The Almanac of the Dead

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  “You know how much all this stuff is worth?” Clinton said, and gestured at the dark expanse of basement filled with refrigeration units, electronic cables, and consoles of switches, lights, and gauges that, in turn, were connected to computer terminals and a red telephone. Roy shook his head and slowly exhaled the smoke.

  “But I know someone who does know.” It was too soon for Roy to know whether Peaches would tell him all she knew. To judge by the backup generator system for power failures, the contents of the freezer compartments were worth a great deal. They passed the joint in silence, and they both scrutinized freezer locker units that filled the basement. Clinton pulled another fat joint from his shirt pocket. What Roy likes best about Clinton is his sense of timing. They are almost alike in that respect; Roy thinks how funny it is to find out the man most like you in temperament is black. No one will ever know this because Roy will never tell, and he doubts whether Clinton feels the same way. Clinton would probably swear and laugh at the notion. So Roy carries these thoughts around with all his other thoughts. He imagines his ideas are popcorn kernels popping inside his brain. Into the third reefer, they are back to strategies and planning. They will wait out this year just to lay down the groundwork. Timing was crucial. They would prepare and wait until the riots across the United States kicked up again, and Arizona’s meager National Guard forces were deployed to aid California police and National Guard. Roy and Clinton know that all across the U.S. there are others who are also waiting for the right moment. When Arizona and southern California had consumed the last drop of groundwater, entire cities such as Tucson would be abandoned to the poor and the homeless anyway.

  After Clinton became “relief” watchman, the basement closet becomes “headquarters.” Clinton drags in a filthy, torn crib mattress and a busted-up tape player held together with silver tape. Nights when Clinton is watchman alone, he presses the buttons and shakes the tape player twice to get it going. Then Clinton begins to dictate messages they will need later on, once their Army of the Homeless has begun to seize radio stations. The people of the United States, ordinary citizens, had set out to reclaim democracy from corruption at all levels. U.S. citizens by the thousands had been put out on the streets while elected officials gave away government money to their cronies. Taxation without representation!

  Clinton’s messages would be a call to war. Homeless U.S. citizens would occupy vacant dwellings and government land.

  SPIRIT POWER

  CLINTON’S FIRST BROADCAST in the reborn United States was going to be dedicated to the children born to escaped African slaves who married Carib Indian survivors. The first broadcast would be dedicated to them—the first African-Native Americans. Clinton talked about the tapes he was making for radio stations, but he never let Roy hear any of them. Clinton said he could describe all the tapes, and Roy would have a better idea if he just let Clinton talk.

  Roy had seen the box full of newspaper clippings. The one on the top was about an African woman who was leading an army of rebels somewhere in Africa. The headline had called the woman a “voodoo priestess.” Clinton said the African woman was only twenty-seven, but her troops loved her like children and called her Mama Marie. Mama Marie and her troops had raised hell with government troops. The ordinary people, the citizens in Africa, had the same problems with government politicians as the people had in the United States. The people worked day and night to pay taxes, but still found themselves hungry and homeless.

  The voodoo priestess and her soldiers believed that with her power, sticks and stones would explode like grenades and bees would become bullets. Mama Marie had rubbed the chests of her young soldiers with special oils to stop bullets. Now here was the kind of army to have, the kind the voodoo woman had had in Africa, because Clinton had seen years ago in Vietnam that the little jungle people weren’t just good fighters. They used all kinds of poisons and spells and prayers to spirits to attack the GIs in Vietnam.

  “You should know,” Clinton said to Roy. “You musta seen that stuff, little monkey gods on altars—things like that.” That was Clinton’s latest theory: the U.S. military had lost the Vietnam War because the Viet Cong had used magic and spirits. How else had the U.S. lost? They had had superior firepower, they had bombed every square foot of the entire country, and still the U.S. had lost. Clinton wasn’t saying the spirits had done it all or spirits had even done half of it; but the spirits had tipped the scale in the Vietnamese’s favor.

  Roy did not bother to argue with Clinton about ghosts winning the Vietnam War. Clinton might be right. Roy had felt like a ghost himself since the war. When he saw Roy wasn’t going to argue, Clinton admitted he didn’t totally believe in that kind of superstitious stuff. He wasn’t convinced magic oil could stop bullets. Clinton still believed in the M16, don’t worry. He had seen saturation bombing by B-52s. He’d seen how napalm burned like a laser through flesh and bone. “I just mean that kind of spirit stuff helps,” Clinton said.

  “Like God is on our side? That kind of stuff?” Roy said. He smiled so Clinton wouldn’t accuse him of being an asshole. Clinton believed it was important for the people to understand that all around them lay human slavery, although most recently it had been called by other names. Everyone was or had been a slave to some other person or to something that was controlled by another. Most people were not free, Clinton knew from experience, yet man was born to be free. The first slaves Europeans kept had been white. Slave keepers didn’t care about color so long as the slaves were strong and stayed alive. The European kings had slaves called royal “subjects” who worked obediently and paid their taxes to the kings. One kind of slavery had often been traded for another slavery as bad or worse. Slaves of past centuries had shelter and food. Yet today in the United States, so-called “free” men, women, and children slept under cardboard on the street.

  White people wouldn’t like being called “slaves” by a black man, but Roy didn’t think most radio listeners would know what color Clinton was except red, commie red. Roy had found out the hard way Clinton couldn’t be teased about communism. Clinton had been all over him so fast Roy hadn’t ever seen where the razor had come from.

  “Don’t ever call me that again! Don’t ever say my name Clinton and communism in the same breath!” Communism was dead. Communism was a failure, and that was not what Clinton was talking about. Maybe Rambo-Roy himself was the communist, Clinton said. Rambo was the one who had gone to all the rich people’s houses to steal in the name of the homeless and poor.

  Roy had laughed out loud then, at Clinton and his razor; he laughed at himself. No wonder human beings never improved themselves over hundreds of years. He and Clinton would just as soon fight and kill each other as go to the trouble to confront a crooked politician.

  Clinton had explained why his camp was separate from the others this way: he had been kicked out of rooms and then out of shelters or halfway houses because of his religion.

  Roy studied Clinton’s face. “Religion?”

  Clinton nodded, his face full again with indignation: “Because of my shrine. You think in the United States of America—” But then he broke off, shaking his head. Roy nodded. No one could argue: the U.S. was a Christ-biased nation. So Clinton kept his camp separate from the others because of his shrine. He set up the shrine in the center of his storage shed. At night he slept behind the shrine, keeping it for protection between himself and the door. Clinton had done that in his hooch in Vietnam at the firebase camp where the enemy had crept in at night to slit men’s throats while they were dreaming.

  Clinton’s shrine held the knife, or the blade of a knife and what remained of a handle, a skeletal piece of metal. Clinton had kept the blade razor-sharp; he had carried the knife in combat because it had never failed him in the dangerous alleys and streets at home. Clinton’s people—women and men alike—all carried knives. Clinton had been hit by flying shrapnel that killed three men nearby. The handle of the knife had been shattered by shrapnel, but miraculously, Clinton ha
d escaped with minor injuries. Clinton woke up and learned the medic had sent the knife along because anyone could see, the knife had saved Clinton’s life. The knife had power all its own. Clinton felt this power long before he studied African religions in black studies and realized his family’s regard for knives was a remnant of old African religion. Clinton had carried the blade wrapped in a piece of red velvet he had cut from the draperies in a whore’s room in Manila.

  When he was not wearing the knife sheathed on his combat belt, Clinton kept the knife on its shrine. He had bought the local incense to burn for the shrine, which of course worked to cover the odor of opium or reefer. He bought tiny Japanese porcelain dishes he put in front of the red velvet bundle surrounded by small candles burning in glasses. Clinton put pinches of food on the tiny dishes and sprinkled rum on the blade each time he unwrapped the red velvet.

  Roy pointed out that people might not want someone burning candles and spilling rum because it might cause a fire. Typical white-man thinking! Clinton had learned to expect that even the best of them, such as Roy, sometimes just didn’t see. Candles, rum, and incense didn’t necessarily mean a fire. The white man would stop everything before it started; the white man would pretend to know all the answers ahead of time, but of course, really, the white man didn’t have a clue. The white man had made some monumental errors in the five hundred years Europeans had disrupted Africa, China, and the Americas. The Chinese and Africans had broken free; now it was only a matter of time before all captive people on the earth would rise up.

  Clinton talked to the blade when he poured the rum over it. The cutting metal edge of the knife was Ogou’s favorite dwelling. In Africa, metalworkers were Ogou’s priests, Clinton’s people all revered the knife. Clinton offered this prayer:

  Ogou, Warrior and Metal-maker,

  Ogou wages war every day.

  Ogou, we suffer a great deal in this battle with our oppressors.

  Ogou protects those who serve him.

  Ogou is watchful.

  Ogou has boundless energy.

  Ogou is powered by anger.

  Ogou-Feray you magnet power!

  Pull iron fragments together

  gather the lost to your chest!

  Ogou, your father-love heals them—

  all the scattered fragments—

  ancestor spirits gathered!

  Ogou-Feray you lead them to war

  for the sake of us, their descendants.

  Ogou-Feray, Commander of the Army-of-the-Lost-Is-Found,

  Ogou fires the cannon to announce the uprising.

  Rage blind rage destroys all in reach,

  mad dog warrior, Ogou!

  The shrine had made people, even other blacks, afraid of Clinton because Americans had swallowed all that Hollywood bullshit about voodoo and the Devil. Some guys even objected to the apples Clinton left out for the spirits. Clinton did not blame people for their ignorance, but at some point a man had to teach himself or learn something. He explained the apples had to be left to rot so the ancestor spirits could “eat” them.

  OGOU, THE KNIFE

  THE ONLY SUBJECT Clinton had ever cared about in college had been black studies. In black studies classes they had read about the great cultures of Africa and about slavery and black history in America. But Clinton had not agreed with Garvey and the others who wanted to go back to Africa. Clinton disagreed because blacks had been Americans for centuries now, and Clinton could feel the connection the people had, a connection so deep it ran in his blood. Clinton had been told by the old women talking when he was still a kid; they had been discussing all the branches of the family. The original subject had been marriages with whites, but one whole branch in Tennessee had been married to Indians, “American Indians.” “Native Americans.” And not just any kind of Indian either. Clinton had not got over the shock and wonder of it. He and the rest of his family had been direct descendants of wealthy, slave-owning Cherokee Indians. That had been before Georgia white trash and President Andrew Jackson had defied the U.S. Supreme Court to round up all the Indians and herd them west. Clinton had liked to imagine these Cherokee ancestors of his, puffed up with their wealth of mansions, expensive educations, and white and black slaves. Oh, how “good” they thought they were! No ignorant, grimy cracker-men dare touch them! So pride had gone before their fall. That was why a people had to know their history, even the embarrassments when bad judgment had got them slaughtered by the millions. Lampshades made out of Native Americans by the conquistadors; lampshades made out of Jews. Watch out African-Americans! The next lampshades could be you! Clinton did not trust the so-called “defenders of Planet Earth.” Something about their choice of words had made Clinton uneasy. Clinton was suspicious whenever he heard the word pollution. Human beings had been exterminated strictly for “health” purposes by Europeans too often. Lately Clinton had seen ads purchased by so-called “deep ecologists.” The ads blamed earth’s pollution not on industrial wastes—hydrocarbons and radiation—but on overpopulation. It was no coincidence the Green Party originated in Germany. “Too many people” meant “too many brown-skinned people.” Clinton could read between the lines. “Deep ecologists” invariably ended their magazine ads with “Stop immigration!” and “Close the borders!” Clinton had to chuckle. The Europeans had managed to dirty up the good land and good water around the world in less than five hundred years. Now the despoilers wanted the last bits of living earth for themselves alone.

  Military solutions were no solutions at all; Clinton had seen what a “military solution” was in Vietnam: destruction on all sides; everywhere burned earth, and the souls of the people tortured. Clinton believed education was the answer although he had had his education cut short. Still, while others off the street used the downtown public library to wash and shave, Clinton always went from the rest room to the reading room. Clinton had plans. He kept pages and pages of notes from the books he read at the public library. Then Clinton had moved up to the university library where little blond sorority sisters roamed in fours looking for black athletes; no other black men would do but jocks.

  Clinton took careful notes of inspirational passages and sudden ideas that came to him while he was reading. He was saving all his notes for use on the broadcasts he planned to tape for the radio. Clinton didn’t waste time worrying where or how he’d get hold of a radio station for his broadcast. That was something the white man did—worry ahead of time. The white man had had the radio waves all to himself; but funny thing was, white man didn’t have nothing alive left to say. Clinton wanted black people to know all their history; he wanted them to know all that had gone on before in Africa; how great and powerful gods had traveled from Africa with the people. He wanted black Americans to know how deeply African blood had watered the soil of the Americas for five hundred years. But there had been an older and deeper connection between Africa and the Americas, in the realm of the spirits. Yet for a while, it must have seemed to the Africans who had survived ocean crossings that their gods had indeed forsaken them. The Spanish plantations and mines of Hispaniola had been a fate worse than death for the Caribbean tribes, who had deliberately died rather than live as slaves. African slaves had been shipped in as replacements for the Indian slaves, who had proved to be nearly worthless.

  From the beginning, Africans had escaped and hid in the mountains where they met up with survivors of indigenous tribes hiding in remote strongholds. In the mountains the Africans had discovered a wonderful thing: certain of the African gods had located themselves in the Americas as well as Africa: the Giant Serpent, the Twin Brothers, the Maize Mother, to name a few. Right then the magic had happened: great American and great African tribal cultures had come together to create a powerful consciousness within all people. All were welcome—everyone had been included. That had been and still was the great strength of Damballah, the Gentle. Damballah excluded no one and nothing.

  Clinton wanted his radio broadcasts to emphasize the African people’s earliest his
tory in the Americas because slave masters had tried to strip the Africans of everything—their languages and histories. The slave masters thought Africans would be isolated from their African gods in the Americas because the slave masters themselves had left behind their God, Jesus, in Europe. The Europeans had been without a god since their arrival in the Americas. Of course the Europeans were terrified, but did not admit the truth. They had gone through the motions with their priests, holy water, and churches built with Indian slave labor. But their God had not accompanied them. The white man had sprinkled holy water and had prayed for almost five hundred years in the Americas, and still the Christian God was absent. Now Clinton understood why European philosophers had told their people God was dead: the white man’s God had died about the time the Europeans had started sailing around the world. Clinton found himself smiling.

  Clinton did not think of the knife blade itself as Ogou. He did not think the tribal people had confused the gentle, huge snakes at the shrines for the Great Damballah or his wife. The spirit of God had only been manifested in the blade and in the giant snakes. God might be found in all worldly places or things. Clinton was careful not to use any names that had been poisoned by Hollywood’s lies. Clinton simply called the religion “ancestor spirits.” Clinton wasn’t trying to scare anyone with his radio broadcasts; scared fuckers would kill you faster than any cocky son of a bitch. Clinton simply wanted people to know the truth. Clinton’s only regret was not listening more to the old granny women talking. The “spirits” had emerged as the most dangerous and potent forces against the European colonials after only two hundred years. Then once the spirits of Africa and the Caribbean Islands had made their marriage, the white man had heard rumors about the union of African and Indian spirits. The “spirits” had been outlawed by the French in Haiti, but too late. The French plantation men of Haiti went gunning for the traveling herb man the other slaves called Don Petro. Planters put a big price on the old man’s head. Creole slaves could only laugh privately at the white men’s mistake. Because old Don Petro, he was one of the “ancients” the white man could never catch. And each year this Don Petro had stirred up more and more trouble for the plantation and mine owners. Don Petro was the head of a new family of spirits, high in the Caribbean mountains.