!” And his face scrunched into a climber’s scowl before he marched out the tent door, like Popeye on a mission.
“Okay!” Charlie looked at Qang. “I better go catch up. Hey Joe! Wait a second!”
When Anna came out from the Khembali farmhouse, where she had been conferring with Padma about the re-establishment of the Khembali Institute for Higher Studies, and the possibility of transferring the Khembali/NSF collaborative funds to studying the Chesapeake Bay rather than the Bay of Bengal, she found all three of her boys up in the treehouse, running from one room to the next on a network of catwalks.