“I’m not sure I’m cut out for this,” Craig says. “You should come back so Roy isn’t short-handed.”
“You’re too honest.”
“Yeah. And I don’t like traveling much.”
“Well,” Michael says, “Maybe I will come back. I need a job. You think I can get something with less driving? I’d like to settle down myself.”
“If I leave, he’ll be pretty desperate,” Craig says. “He’ll need someone on the road, but I bet you could negotiate something.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Stay here until you come back and then maybe coach football or something.”
“Sounds good,” he says.
“Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better. Can I tell Roy you’re coming back?”
“Why doesn’t he ask me?”
“Well, you know.”
“Let me get out of California and I’ll call him. I don’t know my schedule. I’ve been pretty moment-to-moment lately, but that’s going to change.”
“Good to hear you so positive,” he says. “Maybe you can convince me to stick around. We were a pretty good team. I’ve got a run up to Tahoe, but when I get back, let’s get a steak.”
“Good talking to you, Craig.”
“God Bless.”
A bus pulls up and disgorges people. There’s an Oakland A’s advertisement on the side of it. Baseball. Simple elegant baseball. What’s not to like about baseball? A man could become obsessed with the sport and have a good and productive life.
He liked baseball once, and football. And tennis. He could sit all day Saturday and watch games. He taught Peter the infield fly rule and the two-point conversion. He played catch in the yard. His life was rich and complete. He’d had purpose then, good wholesome human purpose. For however he felt about his parenting responsibilities now, he had to admit that he did well enough with his kids. Peter’s going to be a successful lawyer with the skills and intelligence he developed while still with his real dad. Tiffany is a free-thinker. She has acting talent. School might not be for her, but she’s no fool. She’ll do fine. She’ll find herself and do just fine.
Living is enough. Carpe Diem. The sunset, the cool breeze off the bay, the street full of people—these are enough for him. He admires the eager-faced college students carrying books big enough to anchor a boat, children of the flower children, alive and living. This is all there needs to be. All there ever was. Brennan was so right. People are what it’s about. He’d been in a funk, fallen into depression and isolation. If there was something looking out for him, that something sent him Craig and Rebecca, not a hellish she-devil and a mad aristocrat.
He calls Carla.
“Hey Babe. How’s it going?”
“Now you’re getting around to calling me?”
“I got sick again,” he says. “I’m just getting up and about now. How are you? Are you happy?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Are you drunk? You sound drunk.”
“No, Carla, I’m just having a good day and thought I’d say hello.”
“Hello,” she says. “And no I’m not happy. Tiffany finally deigned to come home. She cut her hair and dyed it. It’s black now. Pitch coal black. Ugly as sin. It’s just at her ears. She’s wearing too much eyeliner now too. She looks like a punk vampire.”
“That’s kind of the look now,” he says. “I’m in Berkeley and I see people just like that. Is she wearing torn jeans too?”
“This isn’t freak-out Berkeley. This is Colorado. She looks completely stupid. I’m pulling my hair out.”
“Don’t worry—”
“Don’t tell me not to worry. You’re not here. You don’t see the stress she’s putting on the family. It’s unbearable.”
“I’m looking to settle down soon. Maybe she can visit for weekends or something.”
“That would be awfully responsible of you, Michael. About time you started acting like a father.”
“Hey, can you lay off me a little bit? I called to say hello to an old friend.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “Has something happened Michael?”
“Why would you say that? Can’t I be friendly?”
“This is concern, not accusation. I’m glad you called. I’m actually doing okay. Tiffany is driving me crazy, but Warren is planning a surprise cruise to Italy. I stumbled on his email.”
“That sounds like fun.”
“It’ll be in the fall. Do you think you’ll have a new place by then? Do you think Tiffany could stay with you for a couple weeks?”
“Sure.”
“That’ll be good,” she says.
“Yes, it will.”
“You need anything?”
“I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“Take care, Michael.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
He ends the call and leans back.
The woman fusses with her child a few inches away on the edge of the bench.
He feels like an oppressive weight has been lifted off his shoulders. He can breathe again.
It’s all clear. He’ll go back to Roy and get a paycheck and if he won’t let him have a desk, he’ll be all right while he looks for another job, something where can stay put, have hours, develop a normal routine. He’ll rejoin the population. He’ll watch baseball, have barbecues, 401ks, Christmas lights, sit-coms, grandchildren, and sunsets. He’ll stop worrying and let himself fall into the natural order of things.
It wasn’t a wasted pilgrimage, his odyssey to this bench. Rebecca Brennan connected some dots for him. He is a survivor of a sick bunch of fuckers who killed people. Maybe they’d used Crystal Springs in their crimes. That’s probably how he knows it. It all makes sense. His midlife crises eroded some barriers and he’d received glimpses into a bygone time. That does not mean that that is who he is, only that that is what he experienced. That’s how he knew about the graves. This is why he knew how to kill the mugger in the black checkered shirt.
The thought straightens his back and draws a groan from his suddenly tight throat. The mother flinches from the sudden movement.
He takes three quick breaths and holds the fourth. Regardless of what Michael Kalson was, Michael Oswald is, in fact, a murderer.
His mind is wrong. His thinking addled and dangerous. How can it be that his terrible crime does not consume him? How could he have put it aside for a nice visit with Rebecca? What kind of monster is he that he could dipshits, take his money like pay, toss his corpse into a dumpster and then sit down for tea?
This is not who he is. This is not how he was raised. The Oswalds were good people. He is a good person. He is a survivor. He’s going to have a house and baseball. He is not the kind of monster that kills people and buries them in the desert. He does not have his pick anymore.
He screams at the memory. The woman leaves the bench and moves away.
It was eighteen inches long. The handle was wood, cherry he thinks. Handmade for him. The head was steel, a pick on one end, a shovel blade angled like a hoe at the other. It could be disassembled. He kept it wrapped in a piece of canvas and stowed beneath his seat. It was a perfect tool for the job. With it he could dig a man’s grave three feet deep in under an hour if the ground was soft. He recalls the labor. He remembers the blisters. Christopher teaching him how to scoop the dirt in cadence with The Digging Song sung low in panting whispers usually in the dark, under moonlight. In hidden places. How proud his family was of him when he dug his first one all alone. They gave him the knife then and let him pierce the body, just there along the abdomen, and one plunge each into the lungs to let the gasses out. They sang for him and he buried the man and dared the world to find that body again. He’d been so happy.
“I am Michael Oswald!” he yells.
The mother doesn’t say a word or even look at him. She collects her things and pushes her baby up the sidewalk toward another bus stop on th
e next block.
“Oswald,” Michael says to himself, tears rolling down his cheeks. He looks at his palms expecting to see blisters or someone’s blood.
His breathing grows rapid. His head grows light. He’s adrift in his own reality. He stands up and barely keeps his feet. He forces his breathing to slow, his head to clear. He’s losing his mooring in reality. There is only one thing he can do if he’s to save himself: he has to turn himself in.
He boards the next bus. He collapses in a seat and closes his eyes. His whole body shakes, his hands worst of all. He balls them into fists but it’s not enough. He pulls the broken strap off his bag and wraps it around his hands like fighter’s tape. The tension gives him focus, pushes his thoughts to his hands.
He holds the strap like a garrote.
Then She is there.
Her skin is burned black, scabbed and peeling. She holds a sword in one hand, a severed head in another, and in a third hand a trident, and in a fourth a golden bowl that catches the blood that leaks from the severed head. He knows that bowl. She scooped him up in it, and he died there.
She smiles for him and he is not afraid. It is a fond, proud, compassionate smile. A mother to a son. She lifts the bowl and drinks from it, and he knows it is sweet and thick. He craves it. With his watering eyes, he pleads for a taste.
Her face grows wild, her teeth sharpen into fangs. Her tongue flitters and strikes like a cobra’s. Bloodlust and madness burn in her eyes. She could strike down every soul in the bus, and he would help her if she were but to ask.
The smell of ashes and blood, dry and metallic, fills his nostrils. He draws in deep and his throat shuts. He’s choking. He’s dying. He cannot breathe.
Mother watches him with keen interest, excitement. Joy. He feels his sex stir and harden. He cannot breathe.
“Michael,” She says to him.
He gasps and steals a single breath. He is not so happy for the air. Death delayed.
“Michael,” Mother says.
He is transported outside the bus. He sees his body diminishing below him. He flies to impossible heights while She merely displays her true titanic stature.
Her breath is rot and smoke. Her hair matted in gore. Blood, not her own, drips from Her naked breasts. He gazes into Her wild eyes, red and angry, vicious and merciless, and he despairs. More arms erupt from Her sides, fanning out like peacock feathers. Beneath Her skirt of woven bloody arms, a forest of legs reaches down to earth to bear Her. Her face reflects upon itself ten times. For one terrible mind-breaking instant, Michael glimpses in those many eyes the eternal darkness that birthed the light and must kill it.
She reaches out with her many arms to embrace his frail and trembling body.
“My tiger,” She coos. “I love you.”
Part Three
Who can misery love,
Dance in destruction’s dance,
And hug the form of Death,
To him the Mother comes.
Chapter Twenty-Four
He is insane.
He accepts that he is insane. It doesn’t matter. It is his mind. He’ll do with it as he wants. It is his time, his flesh, his life; he’ll spend it as he will. It is his soul. He’ll give it to whom he pleases.
He stole the car because he needed one. He took it without fear and without malice. He did it as an offering to the Mother, and he knows She approved.
He didn’t choose just any car. He chose one that would test him, one that was owned by a weaker being but with more power and money than he. A fitting target, a proper offering.
He’d gotten off the bus before it left Berkeley. His vision and ecstasy, the Divine embrace, lasted only a moment and he was back among the clay-men. He was off the bus two stops from where he got on. The driver and the passengers were glad to see him go. He’d been noticed and made a mental note to work on that.
He stepped into the parking lot of a health food store and saw the green Range Rover parked diagonally across two spaces. It was way in the back so it wasn’t inconveniencing anyone but it still irked him. The man getting out of the car was well dressed, upscale casual, early thirties; too young for the kind of money he displayed like a dot on his forehead.
Michael bumped into him sideways and was so contrite and submissive that the man was apologizing to him before they parted. He walked into the store to buy his overpriced bottled water and steroid-free beef thinking he’d just met one of the good guys. Michael watched him disappear inside and then, with the man’s keys, opened the SUV and drove it onto the freeway.
He has a car still in Salt Lake City, waiting where he left it in an airport parking lot. He has other things too left behind; people, family, relationships he doesn’t need. It is a continuation of his years-long program of simplification. Lose his family. Then his home, his job, now his car. All willingly sacrificed to get him here. Their loss is no loss. They are not needed. They were and are and always have been crutches. Borrowed bits of matter to prop him up when he was too weak to stand on his own. They are lies, and he knows it, for he is a deceiver himself and to be one, to have that purpose and that potential, he must be able to see through the lies.
He’s given up everything before, keeping only himself and hiding the rest. He’d buried his precious things—his gifts, his loves, his trade, so well and so deep in the grave of his mind, that even he couldn’t find them for thirty years.
He recalls the room with the policemen. He knew they were police even though the woman was in a nice dress and the man in a casual shirt. They asked him questions about his family—what they did, where they’d been, why they thought they had to kill themselves. They’d given him toys to play with, papers and crayons, and encouraged him to draw for them what he would not say. He drew sunsets and mountains, lakes and a deer eating grass. They’d asked him what the lake meant. Was the deer himself or someone else? Did they hurt him? What can he remember?
He told them nothing. When he felt himself weakening, when they’d worn him down and he almost said something he ought not to, he’d cry. They’d leave him alone then and the woman would cradle him like a mother. But he was not deceived. He knew his mother, and she was not Her.
When the crying no longer worked, he’d say only that he couldn’t remember, and to be sure his words carried the weight they needed, he forgot. Even alone, asleep, or pretending to sleep, he’d drive away the memories that if spoken, if hinted at, would break faith with the family.
These things he remembers now. He remembers how he lied, but not what he concealed. So complete was his work that three decades later, he has only begun to suspect what he’s buried.
He pulls over outside of Fairfield for gas and to unplug the GPS satellite system that could be used to track the vehicle. He tosses it into the trash after topping off the tank.
Inside, he fills a bag with candy and donuts, some beef jerky and soda. He pays for it all with bills peeled off the roll he earned in Oakland.
He swaps the Rover’s license plates with a set purloined from a black Saab in need of new paint. He does it deftly and in the dark.
He’s feeling good. He knows he’s mad. Insane. Completely lost, but he doesn’t care. He is euphoric. He has nothing to lose, and that is freedom. He is divorced from laws and morals, the need to blend into society for the sake of society. He steps outside the limits of Rebecca’s narrow band and Craig’s hypothetical box. He takes back what God Herself gave him, what he was forced to give up to blend in: freedom. He recognizes he is of a different caste, a mutated species. A special animal. He lets himself be wild. There will be consequences, he’s sure of that, but when they come, let them come. He will welcome them as fair justice for what he has done. It’s the natural order.
He passes rows of cars filled with people, their flat faces illuminated in dash lights and oncoming traffic. They are still and lifeless. Like statues. Like clay.
He’s close, but he has not gone back far enough. Rebecca Brennan told him where he came from, explained to him
how he’d forgotten, why he’d forgotten, but he hasn’t broken through yet.
He’s sees it. He remembers who he was in the Dormitory.
He had to survive. That was his mission: to survive and rejoin the Mother one day. That was what he’d promised his family before they left him, because he alone could escape the siege. He’d tried to remain true to them, the ideal, and to Mother, but it had driven him deeper into incarceration. He was not a good enough deceiver, he could not hide what he really was: a tiger.
He’d been told in the Dormitory that first year when he’d been shut into the little room with the mattress on the floor and the light that never went out, that he’d better get used to such places because that is all he’d ever see if he didn’t change his attitude. He’d had to change his attitude. He’d buried who he was and hid the body like he’d been taught to do. He hid it so well he’d forgotten where it was and who it was.
But Mother knew.
She knows where all her children are, be they alive and hunting, or dead and offered. She’d been there the whole time, letting him blend and be forgotten, but watching and waiting.
She leads him out of lies.
He is not home yet. He does not remember enough, but he knows now to hammer at the wall he built decades ago and exhume the bodies behind it.
It is not only a memory he strives after. Memory marks but a moment. He strives to be again what he was, a tiger. He knows the word. The more he says it to himself the more loaded it becomes. It means more than he knows. Meaning under meaning; purpose under masks. His place in the natural order.
He’s so eager for it that it hurts like hunger. He laughs and cries and screams and sings a gibberish song to a melody he’s sure is his own invention. The night is dark but the freeway well lit and crowded. He is in a hurry, but he knows not to speed. He mustn’t draw attention to himself. Let the darkness conceal him. Whatever he goes to is waiting for him. This he knows, but he cannot say why.
“No!” he cries out loud. This cannot be him. This will not be him. He thinks of Peter and Tiffany, Craig and Roy. Carla, Maggie at the office. Real people, tangible forces he can know and love. Real beings not the psychotic imaginings of his fever-scarred mind. He’s insane. He must remember that. It’s his only lifeline. He can pull himself out of this. He can get help. Medication. Help.
What Immortal Hand Page 20