All of the Above

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  15.3

  Cole stood at the stove, stirring the onion and garlic as they sautéed in the hot oil. Ruth stood opposite him at the counter, chopping cabbage and singing along with one of her favorite oldies as it played on the stereo in the living room. It was the best part of the day, as far as Cole was concerned: cooking together and listening to music, enjoying each other’s company and anticipating a good meal and an evening of reading, or maybe a movie. And afterwards they would seal their love with their bodies. They didn’t have much money, but they had enough. They were young, and smart, and they were willing to work hard. If they were patient, all of their dreams would come true.

  “You ready for the CC, Mr. C?” asked Ruth.

  “CC?” asked Cole.

  Ruth turned, her hands cupped and full of long, green slivers. “Chopped cabbage,” she said with a shake of her long red curls. She threw the cabbage into the wok and turned to get the rest, noting that the sliced chicken had browned just the way she liked it. She tossed in the remaining cabbage and grabbed the soy sauce from the cupboard. “Smells good,” she said as Cole stirred.

  “You wanna take over for a sec?” asked Cole.

  Ruth stepped in and took the wooden spatula and Cole headed down the hallway toward the living room to put a new CD in the player. He chose Ziggy Stardust, swapping it out for the oldies disc that Ruth had chosen, shaking his head at her taste in music. He hit play and smiled as those lonely drums marched straight into that opening acoustic strum. Some part of him knew that he’d chosen that same disc every evening, but the thought never made it to consciousness.

  Satisfied, he stood and walked back into the kitchen. Ruth had the stir-fry handled so he grabbed a bottle of wine from the fridge and some stemware from the cupboard above the sink, setting them next to the plates and cutlery he’d placed earlier on the dining room table. The house, their first as husband and wife, was small but cozy and clean. It served them well enough for the time being, though Ruth had made no secret of her desire for a house full of children. A larger home would one day be needed. “You want wine, I take it,” asked Cole, already pouring.

  “Just half a glass,” she said.

  Cole finished pouring and sat the bottle on the table. “How much longer?” he asked.

  “Coupla minutes,” said Ruth, picking out a piece of cabbage and testing it. It was time for the soy sauce and she added it generously.

  Cole took the opportunity to do a quick tour of the house, checking the front and back doors and the windows, drawing the blinds. It was almost dark and he did not like the thought of people being able to watch them from outside. That was the one thing about this house he didn’t like: he always felt like somebody was staring at him.

  He stood in the living room for a minute, noting the hand-me-down furniture they’d collected from their parents. On the wall hung the paintings he and Ruth had found at a flea market on their honeymoon: a watercolor seashore with crashing waves, and a pair of wolves howling at the moon. Everything seemed in place. He started up the steps, glancing into their bedroom with the red, white and blue bear-claw quilt and Ruth’s prized “velvet Elvis,” a joke from her best friend from college. He stuck his head into the second bedroom - no larger than a big closet really - filled with a second-hand futon they pulled out for guests and the stacks of boxes that had never quite gotten unpacked. He flicked on the bathroom light and pushed aside the shower curtain. All was well. Looping down the rear stairway he came to the hall, inspecting the utility room before pulling on the back door to make sure it was secure. Part of him felt stupid for checking. He didn’t even know what he was afraid of.

  He stepped into the half-bath opposite the kitchen and flicked on the light to look at himself in the mirror. It wasn’t just the house; it was him, too. He didn’t look right. He was only twenty-three, but his hairline should be farther back, shouldn’t it? His face should be heavier, his gut larger. He knew that that was stupid, but he could picture it clearly in his mind. He could see himself as older. As if he were watching himself from somewhere else.

  Ruth’s voice called him from his reverie. “Ready, sweets,” she said.

  Cole flicked off the light and walked into the dining room to find Ruth piling the stir-fry onto their plates. “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “Do you ever get the feeling that somebody’s watching us?” asked Cole.

  Ruth turned with a quizzical look on her face. “No,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Do you?”

  Cole sat down to his plate. “Yeah. It’s weird. It’s like … all the time. Every day. Like we’re living in a Barbie’s Dream House and there’s some little girl watching us through the windows. Like any moment the roof is going to lift off and this huge hand is going to come down and pick us up and move us around.”

  Ruth laughed and took her seat, reaching out for a sip of wine. “Sounds like you’re working on another one of your stories,” she said.

  Cole shrugged. “Maybe.” He forked a piece of chicken and shoved it into his mouth. “Movie tonight?” he asked.

  “I was thinking maybe Groundhog Day,” said Ruth.

  “Good by me,” said Cole. He dug into his meal. Some small part of him knew that they’d watched that movie every night since they’d moved in, but the thought never made it to consciousness.

  15.4

  “You will sit there,” said Sina to Linda, pointing at three battered metal folding chairs near the fire. Linda had assumed that they’d be inside some big tent or igloo or building but, as she and Aamai neared the site, they’d found the entire group congregated around a huge bonfire on a rocky ledge above the camp. The flames licked the sky, taller than the man who tended the fire, smoke and sparks reaching to the heavens as if longing to join the aurora. Aamai, no doubt assigned to be her keeper during the ritual, took her hand and led her to a chair.

  The sight of Sina sent shivers up and down Linda’s spine. She was so young, this Inuit prophet. She couldn’t be more than twenty-one, from the looks of her, with jet-black hair hanging in long braids from her fur-lined hood. Her eyes shone like warning beacons on distant peaks. Faint blue tattoos on Sina’s face, double-lined arrows pointing to her nose from four directions like a landing pad, cloaked her in mystery more effectively than any mask would have. Aamai had said her name means “the edge of the ice” and now Linda knew why. It felt as though Sina, standing here on the ice, was ready to launch herself into space, if it meant she might encounter the aliens face-to-face. No wonder these people followed her.

  Linda took her seat and watched as the Inuit, maybe twenty all told, men and women ranging in age from teenagers to elders but most in their middle years, went about their business, working with quiet reverence and obvious urgency. Sina supervised with kind whispers and firm expectations as some hauled in sleds and crates to use for seating. Others piled old lumber in high, narrow stacks beyond the circle, aligning them, as far as Linda could tell based on the position of the Big Dipper, with the cardinal directions. The firewood must have come from the dismantling of the mine. That made sense; Linda had yet to see a tree on Bathurst Island. It occurred to her that traditional Inuit rituals probably hadn’t centered around a bonfire, given the tree line in the far North. But these were not traditional Inuit, as Obie had pointed out. They’d been born far to the south, most of them, and raised in the mainstream Canadian culture. Of course they’d want a bonfire. Feeling the warmth on her face, Linda was glad of that.

  On the far side of the fire was the snowcat she’d helped load. A few Inuit stood behind it, one unloading supplies and the others attending to something she could not see. She saw no sign of Cole or Obie and was about to ask where they were when Sina turned and strode directly to her, squatting on the snow before Linda to look her eye to eye.

  “You’ve given your promise?” Sina asked, tossing her head back just enough to convey her mastery of the moment.

  Linda glanced at Aamai, seeking guidance and receiving none. He simply awaited
her response. She turned back to Sina. “I have,” she said. “Though I don’t know what I’ve promised.”

  Sina nodded. “It cannot be helped,” she said. “Such is the time into which we’ve been born. Promise or no, you will succeed or fail, as will we all, according to your worthiness and the judgments of the Earth.” She looked at Aamai. “Can she do this?” she asked him.

  Aamai nodded. “I don’t know!” he said with a grin.

  Sina smiled in return. “Thank you for reminding me.” She stood and walked toward the snowcat.

  “I feel like a child,” murmured Linda.

  “That sounds like a good place to start,” replied Aamai.

  “Will somebody tell me what it is I’m supposed to be doing before this thing starts?”

  Aamai looked her directly in the eye. “Nobody knows.”

  A tall, thin old man with long white hair shuffled into the firelight and made his way over to where she sat. He pulled his hood back as he neared her and Linda drew in a sharp breath. For a second he looked like a skeleton, with ghostly fire shining from his eye sockets. The old man reached out his hand and Linda took it to shake. “What a great pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” said the old man, his voice thin and unsteady.

  Linda stood, unsure of the protocol. “My pleasure as well,” she said. “And you are…?”

  “This is Utterpok,” said Aamai, standing to make the introduction. “Our angakkuq. Our shaman.”

  Utterpok blew a raspberry and winked. “Don’t let this young cub fool you,” he said brightly. “The name’s Kenny Fast. I sold Subarus in Calgary for thirty-some-odd years, until you folks decided to start collapsing the economy in ‘08. That and drank myself into oblivion every night. ‘Fast cars, fast deals with Kenny Fast.’ Just the sort of training a shaman needs, eh?” He winked again and sat down in the third chair, patting the seat next to him for Linda to join him.

  Linda took an instant liking to this angakkuq and leaned against him for support. “You got any idea what the fuck’s going on here, Kenny?” she said with hushed solidarity.

  “Oh, no,” said Utterpok wistfully. “We’re just making things up as we go along, as usual.” He smiled sadly and looked up to the sky. “The Tuurngait – the aliens – tell us that Cole’s spirit, his anirniq as we say in Inuktitut, has been trapped and hidden by those fuckers who’ve been chasing you across the continent. Our battle plan is to upshift a level or two, find him, bring him back and put him back into his body, at which point you and he will dash back to D.C., put the bad guys in jail, and save the world. Course, you know what they say about battle plans.”

  “What do they say?”

  Utterpok looked back at Linda and winked again. “They’re only good until the battle begins.”

  15.5

  Grace was glad she’d listened when Evlyn warned her. The scary people had turned up just as the woman of light had said they would, four of them this time, harassing Linda and her friends as they traveled across the material landscape. Because they’d kept their distance, Grace, Evlyn, Jack, and Dennis had been able to escape detection.

  The skeleton had appeared first, his wild howls piercing the sky and giving Grace and her friends enough warning to flicker away. The distorted woman followed close behind, accompanied by a tall man dressed in a suit and tie, his face handsome and full of smiles, his hair a bright orange flame. They were on Linda like a colony of bats, but Linda was wide-awake and well protected. The scary ones were unable to touch her. It was a minute or so later that the strange young girl arrived. Grace noticed for the first time how much she looked like Jack.

  “What do we do?” asked Grace as they hovered as far back as they could, floating in the blackness they’d wrapped around themselves like a cloak.

  Evlyn beamed her confidence. “I think we just follow for now, little one,” she said. “Wait until our help is needed. We do not yet know what they are up to in the physical realm.”

  Grace knelt to scratch Dennis’s back and bury her face in his fur. Unlike herself, Dennis was still tied back to his body. She imagined Emily lying next to him on Cat and Jake’s bed. She was glad to trust that everything was fine back home. The thought of it filled her with warmth, the thought of home and family, the thought of Dennis sleeping peacefully. She had work to do here, for now, but she would be glad to get back home.

  Grace looked up at Jack and the old woman. “Let’s not hang back too far, okay?” she said. Her father’s body lay amongst these people in the dense layers below. And that was all she had of him now. Her heart ached.

  “Okay,” said Jack.

  Evlyn beamed her understanding.

  Dennis wagged his tail.

  15.6

  “We’ve known since the beginning that to reclaim is to resist,” said Utterpok circling the bonfire, his elderly voice now the voice of an elder, full and clear with maturity, power, and intention. “In the hidden depths of our hearts, we’ve always known that the beast of Empire would thrash and kick in its death throes. We’ve known that the entire Earth would shudder underfoot as this Empire died. We’ve known that we are called to hold this land in our hands and hearts, to walk with it as allies through the coming darkness, and toward the light that flickers beyond.”

  The rest of the company filled the chairs and crates that circled the fire, a ring of bright cheeks and glinting eyes, hoods thrown back from the heat of the blaze. Sina sat in the North, Obie in the East, Linda in the South and Payok in the West. Cole lay on a mat of tarps and blankets in the center, as close to the fire as they dared place him. The firelight brought a flickering life to his face, as if he was merely asleep and dreaming wildly.

  Utterpok shuffled by, stopping for a moment to touch Cole’s forehead with the palm of his hand before continuing. He stood straight and looked Linda in the eye. “What we did not foresee was that the economy would plummet so soon, and that the ice would melt so quickly. And we did not foresee that the battle itself would come to our doorstep.” He turned to scan his audience. “And yet we might have. For we know that we cannot break the laws of the living without suffering the consequences. And we Inuit, some of the last on Earth to follow those laws, have been losing our way for some time now, turning our backs on the gods and giving ourselves to liquor and drugs, to the Christian God and the money-god. We’ve forgotten that ‘our diet consists entirely of souls.’ We’ve forgotten that we are anirniq as well. And while some of us work now to reclaim those souls, I fear that we may be too late.” Utterpok stopped and pointed at the sky. “The Tuurngait are here. They are speaking to us once again. And they do not bring good news.”

  Utterpok circled around to face Sina. “There is no blame in my words,” he said. Sina nodded. “We lost our path long before any of us here were born, led astray by forces far beyond our ken. That is not our fault.” He turned to face the circle. “But we are entirely responsible for this moment, and the next, and for who we will be from here on out, no matter from whence we came. It is time now for our testing. Can we remember ourselves?” The old man shuffled to the East and knelt before Obie as if asking forgiveness. “We must face into who we’ve become,” he said, almost sobbing, his head hung low. “A band of electricians and postal clerks and law students and housewives, following the visions of a young school teacher from Igloolik, and listening now to the ramblings of a drunken old car salesman who hasn’t got the first idea how to act like an angakkuq. You call me Utterpok, which means ‘returns home,’ but I fear I have not yet earned it. I still have so far to go.” He looked up at Obie. “We have lost ourselves. And the beast has found us. As have the Tuurngait. As have you and your brother and your President. You have found us just as we are starting to find ourselves.” Utterpok rose and addressed the whole circle. “So many far-flung forces, come to face each other on this frozen ground. We were right to call this place Tuyurmiangoyok, ‘the place of visitors from far away.’”

  He turned his face to the stars above, as if making a promise to God. “Now i
s the time of piqujait, of that which must be done. It is a time of bargaining and balance, of protection and sacrifice and the making of amends.” He walked quickly to Linda’s side and gestured expansively. “This great leader needs our help before she can do her work in the world.” He motioned toward Cole. “This poor man must be restored so that he can join in that work.” He waved his hands overhead as he spun in a circle, his face growing murky and troubled. “And the air around us is thick with dark forces.” He stopped and looked once again at Sina. “Sedna and Qailertetang must be laughing heartily right now, don’t you think? To hear a con-man like myself speak such pretentious words. I pray I do not overly offend them.”

  Sina smiled but said nothing. Linda understood why. Despite his self-denigration, Linda could see the power in this man. It flowed from him in waves so potent they almost knocked her over. He knew exactly who he was.

  Utterpok grabbed his walrus-belly drum and started beating a rhythm with a thick, antler-handled drumstick. The cadence was simple, a quick, deep, throbbing beat that resonated with Linda’s pounding heart. The others in the circle closed their eyes. Linda followed suit. Utterpok began to chant in a deep, resonant voice. Words she could not begin to comprehend poured across the circle like stage fog.

  Aamai, sitting to Linda’s left, leaned over to whisper into her ear. “Utterpok now calls on the aid of the helping spirits. It has been decided that he, Sinaaq, Payok, Immaqa and Mr. Thomas will ride the drum to the land of the dead, and from there to wherever your friend Cole will lead them.” As he spoke, Aamai pointed out who was who. Payok was the tall young man with the long, flowing black hair who sat in the West. He’d come to get them after Cole’s body had shown up. Immaqa was a mere girl, maybe sixteen, who sat at Sina’s side. The two young women looked like sisters.