The Speed of Life

by James Victor Jordan

  “Good girl, Wind,” he said. “Howdy, Dr. Betty Mae.”

  Wind barred her teeth, flashing the six two-inch curved incisors in her upper jaw. Her snarl became a growl. Her almond-shaped slanted yellow eyes were fixed on the man as if he were prey.

  “Wind? What’s wrong girl?” he said. “Come. Come here.”

  The canine – seventy pounds, her muscles tense, hard – stepped back, crouched, growled louder.

  “Wind,” Betty Mae said in a stern voice, “down.”

  Slowly, the wolf-dog, not taking her eyes off the man, lowered her haunches and let her front paws slide out in front of her. Her body quavered as if, upon the slightest provocation, she would spring into an attack with a burst of speed exceeding 30 miles per hour and jaws capable of crushing and snapping apart a man’s femur with a single bite.

  Betty Mae said, “Uncle Karl.”

  Waving his gun in Wind’s direction, Karl said, “What’s wrong with her?”

  “You leaving?” said Betty Mae.

  “What is that?” he said. “Wishful thinking? Freudian insight?”

  “If I had insight,” said Betty Mae, “I wouldn’t be in this dump.”

  He looked askance. “There’s deferred maintenance,” he admitted. “But I’m not ashamed.” He came into the living room, smelling of liquor, wearing a sleeveless undershirt. Like his stepbrother, Gabe, he had a biceps tattoo. Gabe’s tattoo was the insignia of the Marine Corps. Karl’s was a cowboy atop a bucking bronco. Gabe’s face had never feigned insincerity. Karl’s face, a cloud of menace, became beatific.

  “Where’s yours?” he said softly.

  “My hat?”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Betty Mae,” he said. “Where’s your gun?”

  “I don’t have a gun,” she said, raising her whip-thin arms akimbo.

  Looking at Wind, he said, “Have you brainwashed her into thinking she’s all wolf?”

  Then Estella, wearing a maternity dress the color of Wind’s eyes, near full term, came into the living room holding a document bearing the Florida state seal, and Betty Mae saw that her daughter would have a son.

  “Wind,” Estella said with delight, opening her arms in an invitation of a hug. Wind leapt toward her, jumped up on her hind legs, and her front paws came to rest on Estella’s shoulders, giving them the appearance of dance partners. Estella rubbed Wind’s muzzle with her free hand. The wolf-dog hopped back and circled Estella, licking her legs and sniffing her distended belly.

  Offering the document to Betty Mae, Estella said, “We’re married!” She knelt, rubbed the side of her face on Wind’s shoulder. Not looking at her mother, Estella said, “This is our home. We’re in love. I’m not leaving.” Then she stood, glared at Karl and said, “What are you? Nuts? Put away the goddamn gun.”

  Indigo light, like the erupting vibrant violets in the plumes of stardust ejected from the exploding supergiant red star, leapt from the womb, and Wind howled.

  With strength that would grow, the fetus projected an atmospheric disturbance, a vortex that tightened around Betty Mae’s neck, disrupting her balance, almost dragging her to the floor and prompting a near heart-stopping realization. Like Colonel George Armstrong Custer, like General Phillip “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” Sheridan, like President Andrew Jackson, the proponent and enforcer of the Indian Removal Act, her grandson was imbued with evil.

  Betty Mae said, “Hush, Wind!” To Estella and Karl she said, “Why wasn’t I invited to the wedding?”

  Karl and Estella said nothing.

  “You going to offer me a drink? Something to eat?” said Betty Mae.

  “An omelet?” Estella said.

  “Got whiskey in the car,” said Betty Mae.

  “I’m famished,” Karl said, glancing at the empty whiskey atop the TV. He put an arm around Estella and the in-utero malevolence receded, like the imploding neutron stars, into an abyss.

  Betty Mae said, “We should celebrate.” And then to Karl she said, “Why not put away the gun?” and added in a loving tone, “Son?”

  In the bedroom, Karl put on a pearl-button cowboy shirt. Bareheaded, he returned to the living room without the gun.

  By the Pontiac, Betty Mae turned her back toward the trailer so that neither Karl nor Estella could see her pour not one, but two vials of brown powder – her own potentially lethal mixture of kava pyrones, mandrake, and salvia divinorum – into a bottle of Johnny Walker Red. Back in the trailer, Estella was setting the table and Karl was on the phone, pacing.

  “Wrong number, ma’am,” he said.

  Betty Mae fed Wind, then gave Karl three fingers of whiskey. He nodded in thanks.

  To the woman who had telephoned, Karl said, “Ms. Diamond, I don’t know your daughter. Lucy? You say her name is Lucy?” He looked at Estella, raised his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders as if in query.

  Estella pursed her lips, shook her head.

  “Ms. Diamond, your daughter isn’t here. My wife is here and my sister-in-law, I mean my mother-in-law. You want to talk to them?”

  On the TV, Betty Mae got static.

  “Say,” said Karl, “how did you get our phone number? It’s unlisted.”

  Estella poured a cup of coffee for Betty Mae. Then she said to Karl, “Let me talk to the lady.”

  “What evacuation?” Karl said, his jaw working nervously. He tugged his earlobe, sipped the whiskey. Then he abruptly dropped the phone’s receiver, lay on the sofa, and fell asleep.

  When Estella picked up the receiver, she heard a dial tone. She replaced the handset into its cradle and felt Karl’s forehead. “He’s not himself when he drinks,” she said.

  Betty Mae talked about the baby’s best interests.

  Estella interrupted. “Save the lecture on Hegel for your students.”

  “History,” Betty Mae said. “We have to learn from the past.”

  “Psychobabble,” Estella said.

  Betty Mae talked about Karl’s sexual involvement with an-other girl.

  “She’s lying,” Estella said, shaking Karl. “I’m not listening until we hear his side.”

  Showing Estella a photo of a girl no more than fifteen, Betty Mae said, “Her name is Claudia. Call her.”

  Estella sat beside Karl, her body still, her face a duality of concentration and a maze of emotions. She dialed the phone.

  Betty Mae studied her daughter – crinkled nose, smooth forehead, cheerful frown, each feature giving way during the telephone conversation to a face sagged with an appearance of age.

  After she said good-bye to Claudia, Estella retrieved the gun. She kicked Karl, but he barely stirred. Savagely, she kicked him again. “Wake up,” she yelled.

  He turned over, snoring louder.

  She pulled him up – his shirt wet where he’d drooled, his chin fallen to his chest – and with a tremendous blow, hit him across the face with an open hand, snapping his head back; his eyes opened. She cocked the gun, pointed it at his forehead and pulled the trigger just a moment after he slid back down, back onto the sofa, back into sleep. A thunderous roar rocked the trailer as the bullet blew a hole through the painting of the roundup and the wall behind it.

  Estella’s shoulders heaved. Wind howled with the pain inflicted by the fortissimo of the gun’s eruption. Karl snored.

  Betty Mae, shaking her head, trying to clear it of the tinnitus caused by the blast, took the gun from Estella, calmed Wind, considered slashing the tires of the Corvette but instead called her mother while Estella packed.

  “An evil father, an evil son,” Sarah said. “There will be an accident, a fire. He will hurt Estella. He will kill other Indians.”

  Her momma was right. It was always so with these children.

  Sarah said, “Ending evil is good.”

  As Wind, Estella, and Betty Mae hurried out, Karl stirred.

  Gabriel Verus, a white man twice his wife’s size, had insisted that their daughter’s eyes were jade, like his, though Estella’s eyes were more blue than gre
en. He’d wanted a boy, but Estella hadn’t disappointed him as she loved camping, hunting, and canoeing.

  When Gabe, a naval aviator, lived at home – near the Pensacola Naval Air Station – between missions, Estella was his shadow, always with him, always on the go. Betty Mae had warned Gabe that Estella’s interests would change, that as she grew older she’d bond more with her own friends, form her own interests, be less of a buddy. But he’d disagreed, observing that Betty Mae loved the outdoors even more than he did. So why would their daughter be different?

  Gabe hadn’t lived long enough for Betty Mae to find out which one of them would have been right. On night he left for his final mission, he’d said to Estella, using a closed-fist back-and-forth gesture between their chests to show the connection of their hearts, “We’ll always be together, you and me.” Three weeks later he was killed in military action, too soon to see his best pal flourish into full adolescence.

  Before losing her father, Estella had been motivated, inquisitive, interested in everything. After his death, she was hostile and uninterested. Anything her mother said was rejected or contradicted because her mother was a relic, a fool, or worse.

  One day, not long after Gabe’s funeral, Karl came by for lunch and Estella, giggling and reeking of marijuana, followed by Wind, came into the kitchen. Wind wagged her tail and bounded up to Karl, rubbing first one side of her body and then the other against his leg, as a cat would. Estella threw her arms around her uncle’s shoulders and kissed his cheek. Then she snatched a half-eaten tuna sandwich from his plate and began chewing.

  “You’re grounded,” said Betty Mae.

  “For how long?” said Estella, her mouth full, rolling her eyes.

  “Until I can trust you again.”

  “I hate you!” Estella yelled. She crossed her arms, starring at her mother. Betty Mae didn’t react, and Estella ran out of the house with Wind at her heels.

  “She needs structure,” Karl said. “After school, she can work for me at the stables.”

  Soon afterward, after school a few days a week, Estella and Wind began working with the horses at the ranch Karl managed. And he began spending weekends and evenings with his sister-in-law and his niece. He talked to Estella about her homework, her friends, Green Day, Spongehead, Nirvana, other grunge music, the grunge look, the punk look, and his stepbrother, often saying, “What would your father have said about that?” He told Betty Mae that Estella would soon get over her misplaced anger. And soon it appeared she had.

  To everyone, apparently, other than Charlotte Crow, who kept her suspicions to herself.

  If it were possible to converse with the dead, as Dante had, Betty Mae would have found a way as no one’s desire to communicate with the departed surpassed hers and no one had had better teachers. Her maternal grandpoppa, Bolëk Abiaka, a shaman and Seminole medicine man, often told her about his work with the spirits of their ancestors. He’d been her first guide in hidden reality. He died when she was eleven and afterward, she searched everywhere for his soul, for his spirit living after death, to no avail.

  A year after Gabe’s death, Betty Mae published her well-received book, Reason and Morals, which presented a philosophy of contemporary morality predicated on her thesis that no form of conscious life exists after death. The Divine Comedy explored the afterlife consequences of the good and evil acts of the living and the reward of redemption or the punishment of eternal suffering after life.

  Reason and Morals explored the nature and consequences of good and evil acts during a person’s life to demonstrate that an ethic of absolute mortality, a conviction that there is no conscious life after death, was necessary to optimize free will and hence happiness. What was blasphemous to Dante, a denial of the immortality of the soul, was a necessary virtue according to Betty Mae. What was optional according to Kant, reliance on reason to reach a personal conclusion about the question of life after death, was a nonstarter for Betty Mae.

  And so, as they fled Karl’s trailer, with the fate of Estella’s son in his grandmomma’s hands, his imminent death was foretold because Betty Mae, with no qualm about the moral necessity of her choice, had freely willed it to be so.

  In Betty Mae’s childhood home, the picture window in her poppa’s study framed a daytime vista of long-needle pines, sweet gum, and elderberry. Considering his profession, the decor of Marcus’s office offered no surprise: telescopes, binoculars, astronomical charts, physics texts, a Princeton diploma conferring a PhD, and a chalkboard, a state-of-the-art pedagogical tool in the age of slide rules.

  When Betty Mae earned tenure, in addition to the books one would expect to find by Hegel, Nietzsche, and Russell, the shelves in her office at the University of Miami also housed texts, treatises, periodicals and journals devoted to nature, quantum mechanics, and astrophysics. An anomaly for a professor of philosophy? To the contrary. If Betty Mae’s epistemological inquiries—knowledge, belief, and the interstices between them—were an atom, quantum mechanics would have been the nucleus. If inquiries into the nature of free will were the solar system, then general relativity would have been the sun.

  By the time of Bolëk’s death, Betty Mae understood her parents’ heritages and was to become a percipient witness to the dysfunction of their marriage. Well before Seminole gaming lifted her people from poverty, Sarah Abiaka was raised in a village of chickees—huts supported by four posts that had raised, unfinished wood-plank floors, thatched roofs of palm fronds, and no walls to protect infants, children, and adults from insects, vermin, predators, or extremes in the weather. The village was built on sandy soil in a wasteland of wilderness along the banks of the Loxahatchee River in western Palm Beach County in south Florida.

  Sarah was also a descendent of sangomas, Zulu shamans who’d migrated to western Africa and then were brought to the Western Hemisphere as slaves. She was her poppa’s acolyte and a shaman with prowess surpassing his. She had the beauty of Andromeda and was intellectually gifted. She read relentlessly and as a result had a remarkable and commendable self-education as Abraham Lincoln had, as Michael Faraday had, and as had Akila, her progenitor, who like Lincoln and Faraday had lived in the nineteenth century.

  Marcus Kayalu, Catholic, black, raised among mostly white peers, was the younger son of university professors of mathematics. He completed a post doc with Chandrasekhar in Chicago. He had the mannerisms of Mr. Magoo and the extroversion of a recluse. As a couple, Sarah and Marcus were as heterogeneous as the cultures they came from.

  Soon after Marcus moved to Florida, he met Sarah, who, with her father, was piloting airboat excursions through the Everglades. When they returned to the docks, Marcus asked her out on a date. She was about to say no when Bolëk startled his daughter and his future son-in-law by saying, “Welcome star traveler.” He put an arm around his daughter and said to her, “Your guide to ordinary reality has arrived in need of a guide of his own.”

  Betty Mae had no memory of her parents quarrelling before Bolëk’s death and virtually none of a rapprochement in the half-dozen years that followed.

  When she was seventeen, a senior in high school, Charlotte Crow, then nineteen and a sophomore majoring in psychology at the university where her father taught, became pregnant. When her white pastor, the baby’s father, recanted his promise of marriage, Sarah pressured Charlotte Crow to have an abortion, causing animosity between her parents to intensify to a point of near irreconcilability.

  Betty Mae, believing that only starlight could brighten her poppa’s melancholy, persuaded him to teach astronomy to her and Charlotte Crow. Sarah attended a lesson.

  “Last time,” Marcus said, “we talked about Hawking radiation, how earlier this year, Dr. Stephen Hawking, a math professor at Cambridge University used,” and he pointed to the chalkboard, “these equations to show that black holes emit radiation. Now if it can be proven that Dr. Hawking is correct—”

  “Poppa?” said Charlotte Crow.

  “He’ll win the Nobel Prize,” Marcus said.
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br />   “Dr. Bell—” Charlotte Crow said,

  “Who?” said Marcus.

  “My modern lit teacher—” said Charlotte Crow.

  “Oh, Jocelyn Bell. I’ve met her,” Marcus said. “Lovely lady. I understand it was a coup for the English department to get her.”

  “She says that neutron stars, black holes, they’re just facts. If you want truth, you read literary fiction.”

  “Is that a genre,” said Marcus. “like science fiction? What is literary fiction about?”

  “It’s realistic, so you have quirky characters and dysfunctional relationships. That’s what’s real and what reveals the truth about humanity,” said Charlotte Crow. “Dr. Bell must know. She has tenure.”

  “Poppa had tenure before Dr. Bell was even born,” said Betty Mae.

  “You don’t know anything about her,” said Charlotte Crow.

  Marcus said, “Ask Jocelyn, how can we understand who we are without understanding where we came from? Without understanding our place in the universe?”

  “Poppa’s right,” said Sarah.

  Marcus gave his wife an appreciative smile, lifting Betty Mae’s spirits.

  Sarah said, “To be close to The Creator, you must experience the cosmos. And if you don’t do that, you won’t know how to choose between good and evil.”

  “You have to understand neutron stars to be moral?” said Charlotte Crow.

  “I’d like to think so,” said Marcus. When, to his chagrin, no one laughed or responded at all, he said, “It comes down to this, Charlotte Crow: how important is it for you to live an examined life? When you turn off your mind when math or science is discussed because you’ve decided that it’s boring or too hard to learn or understand, or irrelevant, or if you’re satisfied only reading about quirky characters and dysfunctional relationships, you’re going to have a narrow view of life, you’ll limit your own possibilities, your own potential.