Terry Persun's Magical Realism Collection

by Persun, Terry

  “Perhaps what?” Breakfast had arrived on a metal tray held by a guard. Wolf had not heard him come. “Well?” the man asked.

  “Perhaps the only things in our lives that really matter are our individual relationships at any one given moment.” Wolf stood.

  “Stay put there, buddy. I’ll slide this through.” The officer pushed the tray through a wide slot at the base of the door.

  “Perhaps,” Wolf went on, “we define our own world as we go. At any one time, who we are is defined by the sum total of our interrelationships, our interactions with our environment.”

  “You’re an odd one,” the man said, then moved away.

  Wolf sat next to the food tray. It didn’t look bad, some sort of scrambled eggs, hash browns and toast. There was even luke-warm coffee and juice, all in plastic and paper. He ate while sitting on the cold floor of the cell, then went back to sit on the cot. His mind rolled this way and that almost as much as when he had fasted. He felt that any time he wanted to ‘open up’ he could relax and recreate that same state of mind.

  He sensed he was actually two people now, and he could recognize the difference between one person and the other. Sometimes, he could move from one to the other easily. He liked his new self, whether it was responsible for the murder of a man or not.

  He lingered inside the new Wolf most of the time, but knew the other self waited for him. Any moment it could come back, he thought. Any moment.

  Like a demon standing on the sidelines, it could rush out and overtake him when he least expected it. Enter his body. Do what it wanted. He saw it as a pasty-faced devil, a parasite. When had it started?

  Wolf recalled both rough and pleasant memories of his childhood. Sitting on the cot, he imagined his youth, year by year, searching for that first moment the demon appeared. In his early teens, he found an incident where he did something purposefully wrong, merely to hurt someone. At sixteen, he fell for a girl named Amanda, but she was interested in Bob, a kid who moved in from Chicago several months earlier. Wolf came up with a lie about Bob: that he’d been kicked out of school and his parents kicked out of their neighborhood because of their strange ways. He had never elaborated on what those strange ways were, but it got around that they were devil worshipers.

  He laughed now at the total absurdity of that story. Yet, his friends had believed it and passed it on, elaborating with each new telling. Amanda moved her attention to another boy, but eventually, she too, was implicated because of her one-time involvement with Bob. Wolf never got close.

  Wolf began lying to his two closest friends, Gary and Joe. Even though they questioned his story at first, he convinced them of its basis in fact. Since that time, he had continued to lie, trying to seem more important, higher paid, better loved. His divorce was the first great crack in his wall of fantasy.

  He breathed deeply. Sitting in his cell, Wolf called on the power of the four elements. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly, creating images of earth, water, fire, air. He visualized the medicine wheel and the symbols Running Wolf had etched into the ground. In his meditation they began to move clockwise, spinning slowly at first, then faster and faster until the symbols themselves became three-dimensional and lifted weightlessly from the circle. Like a dust devil, the symbols circled and whirled. His sixteen-year-old self stood in the vortex.

  Wolf lost the sense of his adult self to that of his teenage self. Ripped apart from the momentum of the spinning wheel, the demon was being pulled out of him. He began to chant, first softly, then louder and louder, as the demon oozed out of his skin. The symbols turned into Indians; Night Walker, Leela Shining Star, Running Rabbit, Strong Elk. They spun and circled, chanted and screamed. Suddenly, all stopped. A fevered scream rang out and the demon was gone.

  “Hey!” Wolf heard the loud voice of the guard and opened his eyes.

  “What in living hell are you doing?”

  Wolf felt sweat on his forehead and across his upper lip. His mouth was open. He had screamed along with his Indian friends. The demon in his sixteen-year-old body was gone. He could feel the hole it had left, the lack of it inside him.

  “I’m sorry,” Wolf said. “I dozed off. I was having a nightmare.”

  “While sitting up?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, figure it out and don’t do it again.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The man walked away.

  Wolf knew that the battle wasn’t completely over, nor was his new strangeness. Yet, it felt right and safe. We are seldom what we seem, he thought. He wiped his forehead and face with the palms of his hands, then stood. He knew what he had to do, but the job seemed too great. He had to extricate the demon from each of his acts, go through every year of his life and change himself, change the outcome of his deeds if possible. He lay across the cot and threw his arm over his eyes. The room closed in on him. The darkness entered, even as the sun outside rose into the sky bringing morning, full force and brilliant, into his cell.

  Wolf awoke just before noon His body ached. His head swam with wild images of himself fighting, wrestling first a bear, then an ape, then a man. He wondered if inside his dream he was negotiating, removing the man and replacing him with lower life forms, animals. But why would his subconscious do such a thing? He shook his head. I’m over-analyzing. But there was little else to do in his situation, except think, sleep, meditate, and analyze. Lunch came and Wolf added eating it to his list of things to do in a jail cell. He picked at it, having burned off little of breakfast. The soup was cool. He poked at the meat inside the sandwich. He sat against one wall and closed his eyes only a moment when the guard yelled, “I don’t wanna hear no more of your howling Wolf-man.” Then, he laughed.

  “I was only resting,” Wolf said.

  “You’ll have plenty of time for that in here.” The guard leaned over to pull the tray out. “Hey. Tell me, did you do it?”

  “No,” Wolf said.

  “You know they found blood on one of your campfire logs. Drag marks, too. Signs of a struggle.”

  “I saw no one for several days. I was alone.” Wolf peered at the man trying to figure him out.

  “It’s hard to struggle when you’re alone.” The man stood from his crouched position. “But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I believe you. A lot of strange goes on up there. I’m not always so sure there aren’t sacrifices, for that matter. Those hills…” He shook his head. “They’re scary, if you ask me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You’re not from around here. You don’t hear about all that’s gone on. Those Indians, mixed tribes you said they were. Can’t be found. People heard of ‘em, but they’re gone now.”

  “Someone must be able to locate them. I mean, they were around for months. Long enough for my boss to learn about them. Long enough for me to get conned into coming out here.” Wolf stood, “And long enough to ramrod me into my own personal vision quest.”

  “You were kidnapped?”

  Suddenly Wolf felt interrogated, like this guard was trying to get him to say something, although he didn’t know what. “No, not kidnapped. Tricked maybe. And not by them. By my boss, to get me out of the office.” Wolf quieted. He walked over to his cot and sat. He wanted no ill feelings about any Indians coming out of his mouth.

  “Well, talk to you later,” the guard said.

  Wolf watched the man walk away.

  Later that afternoon, Gary returned with news. He got the judge to set bail. Wolf could stay in a nearby hotel, but would have to check in three times a day. Gary would represent Wolf in court through a local firm called H&L. “You didn’t tell me they found blood, drag marks and signs of a struggle near my medicine wheel,” Wolf said while he and Gary were leaving the county jail.

  “Details you didn’t need to know at the time.”

  “I think I’m entitled to know everything.”

  “Listen to me, Wolf, I’m working on this my way. Do you understand? I don�
��t want you pulling your usual control shit here. You know nothing about it.”

  “Is that what’s going on?” Wolf said. “Jesus Christ, Gary, this is serious. This is my life we’re talking about, and you’re concerned about who’s in control?”

  “No, Wolf,” Gary turned to face him, “you are. You’re trying to dictate to me. And I’ll repeat myself, knock it off. I don’t need you trying to figure this out or telling me what steps I need to take next. What I need is to be left alone to do what I do best.”

  “I wasn’t going to...”

  “You always do.”

  Wolf shut up. He felt suddenly less comfortable with Gary on the case. He wondered what was up. Or was it just the strain of the situation? No, Wolf thought, Gary has tried too many cases to be that stressed. There has to be something else.

  At the hotel, Gary told Wolf that Frank had covered bail, and would cover hotel and meal expenses as well. Wanting no more confrontation, Wolf thanked Gary, then walked up the stairs to his room.

  It was a small space. It held a bed with attached nightstand, a chest of drawers, a round table by the side window and one chair. There were two table lamps, one on the chest of drawers and one on the round table. A television sat on the dresser. A sign on its top advertised free HBO. Wolf threw his suitcase and briefcase onto the floor and walked over to the window. His room overlooked the back parking lot. Beyond that there was a fence and residential housing. To the far right was the back of a gas station.

  Wolf closed the curtain and lay down on the bed. He didn’t feel like doing anything except sort out his predicament, but his mind drifted whenever he tried to reconstruct the past weeks. He removed his shoes and rubbed his feet. Calluses pushed back against his fingers, thickened skin where once there were blisters. He slid to the bottom of the bed and leaned out to put the TV on, but even before the raster could come up, while it was still crackling, he turned it off. Lying back onto the pillow, he closed his eyes to rest.

  He slept, and when he awoke, there were no dreams to remember. His body felt sluggish and his mind slow. He shook his head. Soft twilight slipped through the crack between curtains. He felt hungry.

  Before leaving to get something to eat, Wolf unpacked. He had not talked with Michael for a long while and found that he missed hearing his son’s voice. He dialed his ex-wife’s number and waited. After four rings Julie’s voice came over the answering machine. Wolf hung up without leaving a message. If she was screening her calls, she wouldn’t pick up for him anyway. He was beginning to see where his past meanness had gotten him.

  The hall of the hotel smelled like cigarette smoke. The stairs he took wound to the front lobby. Several people sat in lounge chairs talking. Luggage cluttered the space around them. They were smoking and the air inside the lobby was thick. Outside, away from the small crowd, into fresher air, Wolf relaxed. He sighed deeply. He followed the sound of traffic to the street at his right. He remembered vaguely a shopping center and some restaurants down that road and began to walk.

  The cooled evening air reminded him of his adventure with Running Wolf and the others. He wondered if they had killed the man in question, Charles Owl Heart, but dismissed the thought intuitively. That was not something he could see them involved with on any level. Yet, he couldn’t actually say for sure what might have happened. As the guard had alluded, a lot of strange went on up there. A lot of strange, indeed, Wolf thought. His own episode was probably one small and insignificant chapter in the story they were telling. Oddly enough, he wasn’t concerned or worried about his situation, and wanted to stay in that frame of mind as long as he could manage it. The fresh air and freedom, even if not complete, helped him to forget the severity of his predicament.

  As the automobiles whizzed by him, he became just another man, one of many in the world, walking down the street. To the drivers and passengers there was no significance to his gait, nothing meaningful in his appearance, nothing notable in the way the breezes ruffled through his hair or made his shirt collar flap. He was one of millions, not stronger or weaker, braver or more cowardly, no more unique than the buildings that he passed, or the trees or shrubs. Falling completely into the flow of the world, like some gigantic river, Wolf became one droplet in a mist of the miracle, unnoticed, floating through air. Where he would fall was unknown. That he would fall was certain.

  Inevitable.

  CHAPTER 10

  SINCE GARY SELDOM VISITED, Wolf made his forays between the hotel and shopping center his routine. He checked in at his appointed times and was visited once by a policeman who was ‘just checking on him’. He didn’t know if that was typical, but he was glad for the company. He recognized the man as one of the two who had picked him up at the airport. As the officer turned to leave, light from the window struck his badge producing a quick spark of reflected light—the six-pointed star.

  The sign meant that everything was progressing the way it should. That’s how Wolf interpreted it: not that things would be fine, or that he’d be found innocent, but that things were the way they should be. Wolf knew that the man had arrived only to deliver this one message from the cosmos. Who could he speak to of this? Gary? Wolf had already told his story to Gary and was second-guessing that decision. Gary couldn’t take any more mysticism, Wolf felt. When Gary came to visit the following morning, Wolf didn’t bring it up. After all, it had been a private message, meant only for his eyes.

  Before Gary arrived at the hotel, he had called, waking Wolf from a sound, dreamless sleep. Wolf agreed to meet with him for breakfast, then showered and dressed. With plenty of time before Gary’s arrival, Wolf pulled his little wooden box from the dresser drawer. Placing the box on the round table near the window, he sat in the single chair. With his elbows on the table, he held the box between his palms and chanted for several minutes. Each time he performed this ritual, it felt more as though it had been part of his entire life. With each prayer he moved forward in time, and pushed an equal amount backward in time. If he continued this tradition for the rest of his life, it would insert itself further and further into his past. Once it reached his birth, he would be whole.

  Wolf tried not to consider the possibility of his being crazy, but when logical thought got too close to the surface, it was difficult for him not to think so. Nonetheless, like any religious tradition, he could use the term faith to explain himself back into sanity.

  When he was done praying, Wolf returned the wooden box to the dresser drawer. Immediately after his prayer, as always, he became very sensitive to everything, very aware. The noise of the dresser drawer as it moved assaulted his ears to such an extent that he could physically feel the friction, could sense each moving component. His clothes slid together, his breathing sounded louder, the smell of the room became piquant. He sat quietly on the bed listening, smelling and looking at the room in a new way. In a short time, his heightened awareness receded into the background, and he headed down to the lobby for a quick cup of coffee prior to Gary’s arrival.

  Wolf left the small room, pulling the door shut behind him. The latch clicked loudly, but Wolf tried to turn the knob and pushed the door anyhow, just to be sure it was secure. Every place has its feel, and this hotel felt like it served a unique purpose. Near the court house and police department, it housed all sorts of people involved with legalities, both good and bad. He could sense the existence of those waiting for trial, and there seemed to him to be witnesses holed up in there too. He could almost sense behind which door were which people. There were lawyers and other legal help, out-of-town police officers, reporters of various kinds.

  Wolf sensed all this as he walked down the hall to the winding stair that led to the front desk area. In the lobby, he poured himself a cup of black coffee and sat at the end of a long sofa. Only one other person sat there, a man dressed in black shirt and pants, with a lightweight jacket lying next to him. He looked up at Wolf, raising his eyes, then went back to reading his morning paper.

  “Hey, buddy, how you hold
ing up?” Gary’s voice broke the quiet of the lobby.

  Wolf turned. Gary stood behind and to his left. Wolf sipped his coffee, then stood. “I’ll hold up,” he said. “Judging from your calm, things are going well?” he asked.

  “Well enough. We can talk over breakfast.”

  “Fine,” Wolf said. “Coffee?” he pointed to the half-full pot sitting on the room-service cart next to the far wall.

  “I’ll wait.”

  Wolf downed a few more swallows from his Styrofoam cup and threw it into the trash. “Let’s walk. There’s a nice little place a few blocks from here.” He smiled at Gary. “They’re getting to know me.”

  “Sure. Let’s go.” Gary followed Wolf out the door and picked up an equal stride as they walked together. They walked in relative silence, speaking briefly of the weather, then about Wolf ’s accommodations. When Wolf asked about Lynne and the kids, Gary shot him a lightning quick glance, then hesitated.

  “Everything okay?” Wolf asked.

  “Not quite, but it has nothing to do with your case.”

  “Hey, you can tell me.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Wolf. Drop it.”

  “Fine, Gary, but if there’s anything I can do to help…”

  “Drop it, that’s all.”

  Wolf raised his palms as if caught stealing a candy bar. “Dropped,” he said just before they entered the restaurant.

  They took seats at a small table in a corner that looked as though it had been crammed into the space as an afterthought. The restaurant smelled of eggs, bacon and coffee. Lighting was dim. A waitress came over as soon as they sat down. “Well, hello,” she said to Wolf.