According to the algorithms of the scientists who calculate these things, the sun would reach its maximum elevation at 3:37 p.m. today. Good to know. However, Georgiana had never said exactly when her prediction would come to pass. Her prophesies, regrettably, rarely came with timetables. So as far as we knew, death could visit the house at any hour of the day.
Which is why everyone was already up when I got to the house. Wooly and Nickie were sitting quietly at the kitchen table. Genevieve, on the other hand, was on a royal tear. She was defiantly cheerful, militantly happy.
“They’ll be no long faces around here today,” she said, ripping the words out like she’d entered a speed-talking contest. “No moping, nothing like that. It’s a beautiful day. It’s too beautiful for anything to happen.”
Genevieve was putting as much industry into cooking as yapping. She was making scrambled eggs, poached eggs, sunnyside up eggs, over easy eggs. She was making bacon, sausages, pancakes, waffles. Nobody ate anything, nobody had any appetite, but she kept cooking away, letting all the food heap up cold on the counters.
Wooly, by contrast, remained calm and still, strangely unagitated. He sat with his gauzed-up arms in front of him, the fattest of all the fat Buddhas.
“I thought about what you said about acceptance,” he said to me. “I’m taking it to heart. I’ve accepted the notion of acceptance. Whatever happens, happens. Que fucking sera, sera.”
“Well it’s a beautiful day for it,” said Genevieve. “It’s one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever seen.”
“And you know something?” said Wooly. “It works. It actually works. I don’t feel so afraid. I’m not so worried, and I feel, I actually feel lighter. No shit, I feel like I dropped 75 pounds.”
Of course, there are limits to tranquility.
“It’s just a beautiful day,” said Genevieve. “It’s just a beautiful, beautiful day.”
“All right!” he snapped. “We get it! It’s a beautiful day. Now leave it the fuck alone.”
>>>>>>
Solstice Day 7:30 a.m.
THE DANCING GODS
I told them about last night’s shooting. Genevieve was mortified. Wooly nodded sagely. “Feh,” he said. Nickie showed concern but tried not to display too much of it. She asked for details, was I all right, but then she pulled back into her own static.
Things between us might never be the same, too bad, but this wasn’t the day to dwell on it. I was too wired to dwell on too much of anything. I hadn’t slept last night, or I might’ve been in the stage where I did sleep but it felt like I was wide awake. I might’ve been in that limbo where I’d actually been sleeping but was too amped up to dream.
“You should come with me to the rock,” Wooly said. “Do you some good. If I’m still around at 3:37, I’m going out to see the solstice.”
“You’ll have to go with him anyway,” Nickie said. “I can’t walk all that way.”
Wooly began talking about the solstice, how it was called different names by different people. The Feast of St. John the Baptist. Gathering day. Thing-Tide. And of course midsummer, as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They called it midsummer back then because it happened just about in the middle of the growing season.
“You look at the countries in the northern hemisphere,” he said, “most of ‘em, they made a big deal out of it. England, Germany, Ireland, even China. Here, too. The Natchez celebrated it. The Hopis, that’s when they got dressed up as those gods, those dancing gods.”
Genevieve was looking over at Nickie’s leg. “When’re you getting those stitches looked at?”
Nickie hesitated before she said the word. “Tomorrow.”
“Kachinas,” said Wooly. “That’s what the Hopis called the gods. Kachinas, the spirits of rain and fertility. Fertility was a big solstice thing, a big theme. It was like the prime day for love magic, for love prophecies. Like the Druids, here’s a for instance. The Druids, which were the Celtic priests, they’d build bonfires that night. They’d hold fire festivals, and they’d ask lovers to pair off, hold each others hand and jump through the flames. It was supposed to bring luck. The higher the couple jumped, that’s how high the crops would grow.”
We heard swishing sounds. Genevieve, her back to us, was grabbing Kleenex and crying into the tissues.
>>>>>>
Solstice Day 9:00 a.m.
TESTING
The action, such as it was, shifted to the living room. Genevieve insisted a change of scenery was needed. We sat stiffly on the furniture, conscious of the empty wall space where Georgiana’s photo had hung. Wooly took a chair by one of the windows, where he sat staring outside. His fixed position irritated his wife.
“Can you stop doing that?”
“I’m trying hard,” he said, “not to be a nuisance.”
Outside the window, the day wasn’t so beautiful anymore. The air was turning thick and yellow with humidity, and you could feel the heat building in the house. Wooly had set the a.c. on high. He wanted to avoid profuse sweating, he said, on this day of all days.
Genevieve stood up, hands wrapped around her arms to ward off the chill. She went over to one of the other windows and tugged on the lock. “Is this okay? Was it checked?”
“It’s good,” Nickie said.
“How about the rest of the house?”
“Everything was fine when I looked 20 minutes ago.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m just asking.”
Nickie understood. She limped off on yet another tour of the place, testing every window, every door.
Genevieve was pacified when she got back. Until Wooly got up and started walking out of the room.
“What’re you doing?” she panicked “Where you going?”
“To the bathroom.”
“Make sure you come right back.”
“I gotta take a squat. Could be a while.”
“Somebody go with him. Make sure he’s all right.”
>>>>>>
Solstice Day 10:00 a.m.
YOU’LL KNOW BY THE EYES
Even a sense of impending danger can get heavy and dull after a while. We all felt it settling over us, like mud slowly sliding down a mountain. Genevieve tried to fight it back with endless talk. Nickie helped—they’d chatter away about stuff from the news, the turn in the weather, favorite movies, rhubarb pie, anything.
Despite their best efforts, though, they’d run out of breath every once in a while. That’s what happened while Genevieve was giving Wooly a massage, standing behind him and kneading his trapezius muscles. A sudden uneasy silence seeped into the room.
Wooly decided to take up the slack.
He looked at Nickie. “You remember it, right?”
“Remember what?”
“You know. You remember. Word for word you remember.”
“You mean that?”
“That.”
“You’re sure? It’s really necessary?”
“I want to hear it,” he said, calm, insistent. “I want to hear it again.”
Nickie focused her eyes on the floor, never moved them. “First she said death will visit your house. Someone will die in your house.”
Genevieve took her hands off Wooly’s back. “This is what we have to hear? Right now we have to hear this?”
He ignored her. “Right, the house. That’s what she said. Go on.”
“Someone will be killed…by someone who’s killed before. Then she stopped, and she looked right at you. She looked at you and said It’s you. You’re the one. Death is coming to you. You’ll know by the eyes…by the eyes of one who looks down.”
“Right, right.”
“By the sphinx, by the lion…by the eagle. When the eyes’ two rays are at their most powerful, when they’re…at their strongest, when the two rays are at their strongest, that’s when you’ll die.”
More of that silence again. It was a real killer.
Wooly sat nodding. “That’s it. That’s exactly what she said.”
Genevieve left the back of the chair and started circulating through the living room. Did anybody want something to eat? She could make corn cakes, crab hash, bread pudding. She kept it up at a delirium pace, like every quiet moment was a threat, every silent second was a betrayal.
>>>>>>
Solstice Day 11:30 a.m.
THE FOG
Wooly had enough. Couldn’t put up with this anymore, just sitting around here talking shit. He hoisted himself out of his chair and made for the front double doors.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Genevieve wanted to know.
“Outside.”
“Where outside?”
“Sit outside.”
“On that crappy outdoor/indoor/whatever stuff you bought?”
As soon as she said crappy she’d started crying.
The dense humidity cement-fell on you as soon as you walked out. Wooly hunched himself on one of the cast aluminum chairs, staring at the trees across the road. Nickie stood guard by the doors, hand on the grip of her Smith & Wesson, looking for any furtive movement, any rustling in the bushes.
“What’re you doing?” I said.
“Just waiting,” he mumbled. “Just waiting for something to happen.” His voice was thin and distant, like he was whispering to me from 25 feet away. “I keep trying to hold onto this acceptance thing.”
I told him it was a good idea, told him to take slow deep breaths and keep the thought steady in his mind. Meditation is good, I said, meditation is the GPS of the soul.
Next couple minutes I talked to him about faith, letting go, not clinging to the ego. God can’t visit you unless you’re not here.
Nickie gestured at me with her head. Inside.
“You shouldn’t be sitting out here,” I told him. “The drive-by was only a few days ago. You’re too open to the street.”
“I don’t want to go like that. Hail of bullets, no. If I have to, if that’s what’s meant to be, okay, but it’s not my top choice.”
“Well, that’s good to hear.”
“Know how I want to go? Like the fog. The way the fog disappears. It just lightly fades, it just lightly lifts away. It’s here and then it’s gone.”
Yes, I knew what he meant. “Let’s go inside.”
>>>>>>
Solstice Day 1:00 p.m.
ABOUT TIME
Wooly was managing to keep his zen cool, but the strain was starting to show through. Genevieve was talking about sitting in her kitchen when she was a little girl, eating apple slices dipped in a plate of sugar and cinnamon, and by the way wasn’t it cold in here, was anyone else cold, when Wooly started taking peeks at his watch. He’d drop his eyes for a second, flick his gauzy wrist up to see the time and twist it down again. It was nothing obvious. But 10 minutes later he did it again. Then five minutes later. By the time a half hour had gone by he was fixated on the watch, just staring at it and never coming up for air until—
“Will you stop that!” Genevieve reaming him out with a full-throat yell. “You’re getting to me. You’re really getting to me with this shit. Just stop looking at it.”
But Wooly didn’t. “When did time get so fast?” he said slowly, never lifting his eyes. “I’m looking at it, I can see it move. That’s all it does. It just keeps moving.” There was almost a sob in his voice and I thought it would go to tears until he finally glanced up and saw us all looking at him. “What’re you doing? What’re you people doing? Don’t keep staring at me, goddamit!”
>>>>>>
Solstice Day 2:00 p.m.
MOVEMENT
We gradually switched positions. Wooly sat on one of the sofas. Nickie took his chair by the window. Genevieve and I moved to other chairs. Nothing changed. Wooly said he was thirsty. Genevieve brought him a bottle of water. Wooly opened it and drank some. Completely unremarkable, but not in this house and not on this day.
“Your hand is shaking,” said Genevieve.
“What?” said Wooly.
“Your hand. When you bring the bottle up, it’s shaking.”
“No it isn’t.”
“It is. You shouldn’t let it shake like that.”
“It isn’t shaking. And even if it was, you think I could help it? You think it’s the kind of thing you can decide to—Jesus Christ!”
He jumped off the sofa like a prisoner some guard had forgotten to strap to the electric chair. “It moved!”
He was pointing to a wall on the other side of the living room. He seemed to be pointing to the powder room.
We all jumped with him, jolted.
“What moved?” said Nickie.
“The door.”
“What door?”
“The door to the powder room. I saw it move. I saw it open a little, then I saw it close.”
I approached the door with my hand on the Glock. Didn’t hear anything, didn’t see anything moving. The door opened to nothing but an empty bathroom, spotless since Genevieve had cleaned up Wooly’s blood a little over 24 hours before.
“I saw it move!” Wooly maintained. “I’m sitting here I saw it move.”
Everybody else exchanged looks.
“Maybe it was a draft,” Genevieve suggested. “Maybe the a.c. There’s a lot of a.c.”
“Yeah?” said Wooly. “If it was the a.c., how come I never saw it move before?”
“Well, there’s nothing in there,” said Genevieve.
“But I saw it move.”
Genevieve grabbed a small armless chair, dragged it over to the powder room, closed the door and propped the chair under the knob. “There. You satisfied? It’s not gonna move now.”
Wooly grabbed an arm of the sofa and let himself down slowly. He wasn’t really convinced. “I swear I saw it.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Genevieve. “A storm could blow through the house, that door is not gonna move.”
He nodded, but he was still expecting some bout of phantom hinge action. He kept staring at the door with a blank, shock-shredded expression.
We closed ranks around him, trying to reassure him everything was okay, trying to talk him down, three planets orbiting a doomed sun.
>>>>>>
Solstice Day 3:15 p.m.
THE SUN’S STRAIGHT SHADOW
Maybe the silver streak was an omen, I don’t know. Wooly and I were a half-mile into the woods, everything as soft and silent as heroin, when I saw it—a ripple of silver gliding over our heads, floating across the sky like some hallucinated Airbus before disappearing into the trees. Wooly was too busy talking to notice, but it scared me, even though I had no idea what it was. Some UFO attack device? The sky falling a piece at a time? Then I saw it again—a long metallic streak shimmering in the air, setting out from the tree. It was a bird for shit’s sake, a bird with maybe five feet of silver gift-wrap ribbon in its beak. It landed in another tree, then took off and flew further into the woods, marking its path with a silver contrail. I’d never seen anything like that. It was a beautiful thing to watch, but it made me wonder, was it a sign?
“People always want to be lifted,” Wooly was saying. “They always want to be transported out of themselves. That’s why sex remains so popular.”
The walk seemed to restore him. The air was clearer and cooler out here, much less humid.
“And the solstice, you know, solstice-worship’s another way of getting that done. Like, what’s it called? Bighorn Medicine Wheel. You ever hear of it? Out West?”
I nodded. “I believe Wyoming.”
“All right, so you got this big wheel sitting out there, the medicine wheel. You go a little off from there, there’s a small pile of stones a little outside the wheel. At the exact time of the solstice, the exact time, the sun forms a straight shadow from the pile to the center of the medicine wheel. Pure straight line. That’s no accident.”
We came in sight of the famous oak, the tree that served as host one night to thousands of fireflies.
We kept walking as he told me about the ruins at Qumran, the Essene settl
ement where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. When archeologists started digging, they found this one large room that first they thought must’ve been the dining area, that’s how big it was.
“The only thing they couldn’t explain was this little hole in one of the walls. What the hell was that for? Then they realized, hey, this room wasn’t for eating. This wasn’t some cafeteria. It’s a sun temple. Cause that hole? It’s built so that on the solstice it lets in the full light of the sun. On the solstice, it suddenly lights up the whole eastern wall. It’s like magic.”
And here we were. Right away, I could sense that the mind-pull of the big rock was exceptionally strong today. It felt like a tugboat had latched onto my brain and was carrying it out to the ocean. Wooly, silent now, stood at the western face of the stone. The electromagnetic high was really kicking in. The same hypnotic nerve flutter I was feeling was visible in his face. Something was about to happen.
Time check: 3:36. I looked at the trees surrounding the rock, the leaves seeming to tremble in the diamond air, and I was hit with a rush of sacramental beauty. It was like being a child again. I felt like my body was filled with light. I felt like my body was burning with light. I felt like one of the Apostles that morning in Jerusalem, burning with the Pentacostal flame.
It happened: The sun moved between two small base stones and suddenly lit up the shadowed space underneath the rock, the crawlspace where the dead once were kept. It as like watching water break out of a dam. The whole ground beneath the rock was suddenly flooded with light. I looked at my watch: 3:37. Of course. Of course it was 3:37, and the sun was falling exactly between a pair of stones that supported a massive boulder and that somehow had been set in precise position hundreds or maybe even thousands of years ago.
It was mesmerizing. It was mind-spinning. It was just as predicted.
The Dead Have A Thousand Dreams Page 14