“I can’t believe this guy!” David said, yanking out a chair to sit next to Walter, who was sharing his table with a Checkers game and an open deck of cards.
Walter stared at a pond through a far window, where a duck with an emerald head bobbed for food, probably wondering how it ended up in such a pathetic thimble of water. An American Dogwood’s white and bubble gum pink blossoms stood out against a freshly cut lawn.
“Always bobbing for food,” Walter whispered.
“Yeah, sure, Walter. Want to play cards or something?”
“What’s the problem?” Walter said, bringing his attention to David across the table.
“Ric’s a nasty pile, that’s all. He keeps screwing with my meds—trying to make me look bad. I gotta get this guy fired, so he’s out of my life.”
“Oh.” Walter’s eyes wandered past David’s green scrubs to the nurse’s station as he considered the bitter rivalries of his lives through the centuries—class struggles in nineteenth-century London, title feuds in pre-war Japan, and most recently, subterfuge for strip malls here in twenty-first-century America.
“I remember a competition I was in once,” Walter said.
David chuckled, skeptical and patronizing. “Sure, why don’t you tell me about it, Walter.”
“I can if you’d like.”
“Why not? Let me get a bar from the machine first. Then you tell me about it, big guy.”
Walter felt his body creak like an old car door as he adjusted in his seat. His lemon ginger tea had long since gone tepid.
“I was born into the Pochteca class. My name was Iuitl—it meant feather.”
David opened his energy bar, tore off a bite, and cracked a Mountain Dew. “’s that right?”
Walter couldn’t help but crack a sly smile—this guy thought he was about to hear about a grandkid’s birthday.
“We were traveling merchants, and I was an assistant to our head merchant, Xochipilli. He sat in his quarters all day, separate from the rest of Tenochtitlan, collecting money, taking women, and counting our inventory. My group was in charge of bringing Quetzal feathers along with jade, turquoise, and produce to the capital.”
“I thought you were in real estate before you came to Sunrise,” David said, taking a drink, distracted by another nurse across the room. He smiled and gave her a wave.
A damp light filled the room, mixing slowly with the jazz saxophone in the background, hovering above the burgundy carpet. A man with lengthy straw hair hanging off the sides of his bald head pushed his walker along, telling a friend that he had to be done with dinner by six for his show.
“You had to be born into the guild. We were far above commoners—just below the noble class. The heart of Tenochtitlan! We could do as we pleased as long as we delivered our share of the goods. And there was this other young man, Nochtli…”
Walter’s head twanged back and forth as the gears ground his memories into words.
“We were raised together, but we didn’t get along. He always thought he could treat me however he wanted because he was bigger, and I thought he had the brain of a cockroach. As young adults, he became jealous of my success. One day, in our guild’s quarters, he dropped a clay brick on me from above, so I stabbed him in the foot.”
“Ha!” David let out a wide laugh. “Are you serious?”
“Oh yes. We would have been very happy if the other had just dropped dead. One day, Nochtli returned from his travels, backpack full and body tired. He entered the market, and there were people everywhere—talking, trading avocadoes, and selling pottery, and he stopped to eat. He put down his bundle of Quetzal feathers. Do you know what a Quetzal is?”
“Can’t say I do,” David said, silently offering a chair to a woman in a lavender dress and pearls, joining the conversation.
“They’re a sight to behold. Quetzals are small birds from the forests of Mexico with brilliant turquoise feathers and long, mysterious tales. Their feathers were as valuable as diamonds. We would bring them back to supply Motecuzoma and the nobles with headdresses and clothing. And what do you think happened when Nochtli put his feathers down?”
David shrugged.
“They were stolen, of course!” Walter howled. “We all knew that anything brought back to Tenochtitlan had to be stored in our guild’s quarters, but Nochtli was fat and lazy—the ignorant slug that he was. He thought the rules didn’t apply to him. Then he came back, frantic and incoherent. ‘Oh, it was you, it was you. You scheming little xaltozan!’ He yelled outside my house that day, demanding his shipment back and threatening to murder me in my sleep. But the people in our guild knew Nochtli, just like I did. He’d scream and shout but never follow through; they knew he couldn’t be trusted. So, I never came out, and he eventually left—no one thought anything of it.”
Walter paused to let David catch up.
“So, you were a feather merchant? I thought you were from Cleveland?”
“Many lifetimes ago.”
“Oh.” Confused, David took one of the checker pieces and began rolling it around in his hand.
Walter could tell his nurse had become uncomfortable at how lucid the story’s details sounded. Reflecting across the expansive scope of his lives, Walter saw something that linked each one, a universal truth: blind, clawing competition, unchecked hostility—these were the seeds of self-destruction. Walter gazed down at his shoes in soft regret, then began again.
“We went before the head merchant the next week. Nochtli told him about the enormous feather shipment he brought back from the villages outside Tlacopan. He pleaded with Xochipilli, telling him how efficient his routes were and how much the villages respected him, and he accused me of stealing his entire shipment, an offense typically punishable by death. Xochipilli was skeptical, though. I told him Nochtli was lying, that I had nothing to do with it. At the same time, he had to pay tribute to the emperor, so he punished us both. The debt, he said, was to be paid back in the form of increased shipments over the next year in addition to a bigger tribute for himself and the emperor. I was furious.”
“But you were stuck, right? You needed to pay, or this Zochi—whatever his name was would kill you.” David said.
“Well, yes, of course, but that wasn’t going to stop me. Leaving the head merchant’s that day, I remember Nochtli smiling at me like a Milk snake. I went home and immediately began planning my retaliation. I knew Nochtli’s routes, his schedules, and the different goods he brought back to the capital. He acquired Quetzals from the north and then produce—beans and squash from Tlaxcala in the south. I knew Nochtli had not traveled to Tlaxcala for some time, and now, to make up for his Quetzal loss, he wouldn’t be able to go there right away because he needed more feathers from the North. So, I decided that night to sabotage his produce route.”
David gave a low whistle and blew back in his chair, shocked.
“You have to understand that our job was critical. We distributed everything across the empire. We ran the central market in Tenochtitlan, and Nochtli and I knew the consequences for disrupting the system. Even still, I didn’t care—I was consumed with anger.
So I traveled to Tlaxcala, disguised in a headdress I had borrowed from a fellow merchant. I wore my hair back to make it look short underneath and spoke in a dialect that the merchant wouldn’t understand. Once I got there, I told him that I had taken over for Nochtli and that he needed to give his goods to me. I let him know that the emperor had banished Nochtli to a lower class due to the feather incident and that I would now be his contact with the capital. If he wanted to continue delivering goods to the central market and receive them from Tenochtitlan, he would need to do business with me. He didn’t care as long as the business kept coming. And as I predicted, Nochtli went to Tlaxcala two months later only to be told they had already supplied everything they had to the capital. There was nothing left.”
“Walter, I knew there was more to you than a good checkers game,” A man wearing a red plaid shirt and a USS Alaska hat said from the outer ring of the small circle that had formed.
“People forget,” Walter addressed the group. “Life has always been the same—as far back as you can count, but the food has gotten much better.”
The woman in pearls let out a snort.
“So, what happened?” David said.
“Eventually, Nochtli returned from Tlaxcala with nothing—they had nothing to give him. And, of course, he suspected me. He showed up while I was bathing in our sauna. There was screaming from the street, and I came out to greet him, somehow knowing that this time would be different. I brought a cooking knife and approached slowly. ‘You filthy dirt groveler,’ he hissed. He was crouched and poised to fight, holding his axe. We circled each other, flinging accusations and threats, until eventually, he lunged at me.
Now, I should tell you that our group was also trained in battle. We would meet raiders or thieves on our routes, and we needed to be prepared. So, I knew how to fight. But Nochtli was still more physical and stronger, and I knew it. Because of this, I immediately tried to neutralize him. He lunged and I dodged, and he fell into a tower of clay pots. Killing him would only have me punished, so I let him get up and dust off the broken pieces. I put down my knife and told him I didn’t know what he was talking about, that he had eaten too much Teonanacatl. He charged me again, and I blocked his attack with a pot-stirring post near the front door, getting him to drop his axe. After this, we rolled around, each landing several punches until two older guildmembers pulled us off each other.”
“This guy sounds crazy,” David said.
“He was, we were. But you can’t see how crazy your actions are if you’re busy carrying them out.” Walter said, eyes wide, focused and buzzing.
Across the room, two other nurses looked up from their station, curious about what was happening with the crowd gathered around the table, wondering if they should break it up.
“So, what’d you do after the fight?” David pressed.
“I prepared. I knew Nochtli would not let my offense slide—he knew I was behind the missing goods from Tlaxcala. He wouldn’t come to fight me again because as much as Xochipilli hated losing shipments and his tribute, he hated losing people even more because it meant more work and fewer goods for him. So, I thought long and hard about how to keep Nochtli away, to make sure that his next move wouldn’t make me a slave or kill me. This was when I got the idea to let Nochtli defeat himself.”
The crowd around the table leaned in. Walter’s back straightened; he could feel the tired muscles in his face electrify. He understood now—this was the story of each of his lives.
“Since we were trained to travel and fight, many guild members were also spies. I knew one man who reported back to Motecuzoma himself about affairs of the outlying towns and cities—if they were unhappy with tributes and such. So, I found a spy within the guild that would help me get leverage over Nochtli the next time he came to confront me, and there would surely be a next time. Within days, I found a man, Cipactli, close to my home who kept tabs on a group of middle merchants elsewhere in Tenochtitlan. I told him about my predicament, mentioning I was willing to pay a handsome price for his services, and he agreed.
Months went by. I received reports now and then about Nochtli’s dealings: the feather loads or the prices he was getting for his squash—nothing all that important. But I never became complacent, I knew Nochtli would not forget, and I couldn’t either. I went to bed each night, understanding that I might have to wake up with the stars and run. Sure enough, one night, a knock came on the clay wall outside my room.”
“ ’I think I have something,’ Cipactli said to me, looking around the group of houses for prying eyes.”
“What has he done?” I asked.
“At the market today, I overheard Nochtli bragging to another merchant—he told him that he plans to steal from someone powerful.”
I remember hearing the coyotes howling in the distance that night, encouraging me to sing back.
“He believes he can frame me,” I said into our floating city.
“I believe so,” Cipactli said.
“I had to think quickly. Cipactli looked over his shoulder, growing more impatient every second. He wasn’t going to wait all night. So, I made an agreement under the moonlight to keep Cipactli in my service. I told him that I needed to know the exact moment when Nochtli was about to steal from the head merchant. Cipactli doubled my rate and agreed.
After this meeting, I became consumed by thoughts of defeating Nochtli. I dreamed of the moment he would accuse me of stealing, only to find out the evidence pointed toward him. You have to understand, I didn’t just want to beat him; I wanted him to suffer, so once and for all, our rivalry would be finished.”
“But if the head merchant found out what you were doing, he’d kill you?” David said.
“Of course,” Walter said with a distant look of regret.
“As the days passed, I learned that Nochtli’s plan was what I expected. He planned to steal a load of Quetzal feathers from Xochipilli and plant them somewhere in my stock. Sure enough, another knock came weeks later, and it was Cipactli telling me that Nochtli was moving. I sprung out of bed and ran to the head merchant’s house to hide and wait for the moment Nochtli came. He took several bundles of feathers—what would today be worth millions—and walked away toward the guild’s training facility with them. He was going to plant the feathers in my station! I followed him behind houses, over stone paths, and through the channels made by our cultivated islands of the capital. When he placed the feathers at my station, he looked around as if he could feel me watching him, but he didn’t see me. As soon as he left, I grabbed the exquisite load and left to the outskirts of the city.”
“Not bad,” David smiled, finishing his drink, seeing the details of Walter’s plan.
“Yes, ha, not bad.” Walter gave a tragic laugh, then continued. “I took the feathers to a spot where I used to play as a child, and I dug a small hole and hid them under a pile of branches.”
Walter stared at a painting of a serene lake surrounded by mountains, wondering if this moment of clarity would follow him to his next life or if he would finally be allowed to perish.
“So, you got away with it? You got rich?” David said.
“Not exactly. Now, after many lifetimes, I think I’ve finally learned. In the life I’m telling you about, and many others since, I’ve been greedy, arrogant, and blinded by rivalries. Nothing could ever happen to me, or so I believed. I’ve been through empires, monarchs, wars, and pandemics. And I never really understood why I kept coming back to life. Why can’t I just stay dead, I thought. This might be it—you see. Yes, yes, I think it is!”
Relief flashed across Walter’s cheeks as he reclined and chuckled lightly.
“We all continue to live until we understand something important about the world, something universal. In my case, it is the true consequence of anger. Not understanding this has lengthened my stay here in this beautiful horror show. My feud with Nochtli was just the beginning.”
“Huh,” David said.
“To answer your question, though, I didn’t get rich. Just as I thought, Nochtli came before the head merchant the next day and accused me of stealing the feathers. He took Xochipilli to my station, but of course, he found nothing. We fought in front of the head merchant, yelling and screaming, accusing each other of deception and lies. Eventually, we were allowed to leave—Xochipilli sent us off so he could consider our punishment. Immediately after this, Cipactli went to Xochipilli and told him everything: how I followed Nochtli, then went to the tree outside of the capital and hid the feathers for myself. The next day, Xochipilli sentenced both of us to have our throats cut. This was my first life.”
Walter surveyed the blank stares and then looked across the table. He could tell by the way David was turning the checker in his hand that he had passed the story off as the incoherent ramblings of a resident and was still distracted by his own obsessive anger.
“At least Nochtli got what was coming to him,” David finally added with a shrug.
Walter sighed and hung his head.