“I walk with Her,” he whispers. Then after a moment, he screams it.
He’s riding a wave of undulating reality, crests and troughs, madness and sanity. He has clarity in both directions and that itself is terrifying.
There’s a way through this. He’s done bad things, but necessary things. Self defense. A harmless joy ride. Nothing he can’t forgive himself for. Nothing he has to confess. Nothing he has to suffer unduly for. He can live with this. He can pay penance by living a meaningful life, finding purpose in helping others. Joining a group—maybe a church, a calm family-oriented church. Judeo-Christian, common, accepted and stale. No visitations of devils or gods within the last two millennium. He could foster a child, give him the home the Oswalds gave him. Love and security, three squares a day, Christmas presents and Halloween candy. Love and community.
In Sacramento he turns south away from Tahoe. Which side of him made him take the exit, he does not know. He rolls down the windows and lets the wind and traffic lull him into numbness.
He has a vague idea where he’s going, but it can change. It doesn’t matter. Moving is enough. The darkened freeways and warm summer air is all he needs, and all he takes. Eventually he’ll turn toward Vegas because, in a long round-about way, it’s on the way home.
At dawn, he’s in Barstow. The sun rises over the Mojave Desert. I-15 glistens away into the distance, mirages already twinkling. It’s going to be a hot day. He imagines the road across Nevada, into Vegas and then over the state line up through St. George, Cedar City and Provo and finally to Salt Lake. His car is at the airport. A life waits for him in long term parking.
He’s driven for hours and exhaustion is creeping in. His eyes are blurry and wind-burned. His legs cramped. His mind is as blank as he can keep it.
The moment in Barstow is not without significance. He cannot but notice the irony as he floors the stolen car through the little town, putting it behind him like a curse, returning as fast as he can to the Salt Lake valley. He does not have memory of Barstow, only images implanted in his imagination by Rebecca Brennan. He is fleeing a ghost story, no more real to him than a camp fire yarn or a black and white newsreel. But he dares not even stop for gas in that place, afraid something will draw him to a rented house with a ghastly history and he’ll lose his resolve to go on.
Ahead of him, another nine or ten hours, is home. He has only to keep moving and he’ll get back there. He’ll stop at that new Radisson Hotel by the airport and sleep. He’ll wake refreshed and on familiar ground. He’ll walk the city and buy an ice cream. He’ll fetch his car and get an apartment. He’ll call Roy and get his job back. He’ll be ordinary and sane. He’ll watch baseball. He has only to put Barstow behind him and get home.
His hands shake as he switches on the radio for distraction. He’s on a sugar buzz and caffeine high. He hasn’t slept in over a day because he slept for three before it. God, is this still the same day? Is this still the same day he met Rebecca? Stole this car? Killed a man.
It is a new day but not for him. The sun that blinds him through the dirty windshield is not the same sun as yesterday. It’s been reborn. It died, like him, in a swamp with a fever, and rose again to new possibilities. It is a new day, but not for him. He needs rest. He needs to sleep. He needs to put a few more sunrises behind him to be clean and pure again.
He cannot help it. He’s out of gas and has to stop in Vegas. He doesn’t want to stop. Not now, not ever. If he fell asleep at the wheel at ninety and never woke up, it would be a fitting end to him, a joyful happy conclusion, he thinks. But the car starves and he won’t make it past the city limits if he doesn’t stop. He could use a bathroom too.
Before he realizes where he is, he pulls the stolen Range Rover into the same gas station where Isaac Lowe’s GPS was disabled. He won’t use his credit card and goes inside to drop a C-note to start the pump.
“Is Mr. Abi in?” he asks the same bubblegum-popping clerk he remembered from last time. She doesn’t make eye contact with him, but picks up the phone.
“Who should I say wants him?”
“I’ll just go back,” he says and heads down the hallway past the bathrooms before the girl can alert her boss.
“Mr. Abi.” Michael knocks on the door.
It occurs to him to just burst in, frighten the man and beat what he wants out of him. Normally he’d laugh at such television detective tactics, wondering how anyone could ever believe such things were effective or ever happened outside of Hollywood, but not this time. This time, he feels he could do it. This time he doesn’t trust himself. His censor is untrustworthy. He has to consciously guide his behavior toward civility. He has to.
“Who is it?”
“Mr. Abi, it’s Michael Oswald. We talked last month about a missing truck. I’m an investigator.”
There’s a pause behind the door then he says, “Yes, I remember you.”
“I’d like to talk to you again.”
“I’d think that case was long over.”
“It’s not about that case,” he says. “It’s about Ganesh.”
“Ganesh?”
“The statue in your office. The elephant-headed guy with the arms. I want to ask you about that.”
The door opens. Mr. Abi is dressed in a starched white shirt and black slacks. A fan that wasn’t there before blows furiously from beneath his desk. There is an aroma of incense under the smell of fried food. The statue of the elephant god watches him from the corner cubby.
“What do you want to know?” says Mr. Abi.
“I was in the neighborhood,” Michael says. “I just wanted to ask you about Hinduism.”
Michael tries to put the shop owner at ease with a smile, but he feels the man’s tension like a chill in the hot windowless room. When the man doesn’t respond Michael asks, “Do I scare you?”
“Yes,” he says. “You do.”
“Why?”
“There’s something about you,” he says. “Something unsettling.”
“You’re a sensitive man,” Michael says. “I am unsettled. Mid-life crisis or something.”
“And you seek answers in Hinduism? It’s not the kind of religion you can just pick up.”
“Not Hinduism, per se,” he says. “Just a part of it.”
“What part of it?”
“The arms,” he says. “Ganesh there, has four arms. Remember I asked you about them? You told me it was to hand out blessings.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Are there others with many arms? Other gods, or maybe demons with many arms?”
“It is a common trope,” he says.
“Is there one in particular,” Michael asks. “A woman? A terrifying woman with a sword and a bowl and at least four arms? Black maybe blue in color. Skulls–”
“Around her neck,” says Mr. Abi.
“Yes.”
His hand goes to his throat reflexively. “You speak of Kali,” he says.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“I am not an expert,” Mr. Abi says. “My family practices out of tradition, some might say stubbornness. My mother gave me this statue of Ganesh when I opened this store. I think it’s brought me luck. I am not a particularly superstitious man, but it makes me feel better to light incense and say a prayer once in a while.”
“But you know Kali?”
“Yes,” he says. “To the West, Hinduism is not a religion so much as a mythology. Kali is the consort of Lord Shiva. At the top of Hindu hierarchy sit three primary deities: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer.”
“So she’s the wife of the devil?”
“You must divorce yourself of this type of thinking to understand Hinduism.”
“What kind of thinking?”
“Binary,” he says pleased with the word. “The western world likes things in black and white and in straight lines. Not so in India. Not so in Hinduism. There is no devil as you understand it from Christianity. The three forces of creation, preservation, an
d destruction are a cycle, each part necessary for the other. To remove any one part is to destroy the balance and thereby destroy the universe. We may not like it, but this is the way.”
“Are there no demons in Hinduism?”
“Oh yes, but they are not the devil. Hinduism has its ghosts and vampires, spirits and giants. It’s a mythology. There are many stories,” he says and then adds with a playful smile “There are more things in heaven and earth than dreamed of in your philosophy.”
“Do people worship Kali?”
“She is very popular in times of war. She is the goddess of war. When soldiers seek to harden their hearts, there is no one more merciless than Kali. She is a popular goddess all around actually. Very complicated. She’s a goddess of motherhood and sex as well as blood and violence. She’s the deity of death and of time.” He makes a circle in the air. Michael thinks it might be for a clock, but then realizes it not so complicated. It is a circle.
Mr. Abi continues, “The cremation ground where bodies are burned by the river, is holy to Kali. I remember being told to stay away from her as a merchant. Ganesh will provide riches, but Kali will take them all away to teach the lessons of death. Kali is first and foremost, the goddess of death.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing, but you said that it’s all part of the cycle and Hindus understand it.”
“Only a fool or a saint does not fear death, Mr. Oswald. The mention of Kali is enough to scare people. The Thuggee used that to generate fear.”
“Thuggee?” The name reverberates across time and catches in his throat.
“The cult of Kali, also called The Faithful Tigers. You do not know them?”
Michael shakes his head. His hands are shaking too, but he folds them in his lap to conceal it.
“There is no education in this country,” laments Mr. Abi. “But why should Americans know about the Thugs when even the English have forgotten them? But India has not.”
“What about them?” Michael says maybe a little too forcefully.
“You know the word thug? It has become part of the English language. Its origin is Indian, from Thuggee. Thuggee means “deceiver,” in general, but in the nineteenth century it came to mean a specific cult of dacoits. These bandits preyed upon travelers for centuries before the English discovered them and wiped them out. They were bandits who as a terror tactic claimed to worship Kali. This helped keep the superstitious tribal peoples silent about their crimes for centuries.”
“You’re saying they claimed to worship Kali, but they didn’t?”
“Some might have, but surely not all. William Henry Sleeman was the British Officer most associated with the destruction of the Thugs. He suggested a great conspiracy of criminals operating under the religious fervor of Kali. Using this as an excuse, he led a crusade against low castes and criminals that killed and displaced thousands of people. In fact, it led to a new designation in India of a criminal caste. It is a dark mark in Indian history. Imagine, you could be born a criminal. That law was only removed after independence.”
“A crusade?” says Michael. “Like a religious crusade? Anglican versus Hindu?”
“Not quite. It was more of a witch hunt. I’m sure there was something like 9/11, a dramatic robbery, a killing or something that set it all in motion. But once started, fear and suspicion snowballed into what it became. Bandits have existed in India forever. There didn’t need to be a cult to waylay a caravan, kill the guards, and make off with treasure. There didn’t need to be a conspiracy of blood sacraments for an official to take a bribe to let a group of bandits escape. It was the natural order of things. But the British could not wrap their minds around it. They couldn’t imagine poverty driving whole villages to the road as raiders, or fathers teaching sons the best places to ambush tax collectors. No. Such evil could not exist without supernatural guidance, they thought.”
Michael is dizzy. It could be he has forgotten to breathe again. It could be his fever coming back. It could be his memories are.
“The British made it into a religious war. In their western binary thinking, they saw the devil in this. They saw Kali, black and alien, already carrying a pitchfork—a perfect bogeyman. And the Thuggee, the al-Qaeda of its time. The British used rumors of conspiracy as a rallying cry to arrest, transplant, and execute people on hearsay.”
“The witch hunt?”
“Yes. Someone would be captured, accused of being Thug and he’d turn “approver,” a state’s witness. He’d claim his neighbor had killed hundreds of people on the road to Delhi and the neighbor would be hanged on the spot. A neighbor would make a false accusation to remove a rival or take their land. Beggars accused policemen of secretly being Thugs and the policemen would be hanged on the word of that beggar. Doubtless many villains were dispatched, but make no mistake, many innocent people were also killed during Sleeman’s campaign. I think I read that if all the confessions of the approvers were to be believed, there’re more than five million graves between Delhi and Bombay.”
“So there was no truth to the Kali rumors?” Michael asks.
“There’s always truth somewhere in stories like this,” he says. “My great-grandfather told me that the true Thuggee were the ones who did not turn approver. There are stories of whole gangs of men dancing and singing the day before their execution and then running up the gallows with a smile, tying the rope around their own necks and jumping off to hang themselves. Those, my grandfather said, were the real Thuggee. They did not fear death.”
“Fools or saints,” murmurs Michael.
“The Thugs preferred being hanged,” he says. “The stories said they killed their victims by strangulation. They did not spill blood.”
“With a scarf?”
“Yes,” he says. “The rumal. It’s part of the Indian costume. Everyone carries one. Very handy.”
“What was that about tigers?”
“They called themselves The Faithful Tigers. I do not know why. I suspect they had their reasons. I have seen paintings of Kali wearing tiger skins. Maybe that is why.”
The fan blows cold on Michael’s legs. Air swirls around the little room, its angles and vectors changing with each shift on a chair or gesture of a hand. Papers rustle on the desk, a jacket on the door, the ash in the incense burner rises in a sooty column. It carries to Michael who smells the sweet ash of spent fire and grows dizzier.
“Could the cult still be around?” he says.
“No. The last I heard of them, Indiana Jones fought them in a movie,” says Mr. Abi. “They’re fiction and history now. Their most important contribution to western civilization, outside of Hollywood villainy, has to be the trenching tool. Supposedly the Thuggee invented a special shovel they used to dig roadside graves. It had a short handle and a removable head with a pick-spike on one side and a hoe on the other. An English officer copied the design, and that’s what dug the English trenches in World War One.”
“Kali would be proud,” says Michael.
“Yes, I suppose she would be. Many died in that war. Those trenches became graves for many men.”
Michael rubs his temples. A real headache is forming. He’s crashing from the junk he’s poured into his body and the sleep he hasn’t had. He’s in a fog of information and needs time to process it, and maybe also, the will to forget it.
“I should go,” says Michael. “My car is blocking your pumps.”
“Did I help you find your way?”
“My way?”
“I can tell you are lost.”
“I just need a change of clothes,” Michael says standing up. “I’m tired and I’ve been on the road forever.”
“We’re all travelers on a road, Mr. Oswald,” Mr. Abi says. “The road you see before you does not have to be the road you walk tomorrow.”
“You get that from a fortune cookie?”
“What I’m trying to say, Mr. Oswald, is that what makes most people unhappy is finding themselves in a situation they can change but haven’t the co
urage to.”
“I’m in a rut?”
“Perhaps that,” he says. “Do you like what you do?”
“I don’t know,” he says, his head throbbing.
“If you do not know, then find out. Every man has a destiny, but not every man reaches it.”
“Now you’re a guru? I thought you were just a gas station attendant.”
“Owner,” he says.
“Sorry,” Michael says. “You’re right. I got a lot to figure out.”
“I didn’t mean to preach, it’s all this talk of religion.”
He leaves Mr. Abi’s gas station with a head full of pain. The sunlight hurts his eyes.
It’s still the same day, the same awful, terrifying, pivotal day.
He’s done. He’s tired. He’s spent. He’s two hours from St. George and he doesn’t think he has it in him. He can make the rest stop. That’ll do. It’s so hot. Was there a tree there? Any kind of shade? He can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. He’ll get there and be so tired, he’d be able to sleep in fire.
He finds a pair of prescription sunglasses tucked between the seats and drives on. The blur with them is nothing compared to the glare without them. They let him keep the vehicle between the lines while the cruise control keeps him moving. Blessed technology.
He can’t have the windows open. The dry desert air is too hot. Even a little crack turns the cabin into a blast furnace. He runs the air conditioning until he is chill and shivering.
His mind will not shut off as he wants it to. In an hour he’ll pull over and sleep, he has only to silence the clamor in his head that long and he’ll be alright. But his mind won’t switch off. He could close his eyes, let the cool air and gentle sway of the road lull him to an ultimate, permanent and sudden sleep, and for a moment he tries to do just that.
But he cannot.
What Immortal Hand Page 21