Afterwards Sal could never say just when the magic began to shine once more in his heart. As with so many times of life, as with life itself, the streaming heartlight made itself known only when he stood still and cried at the unending dark.
For want of a better time Sal chose the night that the mosquitoes came to plunge their little strawed mouths into his breast. That night he stood in a corner of an enclosed courtyard behind a bar, his back pressed against the bark of a monkey-puzzle tree, his T-shirt pulled up and bunched about his neck, his cut-off jeans dropped to his ankles. While he moaned and rubbed his right hand over his chest the pretty young man on his knees before him impaled his throat again and still again and yet again on Sal's thumping cock.
Sal had a lovely chest to rub. In truth he had a lovely body, the kind that a great many pretty young men would worship on their knees. Narrowed hips, broad breaking chest, warm strong arms, legs to lift the world. His face might have graced a man sailing the Aegean Sea, though in fact it came down to him through a long line of noble forebears who'd ruled the ancient peoples of Mexico, a line strengthened and made even more lovely when the handsome women of the Mexican highlands brought forth children for the beautiful Castilian men who'd sailed the seas to find them.
He hadn't always walked the world in such a body, or even in the promise of such a body. For long years before the night of the monkey-puzzle tree he'd waddled about the world in a soft pudgy little body that others called fat. All through the years of his growing-up in a little out-of-the-way town shaded by the mountains of New Mexico he'd felt the ugly lash of that word fat, over and over again fat. Late at night when he lay in bed listening to the murmured talk of distant relatives come for a rare visit he would hear his mother speak of Sal the smart one. A quick puzzled stillness would drop over the talk then he would hear some distant cousin smelling of lavender water say, "Oh, you mean the little fat fellow." During recess at school he would hear the teachers clucking about that poor little fat boy who could slug the softball well into the outfield but couldn't even waddle to first base before getting thrown out. At church he heard the other altar boys snickering over the billowing choir robe made especially for the little fat cherub.
And so it went all through those long years of his growing up. He took lash after lash after lash from that hard hateful spitting little word. Along the way some people with deeper eyes looked through the rolls of his body to see the bright light of magic shining in his heart. Once a very pretty brown-haired girl two grades older than Sal held his pudgy little hand as she brushed the hair from his forehead, and she told him to remember that all people are much more than any one part of their bodies, even than their whole bodies. Another time a kind-hearted teacher took him for long walks along country roads, and she told him to see the wild wonderful shapes--all different, all lovely--that sprang from the earth's great old heart.
But these soft words sank without echo into the hard thump of that one word fat. Like clapping in church it beat out the rhythm of his life. In time Sal hardened his heart, grew scales, lit bitter little lights in his eyes. At last the day came when he made himself strip to stand naked in front of the mirror in his mother's room. Everyone else had gone to Bingo, so he stood alone in the empty house and looked hard at his body. "I'm twelve," he said aloud, "and I have enough body for two people." Looking into the mirror his eyes glinted into hard sharp pinpricks and the magic light flickered in his heart.
From that jolted heartbeat Sal used his mind as a magnifying glass to concentrate his magic light on the fat wrapped about his body, and he burned it away. He started to skip meals, and the flab around his belly pulled in and tightened. He began to run everywhere--to school, to church, to his aunt's house--and the dimpled flesh on his legs grew smooth and hard. He took a job as a stock clerk, working long hours at night stacking 24-count cases of canned goods, and the sagging flesh on the backs of his arms climbed higher and rounded itself into hard muscles.
And then the day came when Sal the smart one went away to college at the University of New Mexico. By the time of his leaving home he'd built a body that walked without notice through the Albuquerque streets. No one stopped with caught breath at his beauty, but neither did people pass by him then shake their heads and snicker at a little fat boy. That boy had melted away with the melting of the magic in Sal's heart.
Within days of his coming to the university Sal discovered the plastic pumping wonderland of the college gym. Stealing long hours from his studies he pushed out bench presses, beat steel cylinders up and down with his legs, contracted the muscles of his abdomen until they burned in agony, raised his weighted arms again and still again and yet again until he could lift the weight of Pluto's small icy moon in a month's time. Through the time of his building Sal came home many times to visit his family in the little out-of-the-way town in the shade of the mountains. Little by little his distant relatives lost the memory of the little fat boy, murmuring instead late at night of Sal the smart one grown more lovely than the setting sun kissing the mesa. Nearly everyone marveled at the lovely shape that he'd built about his bones.
Nearly everyone, but not the kind-hearted teacher and not the pretty brown-haired girl. Once in his sophomore year Sal came home at spring break and the teacher asked him to go for a walk to see the shapes of the earth. Sal, though, had no time for walks, strutting instead before the admiring eyes of beautiful men and handsome women cruising along the main street of the little town. In his junior year he came home for Christmas and the pretty brown-haired girl grown now to a woman tried to take his hand and brush the hair from his forehead. Sal, though, grew restless under her touch and worried that she would muss his hair. He soon hurried away to the dancehall to watch the men and the women catch their breath when he looked their way. The kind-hearted teacher and the pretty brown-haired woman shook their heads and wondered how such a lovely light could have burned out so quickly.
But even kind-hearted teachers and brown-haired women can mistake the ways of magic. They'd forgotten that magic burns brightest in the hearts of little fat boys, and those boys don't soon lose the memory of that magic, no matter what glory comes to their builded beauty. And so it was with Sal. All through the time of the building of his body he felt in the darkest room of the deepest cellar of his heart that he'd given over too much light to build the body beautiful. When the time of his building came to an end he knew in the brightest gable of the highest attic of his soul that he'd taken in too much darkness to build the beautiful body.
Still, he'd gone too far, or he thought that he'd gone too far, to give over the fruits of his building, and so in the year of his graduation from the university he once more walked the Albuquerque streets. Through the hard lights glinting in his eyes he saw the men stare at him open-mouthed and startled, then drop their gaze in a heated flash. He saw the women flush, breathe short and quick, loosening their blouses and brushing at the sweat dewing on their breasts. For Sal had burned up all his magic to build a most beautiful body, a body to make strangers catch their breath and dream.
After graduation Sal stepped into a time of restless sex, a time when he would not be taken but took without mercy. Man after man after man he took to his bed, trying to light the dark mist that had seeped into his heart. He made the earth shake to the steady pumping of his loins and he made the skies shudder to the wild pounding of his cock, but the days came and the days left and still his heart stumbled in darkness without end. Or a darkness that seemed to have no end. In a mad welter of drugs and sex and frantic working-out he tried to forget the memory of the light that once had burned in the heart of a little fat boy.
Of course he didn't know--the real wizards never know--that his magic came from the earthforgers, the rockmakers, the children of the earthmother, a mother who doesn't take easy to a quenching of the fire that she once sets burning in the hearts of her little ones.
And so came the summer night when Sal leaned against a monkey-puzzle tree. He stood there moaning and rubbing his chest, the pretty young man pounding his face deep into the hairs of Sal's loins, when the mosquitoes came to plunge their little strawed mouths into his breast. In the air before him the little flying bits of life swirled and drew together into a cloud darker than the nightdark beneath the monkey-puzzle tree. Sal stood, moaning and unaware. Dancing the air into a tight hot arrow the mosquitoes all at once dove into the hard rippling flesh mounded over his heart. He caught his breath, grew still as ice on the dark side of a moon. The young man on his knees thought Sal must be coming. But no, Sal was going. Going back to a time when magic burned and love still mattered. In the flicker of a spider's hinged eyelid Sal's cock went soft and spongy as he tapped the pretty young man on both his shoulders.
"I guess I'm not into this right now," Sal said softly. "Maybe some other time."
Rising from the ground, brushing at his knees, the young man darted a hot angry glance at Sal. He felt that he'd been used by a man who couldn't even come, and so he had. But deep in reproach he couldn't know that Sal's soft touch on his shoulders had said I'm sorry, words that Sal hadn't even thought to say in a long dark time. Perhaps in that heartbeat, if the young man had left off his reproach and his regretful leering at a softening cock and had looked instead into Sal's eyes, he would've seen a lonely man trying to find his way back to the heartlight. But the angry little cocksucker could only think of the lost cum, and so he lost his chance to open the doors of his heart to the mother living in the earth. He'd always been pretty, this young man, and so he had no memory of the light of magic.
But Sal did.
Though he'd burned out his heart in the building of a body now sheltering darkness, still he recalled the days when a kind-hearted teacher had taken him on walks and a pretty brown-haired girl had brushed the hair from his forehead. And so he walked from the courtyard into the bar and he strode by the admiring stares of all the pretty men and he walked and he still walked and he walked yet farther until he came to the edge of the city. There he sat on the side of a hill to look at the stars dancing above the holy head of a mesa.
"I'm twenty-four," he said aloud, "and I don't have enough body for one person." Rising from the hillside he set out to find the truth of the body.
He'd had too much and he'd had too little. Now he wanted to know what it meant to have just enough. Of course he didn't know that he really longed for the magic that once had lighted his heart. But the kind-hearted teacher knew, and the pretty brown-haired woman knew. One weekend shortly after the night of the mosquitoes Sal went home to visit his father and his mother. For no reason that he could name he gave up a lovely Saturday afternoon to visit the teacher and the brown-haired woman, married now and carrying a child. Both of them sensed the new way of his walking, and they smiled. Settling into their armchairs they made ready to await the time when he carried the heartlight once more to their loving eyes.
Setting out on his search for just enough, Sal didn't think of them. Wizards seldom think of the people who think most of them.
He began his search by insisting in a slow, steady, quite often dreary and silly way that people remember his beginnings in fat. At family gatherings he would drag out old photo albums and make everyone look again and again at the pictures of the little fat boy. In bars, as soon as he chose someone to share his bed, he would describe in dimpled detail the way fat used to roll and slump over his body. Most often people misunderstood him, thinking he paraded the earlier days of fat so they would exclaim, My, how hard you must have worked to become so beautiful! In truth, Sal hoped that by standing the little fat boy next to the lithe lovely young man, he and the lookers-on would somehow draw the truth from the two, a sort of psychological average. It didn't work. Of course it didn't work. People just exclaimed, "My, how hard you must have worked to become so beautiful!"
In time, though, the people grew tired of the steady thump of Sal's one-note song fat. Behind his back they began to mutter about his vanity, and Sal found it harder and harder to fill his bed with Albuquerque men. And so began a time of wandering. He traveled here and he traveled there, always seeking just enough, until he found himself still stumbling through darkness in a small apartment with a lost lover in Houston, Texas. Through months stretching into a year and more he tried to make the love affair work, but of course it didn't. He blamed it on his lover, calling him a deadbeat and a whore who had no ambition and no future.
Of course Sal spoke wrong. He spoke so very wrong. He spoke dead wrong. His lover walked the world only as another lost soul trying to make his way in a darkness where the paths changed night by night, a world where the ways of this kind of love had no words, not even among the men who loved men. And his lover did love Sal, in ways only the lover knew. He cried at night, alone in the distance, tried to find the way to be what Sal wanted, failed, filled himself with hard little knots of self-hatred, tried to untie them, longed to be rich and good and lovely for his love of Sal, fell so far short, gave in, and died at heart. Sal blamed his lover for the failure, never taking a heartbeat to see the wrested courage and the wild loveliness of his lover's wild try. Still lost to the light Sal had forgotten what it really meant to be the little fat boy who couldn't even make it to first base before getting thrown out.
And so came a night when Sal left to visit his cousin in Seattle, that faraway land of mist and shadow. In the heartbeat of his leaving he ordered his lover to move out. But the mother in the mist and the shadow walks in mysterious ways, and in all that northwest dampness she would at last make him rekindle the fire of his magic. Of course Sal didn't know what times she'd shaped for him so he came to Seattle worrying only that his lover might steal his stereo equipment or his Polo shirts. In the death of love he only worried about electronic connections and textile weaving. Unfelt by Sal's hardened heart the sea rolled and the earth shook and the sky shuddered, but a kind-hearted teacher and a pretty brown-haired woman smiled in their sleep because they knew that Sal had started the long rekindling of a magic fire.
While his lover cried over cardboard boxes Sal flew the skies until the silver bird left him on the shores of Puget Sound. Through the days and the nights of his visit he roamed the Seattle streets, looking for just enough under bushes and behind dumpsters, in bars and out of bars, sweaty with night sex and cool in the sun slipping above the eastern mountains much like those that shaded his lovely little out-of-the-way homeland. But nowhere could he find what he sought. Still lost deep in his builded body he looked everywhere on the outside, forgetting that the real fires begin in the heart, and then the heartlight shines out to light the ways of the world for little fat boys and lovers packing boxes in the brutal night.
But the mother in the earth always marks our ways, even when we go farthest astray.
Late one hot summer's evening Sal's wandering brought him tired and sweaty to a little park nestled beneath the northern legs of the Aurora Bridge leaping from the north shore of Lake Union to land on the slopes of Queen Anne Hill. Standing beneath the bridge Sal looked on the face of the troll.
Just where the bridge plunged into the northern earth a crazy funny sculptor had created a huge concrete troll crawling up from the earth's darknesses. Only the troll's head and shoulders stuck up from the ground but even then the statue stood as tall as three tall men, nearly as broad as the bridge itself. The troll hulked so large that he could grip the hapless carcass of a VW Bug in his right hand. The rough-poured concrete gave him an ancient rocky look, his hair a gnarled mass of frosted stone, his one open eye a hard glinting gem.
"Fat fucking son of a bitch," Sal muttered as he looked on the great lumpish mass. "Fucking ugly pile of shit. Goddam stupid-ass heap of wasted junk."
Unable to stand the ugly sight and his uglier muttering Sal turned to look southward through the legs of the bridge.
Grown all at once weary he went to sit against one of the great pillars holding the bridge's span. Looking southward he could just catch a glimpse of the darkgreen waters of Lake Union ringed by a tight cluster of the faraway downtown skyscrapers framed by two of the bridge's eastern legs. The long-traveled July sun had just slipped beneath the mountains to the west but the sky scattered its light in a pink cloud over the city. Caught in a shimmering swirl of pale blues and lavenders the buildings lost their heft to float against the deepening blue of the sky. They took on the look of a faery land, their flickering lights mirrored in the dark waters to make shimmered drapery hanging down to the roots of the world. The lazy gusting of the wind, the rare heat, the soft lights, the rumbling of the traffic overhead all lulled Sal toward the edges of sleep.
As he began to settle through spun layers of cotton-candy sleep he saw the downtown buildings across the lake all at once jostle and wave against the burnt-blue sky. Smiling at the funny little jumping mirage he let his head loll back against the pillar and he rested his sleepy eyes on the lovely builded span of the Aurora Bridge. Watching he saw it tremble in a way that lovers and bridges should never know, and the lazy little smile faltered from his face.
Quicker than thought time snapped in two. Space turned on itself. The world went deathly still. Still looking up he saw a lone concrete panel unhinge itself from the bottom of the bridge. He watched as it fluttered without sound through the air until it struck the ground in a soundless little puff of misted dust. Then a light keening sang through the air, a note so high it trembled just on the upper edge of his hearing. All at once the note snapped into stillness, a harp string breaking, and he felt more than heard a rumbling wave pass through the earth beneath him.
Then all sound and movement slammed back into the world. The legs of the bridge shuddered, wove cobra dances in the air, and huge panels of poured concrete pulled away from the hidden girders to crash around him. In that heartbeat he knew that God had come to fling the earth into the sea, to boil the oceans and break the skies, to bury his silly builded little body beneath the rubbled flesh of a body so much greater than his.
For the first time since that night when he'd stood naked and fat before the mirror in his mother's room, he prayed. His words came all at once, in the way of thoughts, an Ur-prayer cried aloud in a single piercing scream.
Oh my God. Oh my dear sweet God. Please know. Now I say it. I love the kind-hearted teacher, I love the lovely brown-haired woman. In this the time of my passing I love the sad-hearted man packing boxes in a faraway place, the lover I said would have to go. Oh God. Dear sweet God. The earth rises and the sky falls. Why didn't I love the people who loved me? Oh God. Oh Father in heaven. Once I was fat, a child fat in the ways of Your love. Oh my God, my Father, will you take me home?
And then the mother took him home.
Not angered by her poor child's cries to a father and a god who would never hear him she sent her rockmaker from the watered earth to take Sal home. The living loving skin of the earth jangled and jostled while great parts of it butted heads and sank and climbed and buckled. But the mother living in the earth never lost touch with her loneliest child, and on that day in Sal's life she sent a friend to shelter him.
Looking up through a rain of rubbled concrete and tumbling cars Sal saw the bridge buckle at its knees and start to settle toward him. In the next wild rustling heartbeat, when Sal thought that the bridge would crash down to bury him in tons of rubble, the ground under his feet roiled and surged. Jerking around he saw a wild raging man, a giant by any standards in this outer rim of the galaxy, shoot from the earth, rear into the shuddered wind, and take the bridge on his back. Raising his oaken arms to grip the edges of the span in his hands he carried it through a soft reach to rest it at last on the buckling earth to the left of Sal's heart. The rest of the great soaring span disappeared in a chaos of splintered concrete and spouting water. Throughout the wild carrying the troll caught two-ton concrete panels and laid them at his feet. Pushed beyond fear into wild-eyed wonder Sal saw the heated heaving wind fill and still fill and fill yet again the troll's mighty chest, and he saw the broken rocks tumbling in torrents down his buckled shoulders.
And then this titan, this man who swam the rivers deep in the earth when he wasn't watching over the little fat boys of the earth, did the strangest thing. Reaching down he cupped Sal's lovely body in the palm of his great left hand and he brought him whistling through space until Sal lay in the cool soft wind whispering from his silvered eyes. Sal felt that a great glad-handed god had plunged him into a sighted lake, and he wanted nothing more than to lie there and bathe through all the ages of the world. Long ago, though, and through his own work Sal had pulled himself from those waters, so the dirtsifter in the earth blew softly against his face to dry the water in his eyes. Then the troll spoke to him, nestled as he was in the palm of his hand.
"Recall it, child," he rumbled soft as faraway thunder in the mountains. "Think for a while on the little lovely shape that you brought too soon into the world."
So saying he reached out a lone finger and with the love of the pretty brown-haired woman he brushed back the hair from Sal's forehead and with the love of the kind-hearted teacher he once more rested him on the ground gone still now, its rolling and buckling come to an end. In a mighty heartbeat he drew the earth like a cloak about his shoulders and he sank into that deep faraway place that we all call home.
Sal rose from the ground to look with shattered eyes on the ruins of a misted and shadowed land, and he recalled the little bit of loveliness shaped too soon.
On that winter's day so long ago his kind-hearted teacher had taken him for a walk. Together they found an ugly little misshapen bundle hanging beneath a withered brown leaf. With a stick he poked at the lumpy little thing until the teacher took his hand and asked him to stop.
"It's only a broken cobweb," he muttered. "It's so ugly."
"Now, maybe," she smiled softly as she sat on a rock by the barren tree. "But it's a winter home filled with loveliness shaping itself for the spring. Come here. Sit by me. Let me tell you about it."
Then she told him of the ugly little fat worm that still dreamed of flying. With its covers drawn tight, she told him, it slept the long sleep so it could awaken in time to the loveliness it had always carried at the heart of its being.
"Remember that, Sal," she murmured. "All things grow lovely in their own time, in their own way. Only those who hurry to beauty never reach it."
Sal didn't hear her last words because his mind jumped and skittered and danced at the hot vision of an ugly little lumpy bundle holding a lovely thing. As they rose from the rock and gathered their things he snatched a quick heartbeat behind his teacher's back to rip the cocoon from the branch and stuff it into his pocket. With her back turned, her heart grown heavy at the long way of coming to know, the kind-hearted teacher let her sight sink into the kindness of her heart.
Thinking to shield it from the cold he kept the cocoon nestled all day in his warm pocket. Every now and then he would take it out and, holding it in his cupped hands, he would breathe his warm breath over it. That night he sealed it in an envelope then taped the envelope to his chest so the little sleeping thing could feel the warm beating of his heart all through the long night. He hardly slept at all, fearful that he might roll over in his sleep and crush it. Early the next morning he once more placed it in his hot pocket and left for school.
Walking along an asphalt road cracked in the cold he all at once felt a little wiggling against his leg. Shocked, frightened, thrilled, he pulled the cocoon from his pocket and held it cupped in his warm hands. Watching he felt more than saw the jiggle of the cocoon, and he knew that the heartbeat of awakened beauty had come to hand. Forgetting about school he knelt by the side of the road. Breathing his hot quick breath into his cupped hands he watched the growing jiggles of the little lovely creature fighting to get out. Picking softly at the head of the cocoon he helped it make a hole. Then it crawled out onto the palm of his hand.
He shrieked. He shook his hand as though someone had dropped a burning coal on it.
In the dirt and gravel at the edge of the asphalt road lay a little monster, a half-formed ugly thing struggling to unfold the sticky lumps of its wings. Tricked by an early false warmth the little creature had awakened long before time had shaped its loveliness in time. Hurled to the ground in the bitter cold air the half-made butterfly felt its wings dry and harden into crinkled knots. Unable to take the wind but still treasuring life the little bit of betrayed beauty tried to struggle over the rubbled ground. It made it a few feet along the road then a cold cat quick in hunger darted from the ditch and snapped it up. Dry-eyed, angry, Sal only watched.
That night he made himself strip to stand naked before the mirror in his mother's room.
Standing naked once more Sal looked over the rubbled wastes of a city. The Space Needle had knitted itself to the earth. The Columbia Center lay grovelling in the dirt. The whole span of the Aurora Bridge swam in the waters of the lake. Thousands of people lay dead in concrete and steel rubble. Soon the stench and the deathflies would hover over the city. He knew that he hadn't built this destruction but standing in his builded body next to a laid-aside bridge he knew that somehow he'd built the shambles of his heart. Falling to his knees he spoke to the mother in the earth.
I've walked in wrong ways. My heart aches for the men, for the women, for all the children who lie buried in this heap of blasted ground. When my heart was fat I had room for all, but grown lean and narrow my heart has room for no one, not even myself. I've stumbled, I've lost my way. Will no one come to light the darkness?
And so someone came, but not the one he hoped for. Rising from the riven ground he became the one who came. With a flicker of magic once more dancing in his heart he carried that light to the people bewildered by blind devastation. He pulled the moaning man from the concrete heaps, he lifted the child from the wooden ruins of the home, he brought water to cool the brow of the woman soon to die of a crushed chest. In his warm strong arms he raised a steel girder and tossed it aside to free the little girl trapped beneath it in a crumbled cave. Stooping on legs that could lift the world he rose up once more, carrying with him a side of the overturned car, and from it he took into his arms the terrified little boy spattered with his father's blood.
Throughout the carnage of the following days the city rocked and screamed and moaned in its burnt-red agony. But as they clawed at rubble to uncover their living and their dead the people began to whisper of a weird lovely young man, streaked with dirt and spattered with blood, wounded, pale, shattered in the eyes, who walked the wasteland without words, who stopped to help where he could, using his wild raging strength to heave aside the rubble, then passing on. Some said that he must be in shock. Others thought that he must be an angel. But in the dark damp chilly nights all felt the warmth of the heartlight shining from his eyes.
Days after the earthquake his cousin at last found Sal sitting on a snapped pylon, holding a dead baby boy to his breast, trying to nurse him back to life. His tears had washed clean paths through the dirt and blood smeared on his face, and new lights shone in his eyes. Far away in a small out-of-the-way town in New Mexico a kind-hearted teacher turned in her sleep and pulled the blankets tight about her shoulders. A pretty brown-haired woman rocked softly in a chair as she nursed the new-born child at her breast, and she cried.
Learning at last that a good man had lived through the earthquake, Sal's lover packed the rest of his boxes and left the house where he no longer had a welcome. Even in the strongest light of the mother there are some who still must walk in darkness. I know. Sal's lover drove the cool New Mexico night until he found the place where all the cast-off lovers make their bed together.