Try to breathe. This dust storm can’t last. I’m surrounded. Can you hear them? Where’s Sage? She’s shrinking away. Gone. I’m cold. I’m naked. Why am I naked? Thirsty. The Man is burning somewhere; I can see the flash of the blaze through the dust, light gone soft in the storm filter. They’re around me. Every direction. I can’t keep them away. I can’t make them BE QUIET!
This dust is ancient. A wall one thousand feet high, pointing at the moon. He appears like a cloud. The dead are alive again. We were one but you ate us to nothing. Wokova, your dance will bring the flood. Your armor will make us safe. We are all around you. Pull you back through yellow-black. We’ll keep you alive till sunrise and eat your tongue to steal your lies.
Dancing in circles all around me. The sky is opening up and the spears are raining down. They will eat my heart. The drums are finding their way home. I can’t stop throwing up. I bit my way through my stitches to try and set the drums free. My blood is still pulsing on the ground. Tiny eyes in the soil. Watching. Waiting. Shit. Help me. Sage? If I’m still naked when the sun rises I will be burned black. Burnt to dust. Floating. Breathe me out.
The land will return. The water will be made of flesh. Wokova is coming. The Earth will breathe again. Wokova is risen. Balance will return. The drums can eat your blood. The drums can eat your blood. The drums…
You can try to imagine it. You can picture what it must feel like to walk naked back to your camp covered in the dust of the playa, with a bloody arm and your own vomit dried on your chest. You would know how hard it would be to get the well-meaning hippies to leave you alone, to not drag you back to a med tent. Or you could imagine the fear that you see on the faces of people who came here for bliss, the people whose trips you are utterly devastating with your wrecked appearance. You can grasp all that.
You might even be able to understand what it’s like to hear drums that can’t be real coursing through your bloodstream. You might be able to picture the phantom blurs of bodies dancing in circles around you as you shamble home. Could be a trick of the light, right?
But is there any way to truly understand what it’s like to unzip the flap to your tent and find the girl you love lying there dead? To understand that she’s gorgeous and naked there, with her legs spread, so much so that you’re instantly aroused despite the fact that her eyes are wide open and staring at nothing and there’s old vomit pooled in her mouth and caked in her flowing hair? When you smell the booze on her breath, the stink of the alcohol that she’d sworn off by oath and will so many years ago, would you know that she’d found something to make her feel safe again? And would you be surprised to find you can only think one word?
Would you ever understand what it’s like to be there at the foot of the dead, bathed in new sun, whispering the word “Wokova” like a holy prayer?
.45’s come cheap. I’m just glad that Scott’s brother still lived in Aston. His place was an easy stop on the way back towards Kah-Tah-Nee. Even when I was little, Scott’s brother Dean always had crooked guns. No numbers. Said he bought them at truck stops from cranked-out drivers doing a little extra traffic on their long hauls. Didn’t say much more than that.
Even now, when I show up at his place still covered in dust and withering away inside of a gray velour track suit, he isn’t the talkative type. He notices that my sleeve is crusted to my arm with blood and say he knows a doctor who can fix things without reporting them. I shrug it off. What can I tell him?
I’d see your doc, Dean, but this open wound is the only thing keeping me from hearing the drums. In fact, it was healing up and I cracked the scab open this morning, just outside of Modesto on I-5. Didn’t want to see the shapes dancing around my car anymore so I took my house key and raked the wound until the blood started flowing again.
Nope. I just keep quiet and buy the gun and feel its oil soaking into my skin.
I’m confused by Dean’s question as I leave.
“Hey, Darren, don’t you need to buy any bullets for that?”
I keep quiet.
The sign tells me I’m now entering the Kah-Tah-Nee reservation and I start to cry. Last time I saw a similar sign Sage was sitting there next to me, sipping on her coffee, planting sweet kisses in the soft spot by my ear. Now she’s gone, cooking away in a little tent in the desert until the wind spreads the smell of her and other campers come calling.
And I’m back here, smelling gun oil in my nervous sweat and hearing the drums inside my blood. The wound has scabbed over again and the drumming is so loud I’m having a hard time staying focused on the road. I can try and think in the space between the drums, but I keep losing the plot and these words keep repeating in the place of logical thought.
Wokova.
Balance.
Revenge.
Fifteen miles. Seven. Almost there. These drums are smashing around in my head. I feel heat on my lips and chin and realize I’m bleeding from both nostrils. Bloodshot eyes stare back at me through a vertigo haze that makes me feel like the world is on permanent tilt.
My body is in the grasp of tremors, shaking to this rhythm that was never mine. The sun drifts behind a mountainous ridge and dusk floats down, spreading gray light across the Sheenetz River. I can see the rest stop. My pulse is the sound of long dead tribesmen calling down the flood.
They are still here. The men in the shade. But now they aren’t laughing. Can they hear the drums too? Apparently Mr. FBI is their permanent mouthpiece for tribal affairs, because he’s stepping forward with his box cutter in hand and saying, “Man, you get in an accident or something? You deaf? I told you not to come back to our place.”
The drums are so loud now. Can they see me shaking? With the sun gone there is no more shade, just dim light and dark shapes. I feel a drop of blood slide off my chin. The four-hundred-pounder shouts out from beside the tree.
“You lose your pussy somewhere, little man?”
I raise the gun up with my ravaged arm. They register it quickly and appear more angry than scared. I level off at Mr. FBI and he doesn’t flinch. I’m not the first sick white man to aim a gun at him. He’s resigned to it. He looks straight at me with his one focused eye.
“Pull the trigger, man. Because when you do, my friends will fucking kill you, and I’ll be free.”
The dancers are around me now. They’re surrounding Mr. FBI and I, and they seem real. The drums get louder, too loud, and I grind my teeth together and I can feel the enamel cracking, my teeth splitting down the middle and now there’s this pain that accompanies each beat of the drum, this soaring red fire that courses up my gut every time another invisible hand falls to a skin pulled tight, and there’s only one way to make this stop before it tears me to shreds.
Wokova. Balance. Revenge.
They watch me as I lift the hand that isn’t holding the gun and plunge the fingers into the wound on my forearm. I’m scraping. I’m digging. Get the sound OUT.
The wound opens and instead of dripping to the ground the blood sprays out fast, too fast, and too much of it, forming this thin mist that spreads quickly through the air.
We are all in it now. The dancers. The Indians. Whoever I’ve become. We are all standing in this red mist, breathing in the drums. We are breathing my blood, our lungs pulling a lost pulse from the sky.
Wokova. Balance. Revenge.
REVENGE.
I aim at Mr. FBI’s head and pull the trigger on the .45. His good eye goes wide as the hammer falls on nothing.
Click.
I pull the trigger five more times, letting each empty click echo through the sound of the drums.
Revenge is here. And it is theirs.
They are upon me in seconds, all of them. The sound of the drums, the mist we are breathing in, the sight of the gun, all of it has brought forth an old rage. Not anger and booze and cheap, easy hate.
Rage.
Box cutters become talons. Fists become great stones. Their ancestors dance around us while they consume me. My teeth crack against smooth
river rock. They float away, broken bits of white bone flowing over red clay. A fist grabs the front of my dusty mohawk. Claws enter my scalp at the top of my forehead and then I feel fingers sliding under my skin and pulling up, pulling back. I can feel them sawing it free and my head drops down to the river stones as the men raise my scalp in the sky. They drink the blood that drips from the shank of skin and hair. They are chanting a name. Wokova. Bringing a flood to cleanse the Earth.
Mr. FBI is chewing at the back of my neck, tearing at the skin with his few remaining teeth.
They are becoming as hungry as we are.
And I can see by the light of the new moon that the waters of the old river are rising fast.
Thirty deep black strands of hair from the bedroom carpet.
I am collecting what remains of my beautiful Zhao-shi, just days ago murdered by her defective heart.
Before her passing, Zhao-shi was capable of flight. Toured the world as part of the Dynasty Circus—The Suspended Woman. 747’s her daily commute. Paris, Tokyo, London. Seldom earthbound, whether borne by flying metal behemoths or her own luxuriant hair.
Acrobats, contortionists, fire eaters—none matched her radiance.
Fifty hairs entangled in her brushes (I’d combed her hair for an hour before calling the paramedics; held my face to it, swallowed its cherry scent).
She was the girl with feather bones, floating before red backdrops, her arm-length purple-black hair tied tight to a silken blue rope, arms and legs fanned, swimming against gravity, winning. I would watch for the drift of butterfly dust crossing the stage-lights’ beams.
Could I sleep, I would pray this image into my dreams.
Twenty-seven hairs from the shower drain, gently washed until they squeak.
I’ve been offered dope and therapy. Her friend Bai, equally confused by Zhao-shi’s early death, even offered me sex as sympathy.
All are empty solace.
Seventy-two hairs on her clothes.
Zhao-shi’s been dead three hundred fourteen hours as of… now.
Time will slide past like nothing, then constrict; every second is suddenly stark, cold. And lonely like I’d never imagined.
It’s all quicksand. Just a matter of how long I can drift.
Ninety-four strands are hiding, entwined with silvery party tinsel, coiled around the motorized carpet-scrubber in our vacuum.
The tensile strength of a single hair fiber is equal to copper wire.
There’s not enough left of her for a hangman’s knot, but any knot will do.
The chair topples beneath me. I hover for a moment before gravity asserts itself.
Although I can’t breathe, I taste the scent of cherries.
Zhao-shi holds me again.
We float home.
INTERNAL MEMO: 08/07/2010
CASE: F-DPD0758 (CDC NORS-Water Report ID VEC147, Received 08/03/2010 via State Report OMB No. 0920-0004, Submitted by: Dr. Lorena Santos of Pacific Grace Clinic)
ETIOLOGY: Unknown (comparative specimen analysis in progress, genus/species/serotype may require new designations)
CONTAMINATION FACTOR: C-N/A, Unknown
SURVIVAL FACTOR: S-N/A, Deaths can be attributed to case though comparable pathogens have displayed symbiotic behavior
DOCUMENT INSERT: Verbatim transcript of post-containment etiology determination interview with Subject 5 (Matthew Hall). Due to active vector status (transmission mode remains classified as Indeterminate/Other/Unknown although enteric Phase 1 possible) subject interviewed in iso via 2-way audio. DPDx program active/engaged. Elimination & Control team at ready.
Recorded at Director’s Request/Classified Confidential 1-A. Speaking: DPD Director Cliff Selzer, Matthew Hall
CS: Hello, Mr. Hall.
MH: [No response]
CS: I’m going to be frank with you, Mr. Hall… Can I call you Matthew?
MH: You can call me whatever you want.
CS: Very well, Matthew. I need you to understand the situation we’re in right now. How important you are. How much you can help us.
MH: I’m not important. I’m the least important person you’ve ever met. And I don’t give a shit about helping you. And if you don’t get me something stiffer than this glass of fucking tap water then I’m not saying a word.
CS: Matthew, I’m afraid that water is all we can provide you right now. But if you cooperate there could be adjustments to your Stay Profile.
MH: You get me a bottle of Maker’s and a shotgun. You promise that. Then I’ll tell you everything.
CS: You know I can’t do that.
MH: I don’t know what you can or can’t do. I don’t even know who the hell you are. You strip me naked. You spray me down with some kind of goddamn fire extinguisher and make me sit in the dark in three smaller and smaller rooms. I thought you were cooking me alive in the last one.
CS: Matthew, that was all for standard decontamination protocol. We’re trying to protect you and others.
MH: So am I safe now?
CS: “Safe?”
MH: Decontaminated?
CS: [Long pause] We’re not sure, Matthew. That’s why it’s so important you tell us what you know.
MH: [Garbled] fucking shitbirds. Just let me die. Please.
CS: That’s very selfish, Matthew. There are millions of people in this country who don’t want to die, and you’re putting them at risk. If you won’t speak with me will you at least consider filling out the form we’ve placed in front of you?
MH: [Sound of pen being thrown across room, striking floor. Sound of Subject 5 expectorating on form CS115.]
BREAK IN RECORDING
MH: Now that’s more like it, chief. Aaah, that’s more like it.
CS: I suggest you slow down, Matthew. We don’t know how alcohol will affect the specimen or its interaction with your body.
MH: [Sound of gulping.] Shit on your specimen, chief. [Sound of belch.] Oh, Jesus, that fucking burns.
CS: It’s 100 proof, Matthew.
MH: No, not the booze. That stuff is silky. It’s the fucking crawler. Sonofabitch never stops working on me. I knew it. Your precious little detox rooms were a waste. [Sound of fabric rubbing on skin.] See, my mouth is already bleeding. Then I’ll get the fucking seaweed eyes. Then you guys will wish you already would’ve given me that shotgun.
CS: “Seaweed eyes?”
MH: Yeah. It’s like lace under the eyes, or like… like they’re bloodshot but the blood is dark green.
CS: And your wife displayed this condition?
MH: Claire had it first, and then…
CS: Then your daughter?
MH: [Long pause. Sound of gulping.] Yeah… Myra.
CS: We’ve performed a full sweep of your apartment, Matthew. We’re aware of your loss and I promise you we understand how difficult this must be.
MH: Did you burn them?
CS: No. Our procedure dictates a course other than destruction…
MH: Quit fucking around and burn them. Please. Give them that. Claire always wanted to be cremated and… I was going to do it myself, before you guys booted in my goddamn door… please. It’s the last good thing I can do for them.
CS: The sooner we know what you know, the sooner we can honor your request.
MH: Promise?
CS: We will do our best to keep funeral processing in motion.
MH: Well, cheers to that. [Sound of gulping.]
CS: So, at what point did you notice the discoloration in your wife’s eyes? And were there any notable signs or symptoms prior to that? Vomiting? Fever? Abdominal cramps?
MH: There are probably some symptoms I didn’t even notice. To be honest, we weren’t talking that much. I mean, this all happened last week and it happened so fast. But she was always bitching and crunching on Tums and popping Tylenol, so… I mean, running a daycare center is hard work. She used to joke that children could only grow by stealing your energy and happiness. But she liked it, she really did. Hell, she was pretty much raising Myra withou
t me.
CS: Our records indicate you lived together.
MH: [Brief laughter.] Depends on how you define living, chief. We split rent on an apartment and had the same last name, you know... Sometimes I’d take Myra to the park. She was too little to go on the swings or anything, but she liked to smell the flowers and watch the other kids play… But Claire would have been the second person, after me of course, to tell you that I’m a piece of shit. A real charity case. So the truth is that I didn’t notice how wrong things were until they’d gone way past wrong.
We Live Inside You Page 13