The Removed

by Brandon Hobson

  Edgar

  SEPTEMBER 4

  IN JACKSON’S ROTTING HOUSE, I watched him whittle a devil’s flute from a piece of wood. He carved out the holes so that when he played it, I heard the songs of past centuries I’d never heard before. He explained that a friend of his had taught the songs to him while they were working on the projections of Indians for the games he was developing.

  “I don’t understand the attraction to these games,” I said.

  “They’re games, nothing more. People like to play sports games.” He held the knife out and glared at the blade. “The possibilities are endless with gaming.”

  He whittled and made sniffing sounds.

  “I’m going downtown,” I said.

  “Where to?”

  “Rusty Spoon Records, to look through music. There’s a guy I like named Venery who works there.”

  “Oh, Lyle knows him. He’s bought weed from him. Trying to get him to sell some ammunition, too. Apparently the guy’s got all kinds of ammo for hunting. Ask him about it and let me know.”

  I left and walked downtown. On the way I passed trees with low-hanging branches, old cars with busted-out windshields. I walked along the sidewalk at a steady pace. A few kids were riding skateboards up ahead. One of them saw me and pointed. I watched them as I walked. The others got off their skateboards and congregated. They huddled together and talked for a minute, and then they all looked at me. I watched them until they turned and ran off.

  When I got to Rusty Spoon Records, Venery was thumbing through a stack of records. He looked up at me, his long silver hair hanging down in his face. He could’ve passed for someone living deep in the woods of the Oklahoma northeast, somewhere outside Quah, and the longer I was in the store, the more I wondered whether he in fact had lived there.

  “Jim Thorpe,” he said, laughing.

  “Jerry Garcia?”

  He wheezed laughter, causing him to cough a couple of times. “I met him many years ago,” he told me. “I was at a party in San Francisco in the seventies, back when I toured with a psychedelic band called Venery and the Voyeurs. We smoked hash, and he gave me an earring I wore for twenty years.”

  I looked at him. He wasn’t wearing an earring.

  “Lawd knows my ear got infected, and it was never the same,” he said. He told me his band used to play in the Paseo district in Oklahoma City and then down in Deep Ellum and at terminals at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. He drove west to California to stay with a cousin outside of Venice Beach. He was there about six months before he ran out of money and had to move back. “We could never get anything to work out,” he said. “My buddy and I did this thing in LA where we pretended like we didn’t know each other. We would go into bars and clubs. He would sit at the bar, and later I would come in and sit alone at a table. At some point he would pretend he recognized me and start telling people around him that I was the brother of Jerry Garcia. We could eat peyote or score free weed or booze. I met some real weirdos out there. One told me there were narwhals hiding behind dumpsters in Paseo. I existed in the fantasy of pretending I was someone else.”

  “That seems to be what’s happening around here.”

  “You may be right. Are you flummoxed?”

  “I can’t figure anything out.”

  “You look anxious,” he said. “I could tell the moment you walked in here. Everyone can tell, so choose carefully where you walk. Some roads lead to pain, others to your past. Anyone come up to you and ask you a bunch of random questions or make equivocal statements on purpose? Folks with twitchy mouths or protuberant eyes? Don’t dicker. Best thing for you to do, Chief, is just keep walking. Don’t talk to anyone unless you know them.”

  “Why me?” I asked.

  “There aren’t many Indians around here, JT.”

  “It’s fucked,” I said. “Have you heard anything about this Jim Thorpe game?”

  “Games? All I do is run the store and read hagiographies upstairs until I levitate. I don’t know much anymore. I don’t trust no one.”

  Venery’s cell phone was ringing. He went over to the register and answered it. I wanted to browse through records and focus on something I enjoyed, since music always put me at peace. The more I thumbed through records, though, the more I realized I couldn’t find the motivation to continue browsing. I looked over at Venery. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he kept glancing over at me, so I waved goodbye and left.

  I found myself thinking about fantasy, about what Venery had said about pretending to be other people. Part of why I liked leaving Oklahoma was that I could go places nobody knew me. I could walk around with Rae and be a new face. I never planned to stay in one place for very long.

  Back at the rotting house, Jackson was preoccupied with an approaching storm. He sat on the edge of the couch, watching a meteorologist on TV. “I’m really high right now,” he said. “This is all freaking me out.”

  “You smoked?”

  “Yeah, while you were out. I was feeling anxious or something. Don’t look at me.”

  On TV, the meteorologist looked pale and ghostly and exhausted. The radar showed red and yellow flashes of blocks ticking slowly eastward, indicating a severe thunderstorm. “This is the one they’ve been talking about for the past week,” he said, staring at the screen.

  “Maybe tornado season is over,” I said.

  “There is no tornado season in this goddamn hell,” he said. “It’s all the time. Tornadoes form even in the winter. Last year an F-four blew across the southern part of the land, ripping the roofs off houses and knocking down power lines. There are no seasons, haven’t you noticed?”

  “The weather seemed fine just now.”

  “Storms can stir up quickly. They’ve been talking about a flood for the past fifteen minutes. Here it is, heading right toward us. See those streaks of red? The flashing colors?”

  We both stared at the TV screen as the meteorologist tapped his earpiece and we heard the static of a storm chaser’s voice saying something about winds blowing up to sixty miles per hour. The meteorologist kept tapping his earpiece.

  “And the rain could flood us again,” Jackson said. “This house was underwater once. This house has mold. They all do. I hate floods. My lungs are probably black. A big rain would really put a damper on our game production.” He glanced at me. “Isn’t there a rain dance or something you could do to make it stop?”

  I went into my room without answering him. I stayed in there for a while, looking out the window at the graying sky. Rae and I were once trapped in her apartment in Oklahoma during a terrible thunderstorm. Hail the size of softballs battered cars in the parking lot, shattering windshields and damaging the roofs of houses. Amazingly, there was no tornado then. The electricity was out, and Rae and I drank vodka with cranberry juice and lit candles and placed them all around the room the rest of the night. It was a miracle we didn’t burn the place down.

  I thought of that night, the way the sky had turned the same yellow as the sky here. And soon the sky turned gray again, and it was raining hard outside. The wind came up, blowing the trees outside. I heard Jackson talking on the phone to someone about the wind speeds. The television was blasting loudly. The only way to pass the time during these storms was to focus on something else.

  I was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, when Jackson came in and said the storm had shifted. “It turned north, so we’re in the clear. I was a little scared, Chief. You never know.”

  “You never know,” I said.

  “Storms do something to me. I can’t explain it.”

  “Frighten you?”

  “But the fear does something else, excites me, I guess. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “You’re high.”

  He laughed a little, then sat on the edge of the bed near my waist, and we were both quiet. I had my hands behind my head, staring up at the ceiling. Jackson pulled off his T-shirt. I didn’t think anything about it. He turned to me and waited for me to look
at him. When I did, he put his hand on my leg. I hadn’t seen him without a shirt on. His skin was pale, his body gangly and thin, not much different than mine. I wondered if he was waiting for me to say something. Then he leaned in to me, running his hand from my upper thigh toward my crotch. I stopped him with my hand and sat up.

  “Sorry,” he said, pulling his hand back and looking away, embarrassed. I was a little shaken by what he was doing, not having understood.

  “Oh man, I’m sorry,” he said again. “I thought maybe you wanted to.”

  I shook my head.

  He got up and left the room, closing the door behind him. I stayed in bed for a few minutes, wondering why, how I had given him the wrong impression or said something to lead him on.

  Soon I got up and stepped into the front room. Jackson wasn’t there, but the door to the basement was open, so I went downstairs. It felt too warm and smelled of cigarette smoke. Jackson was sitting at a desk down there, working on his laptop. There were some military and sports magazines scattered on the floor. Other than a cabinet against the dark-wood-paneled wall, the walls were bare except for two screens: one against a wall and the other on the floor. Jackson looked up at me, then back at his laptop. Our shadows spread across the floor from the light.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said, typing without looking at me.

  “What?”

  “It was uncomfortable, I get it.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t mean to give you the wrong impression.”

  “I shouldn’t have done that, Edgar. I’m embarrassed.”

  “It’s not a big deal, though.”

  He stopped typing and looked at me. I could see he felt bad about trying to manipulate me. “Seriously, I’m embarrassed.”

  “It’s all cool,” I said. “Really, no big deal.”

  He nodded. “Can I at least film you for the game, since you’re down here?”

  “That’s fine.”

  “For the game,” he said. He got up and went over to a cabinet, took out a plastic assault rifle, and handed it to me.

  “It’s not real,” he said. “Just pretend like you’re firing it at the camera. I’ll get some shots with the camera.”

  I looked at the assault rifle. He had me stand against the paneled wall and point it at the camera while he recorded me. I saw the red blinking light on his camera. He had me stand in various poses, holding the rifle in one hand or at times with both hands. Then he handed me a fake hatchet, an old Halloween prop, and told me to pretend I was attacking the camera. I lunged forward with it. Jackson got down on one knee, working the camera. The red light kept blinking.

  Finally we stopped, and he told me he was happy with the way I looked. “It’ll be great for the game,” he said.

  “I guess I don’t see how this is all part of the game,” I said. “I mean, what it has to do with playing sports.”

  “It’s tricky,” he said. “I’m working on bonus features, those kinds of things. It’ll be great, Chief.”

  “I’m stepping outside for a smoke,” I said.

  “I’ll be down here working.”

  I went upstairs and stepped out into the backyard and smoked a cigarette. I tried to think about how I felt about Jackson. It was confusing. While I smoked, I noticed a creek nearby, with muddy water that rippled and bubbled. I walked to it and found myself staring at something in the water. It resembled a thin snake but was moving very slowly. The water, though shallow, was so dirty that I couldn’t see how long the thing stretched, but it looked too long for a snake. I saw no head, only a silvery body moving underneath the water. I remembered my dad telling me a haunting Cherokee myth wherein a boy reached down to a snake and was pulled underwater. I had a snake phobia. I didn’t like rivers or lakes, even though I grew up close to them.

  A man sitting on the porch next door called me over. “Hey, who are you?” he called out, and then stood up and walked over to me. When he got closer, I could see he was old, and his face was sagging and covered in blemishes. “Who are you?” he asked again.

  “Edgar.”

  “Have I seen you before?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m staying with Jackson Andrews.”

  “The game maker?” He had a low, gravelly voice and sounded out of breath when he spoke. “You take a bunch of pills?”

  “What?”

  “Pills,” he said. “You take a bunch of them? Like all the people walking around, stoned on death. How we got here.”

  “I took pills in Albuquerque.”

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m looking for a way out. We all are. You’re stuck here with the rest of us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He coughed dust, shook his head.

  “My stomach is in knots here,” I said, unsure what I meant.

  He looked toward Jackson’s house, then back at me. “I need to go,” he said, and he started to walk away.

  “Wait, what does it all mean?” I said, but he wouldn’t stop walking. “Wait,” I called out to him.

  Back inside the house, I went straight to my room, closing the door. I lay down on the bed and thought about what he meant, being stuck there, unable to leave. I could leave anytime I wanted, it seemed to me. I imagined myself walking around town, people staring at me. I had a sudden coughing fit in bed. My eyes started watering. After a few minutes I relaxed and was about to drowse into sleep when my ears started ringing. I turned over on my side in bed. My eyes were tired. I heard the toilet flush in the hall bathroom, and then fell asleep quickly.

  Now this happened. At some point I woke in the middle of the night, confused. It took me a moment to remember where I was, my surroundings. A steady rain was thrumming on the roof. I could see a glass of water on the nightstand beside me, as well as my bag and my shoes on the floor. When I sat up, I saw the figure of an old man standing in the doorway, an apparition. I didn’t recognize him. His hair was long and silver and hung languidly. I was too afraid to say anything.

  For a moment I had a sense of our mutual awareness of each other, of a state of confusion, although it felt way more definitive than that. When he turned and walked away, I got up and followed him. He walked into the bathroom, where he looked at his reflection in the mirror. He raised his hands to touch it, tilted his head, studying himself. I could see his reflection in the mirror, but it was much blurrier than he appeared. I reached to turn on the light, and he disappeared. When I turned it back off again, he was still gone. I turned the light on and off again. He didn’t reappear. “Where are you?” I whispered. I called for him, but he never responded. I turned and walked through the quiet house looking for him, my feet creaking on the old floors in the dark. I peeked into Jackson’s bedroom and saw him asleep with his back to me, snoring over the hum of a ceiling fan.

  I stepped quietly back to the bathroom, but I couldn’t find the old man. Again I turned the light on and off, whispered for him. I returned to my bedroom and went to the window. Outside, at the back of the yard, a hawk was resting on a fence post, sitting very still. The moon shone blue in the dark sky. At one point something flashed by in the darkness, but I wasn’t able to tell what it was. I sat on the bed and saw that it was almost four in the morning. What was I supposed to think about the man I saw? I wasn’t able to go back to sleep, too unsettled by what I had witnessed, too afraid of whatever it meant.

  I saw many people that night: apparitions of women and men with blankets over their shoulders, walking down the hallway. I saw children being carried. I saw people crawling and reaching out to me for help. They kept coming and coming, walking down the hallway past my bedroom. In the dark I couldn’t see their faces, but their bodies were struggling against a wind, pushing forward. My ancestors, I thought. My ancestors walking the Trail.

  My ears were ringing when I got back under the covers. What did this mean? The ringing was as severe as it had ever been, growing louder. I pressed my hands against my ears and stared into the dark hall. I felt compelled to wat
ch these people as they walked. They pushed forward and kept walking, falling.

  Maria

  SEPTEMBER 4

  ERNEST USED TO TELL me I had always been good at maintaining composure even in times of extreme stress. After Ray-Ray died, I made it my sole purpose to do whatever I could to keep my children alive. I looked after them closely, watched them play outside even when they weren’t aware, listened at their bedroom doors if they talked on the phone or had friends over. My blood pressure rose; I developed panic attacks, something that I had never experienced before. I always made sure that if Sonja and Edgar left with friends, they called and checked in with me every hour. I kept photo albums near my chair and looked at pictures of all my children, including Ray-Ray. My sister Irene said it would always help me feel better, and I was surprised to discover she was correct.

  After I took Wyatt to school, I returned home and sat in the living room and flipped through pictures of Edgar in the photo albums. The ones I enjoyed most were the ones when he was little, all the birthday parties and Christmases. They brought me joy no matter how many times I looked at them. When Ernest came into the room, he smiled at me. Something happened to the configuration of the room, and we felt what I thought was the slight trembling of an earthquake.

  “Did you feel that?” he said.

  “Was it an earthquake? It was an earthquake, wasn’t it?”

  “Maybe so. It wasn’t too bad.”

  I noticed that his eyes were dark and full of wonder. His eyes could speak to me better than his mouth sometimes, and I knew he was about to say something about Ray-Ray’s spirit.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I said.

  He sat in the recliner across the room and put on his sneakers. He bent forward to lace them. He sat back and looked at me.

  “I have a good feeling Edgar will come home,” he said. “I feel better than I’ve felt in months. In years.”

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” he said. “I have a hunch things will look up. And last night the boy wanted to sleep in bed with us.”