“To be fair,” Jackson said, “the Depp-like dude was not really an Indian, I don’t think.”
“Shit. The grandpa just fathered a child at eighty. He runs three miles every damn day and still works for the government. That man is a god.”
Jackson nodded impatiently. “Let’s not get excited here, Lyle.”
They both looked at me, waiting for me to respond, but I didn’t say anything.
“We really need to talk gaming,” Lyle said.
He motioned for us to follow him and led us to a foldout table by the far wall of the warehouse, away from the music and crowd. Lyle put a cigarette in his mouth but couldn’t get the lighter to work.
“Lyle has some questions for you,” Jackson said. “We’re beta-testing the game I told you about. There’s a mud pit we’re using. Lyle can explain it better than I can.”
“A mud pit,” I said.
Lyle kept flicking the lighter until he finally got his cigarette lit. He exhaled a stream of smoke from the side of his mouth and leaned forward. “It’s an area near Devil’s Bridge,” he said. “Do you know where that is?”
“I’ve only been here a couple of days. How would I know where that is?”
“It’s on the outskirts of town. There’s a mud pit we want you to see.”
“You want me to see a mud pit?”
Lyle nodded, eyeing Jackson.
“We actually need you to get muddy,” Jackson said. “We’ll take video. We just need you in the pit.”
I took a drink from my cup and frowned at them. I couldn’t figure out if they were serious or if this was some strange joke at my expense.
“For a football simulation,” Lyle added. “We need better footage, like playing in mud and bad weather. You get the idea. It’s a mighty good game, friend.” He stopped talking to watch a woman walk by. She wore a black leather jacket and blue jeans. Her hair was long and dark and hung down her back. I wasn’t able to see her face, but Lyle was staring at her.
“We could all go tomorrow,” Jackson said.
I finished off my beer and set the cup down. “This is for the Thorpe game?” I said.
“Yeah, for the Thorpe game,” Jackson said. “It’s killer.”
Lyle laughed. They both laughed.
I told them I needed to find the toilet for a piss and walked away. Fuck it, I thought. Fuck Jackson for bringing me there. I felt paranoid and antisocial and knew I had to get out of that place. I was able to move quietly and unnoticed along the wall to the front door, where I stepped outside into the cool air of the moonlit blue night.
I walked away from the warehouse, following a road heading south to a small field. I thought I recognized the street on the other side of the field from one of my walks. Squeezing my way past a large bush and a wooden fence, I walked down a small slope of grass to the dark field, where I heard things around me creaking in the night. It was still warm enough for bugs, night insects and creepy sounds. I felt the urge to get high then. It came out of nowhere, and suddenly I saw it: the fowl, running toward me with its wings outstretched. I ran. The red fowl chased me as I scrambled through the darkened field toward the main street, breathing heavily without looking back, feeling the soft dirt underneath my feet as I made it to the edge of the street. I saw glimpses of red traffic lights up ahead. I turned around, then, and saw the fowl was gone.
When I finally made it all the way back to Jackson’s, I was still trembling from anxiety, and I desperately wanted to get high but I had no more weed. I drank a couple of beers from the fridge and sat in the chair for a while, trying to relax. The urge to leave the Darkening Land made it difficult to calm down. I missed Rae, too. She hadn’t called once, which made me feel awful. She wouldn’t want to be with me anymore, not with my lying to her about my drug use, but I still hadn’t accepted this.
There were too many unanswered questions. I sat on the couch for a while and started to doze. Maybe I fell asleep for a while, but soon enough I heard Jackson come in. He was a little drunk, I could tell, and asked me why I left so suddenly.
“I fell asleep, I guess,” I said.
“But why’d you take off?” he asked again. “Lyle was annoyed. We looked everywhere for you.”
“Too many people there for me. You know me. The place was crowded.”
He staggered into the kitchen and opened the fridge. He took something out, unwrapped it, and heated it up in the microwave. He sat in the kitchen and ate.
“I should go to bed,” I said.
“Wait a minute,” he said, turning to me. His words were slurred a little. “Let me show you something new I’ve been working on for the Jim Thorpe image on the projector downstairs. The hologram.”
I agreed, though somewhat reluctantly, and followed him downstairs to the basement. He turned on the light, and the air felt warm and heavy. There was a stepladder. He pointed above it, and I saw a gray device that resembled a projector installed in the ceiling. “This is it,” he said. He stepped on the ladder and reached up to the device. He was a little wobbly, drunk, and I worried he might fall.
“Maybe we should do this tomorrow,” I said.
“It connects to the Wi-Fi,” he said, ignoring me, “but it’s a little spotty most of the time. The light from here projects to the screen on the floor and then bounces to the Mylar screen on the wall over there. All of it creates a hologram that looks very fucking real.” He turned and barely kept his balance, drunk. “You’ll see in a minute.”
I watched him work. His face twisted as he tried to focus. He powered up the device, and blue lights blinked around it. “Here, yeah, you’ll see an image of Jim Thorpe in a minute,” he said.
The projector began clicking, and a moment later a robotic voice spoke: “I am the Indy Ann,” the computerized voice said. “Shoot the Indy Anns.”
The light on the device blinked, and I saw a blue light project from it. In front of us, a cloud was forming into something human-shaped. The image that slowly appeared in front of us was not Jim Thorpe, but a hologram of an Indian man in full headdress, with feathers, standing before us. I stood up. He was maybe six feet tall, with his arms at his sides. His body was in focus, but his face remained a little bit blurry. There was a cool tint to his body, as if he were standing under a blue lightbulb.
I lost all awareness of my surroundings, if only for a moment, lost my interest in the image and the technology and in Jackson, consumed as I was by the reflection of blue light, but the moment reasserted itself and almost immediately I felt the absurdity in the situation.
“That’s not Jim Thorpe.”
“Fuggin’ glitch,” he said. “Must be a damn glitch in the software. I need to get in there and screw with it.”
“Glitch? It’s a man in a headdress.”
I watched the image of the man flicker while Jackson, still up on the ladder, looked inside the machine. He picked up a tiny microphone and spoke into it: “Testing, testing,” he said.
Slowly, the apparition began approaching us. He didn’t so much walk as he glided slowly toward me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. When he reached me, I could hear a ticking sound coming from his head. The expression on his face was horrific, a cry for help.
“Testing,” Jackson said into the tiny mic again.
The apparition said, “I am the savage. Shoot the savage.” Then it froze, staring out into the distance. I realized it had paused, fallen into sleep mode, unresponsive and still.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Jackson said. He had the projector’s lid open and was leaned way over, trying to rewire or repair whatever was wrong with it. “Give me a minute,” he said. “Is it still the same image?”
“What the fuck is going on?” I said.
“Trying to get the Jim Thorpe image to appear. This was a model, a stock image. Shouldn’t be there. Please ignore.”
I watched him bite his lip, concentrating. The image of the unblinking Native man kept flickering in front of me, eyes wide open. Finally Jackson clicked it off
, and the image disappeared.
“Thing’s gone apeshit,” Jackson said, wobbling as he climbed down the ladder. He slumped down in the chair. “Voice activation is damn hard. There are speech patterns. Fuggin’ glitch.”
“This isn’t for the sports game,” I said. “It wasn’t Jim Thorpe. What’s going on?”
“Shit.”
“Tell me the truth, Jackson.”
He stared into the floor, drunk.
“Seems like this is a different game about Indians,” I said. “Is this what you were filming me for?”
Jackson didn’t say anything. He wouldn’t look at me.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“I didn’t want you to know.”
“Why not?”
“It’s nothing, just a harmless game. I don’t even want to talk about it. Let’s head back upstairs, I need to get to bed.”
Jackson stumbled a little and steadied himself as he trudged slowly up the stairs, not seeming to care that I wasn’t following him. I stood for a moment, reeling from what I had just seen. Then, not really knowing what I was looking for, I started going through Jackson’s belongings to see what I could find. I opened the cabinets. There were papers, receipts, notes with scribblings. I shuffled through them. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Next to the ladder I found a game manual:
SAVAGE
—Ready for Beta-Test IMMEDIATELY!—
PLAYER GOALS: Determine whether the savage Indians are real or holograms by interaction. Capture and torture. Shoot to kill.
SPECIFICS: Single- or multiplayer. First-person shooter. Ages 10 and up. Players may purchase game weapons from local dealers in DL (DT’s Gun Supply; Conway’s House of Guns and Ammo; Gunz R Us; etc.). Please register code tracking # for game.
LOCATION: Darkening Land city limits is approximately 1,970 feet (600 m) below sea level (located at 35.20388S, 97.17735E)
GAME OBJECTIVE: Players take on the role of police officers, special agents, soldiers, or assassins who are fighting a local threat of a savage (SAV) invasion. Weapons can be mounted on steady surfaces for shooting, but fewer points are collected. Players shoot Savages.
RED HELMET BONUS: Players earn red helmets for information gained from SAV, so in order to reach the Reward Tier, player must earn ten (10) red helmets. Red helmets can be traded in for experience points.
TORTURE BONUS: Players can place SAV in the Torturous Radioactive Mud Pit (TRMP), located approximately 69 km south of Devil’s Bridge, where they can question SAV and gain information and points before destroying SAV by slow radioactive torture in the mud pit. The radioactive mud creates a slow memory loss (based on historical records of deaths near Devil’s Bridge); therefore, the more torture a player uses, the less information is gained. TRMP is the worst of possible tortures for SAV and is used as a strategic gameplay for long-term players because it earns them red helmets.
REWARD TIER: Experience points are saved in system to encourage long-term gameplay and can be redeemed for a Missile Launcher Fighter (MLF) or Petroleum Fuel Freeway Fighter (PFFF) in case of rare SAV escapes from TRMP. *Note: PFFF redeemers be aware that PFFF/MLF trades are not accepted because MLFs are in much higher demand and take more experience points to redeem. **Once a player collects three (3) different MLFs, player then has opportunity to enter the Jewel Zone (JZ) and purchase Native jewelry stolen from SAVs suffering in TRMP.
COMMUNITY RULES: Never share personal information with other players or SAVs, even when SAVs are in TRMP, unless you are redeeming red helmets for PFFFs or MLFs through Andrews, Jackson Media Inc. Cheating, Impersonators, and Trollers: See TRMP. We at Andrews, Jackson Media want you to be careful and have fun.
I tore the guide to shreds, then climbed the ladder and looked up at the projector. I touched it, felt for buttons until I heard it power up. The lens lit, and I climbed back down, waiting for the image of the Indian to appear. The screen was hazy at first, but after a minute the hologram showed a child, a boy with dark bushy hair, sitting cross-legged, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. I moved closer. The image remained still until I knelt down in front of him. He looked at me, and I recognized the face.
“Ray-Ray,” I said quietly.
He blinked slowly, giving me a curious look. His eyes were dark and piercing. His eyes held a complicated gaze, as though I was staring into his spirit. The structure of his face, his hair and body—it appeared just as it did in photographs of Ray-Ray at home. My own memories had grown hazy by this point, I realized. Quickly I stood and moved away, nervous. What was I afraid of? Maybe it was the haunting silence of the late night, or the thought that something could look so much like my brother and yet be a blatant fabrication. The urge to recoil gave me a dizzy feeling that almost made me ill.
“Talk to me,” I whispered. “Say something.”
I coughed into my hands, waiting, but he kept staring at me. I moved closer to him. I held up my hand, and he looked at it. I waved, and he waved back.
“Hello,” I whispered.
I saw his mouth move, but no sound came.
“Ray-Ray,” I whispered again, and he kept forming his mouth as if trying to speak. I couldn’t hear anything. I reached to touch his arm, but when my hand touched the image, it burned badly, and I quickly withdrew it. I held my hand, grunting in pain. Ray-Ray was an image, nothing more. A hologram. A hallucination, a mirage.
Finally, he spoke: “Brother,” he said softly.
My heart was racing. What did it mean? Did he recognize me? Was his spirit somehow present in the projection, or was it programmed?
His eyes looked upward, and he evidently fell into sleep mode. He sat frozen, not moving. I climbed the ladder and pushed every button I could reach, anything to get a reaction. Then I saw the image of Ray-Ray looking up at me as he slowly dissolved into nothingness.
Maria
SEPTEMBER 5
A COOL MORNING IN FALL and perfect weather for an outing, our first in a long while. It was a teacher conference day, and there was no school. Wyatt told us he had never seen exotic fish or sharks, so we decided to take him to Jenks, near Tulsa, to the big aquarium. While I drove, Ernest engaged in a long conversation with Wyatt about old-time music and various dances: the Charleston, the fox-trot, the waltz. Wyatt pulled out one of his meticulously organized notebooks and read from an alphabetized list of his favorite old standards: “All of Me,” “Have You Met Miss Jones,” “In a Sentimental Mood,” and so on, along with a list of musicians by genre. They talked jazz—Coltrane, Gillespie, Wyatt naming off little-known anecdotes he had read in various online sources. Ernest listened, delighted. “The boy is a walking encyclopedia,” Ernest said to me. “He has class. Not many kids have such good taste these days.”
I looked at Wyatt in the rearview mirror and saw him staring out the window at the rolling prairie outside. Ernest was as happy as I had seen him in a long time.
At the Jenks Aquarium, Wyatt scanned the map, wanting to see all the exhibits, every one of them: Sea Turtle Island, the South Pacific Reef, the Ecozone. We entered the Extreme Fishes exhibit, a large, dimly lit room encircled by enormous tanks filled with exotic fish. The room had a magical quietness about it the moment we walked in, as if we were underwater, deep in the ocean. I saw a rainbow of light as the fish darted back and forth behind the glass. Ernest went over to the tank and touched the glass. A blue fish drifted over and stared at him. They were looking at each other, Ernest and the fish. He tapped a finger on the glass, but the fish wasn’t frightened.
“This fish is giving me the stink eye,” he said, winking at Wyatt.
“Must be a female,” I said.
“She’s jealous of a fish,” Ernest told Wyatt.
For a moment I felt envious. Oh, to be so happy. How did this work again? I was in control of my own emotions, my own needs, and everything felt stable again. I recognized what made me happy or sad. Seeing Ernest like this made me feel elated.
Another family had enter
ed the room, and I noticed that Wyatt had made friends with a baby in a stroller. The baby’s siblings, an older brother and sister, were with their father, looking excitedly into the glass at a yellow fish. The baby was wearing a pink outfit and a bow in her hair. Wyatt was making her laugh. I heard him make little baby sounds. The mother smiled politely, then strolled away to join the rest of her family. I walked over to Wyatt.
“What about the fish?” I asked him.
“They’re fantastic. But babies? Babies are my jam.”
He joined Ernest at the glass, and we continued to walk down alongside it, looking at the vast underwater world. My phone rang, and I stepped away to answer. It was Bernice from Indian Child Welfare.
“How’s everything going with Wyatt?” she asked. “Is he behaving himself?”
“He’s an angel,” I said. “Can we keep him?”
“Well, the hearing is tomorrow. It looks like he’ll end up going to stay with grandparents.”
“That didn’t take long,” I said.
“Sometimes it doesn’t. The school said he’s doing well, as I expected. He really is a doll, but his grandparents are here in town, and they want to take him. The hearing is at ten in the morning.”
I watched Wyatt lean in to Ernest. From behind, they looked like grandfather and grandson. “I don’t want him to go,” I breathed into the phone. “We want him to stay with us. Is that even possible?”
“Oh, Maria,” Bernice said. “Are you serious? Is everything okay?”
They were leaning into the glass with both hands, staring at the fish, and standing there watching them, my heart broke thinking this could be their last day together.
“Maria?” Bernice kept saying.
The drive home was silent, and I didn’t want to bring up the hearing to Ernest and Wyatt. As I drove, I tried to imagine Wyatt’s reaction to the news that he would be leaving us. Would he be sad, or would he be relieved? How would Ernest take it? I didn’t want to think about it. When we arrived home, Sonja was in the kitchen, stirring blackberries in a saucepan. She turned and looked at Wyatt and said hello, smiling.
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