The Removed

by Brandon Hobson

  Vin’s phone was ringing again, but I ignored it. I heard a dragging noise from the basement, as if he were moving a mattress around down there. I powered up my phone and walked throughout the house, turning all the lights on. There was nothing to be afraid of, I told myself. I was defending myself from him. But still I was starting to panic. I felt a slow, creeping fear connected directly to Vin, though it also flowed deeper. Papa had always told me to confront fear, so I did just that. What kind of person was I, to keep him downstairs? He had hit me, but that didn’t give me a reason to keep him hostage, did it? I began to think about what I had done. Questions came to mind about what was legal and what was beyond self-defense, especially after so much time had passed. I started to feel paranoid. Maybe I would go to jail for this. Was it morally wrong to protect myself from harm? Was I still protecting myself? For a while my thoughts raced back and forth between what was moral and immoral, which made me feel pressured about what I should do next. No matter what I thought, nothing made me feel any better about the situation.

  Slowly I retreated back to my bedroom and searched for a Valium, a Xanax, an edible, anything. I started reading again, looking up at the hallway every now and then. Someday I wanted to be the type of woman who could read in solitude while my lover worked outside, coming into the house to ask for my help. The type of woman whose lover waited patiently while she raised a finger and finished reading. My ideal lover was a person of patience and fortitude, which Vin was not.

  Soon his phone was ringing again. The battery had not run down completely. He must’ve heard it ringing down there, because he started yelling again: “Hey, let me out of here, you crazy bitch!” I took his phone from the kitchen into my bedroom and closed the door. When I answered, I heard Luka’s voice, sweet little Luka, crying on the phone. “Are you coming home, Dad? Where are you? Are you coming to get me?” He was crying really hard, and I couldn’t bear listening to it. His crying absolutely broke my heart.

  “Luka,” I said. “Luka, settle down. This is Colette, your dad’s friend.”

  “I’m at my aunt’s house,” he said, and I felt overwhelmed with sadness. He kept asking where his dad was, near hysterics, and I had to work to get him to hear me. “Luka,” I was saying over and over. “Luka, your dad will be there soon. Your dad’s coming to get you, Luka, okay?” By then I was near tears myself, very upset. I felt confused, trying to sound like a mother calming her son. A mother, this is what I told myself to sound like. Show empathy, understanding. Comfort him the way a mother would.

  When I hung up the phone, I felt my heart racing. I thought of poor Luka, sweet Luka. Why should he suffer for his father’s weaknesses? Overcome with guilt, I told myself I should let Vin go to him. Luka needed a dad right now. Depriving him of that only made me feel worse. So I grabbed a can of Mace, which I kept by my bed in case I ever needed it.

  I stood in the hallway for a moment. I thought about my intentions with Vin. I wanted him to see me as a strong woman, not someone he could take advantage of. Not someone he could slap in the face. He needed to understand this, and I would make sure of that. I was an older woman, more experienced, one who held grudges. I was an angry woman who never learned to forgive. I sought revenge when I needed to. I’d learned to take up for myself.

  When I knocked on the door, Vin didn’t respond. I called his name. I unlocked the door, opened it slowly, and saw him sitting cross-legged on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. A few empty water bottles were scattered on the floor. The blanket was balled up in the corner. When he realized the door was open, he struggled to sit up. I didn’t enter the room, but stood there waiting for him to speak. He managed to stand up. “Are you a fucking lunatic?” he said. “Why did you lock the door?”

  Something flashed in my mind as I glared at him. He was of some other presence. Maybe he could’ve killed me. Maybe I could’ve killed him. But I saw where that anger would lead me: a place in which Luka had no dad, a new pain that would not resolve an old pain.

  “Do you remember hitting me last night?” I asked him.

  He looked down at his hand, and I wondered if he felt remorseful. He was shaking his head in disbelief. I hadn’t thought he could ever be capable of being so cruel, but now I knew, and I needed to let him know. I felt as though I were staring into the face of a different man, someone I had never seen before. He seemed fatigued, unkempt, pitiful, like someone who had been through hell, through turmoil, and realizing this, if only briefly, gave me a sense of satisfaction.

  “I’m bleeding,” he said, compliant and not defensive. “My hand is bleeding.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He wiggled his fingers, and I saw a little bit of blood on his knuckles.

  “Do you remember that your cop dad shot a teenage boy?” I said. “It was fifteen years ago. Do you remember that?”

  He looked up at me, trying not to blink. He was like a weak soldier, and I was like a spirit before him, full of rage for what he had done.

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “That boy was my brother, Ray-Ray. The boy your dad shot and killed. That was my brother who got shot.”

  “My dad shot your brother,” he said, as if he was thinking aloud.

  “Your stupid racist dad shot and killed my brother.” I could hear my voice go weak.

  “I’m bleeding,” he said again. He kept wiggling his fingers.

  “Christ, Vin, you make me sick. You deserve to bleed. You deserve to suffer for the murder your dad committed.”

  He looked serious, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know he did that. There must be some kind of explanation. My dad’s not a killer. He was a police officer, there were some messy cases over the years. Lots of people died.”

  “Please.”

  “I don’t know everything he did at his job. I was a little kid back then.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He panicked. “Hey, I really didn’t know. Why are you bringing this up? Have you just been waiting to confront me about this?”

  “My God, Vin, he got away with murder!” I told him. “Your dad should’ve been tried. He saw an Indian kid and just shot at him. Ray-Ray never even owned a BB gun, much less a real gun. Some other dude was the shooter, not Ray-Ray. There was no trial. It feels like a cruel joke on my family.”

  He ran his hands over his face, then clenched his jaw. His hands were fists. I saw a vein bulging in his neck. “Settle down, Sonja,” he said. “My dad’s got lung cancer. He’s on chemo. He’s weak and dying.”

  “It feels like a cruel joke,” I said again. “The pain we went through. Every single person in my family is still fucked up. My dad’s tried his best to keep us together, but he has Alzheimer’s and can’t even recognize us sometimes. My brother is an addict, and my mother has been depressed for years because of this. Where could we find justice? Can you tell me that?”

  He shook his head.

  I didn’t say anything more, nothing. I set his phone on the floor and left, leaving the door open, then headed outside and began walking down the road toward my parents’ house. A moment later I turned and saw him walking to his car. He started the engine and pulled away.

  In the end, whatever I thought didn’t matter. Calvin Hoff was old, and someday soon he would be eaten by cancer and die. That was the only justice I could hope for.

  FOR THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON I thought of Luka. If I could’ve snatched him up from Vin, I would have. He would’ve been safer with me anyway. He would love living with me. I would push him on a swing and see the rush of wind in his hair and eyes as he looked at me. I would take him shopping for clothes and to get haircuts at the barbershop downtown. I would take him swimming, like I used to take Ray-Ray.

  Thinking of Ray-Ray reminded me that I needed to visit his grave before the bonfire, so late in the day I rode my bicycle to the cemetery. It was a long ride, and my legs were tired from riding uphill. I felt a sense of density when
I got there, as though the air had left my body. As I walked my bike toward Ray-Ray’s grave, I saw a young girl reaching down to pick up rocks beside the road. She was alone, talking to herself, I think, though I couldn’t hear exactly what she was saying. She wore a white dress and a long necklace. Her hair was long and dark and hung loose to her waist. I walked toward her to see her better. She was classically lovely, with sharp cheekbones and contemplative lips. When she looked up, she stood and smiled.

  “I’m picking up rocks,” she said, and laughed.

  “Who are you with?” I asked. “Is your mother around?”

  She held the rocks out in her hand, ignoring me. “They’re jewels,” she said. “Look at them, they’re all around us. Do you see how pretty they are?”

  “Pretty,” I said, glancing at them. “But are you with your mother or dad?”

  “I’m here to see my sister who died on the Trail.”

  “Your sister on the Trail?” I said. “Do you mean your ancestor?”

  “No, it’s my sister. My name’s Clara.”

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “She’s over there,” she said, pointing, but when I turned I couldn’t see anyone.

  “Look at these,” she said, holding out the rocks again. She ran a finger over them in her palm. They were sparkling in the sunset. I knelt down to get a better look, but she turned and ran away from me. I considered following her, but then I noticed a woman at the end of the road. She was an older woman, wearing a red coat.

  “Is she with you?” I called out. “I was worried she was alone.”

  “Thank you,” the woman called back.

  Clara ran to her, grasped her by the hand, and the two walked away together.

  I walked on to Ray-Ray’s grave, and on the path I saw a man up ahead wearing a wolf mask with feather trimmings. Beside him was a woman and child. “We finished the Snake-Mask Dance,” the man called out to me. His wife and daughter were waving. The little girl pointed to the sky and shouted at me to look up. Papa had told me the tale about the seven dancing boys who turned into stars, and when I looked up to the graying sky, I saw them dancing, even in the daylight.

  “The seven dancing boys,” I called out, but when I looked back at the people, they were gone. I continued walking down the path, looking around. They had disappeared so quickly. I remembered Papa once saying all cemeteries are connected, and a wave of sadness passed through me as I thought about how many bodies were underground. Death was all around me.

  Mosquitoes and insects buzzed in the air, which was humid and warm. The cemetery was colorless and grim, as all cemeteries felt, with the smell of rotting wood and damp grass. When I reached Ray-Ray’s grave, I saw his name engraved on the gray stone. The stone still looked new, after all these years. The engraving was so prominent. I reached down and touched it, ran my fingers over the letters of his name.

  As I looked down, underneath the earth I saw him, my brother Ray-Ray, lying on his back. I saw his mangled body, his corpse. His face was disfigured, unrecognizable and without eyes. I was stricken by the horror of the image, my dead brother looking so different. It filled me with anguish, seeing such an unhinged and cryptic apparition. But how different, too, I must’ve appeared to him—or had he watched me grow? Had he in fact been watching all along, with our ancestors, disguised as an animal or bird?

  Only then did I begin to see his beauty blossoming. Death opened like a cave into his body, a passage to somewhere; and I entered it, collapsing into him, entering my little brother, and the two of us watched a bird circle in a cloudless pale-blue sky.

  Tsala

  Resurrection

  BELOVED: REGARDING MY DEATH, I do not understand the reason why I awoke when I did. The soldier had taken my life and your life from us, from our family. We were no longer of this world.

  I saw only dark red, the color of blood. In death, as we slept beneath the earth with the worms and the cold mud and rocks, hearing the soulful howl of the coyotes and the drumming of our people, as we slept beneath the feet of those who stomped the ground and shook the heavens, I felt your mother’s aching.

  I felt her suffering as if it were my own, a suffering so great I felt my spirit move restlessly in an unfathomable darkness. How long was I dead? Surely not long!

  I crawled out of the earth like a beast in the night, with necklaces made of bear claws and gold, with wet mud and worms matted to my hair, which hung to my chest. I crawled out of the grave and felt as strong and mighty as a horse, even though I knew I had died. I remembered the story of the tribe of root eaters and acorn eaters whose wives were buried in the same grave as their husbands, and I feared I would look down into the grave and see my wife. In the old story of the root and acorn eaters, a lighted pine knot was placed in a wife’s hand, a rope was tied around her body with a bundle of pine knots, and she was lowered into her husband’s grave, where she would die after the last pine knot was burned. I feared I would find my wife’s body in the grave, burned and dead, and the fear consumed me like a great fire.

  When I looked down, I was happy to see that the grave was empty.

  And here I stood, not of flesh but of spirit, not of bone or skin as I had known. In this world around me I saw a great fire, right there in the same world where I had lived. A great fire spreading across the sky, heavy in flames, flashing and blinding, and I saw animals running to the trees and birds flying in the sky. Soon the birds changed into children and then disappeared into the flames. I saw columns of smoke leading to the heavens. I saw snakes with their heads chopped off; their mouths were still biting. Their bodies slithered into the ground and turned into dust. The dust rose into more columns of smoke. I saw figures in that dust, figures whose faces I did not recognize but whose bodies were strong, who rose up and drifted away as dust. They rose up and drifted as dust, falling into the great fire, and this sight was beyond anything I had ever dreamed. I saw the winged bodies of others forced into a vortex of wind and smoke, disappearing into the great fire. Yet I was not afraid.

  I could see for miles. I saw boys from my childhood dragging their dead mother around so that corn would grow. They were wailing in fear. I called out to them, but they couldn’t hear me. Most of our people were at stockades, waiting to be moved west. Our people were being forced out of our land, this I knew, but I could not understand why. My thoughts were cloudy and confused as they can be in sleep. I tried to remember my name, but I fell into a strange loss of thought. For what reason did I awake? Why did I see these visions in the night? I saw oxcarts and soldiers with rifles. I heard the crying of children and saw our feeble elders being lifted into government wagons. I saw a flash of light across the sky. A pale mist swirled before me like a small tornado, holding the image of someone I recognized: you, beloved, a strange vision unlike anything I had ever seen before. I wasn’t able to speak or call your name, and in an instant you dissolved. Across the land I heard the wailing of someone in pain.

  “We are Ani-yun’ wiya!” I shouted.

  But when I spoke, I heard no language, no sounds of words. Instead I heard from my mouth a tiresome moan. The soldiers must not have heard me, as I was very far away. I shouted again: “Ani-yun’ wiya!” and this time again, a weary moan. Nobody seemed to hear me. I became frightened of myself, and for a moment I wondered if I had changed form or identity. As I examined myself, I saw I wore a buckskin, and I could not feel my skin. Clearly, I was a spirit now. I felt the earth beneath my feet, but when I stomped, I heard nothing. I tried to adjust to the elements, breathing deep. I did not hunger or thirst. I cried out in Cherokee like a wounded dog.

  I saw myself as a strong, fierce presence. The air sharpened the sting in my eyes, and I knelt down and felt the ground for dirt, which I rubbed together in my hands to create heat. I placed my palms on both eyes, and when I opened them this time, I saw the spirits of those who had died before me, warriors, hundreds of them. I saw their sleek figures and raven-black hair and a thick, swirling dust building behind them.
They wielded black and red clubs, the colors of courage and blood. They were watching me from a distance—for what reason I do not know. And I could hear them calling out:

  Ayanuli hanigi! Ayanuli hanigi!

  Walk fast! Walk fast!

  In the distance I saw fires aroused from smoldering coals. I was left alone in the night, alone, near a stream reflecting the quivering moonlight. I approached the water and leaned over to look at my reflection. The image peering back at me in the water was not the face I had during my life, but some hazy figure whose eyes I could not see.

  I stood and looked to the sky, where I saw two twinkling lights in the darkness. The stars told me our people were being held at a campsite nearby, and I needed to help them. I heard the howling of a wolf across the stream and saw that the wolf appeared to be in pain, lying on its side. Wading through the stream in shallow water, I felt no bottom to the stream. I crossed the water to the wolf, which howled again in pain, and I could see that the skin on the wolf’s neck had been ripped out, exposing blood and bone. I knelt down and placed my hand on the wound, which made the wolf stop howling. Then the wolf stared at me. His eyes held my gaze. He spoke to me through his eyes.

  There is a great sadness coming to the people and this land, he said. Your people are being forced to leave, to move west, and many will suffer and die.

  I did not speak to the wolf, but he knew I did not trust him.

  He continued to stare at me: If you want a sign that I speak the truth, you must first throw me into the water.

  So I lifted the wolf and placed him in the shallow water, and I saw that the wound had healed. Then I stood back, and the wolf came out of the water and shook its body dry.