Read Online Time Dancers by Steve Cash - Free Book Online Page B

opposite sides of the trail at the head of the pass were two men about the same age. Physically, there seemed to be no difference between them, except that one was wearing a beret and the other was not. Both claimed to know the true and only safe way through the pass. The chieftain knew if he chose the wrong guide, his mission would certainly fail and he would likely be robbed, beaten, or killed. Not a single soul from his tribe would ever learn his fate. To the chieftain, there was but one choice. Laughing out loud, and without hesitation, he chose the man in the beret to be his guide. Why? Simply because a man with a beret will always have more to offer than a man without. If the “truth” is unknowable, he believed, then one should enjoy the journey, regardless of the outcome.
    “What became of the chieftain?” I asked.
    The man on the train turned his head toward the window and gazed out at the passing fields and farms. “No one knows,” he said quietly.
    R ay Ytuarte is a survivor. He never thinks of his present situation as dire, only urgent. That is the difference between those who go under in a flood of circumstance and those who find their way to shore, any shore, and survive. True survivors never look back, except to remember what not to do again, and they rarely look ahead because the future is merely a dream, a trick of the mind. They exist squarely in the present, usually with good humor and always with no illusions. And they make excellent friends.
    I overheard a woman say once: “Friendship is the work of childhood.” I suppose that’s about as true a thing as anything there is. In Africa I had witnessed how effortless that work becomes, in the heart, in the moment when Ray saved my life, putting his own life in harm’s way without a thought and delighting in it.
    Ray and I embraced each other while the crowd was still standing and marveling at the distance of Babe Ruth’s grand slam.
    “Damn, Z,” Ray said, “are you tryin’ to break my ribs?”
    I laughed and let go of him, but I could easily have broken something without much effort. It felt that good to see him in flesh and blood. Opari was staring at both of us. So were Carolina and Jack.
    It was because the Meq remain unmarked, or changed in any way, that it was impossible to tell what Ray had been through. He looked the same. I wanted to know everything that had happened to him since Africa. I wanted to know right there in Sportsman’s Park, but I also knew I would have to wait.
    Carolina touched Ray’s shoulder and he looked up at her. “Good to see you, Ray,” she said, “we’ve missed you terribly.”
    “It’s good to be back,” Ray said. “It surely is.”
    I started to introduce Opari when Jack suddenly pulled on my sleeve. “How many more are there, Z?”
    “More what, Jack?”
    He hesitated, glanced at his mother, and turned back to me. “Well, you know, Z…how many more like you?”
    Carolina seemed embarrassed, then looked at me and shrugged. Questions about the Meq almost never surfaced when we were together. I assumed we were simply a fact of life. I didn’t quite know what to say.
    Then with a grin and a mysterious wink in my direction, Ray answered, “More than you think, kid…more than you think.”
    As I introduced Ray to Jack, and finally to Opari, I heard the words being exchanged between them and watched their faces laughing and smiling, but I seemed to be somewhere else. I had an odd feeling, a dreamlike feeling I had experienced once before when Solomon reappeared after years of absence. I even heard the sound of a dog barking in the distance. Was it really Ray standing next to me speaking? I didn’t fully realize until that moment how much I had truly missed my old friend.
    “Why now, Ray? Why here?” I asked him.
    “Well…‘here’ because I stopped off at Carolina’s first. I found out a few things from Owen, you know, about everything from Eder and Nicholas to that nasty business down at the