I want to find strength in my solitude so that when I do interact with other people, I won’t hold on so tightly when they’re with me. So that I can let them go when we have to be apart.
I know the danger. All I have to do is remember what happened to Elise. If I close my eyes, I can see her ravaged body as clearly as though it were still lying stretched out in the morgue in front of me . . . .
By looking into Faerie, I might be calling the same savagery down upon myself. But there’s no point in being afraid. The danger’s all around anyway. I might have imagined all those psychotics and rapists that peopled my fears, but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there. All you have to do is pick up a paper or turn on the news.
The dangers of Faerie are out there, too.
I guess what I should be saying is that while I have to be careful, I can’t let my fear overwhelm me the way I have in the past.
I reach into my pocket to take the package of cigarettes I’m currently working on and lay it down beside the roses.
Break the old patterns. The old cycles.
“It’s funny how it works out, isn’t it?” I say to my client’s gravestone. “I failed you, but you—however inadvertently—you didn’t fail me.”
I stand up and brush the dirt from my knees.
“I can’t pay you back, but maybe I can help other people the way you’ve helped me: trip them out of their old patterns and show them what they’re doing to themselves. Jump-start their lives onto a new track and then try to be there for them when they begin to put their lives back together again.”
I touch the stone, trace its smooth surface with my fingers.
“I don’t know where you are,” I tell Elise. “I don’t know if you can hear me or if it’ll make any difference if you can, but I promise I’ll give it my best shot.”
I turn away from the grave, continuing the one-sided conversation in my head.
I’m going to start with Ari and see if, together, we can’t break the pattern of her pain. Her pain, and mine. That’d be a kind of magic, too, wouldn’t it? Because we can’t close our eyes to it. Not the magic, not the pain. If we do that, we might as well close them forever.
The gates of the graveyard loom over me again as I leave, but they don’t feel as oppressive as they did when I first went in. In my mind’s eye, I’m picturing little figures the size of mice, slipping out from behind Elise’s gravestone. They look like they’ve been put together with twigs and leaves and other debris. Their heads are wide, eyes slightly oversized and slanted, noses small on some, prominent on others, mouths very wide. Their hair is matted like dreadlocks mixed up with leafy vines.
They climb over the roses. One of them pulls a cigarette from the pack I left there and is awkwardly holding it, nose quivering like a rabbit’s as it sniffs the paper and tobacco. A few of them clamber up onto the lower base of the gravestone and are shading their eyes, looking in my direction.
I don’t turn around and look back. So long as I don’t turn around, they can really be there. The magic can be real. The pain can be put away.
Heartfires
Dance is the breath-of-life made visible.
—seen on a T-shirt on 4th Avenue, Tucson, AZ
1
Nobody tells you the really important stuff so in the end you have to imagine it for yourself. It’s like how things connect. A thing is just a thing until you have the story that goes with it. Without the story, there’s nothing to hold on to, nothing to relate this mysterious new thing to who you are—you know, to make it a part of your own history. So if you’re like me, you make something up and the funny thing is, lots of times, once you tell the story, it comes true. Not poof, hocus-pocus, magic it comes true, but sure, why not, and after it gets repeated often enough, you and everybody else end up believing it.
It’s like quarks. They’re neither positive nor negative until the research scientists look at them. Right up until that moment of observation they hold the possibility of being one or the other. It’s the looking that makes them what they are. Which is like making up a story for them, right?
The world’s full of riddles like that.
The lady or the tiger.
Did she jump, or was she pushed?
The door standing by itself in the middle of the field—does it lead to somewhere, or from somewhere?
Or the locked room we found one night down in Old City, the part of it that runs under the Tombs. A ten-by-ten-foot room, stone walls, stone floor and ceiling, with a door in one wall that fits so snugly you wouldn’t even know it was there except for the bolts—a set on either side of the door, big old iron fittings, rusted, but still solid. The air in that room is dry, touched with the taste of old spices and sagegrass. And the place is clean. No dust. No dirt. Only these scratches on that weird door, long gouges cut into the stone like something was clawing at it, both sides of the door, inside and out.
So what was it for? Before the quake dropped the building into the ground, that room was still below street level. Somebody from the long-ago built that room, hid it away in the cellar of what must have been a seriously tall building in those days—seven stories high. Except for the top floor, it’s all underground now. We didn’t even know the building was there until Bear fell through a hole in the roof, landing on his ass in a pile of rubble which, luckily for him, was only a few feet down. Most of that top floor was filled with broken stone and crap, like someone had bulldozed another tumbled-down building inside it and overtop of it, pretty much blocking any way in and turning that top floor into a small mountain covered with metal junk and weeds and every kind of trash you can imagine. It was a fluke we ever found our way in, it was that well hidden.
But why was it hidden? Because the building couldn’t be salvaged, so cover it up, make it safe? Or because of that room?
That room. Was it to lock something in? Or keep something out?
Did our going into it make it be one or the other? Or was it the story we found in its stone confines?
We told that story to each other, taking turns like we usually do, and when we were done, we remembered what that room was. We’d never been in it before, not that room, in that place, but we remembered.
2
Devil’s Night, October 30. It’s not even nine o’clock and they’ve already got fires burning all over the Tombs: sparks flying, grass fires in the empty lots, trash fires in metal drums, the guts of derelict tenements and factory buildings going up like so much kindling. The sky overhead fills with an evil glow, like an aura gone bad, gone way bad. The smoke from the fires rises in streaming columns. It cuts through the orange glare hanging over that square mile or so of lost hopes and despair the way ink spreads in water.
The streets are choked with refuse and abandoned cars, but that doesn’t stop the revelers from their fun, the flickering light of the fires playing across their features as they lift their heads and howl at the devil’s glow. Does stop the fire department, though. This year they don’t even bother to try to get their trucks in. You can almost hear the mayor telling the chiefs: “Let it burn.”
Hell, it’s only the Tombs. Nobody living here but squatters and hoboes, junkies and bikers. These are the inhabitants of the night side of the city—the side you only see out of the corner of your eye until the sun goes down and suddenly they’re all over the streets, in your face, instead of back in the shadows where they belong. They’re not citizens. They don’t even vote.
And they’re having some fun tonight. Not the kind of recreation you or I might look for, but a desperate fun, the kind that’s born out of knowing you’ve got nowhere to go but down and you’re already at the bottom. I’m not making excuses for them. I just understand them a little better than most citizens might.
See, I’ve run with them. I’ve slept in those abandoned buildings, scrabbled for food in Dumpsters over by Williamson Street, trying to get there before the rats and feral dogs. I’ve looked for oblivion in the bottom of a bottle or at the end of a need
le.
No, don’t go feeling sorry for me. I had me some hard times, sure, but everybody does. But I’ll tell you, I never torched buildings. Even in the long-ago. When I’m looking to set a fire, I want it to burn in the heart.
3
I’m an old crow, but I still know a few tricks. I’m looking rough, maybe even used up, but I’m not yet so old I’m useless. You can’t fool me, but I fool most everyone, wearing clothes, hiding my feathers, walking around on my hind legs like a man, upright, not hunched over, moving pretty fast, considering.
There were four of us in those days, ran together from time to time. Old spirits, wandering the world, stopped awhile in this place before we went on. We’re always moving on, restless, looking for change so that things’ll stay the same. There was me, Crazy Crow, looking sharp with my flat-brimmed hat and pointy-toed boots. Alberta the Dancer with those antlers poking up out of her red hair, you know how to look, you can see them. Bear, he was so big you felt like the sky had gone dark when he stood by you. And then there was Jolene.
She was just a kid that Devil’s Night. She gets like that. One year she’s about knee-high to a skinny moment and you can’t stop her from tom-fooling around, another year she’s so fat even Bear feels small around her. We go way back, Jolene and me, knew each other pretty good, we met so often.
Me and Alberta were together that year. We took Jolene in like she was our daughter, Bear her uncle. Moving on the wheel like a family. We’re dark-skinned—we’re old spirits, got to be the way we are before the European look got so popular—but not so dark as fur and feathers. Crow, grizzly, deer. We lose some color when we wear clothes, walking on our hind legs all the time.
Sometimes we lose other things, too. Like who we really are and what we’re doing here.
4
“Hey, ’bo.”
I look up to see it’s a brother calling to me. We’re standing around an oil drum, warming our hands, and he comes walking out of the shadows like he’s a piece of them, got free somehow, comes walking right up to me like he thinks I’m in charge. Alberta smiles. Bear lights a smoke, takes a couple of drags, then offers it to the brother.
“Bad night for fires,” he says after he takes a drag. He gives the cigarette a funny look, tasting the sweetgrass mixed in with the tobacco. Not much, just enough.
“Devil’s Night,” Jolene says, grinning like it’s a good thing. She’s a little too fond of fires this year for my taste. Next thing you know she’ll be wanting to tame metal, build herself a machine and wouldn’t that be something?
“Nothing to smile about,” the brother tells her. “Lot of people get hurt, Devil’s Night. Gets out of hand. Gets to where people think its funny, maybe set a few of us ’boes on fire, you hear what I’m saying?”
“Times are always hard,” I say.
He shrugs, takes another drag of the cigarette, then hands it back to Bear.
“Good night for a walk,” he says finally. “A body might walk clear out of the Tombs on a night like this, come back when things are a little more settled down.”
We all just look at him.
“Got my boy waiting on me,” he says. “Going for that walk. You all take care of yourselves now.”
We never saw the boy, standing there in the shadows, waiting on his pa, except maybe Jolene. There’s not much she misses. I wait until the shadows almost swallow the brother before I call after him.
“Appreciate the caution,” I tell him.
He looks back, tips a finger to his brow, then he’s gone, part of the shadows again.
“Are we looking for trouble?” Bear asks.
“Uh-huh,” Jolene pipes up, but I shake my head.
“Like he said,” I tell them, jerking a thumb to where the brother walked away.
Bear leads the way out, heading east, taking a direct route and avoiding the fires we can see springing up all around us now. The dark doesn’t bother us, we can see pretty much the same, doesn’t matter if it’s night or day. We follow Bear up a hillside of rubble. He gets to the top before us and starts dancing around, stamping his feet, singing, “Wa-hey, look at me. I’m the king of the mountain.”
And then he disappears between one stamp and the next, and that’s how we find the room.
5
I don’t know why we slide down to where Bear’s standing instead of him climbing back up. Curious, I guess. Smelling spirit mischief and we just have to see where it leads us, down, down, till we’re standing on a dark street, way underground.
“Old City,” Alberta says.
“Walked right out of the Tombs we did,” Jolene says, then she shoots Bear a look and giggles. “Or maybe slid right out of it on our asses’d be a better way to put it.”
Bear gives her a friendly whack on the back of the head but it doesn’t budge a hair. Jolene’s not looking like much this year, standing about halfway to nothing, but she’s always solidly built, doesn’t much matter what skin she’s wearing.
“Let’s take that walk,” I say, but Bear catches hold of my arm.
“I smell something old,” he tells me.
“It’s an old place,” I tell him. “Fell down here a long time ago and stood above ground even longer.”
Bear shakes his head. “No. I’m smelling something older than that. And lower down.”
We’re on an underground street, I’m thinking. Way down. Can’t get much lower than this. But Bear’s looking back at the building we just came out of and I know what’s on his mind. Basements. They’re too much like caves for him to pass one by, especially when it’s got an old smell. I look at the others. Jolene’s game, but then she’s always game when she’s wearing this skin. Alberta shrugs.
“When I want to dance,” she says, “you all dance with me, so I’m going to say no when Bear wants to try out a new step?”
I can’t remember the last time we all danced, but I can’t find any argument with what she’s saying.
“What about you, Crazy Crow?” Bear asks.
“You know me,” I tell him. “I’m like Jolene, I’m always game.”
So we go back inside, following Bear who’s following his nose, and he leads us right up to the door of that empty stone room down in the cellar. He grabs hold of the iron bolt, shoves it to one side, hauls the door open, rubs his hand on his jeans to brush off the specks of rust that got caught up on his palm.
“Something tried hard to get out,” Alberta says.
I’m thinking of the other side of the door. “And in,” I add.
Jolene’s spinning around in the middle of the room, arms spread wide.
“Old, old, old,” she sings.
We can all smell it now. I get the feeling that the building grew out of this room, that it was built to hold it. Or hide it.
“No ghosts,” Bear says. “No spirits here.”
Jolene stops spinning. “Just us,” she says.
“Just us,” Bear agrees.
He sits down on the clean stone floor, cross-legged, rolls himself a smoke. We all join him, sitting in a circle, like we’re dancing, except it’s only our breathing that’s making the steps. We each take a drag of the cigarette, then Bear sets the butt down in the middle of the circle. We watch the smoke curl up from it, tobacco with that pinch of sweetgrass. It makes a long curling journey up to the ceiling, thickens there like a small storm cloud, pregnant with grandfather thunders.
Somewhere up above us, where the moon can see it, there’s smoke rising, too, Devil’s Night fires filling the hollow of the sky with pillars of silent thunder.
Bear takes a shotgun cartridge out of his pocket, brass and red cardboard, twelve-gauge, and puts it down on the stone beside the smoldering butt, stands it on end, brass side down.
“Guess we need a story,” he says. He looks at me. “So we can understand this place.”
We all nod. We’ll take turns, talking until one of us gets it right.
“Me first,” Jolene says.
She picks up the cartridge and r
olls it back and forth on that small dark palm of hers and we listen.
6
Jolene says:
It’s like that pan-girl, always cooking something up, you know the one. You can smell the wild onion on her breath a mile away. She’s got that box that she can’t look in, tin box with a lock on it that rattles against the side of the box when she gives it a shake, trying to guess what’s inside. There’s all these scratches on the tin, inside and out, something trying to get out, something trying to get in.
That’s this place, the pan-girl’s box. You know she opened that box, let all that stuff out that makes the world more interesting. She can’t get it back in, and I’m thinking why try?
Anyway, she throws that box away. It’s a hollow now, a hollow place, can be any size you want it to be, any shape, any color, same box. Now we’re sitting in it, stone version. Close that door and maybe we can’t get out. Got to wait until another pan-girl comes along, takes a break from all that cooking, takes a peek at what’s inside. That big eye of hers’ll fill the door and ya-hey, here we’ll be, looking right back at her, rushing past her, she’s swatting her hands at us trying to keep us in, but we’re already gone, gone running back out into the world to make everything a little more interesting again.
7
Bear says:
Stone. You can’t get much older than stone. First house was stone. Not like this room, not perfectly square, not flat, but stone all the same. Found places, those caves, just like we found this place. Old smell in them. Sometimes bear. Sometimes lion. Sometimes snake. Sometimes the ones that went before.
All gone when we come. All that’s left is their messages painted or scratched on the walls. Stories. Information. Things they know we have to figure out, things that they could have told us if they were still around. Only way to tell us now is to leave the messages.
Moonlight and Vines Page 22