The Entropy of Bones Read online

  “You ok?” Genuine concern fell from his lips.

  Yeah. Fou-Fou can’t talk anymore but I’m fine. Nordeen did some weird thing to me, but I stopped him and Poppy put him back on leash. Like I said, scrap.

  “So you’re why Fou-Fou can’t talk.” A.C. said like it explained something. “You know the fight is tomorrow, right?”

  . . . Not nearly enough time to teach me a whole new technique. I cut him off, knowing where he was heading way in advance.

  “You don’t have to know all two hundred and ten katas and eighty-nine blows to be effective, Chabi. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s an extension of yourself, a combination of the old you with what’s available in that moment.”

  You’ve got two hours to show me something useful. Then I’m eating food with my mom and getting some kind of sleep. I jumped up from the bed. I hated how easy it was to make him happy.

  “Your whole technique is centered on striking, punching the movement of your energy into your enemies. Wind taps into the entirety of movement. All of it. Where there is movement there is wind. A strike ends movement or reverses it, in order to retain your fighting stance. Wind strives to constantly keep motion going. Hit me,” he told me as we stood on deck after I’d changed into more comfortable fighting gear.

  It was like I was waiting for it. I shot a high kick like a bullet. But as soon as I hit maximum extension, A.C.’s hand was there, holding my leg up and extended.

  “Now if I was in full combat mode I’d be pushing up and sweeping your other foot at the same time to keep the motion going, understand?” I nodded but only after he’d let my foot go. The first twenty minutes felt like my first year with Narayana. I copied everything I saw A.C. do. And I failed at all of it. A.C. didn’t get as frustrated as I did. He just kept laughing with his eyes. When I ended up on my ass for the tenth time, he finally had to say something.

  “I know you can murder the hell out of whatever is in front of you. But how about just trying to move it?” he said, offering me a hand up.

  All you’re doing is moving, I said, flipping up from my back, refusing his hand. How does that put the hurt on folks?

  “It’s not always about you hurting them. Sometimes it’s about letting them hurt themselves.” He started his weird kata. I observed, not following literally or figuratively. I barked at him again.

  I don’t understand. Like even that kata there. There’s no start, no stop. You just keep twirling, moving. I don’t even see any clear blows in it. Just places where you throw your arms or legs up or down. It’s like you’re making it up as you go along.

  “That’s ’cause I am.” He smiled, jumping from the deck to halfway up the mast and back to the deck behind me in under a second. The wind from all around me whipped up so hard the Mansai began to rock. “Look, I can teach you dance steps or I can teach you the spirit of the dance. What do you think is more important?”

  I’m not trying to dance, A.C.! I snapped, not bothering to turn around. I’m trying to fight. I’m trying to survive.

  “Sometimes in order to survive you’ve got to dance,” the Wind Boy said, coming up behind me. “You try to murder everything that stands in front of you. That’s a lot of expended energy. Granted, you’ve got heat to spare, but sometimes if you go with the motion of the world, you make your opponent’s energy work against them.”

  I turned on him quick, expecting him to be a foot and a half behind me. Instead he was up close. I was about to find the entropy of his bones but I stuttered, unnerved by his proximity, his coolness, and his smile. He made me feel like a novice. Like my first day on the Mansai and Narayana getting frustrated with teaching me how to breathe while I move.

  “I try to find the flexibility of bones. The porous nature of them. It’s easier than their entropy. Strike me,” he dared. His face was too close for a fist or a foot so I side-angled a head butt. I aimed for his chest but he twisted my target completely while shooting a thumb to the base of my neck so precisely that my neck extended against my will. The move threw me off balance and I began to fall. A.C. telegraphed my compensation and scooted under me, trapping my bracing hand behind my back as he sat with me. Again I was on the deck. Only this time, A.C. was under me.

  “You could have kicked my shin, chopped my side with your elbow, even gone in for a kiss . . .” He started.

  Why the hell would I kiss you?

  “ . . . But instead you went all out. With fury and anger. And absolutely no balance. When it comes to fire and rage, you are one of the best, Chabi. But if you’re going to get through the Vish Kanya, you’re going to need some of the inner art, the understanding of movement and balance.” I threw all my weight into A.C.’s chest and felt him push back. I curled my stomach muscles and legs while reaching back with my free arm. Somehow I managed a perfect one-handed handstand on his shoulder. When A.C. stood, I flipped off him and landed on my feet.

  “Beautiful!” he congratulated the move. When I smiled he said, “That too. You’re always so serious when you fight. There’s no joy in it. No freedom of movement or thought. You’ve got to be spontaneous. Like ODB . . .”

  Old Dirty Bastard? I asked.

  “Yeah, you know, no father to his style. It’s not just pure fighting. It’s also like fucking.” He grinned.

  Wouldn’t know anything about that, I confessed, then immediately felt sheepish.

  “Ah so,” he said without judgment and sounding like an old Chinese man. “Well, that explains a lot.”

  Fuck you, I said lightly and turned to go downstairs. A.C. made a vault over my head and landed in front of me. In his form I began to see the joy in his movement. It started making sense. Given what he could do, what I could do, why wouldn’t you flip jump, leap around the world?

  “If you want.” He smiled at me. “But seriously, I get why it’s been hard for you to get where I’m coming from. The fight is the only way you’ve ever interacted with other bodies, other energies. I’m speaking a foreign language to you.”

  In a fucked-up accent as well, I said, trying to sidestep him. A.C. threw his body in the air and let the wind keep him aloft so it looked like he was lying on an invisible bed.

  “But you do dance. I see that in you. You understand rhythm.” I stopped moving, letting him know he looked ridiculous. “The rhythm will save you, Chabi. Rely on your tempo. See the tempo of others. You don’t always have to interrupt that vibe. Sometimes you can participate in it. Those seeking combat will get unnerved, then you can contribute your fire. Fire isn’t the opposite of wind. Added together they make a firestorm, understand?”

  No, I said, pushing on his head, which righted him to a standing position.

  “Yes, you do,” the Wind Boy smiled.

  Maybe. He stood on his legs and moved closer to me. His breath smelled like the sea. Without his jacket, he seemed more substantial, this man/boy I’d been seeing out of the corner of my eye for years. The guns that hung from his hip showed off his swagger. The sword almost permanently attached to his back accented a posture incapable of bending. I couldn’t help but compare him to Narayana. But where Narayana was rigid, he was loose. Where Narayana burned, A.C. cooled and soothed. It was tempting to think of him as weak, but the reality was that he was more tantalizing than anything else. So inviting I would have fallen into him, on him, through him, had it not been for Mom showing up at that moment.

  “Girl!” It was more the surprise of her voice coming through than the tone that made me jump back from A.C. For his part, he receded into the blind spot that he lived in.

  Yeah, Mom? I went over to the bow to see her in her nightclothes.

  “Roderick needs your help. I told you to call on them,” she said, trying not to sound pissed. I could hear her Oakland accent coming through. It only did that when she was pissed or scared.

  Been busy, Mom. What’s the deal?

  “Roderick’s in a panic talking about how Dale is about to make some big noise at your work. Says he’s got explosi
ves and the like. Says he’s talking about getting revenge for his nephew.” What was I going to say? I had the same plan as him sans explosives. The man had more of a right to the plot than I did. But I knew Poppy and Rice. At least, I knew them more than Dale did. As competent as he was, they’d eat him alive. It took me a few seconds but I knew I had to stop him. Apparently so did Mom.

  “How quick can you make it up there?” Mom demanded.

  “Quicker than you think,” A.C. answered.

  Chapter Fourteen: A Return to Gringo’s Last Chance

  A.C.’s power worked like his martial art. He didn’t generate movement but he added to it. All I had to do was start running and he added the power of the wind to my effort. A run that took hours ended up only taking fifteen minutes. A.C. was with me the whole way. Not in body, but in sentiment, feeling. In the wind, I felt his laughter and lightness. He was all around me and nowhere to be seen until I slowed down by the ranch, then suddenly, or rather not suddenly, as though he’d always been there, A.C. was right by my side, smiling.

  I walked into the main house to see Roderick loading an arsenal into a black duffle bag in the middle of the living room. I made sure I had cover before I called out. Good move, as the big man looked up fierce and quick. When he saw it was me, he went back to loading.

  “Hey, girl,” he said pleasantly but briefly.

  Roderick, I said closing the distance between us slowly.

  “What’s up, Roderick?” A.C. said and I was shocked by his voice.

  “Hey, A.C.,” he said after studying A.C.’s face for half a second. Then he went back to loading the guns.

  “Quick question, man,” A.C. said casually, motioning for me to slow down and be quiet. “Where’s your brother?”

  “Dumbass is out by Lamb’s Tears putting together some homemade shit he learned to make over in some war-torn land. Says it’s time for those that fucked with our family to get fucked with,” the big man recited almost as though he were in a trance.

  “And you are . . . ?” A.C. continued.

  “Well, I’ll be damned if he thinks he’s going in without backup. He’s running on more anger than common sense but he’s committed. You know what he’s like, A.C.,” Roderick said and kept loading his weapons.

  “I can’t tell him to stop,” A.C. finally said to me. “But you can.”

  I knew what he meant. I summoned the inner Voice and told Roderick to look at me.

  “Roderick. Go make yourself some tea. Stow the guns. Get some sleep.” I felt him resisting so I added, “Your brother won’t go. I promise.”

  When he went to the kitchen, I turned to A.C. What the hell was all that? I asked him.

  “I’m on the fringes of consciousness for most people. Talking to me is like talking to yourself. People forget me almost as soon as they finish speaking. You can get lots of info that way.” I nodded. “I’ll keep an eye on him. Go get Dale.”

  Five minutes later I was at the shed. The weed plants were flowering. The nymph poo was growing everywhere, its scent daring me to take a nap. Everything the family had created was going to seed. But my focus was on Dale. I knocked on the door gently, being sure to let him know it was me with my Voice soon after. He told me to come in. Like his brother, he was prepping a mid-sized duffle bag. But he had small black vessels he was filling with two liquids, one green, the other clear. A thin line connected both of the containers to a sloped button. Before putting them in the bag, he pressed some lever on the top of the contraption hard.

  “Hey, girl,” he said coldly. He’d never been that cold to me in my life.

  Dale. Your brother called me . . .

  “Good. I’ll need your help getting in,” he said, offering me a .45, holding the barrel. “I know guns aren’t your style. But we don’t know what we’re facing in there, so . . .”

  No offense, but this ain’t the move. If his eyes could have killed me, they would have. Instead he just put the gun down and went back to filling up his weird cartridges with liquid.

  “I should wait, then? Until what? Bitch already took my nephew. Now she wants the farm? I should wait until she has her hands around my throat? Fuck that!” he said coolly, calmly.

  I don’t understand . . . I started.

  “She got Matt to sign over his share of the farm to her. I don’t even know this bitch! I’ve never met her. None of us have. And now she’s moving in on us. Well, I don’t know you, Ms. Poppy, but you don’t know who the fuck I am, either.”

  I didn’t know, I whispered.

  “No, you didn’t. You didn’t know he was staying in the same place you were. You didn’t know he was in love with her. You didn’t know he was thinking about suicide. There’s a lot you didn’t know. Here’s my question: how could you be so close to everything and not know anything?” He was shouting. I started crying when I tried to speak.

  I stood still, unmoving, trying to find my balance, my answer for him. I couldn’t. Not until he was fully loaded and had to push by me.

  “We going to have a problem here, Chabi?” he asked. I was fortunate. Conflict is something I always know how to respond to.

  Only if you try and walk out of here with those explosives, I said calmly, not bothering to wipe the tears from my face. He stood facing the door not looking at me. I looked into the darkness of what was once Matt’s plant playland, both of us registering each other out the corner of our eyes.

  I must seem like an ungrateful . . . I left the funeral and . . . I refused to let myself cry more as he started. I could force you, Dale. Fucking A, you know I could. But I’m asking you. Fuck it, I’m begging you. Let me handle this. I swear to you, on my mother, that bitch will never own a pebble of this land and they will all pay for the suffering they’ve caused. That’s my word.

  “Contract said she’s making a survey of the land next week,” Dale said stoically.

  Doubt she’ll make it to the weekend.

  “On your word?”

  On my everything, I say, eye-locking him. Slowly, he put the bag down. I turned to leave but before I hit the door I felt possessed to speak again.

  It may not seem like it, and I know I didn’t deserve it, but I appreciate the trust and the friendship your family has always shown me. I’ve never had lots of friends. I’m glad to count you among them.

  Outside the barn, A.C. sat on top of the mystery rock smoking his strange weed again. The scent lingered with the nymph poo and the weed. The half moon caught the mystery man in his best light.

  You ready? I asked him.

  “I was born ready. Question is, are you?” he asked back, opening his eyes slowly.

  Enough with the challenges for today, ok? I half begged. I just need some peace. Just a little before tomorrow night. He gently stepped off the rock, almost floating down to my side. I let his strong and narrow fingers push casually into my neck and felt a measurable amount of my tension get carried off into the wind.

  “When I have too much of it all, I like to find a nice quiet spot like this and find my bliss.” He smiled smoking his weird joint. When I started singing “Pusherman,” he came out and laughed. “Girl, your voice has so much power. Just remember, this place, this smoke is here for you.”

  Going up to the farm, it felt like I was running at the speed of the wind. Heading back to Sausalito, I was carried in the air by the wind. I didn’t even give the conceit of pedaling my legs. I let A.C. do all the heavy lifting. If it was a bother for him, I wouldn’t have known it. He carried me high above sight, leaving me with the divided moon as my only company. Of course I felt him around me, his smile, his casual courage keeping me up.

  That night, just as I was about to crawl into bed, the Wind Boy showed up in the walkway to the lower deck, looking sheepish. I knew what he was thinking and had to stifle a laugh. Then, for reasons I can’t figure, I blushed.

  “I was thinking . . .” he started.

  No, I said plainly.

  “But, it’s just that it might give you a better sense of ho
w to . . .”

  Dude, that is the worst pick-up line ever. Like ever, I said, threatening to get loud. Besides every fighter on the planet knows you don’t get down right before a fight. Saps your energy.

  “Ok, you’re right. I see your point. I’m sorry. I was just trying to help. I wasn’t trying to, I mean it wasn’t just because I wanted to . . .” When his form started getting hazy I realized I didn’t want him to leave.

  Wait. He blinked back into full existence. If you want . . . I want you to crash out with me tonight. Just sleeping. But if you want, you can.

  He jumped in the bed like a kid, like it was a sleepover. Not like a lover. That night the wind, warm and comforting, nuzzled against my neck, held my hand, caressed my back, and let me put my guard down for the first time in years.

  I woke up early. The fights wouldn’t start until midnight but I couldn’t sleep. I’d never been nervous for a fight before. Surprising as it was to see A.C. snoring in my bed in full human form as I woke up, I couldn’t stay there next to him. I had to move.

  I did what I knew, what Narayana taught me. Despite the curse of it, it was my curse. It was all I still had of the man who put me on this path. I’d spent my whole life mastering the Downward Rooster block, Red Salamander strikes, Poor Dragon’s Repose, the Ascendant Phoenix cry, Lion’s Blighted bite, and seventy-two other strikes, blocks, counters, and techniques. And I was their master. Now that I knew to feel for it, the heat of the Vish Kanya mark on my back was white hot against the cold morning air.

  I tried what A.C. taught me. But before I started, I put an old mix from the Little Kid on my headphones to get into the jungle vibe. With no skeleton in front of me, I practiced the entropy of bones. It had been a pinnacle for me. It was strong enough to take out Samovar. But now A.C. was saying it wouldn’t be enough in the long run. And I only had hours to improve. I took to studying.