She laughed.
‘Not while you still got a hole in your ass,’ she repeated. ‘What an excellent phrase. I must remember it. Well, as you wish.’
Here it comes, I thought, and closed my eyes, waiting for the ka-boom that would take us all either up to heaven, or down into hell.
But it didn’t come.
What happened next was that she kicked the door down, and stood there, panting, her hair all over her face.
We coulda taken her. Three of us, one of her, no-one to see. Her one possible advantage had been whether she could smash her way in faster’n we could get the door open, and she’d just thrown it away.
But we didn’t. Her coat was half burned off of her, and she was covered with scratches and burns, and still she was beautiful. She looked like an avenging angel, which I guess mighta been what she was, and we cowered. Three grown men, and we cowered.
‘I thought you couldn’t come in if we didn’t invite you!’ Randy screamed. ‘I thought that was the rules!’
‘Ways and means, Officer Lewis.’ She nodded to the fish over the sink. ‘Death in the house allows many things access. Of course, now I’ll die too; but that’s fine.’
‘We can work this out,’ said Mike, doggedly sticking to the script. ‘We can —’
‘No, we can’t,’ I said.
Mike and Randy clearly thought I’d gone nuts.
‘You’ve gone nuts,’ said Mike.
‘Nope,’ I told him. ‘She’s right. We gotta pay for what we did. We killed, the three of us.’
‘But we had to —’
‘No, we didn’t.’ She nodded approvingly. ‘I did shoot Ben Arbuckle because I was pissed off and too hot and I’d had enough. I thought he was Robaire Lebrun, but that don’t make it right. We all chose the tune we danced to. Now we got to pay the piper.’
‘Henry, I always knew you were the smart one,’ she said. She was holding the last bomb in her hand, tossing it thoughtfully up and down, that blister quivering like jelly. ‘You might be a fat middle-aged redneck, but that’s okay by me. Anything else you want to say?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I guess — I guess I’m sorry. I don’t know if I’m sorry cuz I’m gonna die, or sorry cuz I finally see the evil of killing someone just because I could.’ I looked right at her. ‘Which is what you’re doing now, ain’t it? You’re gonna kill all three of us, just because you can.’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ she agreed. ‘Officer Stone, Officer Lewis, anything you want to say before I end it all?’
‘Can’t we talk about —’ started Randy.
‘Just get on with it,’ growled Mike.
She pulled the fuse.
I thought I’d heard how loud an explosion could be that evening, but it turned out I hadn’t. This was so loud it was almost silent, and it felt like it was happening right inside my head. I thought I’d feel my brains leaking outta my ears any second. And then I didn’t have time to worry about my brains, cos my whole self was flying upwards, like it’ll be when the Rapture comes, only I doubt getting Raptured up’s gonna hurt quite so much, and also I don’t think our Lord Jesus will set our clothes on fire. Up and up and up, and then down and down and down, bits of the shack falling around us like straw. And then the Bayou opened her cold arms and welcomed us into the mud and the slime, and I went from burning to drowning, and the mud leaked in through my nose, and I wondered if the gators’d mind me turning up on their doorsteps half-cooked.
And then —
Then someone was kissing me. A kiss that brought a dead man back to life, and I don’t mean resuscitation. I’ve given that kiss myself, sometimes after scraping clots of blood or vomit out first, which ain’t much fun. I could feel her hands on my face, the strength in them bringing me back to life, and she tasted like ripe peaches on a hot day.
I opened my eyes.
I was lying on the path near where Mike’s hut used to be. The debris was burning merrily; I felt the warmth from fifteen feet away. The thunderstorm — her thunderstorm — had stopped. I was still wearing bits of my bathrobe and she was still just about covered with the tatters of that leather coat. Half her hair was burnt off and I could see the head wound she’d been scratting at earlier, a big hole in the skull, pink and white jello showing. Only took one look to see she was almost done.
And she’d spent the last of her strength dragging me outta that swamp.
‘Why . . .’ I coughed, tasted mud, threw up, tried again. I could only tell I was talking from the vibrations in my head. ‘Why’d you save me? Is it because . . .’ a bit more throwing up. She waited patiently. ‘Is it because I repented?’ She shook her head. ‘Then why? Why me?’ I looked around. ‘It is just me, ain’t it? You ain’t got Mike and Randy stashed away somewhere too?’
‘No.’
‘Why me?’ I repeated. ‘You said you came for payment. Three of us for three of them. Wasn’t that the deal?’
‘You still don’t know who I am or who sent me, do you?’ I could hear her perfectly, even though the rest of the world had gone silent. Her eyes were liquid like the water she’d pulled me from, and just as hard to read. ‘But how could you ever recognise me, you poor stupid white man? Your God let His own beloved son be slaughtered, and never took revenge. The word that moves me is the prayer of three mothers, whose love you spilled with the blood of their boy-children. They wept, and they prayed, and they called on the powerful female spirits, Marinette and Erzuli Dantor. They told their sorrows and they made their sacrifices, until finally they summoned me up out of the ground to give them justice. But even that old, wild Justice has a mercy your God will never understand. The love of a mother who prays for you nightly is a powerful and mysterious thing. Henry Reynolds, be grateful you still have a mother.’
And then, as God’s my witness, she threw back her head and howled aloud to the sky. And when she ran away into the Bayou, well, you can think I was dazed, or confused, or just plumb crazy, but I’ll tell you anyway, and you can laugh if you want, because I know what I saw.
As she took off into the night, she was just about the biggest damned she-wolf I ever saw.
Interview #15
— Cornelia Sahani Adair
Blue Ridge Mountains, Boone, North Carolina
So you found the studio. Well, young man, you passed the first test at least.
I hope my agent explained the conditions of this interview? And you’re absolutely sure you’re comfortable with that? All right, then. Take your clothes off behind that screen.
You did understand that condition, didn’t you? You can interview me, if I can sculpt you. And I’m afraid I’m not interested in sculpting your clothes.
Sit on that stool, please. I’ll be working in wax, it’s not my usual choice, but something tells me this won’t work if we’re shouting over the sound of hammering. Don’t look so scared, I promise not to bite you. If it’s any consolation, I’m rather nervous myself. You only have to bare your body. You’re asking me to bare my soul.
Do you know the most insulting compliment you can pay a woman? Tell her she’s got beautiful hair.
My earliest memory: kindergarten, playing with plasticine, making a rabbit; a sudden cohort of little girls.
‘Why are you so funny-looking?’ their leader demanded.
When you’re a child, your body’s your home; not beautiful, not ugly, just there. I had no words.
The teacher arrived to rescue me.
‘Cornelia is not funny-looking,’ she said severely. ‘We don’t say that here. We’re all different, in our own good ways. Everyone has something beautiful about them.’ She looked at me, and faltered. I was tall and lumpy, incongruous green eyes beneath an epicanthic fold, skin neither fair nor bronze, but a dull mud colour, with a nose that worked on my father but not on a woman, never mind a little girl.
‘Look,’ she said,
determined. ‘Doesn’t Cornelia have beautiful hair?’
With that sentence, she imprisoned me.
Turn this way a little, please — thank you.
A memory of my mother’s shop; a cornucopia of woods and fabrics and gleaming metals, cushions and tables and mirrors with enormous frames and things to put in fireplaces instead of fires. It was like climbing into a jewellery box.
I was mostly terrified of breaking things. My body was a constant, unwelcome surprise; I grew fast and I was never sure how much of me there was at any one time. In a mirror, my face loomed out of the darkness. I staggered backwards, knocked something alabaster off something else gilded, then put a sticky hand down on a third thing all velvety, leaving a stain. My mother didn’t scold, which made it worse — the implication, of course, being that I couldn’t help it.
She taught me the love of beauty and the agony of its absence. I would have given anything to belong to her world. I walked in beauty, but I had no part of it. I could only look and yearn.
You don’t like to hear me talking so candidly, do you? The word ugly distresses you. Like all attractive people, you think ugly is a four-letter word. But this is the first lesson every artist must learn: to see things as they truly are.
A memory of my father: weekends and vacations when I ceased to be the strange half-Indian girl in Sacramento, and became the strange half-white girl on the North Carolina Reservation. He taught me the things he thought I needed to know, which in practice meant the things he needed to know to survive on twenty-two thousand dollars a year and no health insurance. He had the skills of successful poverty: repairing machines, chopping wood, building fires, mending clothes, fixing houses, cleaning guns, hunting meat, cleaning and cooking it afterwards. I don’t think that was particularly because he was Native American. It’s just what blue-collar fathers from North Carolina do. He taught me to fix cars, since that was his trade, to weld, to change a plug, to use power tools; the kind of things he’d have taught his son if he’d had one, but I was what there was, so, like my mother, he made do.
The memory of the day he first took me hunting. The stars watched us as we left and the air was clammy. He’d been teaching me to shoot — a skill to be acquired with respect, with slowness. For the white people it wasn’t deer-hunting season, but a Cherokee Indian on his own tribal land doesn’t worry too much about the rules of white people. By a still forest pool, he tested the wind, and led me through mud and green moss to the far side of the water.
A white-tail buck breasted the thin grey light. His head dipped, raised, dipped again. The wind blew his scent to me and I inhaled it deeply.
He was perfect, in his prime, glossy and well-fed, his antlers soft with velvet, his dappled coat smooth and without flaw. He was beautiful, but we were hungry.
I took careful aim at the heart. I saw the leap and the drop and the twitch and the stillness.
By myself, I cleaned him and bled him and thanked the earth for her bounty. My father nodded approvingly. I hoisted him across my shoulders and carried him to the truck. We let him hang for a week, then butchered him, froze him and roasted a haunch, which we ate sitting by a fire I’d chopped the wood for.
This is another lesson all artists need to learn, including you. Beauty is beauty, but it doesn’t fill your belly. If you want to eat, sometimes you have to compromise.
We got on all right, my father and I. He didn’t talk much, but fathers often don’t. At first I thought he was keeping his thoughts to himself. Later I realised he simply didn’t think all that much. His life was hard and rough and left little room for introspection.
Was I happier with my father? I suppose I was less unhappy, less conscious of what a misfit I was. I do better in big, empty spaces, and there were plenty of those where he lived. He didn’t have much of anything, so there was less for me to break, and I was handier with a wood-axe and a rifle than a paintbrush or a needle. Five foot twelve and built like a linebacker makes you good at outdoor living . . . it’s time we took a break; you’ll get cramp if you sit still much longer.
You’re sure you don’t mind if we keep going? You’re right, of course; I don’t feel comfortable if I’m not working. I’ve become very self-indulgent.
Turn your head away, please.
Okay. A memory from college; a hot April night, Sophomore year, two days before my twentieth birthday. I was determined not to begin my third decade as a virgin.
I applied make-up, bought that afternoon. I put on underwear that pushed me upwards and inwards. I put on a scarlet silk dress a theatre major called Janice had made for me. I unbraided my hair and brushed it smooth and straight. I forced on high heels that were slightly too small. I limped downtown to a bar I had heard Janice mention.
I ordered a beer and felt strangely at home. Men looked at me and did not look away. A man sat down beside me and we talked a little. He told me his name was Rolando. He wanted to be an actor.
In the motel room, he closed the door behind us. He was even more nervous than I, which I found charming. He was clumsy, but so was I; he was shorter than me, even without the heels, but most men were. He was good-looking and gentle, which was enough for the first time, I thought. I had to kiss him first. He tasted of beer and peppermint.
I could feel his eagerness, which I found unexpectedly thrilling. I helped him help me out of my dress. Then he stopped.
‘Jesus,’ he gasped.
Something was wrong, but I couldn’t see what. His hands flinched away as if I was a hot skillet.
‘But you’re —’ His face was horrified.
I looked at him blankly.
‘Sweet Jesus, I’m sorry,’ he said, and he really sounded sorry. ‘I thought . . .’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘I thought you . . .’ He hesitated. ‘I thought you were a man.’
I’ve often been told that white people find my face difficult to read. For this one poor, thin mercy, I was profoundly grateful.
‘But I’m wearing a dress,’ I said. ‘I’m wearing make-up. I’m wearing high heels. I have long hair.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘You just — you’re so — um — tall.’ Beneath his skin I could see the blood rising. The word ugly perched on his tongue. ‘I — I’m not gay, I just — wanted —’ Maybe I looked inscrutable, but his face was easy to read; he was beginning to pity me. ‘Didn’t you know what kind of bar it was?’
‘I just heard a friend mention it once,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll go now.’
I’d like to say I can laugh about it, but the fact is that I can’t. It was the single most humiliating experience of my life.
A memory of my first and only job interview, a week after graduation. The Blue Ridge Mountains are surprisingly rich in places selling beautiful things.
My future boss was in her late thirties, black hair in fierce ringlets around her heart-shaped face, and enormous black eyes that drilled into you and made you squirm. She wore a lot of black, which suited her. Her gallery was a cool, quiet space with high ceilings, which suited me. I could move freely among the lovely objects without fear of smudging or chipping or destroying.
‘You’ve no experience,’ said Amaranth.
I could have said, You’re not paying enough for experience. I could have said, You knew that before you said you’d see me. I could have said, Everyone has to start somewhere. I could have said, I’m willing to learn.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘You’re very tall, aren’t you?’
There was nothing to say about that, so I kept silent.
‘Your hair is lovely.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And your degree’s in . . . ?’
‘Liberal arts, majoring in art history. I graduated from Appalachian State.’
‘I was thinking of a man,’ she mused. ‘I have a sculptor at the moment . . .�
� She looked me up and down. ‘How strong are you?’
A granite bear, three feet tall, snarled from a plinth. I put my arms around it, bent my knees, tested the weight and awkwardness. A brief effort and I had it securely, first against my chest, then high in the air. I heard Amaranth inhale sharply.
‘That’s a three-thousand dollar —’ she let her breath out again as I lowered the bear back onto the plinth. ‘Okay, you’re strong enough.’ She looked at me narrowly. ‘What do you think of it?’
I looked at the bear.
‘I think it’s very ugly,’ I said. ‘But I can’t afford it anyway.’
Amaranth laughed.
‘What would you buy? If you had the money?’
In the window was a semi-abstract oil painting: thick, exuberant brush-strokes in greens, blues, browns, ambers, silvers, golds. It was like looking at the soul of the mountain. It lit up the street, calling customers inside. I hadn’t dared look for the price ticket. She saw me glance.
‘The Blue Ryan,’ she said, purring and possessive. ‘You have good taste.’ She looked at me thoughtfully. ‘I can’t pay much —’
‘I don’t need much,’ I said hastily. It was true; I’d learned to live frugally.
‘All right then, Cornelia,’ she said, smiling. ‘You can start Monday.’
A memory from a cool spring evening, eighteen months after I started. Amaranth didn’t like her hulking half-Indian girl lurching out from behind things at the customers. She encouraged me to spend time in back instead. But when the customers went home, I’d sweep the floor and dream over the beauty dripping off the walls.
In her office, Amaranth was on the phone. I lingered.
New World Fairy Tales Page 5