“… and the Comforter …
shall teach you all things
and bring all things
to your remembrance.”
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
One
“Bastard! You son of a bitch! Bastard!”
I was almost bored. She stood in front of me like a woman out of one of my books. I had a sudden thought that I might have invented her: long legs, small waist, full breasts half covered by tossed blonde hair. I must have smiled because she swung at me again. I caught her wrist, and she made a stifled sound of anger, almost a growl.
“Put your clothes on and get out,” I told her.
She went on screaming at me. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched her. Her breasts were full, but they hung loose, like bags over a torso on which I could count every rib. The pubic hair told the true color of her bleached head: mousy brown. Her skin, breaking through her smeared make-up, was blotchy.
“I exist!” she was screaming. “I’m a person!”
I yawned and looked at the clock. Four a.m. “No,” I told her. “I invented you, or you tried to invent yourself, right out of my latest book. But some of the details got …”
She lunged at me. She took me by surprise, and I fell back on the bed with her on top of me. She gave a little jump onto her knees and started digging her fingernails into my face. She almost straddled me, but one knee pressed down on my chest. Her hair and her breasts dangled over my eyes, merging like the slack dugs of some obscene animal. Her breath smelled sour, wine and pot mingling in a sickly smell that turned my stomach.
I tried to grab her wrists, but they were slick with sweat and kept slipping away from me. She was stonger than I expected, and she was hurting me, taking long slashes at my face, aiming at my eyes.
Finally I grabbed her by the shoulders and stretched her away from me at arms length. Her fingernails clawed the air an inch from my nose. I pushed, and she landed against the wall behind the bed, making a couple of thick slapping noises as she hit the wall, then bouncing back at me, her eyes and mouth wide, her claws flailing. As she fell toward me, I stretched out my arm and caught her by the throat.
It wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been stoned. And if it hadn’t been four o’clock in the morning. And if it hadn’t been for the nightmare. But the nightmare had been especially bad that week, and I’d had hardly any sleep, trying to keep it from me.
It didn’t feel like murder. It was all unreal, like a scene from one of my books. Or she was like a phantom from my nightmare, the phantom I held off with my eyes closed, afraid to look, I wasn’t real either. Nothing could be real at four o’clock in the morning. I might wake up anytime, sweating and shaking, and take another pill to push me to a level beyond or below nightmare.
It had been quiet for a long time when I gradually came to myself. The first thing I realized was that I was cold. Then I felt the ache in my outstretched arm. I looked down my arm to where my hand gripped her throat, pressing her against the wall. My arm ached because she was heavy, hanging in my grip like a wet doll. Her eyes and mouth were still wide, but her face was dark, and she was quiet. I let go and she slid down the wall, crouched as if she would sit resting against it, then toppled over to one side. I could tell by the way she lay there that she was dead. There was something inhuman, deadlike, in the way her body crumpled.
I looked at the clock: 4:15. Was that all? I thought a lifetime must have passed. It had, of course. In those few minutes, my lifetime, all that my life was, had passed away, had died with … it took me a few minutes to remember her name … with Connie.
But I wasn’t thinking of my life, past or future. If I was thinking at all, it was of escape, of running away. And that wasn’t really thinking. It was instinct. Pure panic vibrated through my knees, widening the huge, windy void at the center of my body.
I put my clothes on. I ran out to the garage, got into my car, and drove off.
I didn’t know where I was going. I had some idea of getting far away before the sun came up, before the light shone through the glass doors at the end of my bedroom, and lit up the brittle blonde hair falling over the bloated face that leaned against the baseboard.
That part of me saw the body. That part of me drove.
Another part of me stood off watching, and after a while that second part of me started to talk. You fool. You did it now. You had everything. You had everything you always wanted. You were at the top. There was nothing left that you could want. And you threw it away.
I shook my head and turned onto the freeway. Going south. That was all right. Going somewhere. Anywhere. Going away.
Don’t run away, the other part of me said. Go back. Take the body and dump it somewhere.
You read too many of your own books. (Was it another part of me, arguing? How many ways was I split?) You’ve been seen with her. People know. You don’t go anywhere without being recognized. They’d connect it with you.
All right, that’s why you pay a lawyer. Call Spanger. He’s gotten you out of messes before. Temporary insanity. Get your psychiatrist in on it. He can tell about the nightmares. You’re a sick man.
A killer or sick. All the same. It’s over. You had it all and threw it away. Now they won’t read your books anymore, they’ll read you, in the morning paper, every stupid voyeur who ever masturbated to your books will take you with his morning coffee and lick his lips.
Where are you going to go?
Did you bring any money?
How far Can you get without more gas?
The nagging voices buzzed like flies around my body. My silent body answered nothing, thought nothing. It heard without listening and kept driving.
I don’t remember turning off the freeway. I don’t remember the road I took to the mountain. I don’t remember the ascent. There was nothing but the whining voices inside me and the still, stolid body driving.
I don’t remember the curve.
It was only when the car began to roll over, when my body driving it no longer drove it, that I realized I’d turned too sharply, skidded, and gone off the edge of the road.
It all happened with incredible slowness. The car shuddered on the edge, then rolled over. I gripped the wheel as my foot lost the pedal and my head bounced against the roof. For one eternal second the car floated through the air. Then it hit, bouncing on its side, shattering the windows, rattling like tin cans on gravel. Then it rolled, and rolled, grating and scraping, rolling, as within the car I spun and crashed like cargo broken loose, until I saw the broken door fly off and felt myself bounced through the opening into space.
I remember that moment when the car spewed me out, that moment of floating in space. It was in that instant that I first realized I might die, in that instant that my whole being unified into the realization of my own death, not as a theoretical possibility or a far distant probability, not as a word unimagined or repressed, but as a palpable thing, a permanent state. My death. I knew, not with the blind panic of my flight from Connie’s death, but with a clear and rational fear that burst on me like the bright sunlight dawning on that mountainside. I knew that my death would be a permanent plunge into the nightmare. I heard myself scream, not in fear of what might happen, but in the sure horror of knowing.
I had never screamed before. It was not a scream, but more like a great howl into which my falling body melted. And then the nightmare swallowed me.
My eyes are shut. I am surrounded by shadowy shapes. They close in. I must fight them off. But I must not look at them. How can I f
ight if I can’t see them? I must run, but they are all around me. I might run into the grasp of one. Don’t look at them. They are closer. I feel their breath on me. I throw out my arms to hold them off. But they will swallow my hands. I spin around with my arms outstretched, clearing a safe circle around me. I turn and turn, I spin so the shadows cannot come closer, faster, so they cannot catch my hands. I make a great wind circling round me. I spin, faster and faster until I am dizzy. I am dizzy. I am falling. I fall. I fall, and they are on me. They have me.
My eyes opened. I was not dead. It was all just another nightmare. The murder, the drive, the accident, all a refinement on the old nightmare. For a while I lay still, breathing deeply, gratefully. I did not want to move. In a moment, I would roll over, look at the clock and take another pill. But not yet. I wanted to lie still and safe, in my own bed, in my house. In a moment I would sit up and laugh and write down my dream for the psychiatrist. It was a good one. He would dig into it like a kid making mud pies.
I started to roll over, but the shock of pain made me gasp, feeling as if knives had dug deep into every part of my body involved in the move. I lay still again. It had not been a dream. I was hurt, very badly hurt. I made tentative moves, first in my fingers, then my hands. By the time I tried my arms, I again felt the stabs of pain telegraphed throughout my body. I knew there was some very good reason not to move my right leg. A mere twitch of a toe warned me that something was very wrong there. I raised my hand to my face. It felt wet, and it stung when I touched it. My hand was stiff, my fingers raw.
Now even without movement I felt the pain of the scrapes and bruises covering my body. My leg must be broken, I thought. And with every breath, I knew that I must have cracked most of the ribs on my right side. My slight movements had activated a smashing pain in my skull. I felt almost as if even blinking my eyes would crack my head wide open. I groaned, and I heard a soft rustling sound near me. Then it stopped. Someone had been there and was gone. Where? Who? Where was I? I could see nothing. Everything was absolute blackness and stillness. Brain damage, I thought; blind and deaf. Perhaps I was mute as well. I should try to speak. I hesitated for a minute, stupidly wondering what to say, as if it mattered. Finally I said, “Hello.” It came out in a sharp whisper through my dry throat. But I spoke it and heard it. Only my sight had been affected.
I heard the rustling again and managed to turn my pounding head slightly. What I saw made my heart begin to pound as well. It was like my nightmare again. Part of the darkness gathered itself into a shape, two shapes, coming toward me. I was helpless. It would do no good to yell, even if I could. I closed my eyes tight and waited.
Something touched my cheek. It was cool and wet and smelled like a leaf. A cool drop fell on my lips. I licked them. It was water. I let my lips open, and the drops of cool water fell into my mouth. I opened my eyes again, but saw only blackness. I could sense that someone knelt over me dropping water into my mouth from something that smelled green, like grass or a leaf. I could sense too that someone else was behind the one giving me water, someone perhaps only watching, but I began to feel the presence of the second person even more than that of the water giver. Gradually my eyelids grew heavy. I thought, I must be in a hospital. The nurse gives me water, and the doctor stands behind, watching.
But just before I drifted off into a dreamless sleep, I smelled the leaf again and I heard a low, musical chanting from the figure behind. I opened my mouth to ask—and received another drop of cold liquid, this one sweet and aromatic, like rosemary. Then I slept.
I don’t know how long I lay this way. The darkness remained. There was no day or night. I slept. I awoke to pain and thirst and was given water and perhaps an herb or drug. Sometimes there was only one person with me, the water-giver kneeling over me. Sometimes the second one came and I waited for the soft, almost unheard chanting that threaded its way into my sleep. I seemed to hang between two dark places, the nightmare of my death-sleep and this waking to blackness and shadows out of my sleep.
Then I awoke with my head clear and cool. I raised it and felt only a slight twinge. And I realized I was hungry. I said, “I’m hungry,” into the darkness. I felt the presence of someone leaning over me and I smelled the leaf. I opened my mouth to the drops of water. Then I raised my head again and said, “I’m hungry.”
There was a slight pause, a hesitation. Then I felt something touch my lips. It was a finger. It smeared something on my lips. I licked them and tasted a sweet, fruity pulp, like some kind of mush mixed with honey and fruit. The finger continued to dip into something I could not see and carry the sweet substance to my mouth. I licked it off and very shortly felt satisfied. I felt myself being watched. After waiting for a few minutes the figure withdrew.
I waited. Soon it returned with the second shadow. This time the second one came close, and I felt myself being touched, listened to, even smelled. Then both withdrew, and this time I waited for a long time.
I was wide awake. I knew that I had come through something. I’d been close to death, but I was going to live now. I still hurt all over, but the pains were aching and smarting, no longer like stabs deep into me. I still did not dare to move my right leg, and when I touched my head I felt my hair matted in dried blood. But I was going to live. I wondered if I would always be blind. I wondered where I was.
Then I heard them coming back. One, then the other. More. There were more, crowded against one another, so that I knew we must be in a very small place, a place that smelled of earth and grass. They came close and surrounded me, shadows in the dark, like the nightmare again. But this time I was not frightened. I was wide awake and curious.
One of them spoke, not more than three syllables. The sounds made no sense to me, but as he spoke I felt myself moving. They had grasped the mat underneath me, and using it as a stretcher, were half-lifting, half-dragging me, as they moved on their knees. “My leg,” I said. “Watch my leg.” We moved only a few feet and then came to a narrow, low place where they could not even kneel. Some went ahead and dragged me upward through the narrow place. It was like a short tunnel, not more than eight feet long.
Then suddenly a ray of light hit my eyes like hot sparks. Someone threw something over my eyes, a leaf. Through the veins of the leaf I could see light. “I’m not blind, for Christ’s sake, you had me in some God damned cave. Why didn’t you …”
We were already at the end of the little tunnel. The light had hit my eyes when they threw back the mat that covered the opening.
When they got me outside, they stopped again and knelt down beside me. Someone threw a soft covering over me. They all seemed to be waiting. I was breathing heavily. My leg had hurt quite a bit when they moved me, and the shock of the light had really shaken me. They were giving me a chance to rest.
“Okay, okay, I’m all right,” I said.
After another pause someone touched the thing over my eyes. “Yeah, take it off, it’s okay,” I said. Then while they hesitated I reached up and pulled it off my eyes.
I looked into the face of a boy, a broad fair face with the slight down of a blonde beard. His hair was thick and long, curling down to his shoulders. His face was broad, with high cheek bones, and his eyes were wide and slanted with an oriental fold. He was leaning over me, shielding my face from the sun, so that the sun shone behind his head, lighting up his hair like a halo. I raised my head and looked around. There were five others on their knees facing me. They nodded their heads at me. Then they stood up and picked up the mat again. This time the pain in my leg was worse. My head fell back and I groaned, looking at the sky as we moved.
Now that no one was shading my eyes, the brightness of the sun hurt them. I squinted, and tried to keep my leg still, and I looked around to see where I was. “Do you guys speak English?” The blonde boy turned to me and gave a shrug. I was aware of passing people who stood looking. A naked, brown child ran alongside looking into my face. Then my leg must have been jolted, and the pain shot through me, knocking me out.
The next time I woke up I was alone. I was lying in some kind of tent shaped like a dome. Above me I could see a framework of wooden branches and over them a covering that looked like woven grass, like the mat I was lying on. The dome was about twenty feet in diameter, and contained nothing but some kind of rough blankets hanging from the framework. Near the ground the tent covering was loose, a series of woven mats hanging in separate flaps. One of these flaps had been pulled back, letting in some light. Light came through cracks in the mats above too. The floor was hard dirt covered with some kind of fern. Otherwise the place was bare, cool and quiet, permeated with the smell of the leaf from which I’d sipped water.
I propped myself up on my elbow. My head ached only slightly. I was naked, lying on another woven mat. It felt sticky. Between my body and the mat someone had stuck some wet leaves, and wet leaves were stuck to various parts of my body. I lifted one of them and found a bad gash, which started bleeding when I moved the leaf. I pressed it back into place. Around my leg, grass had been woven in a lacey, stiff stocking.
Beside me on the ground was a light blanket, a pile of fruit that looked like some kind of green plum, and a broad leaf with a pink, pasty substance on it. I dipped my finger into the paste and tasted it; it was the same as what I’d licked off the boy’s finger in the dark.
I ate everything, including the leaf, which was tender like lettuce. Then I covered myself with the blanket and waited for someone to show up. As I waited I speculated on where I might be. I could imagine only two possibilities. One was that my car might have been found by some Indians who took me to their reservation. But I didn’t know of any Indian reservation nearby. Besides, the blonde boy didn’t look like an Indian. The other possibility, which made more sense, was that I’d fallen into some kind of rural commune. I’d heard about these places, these back-to-nature people going out into the country and growing food and living out of doors. They shunned publicity so there might be a group living quite close by without my knowing it.
The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You Page 1