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30: Healing

Nigra.

Pec-Pec rarely heard the word—only among island Fungus People.

Stone-faced, Pec-Pec had gently lifted back the gauzy swath over Little Tom's crotch. Around the hospital bed were Big Tom, still looking blue-green from his voyage and clutching a fresh bourbon-on-ice, the beefy attendant Lily, and Gregory, looking a little worried but mostly vacant. Gregory had seemed to recognize Pec-Pec, but cowered when he first saw the Rafer. It was as if Gregory felt he had done something wrong—failed his mission, perhaps.

Pec-Pec had pointed out the row of festering puncture wounds along Little Tom's penis, saying, "Ah-ho. That's the root of it. The bite of a Rafer tosser disk."

And Big Tom had coughed, skeptical. "A tosser disk? Not in his willie." But silently the merchant remembered the story that Bark had told—about the young Rafer woman forced into the master's cabin of the Lucia. Sampling the merchandise. And smoking ganja while on command.

And then Lily harumphed her own doubt about the dark-skinned healer and waddled toward the door of the clinic room. To no one in particular she whined loudly, "Well, I'm glad we gots a doctor again—even if he is a nigra."

Pec-Pec watched her wide churning buttocks disappear into the chipped-linoleum hallway. Nigra. He made two mental notes: Someday, make a study of isolated island lexicography; and someday, make a study of the effects of in-breeding among the Fungus People.

He unbuttoned the backpack he had placed on the wheeled surgeon's table and began to empty its contents—pouches of fan-shaped mushrooms, acrid roots, shards of dried meat, and spices. Big Tom's eyes widened: The pack seemed to hold more than physically possible.

"Please draw a warm bath, Big Man," Pec-Pec murmured, taking advantage of his authority to give the island owner a new name. "And I must have a kettle of boiling water."

Finally, Pec-Pec told Big Tom to cut the restraints, and the delerious Little Tom began to scratch feverishly at his crotch again. Big Tom and Gregory grabbed him by the wrists and ankles and dragged him naked down the hall to the tub room. The young seaman's eyes were open, but his head lolled aimlessly and he stammered his way through a droning nonsense song as they shuffled down the linoleum: "La me treeeeee. . .in coffee leeeees. . .."

It was an ancient upright tub, the kind meant for muscle therapies. But being one of only three tubs on the island that was fed by running water, it was used most often for mere bathing. The steaming water thrumbled and swirled into the tub from a pair of jets. When they sat Little Tom on the submerged bench, he relaxed immediately and his singing subsided.

Pec-Pec entered the room sloshing a bowlful of his eclectic ingredients mixed with a couple of cups of boiled water. The green-black mixture produced the odor of dank mustard, fumes that brought tears to the eyes. Unceremoniously, Pec-Pec threw the entire bowl into Little Tom's bath, and the soothing water turned the color of ink.

The Rafer studied his patient's eyes one at a time, then grabbed him by the neck and dunked him under the water, holding him there firmly.

Big Tom sputtered, "He's not got the mind for holding his breath! He'll drown—let 'im up!"

Pec-Pec seemed surprised at the concern. "Hoo, this'll cure him though, Big Man. If it doesn't kill him."

Large dollops of air were breaking the surface of the water. Gregory wrung his hands and whimpered. Pec-Pec held his patient fast under the black water, and his eyes locked grimly onto Big Tom's.

"I been meaning to ask you," Pec-Pec said in stony politeness. "You remember a man come through these parts back a few months? Man name of Quince?"

Big Tom did remember the name—the doused red-legger—but he pretended to think, a puzzled expression on his face, his eyes never wandering from the sight of his son bubbling under the watery murk. "Ah. . .no. Can't recall."

"You sure? All his friends show up on the mainland, say they don't know where Quince gone to." Little Tom's head began to jerk involuntarily just under the surface. Pec-Pec continued, "I have to tell them that I found their friend Quince in a very bad way. That I have taken him to a place where I go, and they will not see him again. But he is happy, finally, and no more harm can come to him."

Big Tom felt as if the steaming bath were searing his own face. This Pec-Pec—a lunatic. Or? He pointed to his son weakly. "Ummm. . .."

Pec-Pec squinted darkly and pulled the young man up. Little Tom coughed, spewing the rancid liquid. "Ah," said Pec-Pec, seeming friendly again, "let him sit in there an hour—he will come around."

Big Tom gently touched his son's face. "His skin," the merchant said. "It's been stained, uh, rather dark." Little Tom slumped against the wall of the tub, mouth agog, still barely conscious.

"Oh, that. It will wear away, I think. Maybe. Few months, a year."

"A year! Wait. . .."

"But for now," said Pec-Pec, smiling widely, "a nigra!"

 

Gregory slept with his head pillowed against his two hands folded together. Pec-Pec, sitting cross-legged on the foot of the bed, marveled at the childlike face, the lips pursed, his once-worried eyes finally at ease for the evening.

Pec-Pec cradled a fish bowl in his lap. Inside, a delicate dragon fish the size of his index finger swished lazily. He dipped in and took the fish in his palms gently, murmuring, "Dragon fish, will you come with me?"

He sucked the fish into his mouth, and the coppery taste seemed to spread instantly—down his throat, out to his ears and enveloping his eyes. Pec-Pec swallowed, and his vision dimmed. He leaned out of his body and hovered over Gregory's face. The Rafer was now a spectre, just a point of consciousness in the air, no longer having any weight or size.

He felt himself buffeted by the ebb and flow of Gregory's breath. After twirling for a moment around the angelic face, Pec-Pec rode a narrow torrent of wind into his left nostril.

Inside Gregory's head, Pec-Pec's apprehension grew. He had done this only once before—into the mind of a Government inspector—and the memory images he had found there so enraged the Rafer that he tore the man's mind apart. It was not the act of a Healer.

This would be different, he hoped. Pec-Pec found a large book, a sopping wet volume made up of flimsy pages—Gregory's collective memory. Most of the pages were horribly torn, as if a machete had hacked through the book twice. Dozens of scraps of paper swirled around the chamber, and Pec-Pec would have to return them to their proper spots in the book somehow.

He caught one shred of paper in his cupped hands, the way a man might snatch a butterfly, then flipped through the hundreds of pages until he found the one torn in precisely that shape. He fitted the page together, ran his fingers along the rend, and the page was whole again. The page had been blank, but slowly a picture appeared out of Gregory's boyhood: a grassy hill topped by a spinning windmill.

Pec-Pec sighed as he surveyed the myriad scraps wafting about him. It reminded him of one of the paperweights the Fungus People make—the kind with the snow glittering about.

Hoo. This was going to take hours.

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Framed