‘Oh, sure I do,’ said Papago Joe. He reached in his pocket and he took out the cockerel pendant, and let it spin and shine in the lurid red candlelight. ‘You’re Sawtooth, Jonas DuPaul, the great and magical Doctor Hambone.’
I was literally grinding my teeth with tension and fright, but Papago Joe seemed to be quite unperturbed. He let the pendant spin around and around, and then he said, ‘Toussaint L’Ouverture gave you this amulet, didn’t he?’
Doctor Hambone couldn’t take his eyes off it. He half-lifted one of his half-mummified hands towards it, but Papago Joe drew it away.
‘The question is, who gave the amulet to Toussaint L’Ouverture, and why? You know, don’t you, Doctor Hambone? It was given to him by a voodoo witch-doctor, so that he would always be protected against zombies and demons and loogaroos. The amulet always passes the qualities of one wearer — whatever they were — on to the next. The witchdoctor was immune from zombies, and so were you. But Toussaint L’Ouverture gave it some of his own qualities, didn’t he? And when you started wearing this amulet, that was when you turned your back on your Soul Day bargain with Misquamacus, wasn’t it? Because Toussaint L’Ouverture was prepared to fight on the side of progress, and light, and even to accommodate the white men, when it suited him.
‘So you gave the amulet to a little white girl, and for the short time that she wore it, that little white girl became fearless and magical and wise beyond her years, just like you. But what would happen if I gave it back to you?’
Doctor Hambone stared at Papago Joe with his eyes almost bursting out of their sockets. Then he turned to Mama Jones and roared so furiously that the cupboard doors burst open, and swung on their broken hinges.’ You traitor-woman! What did you call me for? You traitor-woman! I am going to fix you for ever in pain! You see!’
But Papago Joe had already thrown up the amulet. It flew across the room in what seemed like slow-motion, its chain looping like a lassoo. Doctor Hambone lifted his head as it circled toward him, and tried to lift his hand to catch it, but it encircled his head and dropped down around his neck.
Doctor Hambone let out a bellow that made the glass chandelier shake. He dragged aside the tablecloth and cockerel-bones, and statues and glass beads showered everywhere. The lamp rolled over and dropped onto the floor and set light to the fringes along the bottom of the curtains.
‘Harry!’ shouted Papago Joe. ‘The curtains!’
I stamped on them furiously, and then dragged them apart, so that I could open the window. The living room was flooded with sunlight.
Doctor Hambone stood rigid, his eyes still bulging, his hands grasping the chain of the amulet, his lips stretched back in a hideous grimace.
In front of my eyes, he began to shrink and collapse. His tailcoat caved in, and then his legs crumbled beneath him. I saw his eyeballs dry up like two prune-pits, and drop out of their fleshless sockets. I saw his wristbones tear through his papery skin. His head fell back, and then he dropped onto the floor, with the softest of noises.
From the open cupboard, I thought I heard an echoing, diminishing cry; but then I could have been imagining it.
But there was no question about the cry that we heard next A thick, roaring scream from the kitchen. A cry of agony and hopelessness and terrible despair. The living-room door was flung open and Nann stood in front of us with her eyes wide.
‘It’s Nat! Grandmama! It’s Nat!’
I followed Papago Joe into the kitchen. Nat lay on the floor, crushed and crumpled, blood foaming from his lips. One leg stuck out from underneath him at an impossible angle, and his whole body trembled and shuddered.
Trixie was kneeling beside him with tears streaking her face.
‘What’s happening?’ she begged, in a shrill, unbalanced voice. ‘What’s happening?’
There was nothing we could do. Nat had been dead already and now that his spirit-master had gone, he was dying for a second time. Crushed by tons of concrete, broken by falling girders.
Nann crossed herself and then pressed her hands together in prayer.
‘Isn’t there anything we can do for him?’ cried Trixie. ‘He’s hurting so much!’
Papago Joe laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. He wasn’t meant to die. But then he wasn’t meant to come alive again, either. These things have away of coming full circle.’
Outside in the streets, we could hear shouting and sobbing and people running. Papago Joe glanced at me and we both knew what had happened. The hatless people had collapsed, too. I crossed to the kitchen window and looked out, and saw an elderly couple lying face down on the sidewalk, while a middle-aged woman knelt beside them in grief. She had buried them once before: now she would have to bury them again.
Hoarsely, Mama Jones cried, ‘What have you done? What have you done?
Papago Joe said, ‘Come take a look.’ He led us back to the living room and stood over Doctor Hambone’s fallen body. ‘Come on, Harry, take a look.’
I went over reluctantly and took a look. To my amazement, Doctor Hambone’s dusty tailcoat contained the corpse of a young boy, no more than thirteen or fourteen years old. He was desiccated, his skin was stretched like beige leather over his bones, but I could see that he had once been handsome. I looked up at Papago Joe and said, ‘What? I don’t understand.’
‘Very simple,’ said Papago Joe. ‘Wanda wore that amulet and gave it her youth. Doctor Hambone became a child again. A child who didn’t know voodoo; a child who didn’t have the strength to keep a dead spirit alive in a dead man’s body.’
He turned to Mama Jones, who was standing ashen-faced and shaking in the doorway.
‘Mama Jones,’ he said. ‘There’s one more thing you have to do.’
‘I can’t,’ whispered Mama Jones. ‘I can’t.’
Papago Joe took hold of her hand. ‘Yes, you can. You can bless this body here, in accordance with the voodoo ritual. You can do it now. This body owned hundreds and thousands of discontented souls, and you’ve got to give those souls peace, and contentment. Help them to cross back over Jordan, where they should rightly be.’
Mama Jones crossed herself. ‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘It’s gone so far, it had better be finished. I’ll do that thing.’
Papago Joe triumphantly squeezed my shoulder. ‘That’s it — that’s taken away all of those black spirits that Misquamacus has been counting on. You mark my words, Harry, once Mama Jones has done her stuff, and those spirits have been laid to rest, Aktunowihio won’t have the strength to pull down an outhouse, let alone a skyscraper.’
‘You’re a bright guy, Joe,’ I told him. ‘I never would have thought of that amulet stunt, not in a hundred years.’
He looked away, and gave my shoulder one last squeeze. ‘You want to know the truth? I didn’t think for one split-second that it would actually work.’
‘You’re kidding me. I thought you had it all planned out. What were you going to do if it didn’t work?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Kick him in the nuts?’
Twenty
E.C. Dude arrived at Midway Airport at seven o’clock that evening, wearing jeans with elaborately ripped knees and cowboy-boots and a Grateful Dead T-shirt and carrying a large canvas shoulder-bag studded with Mr Smiley faces and Nixon for President buttons. He looked tired and unshaven and his face was waxy. More like Jim Morrison than ever.
We greeted him and relieved him of his bag and took him out to our waiting taxi.
‘How’re things in Phoenix?’ I asked him.
‘Oh, quietened down now. The wind’s died down, anyway, and the houses have stopped sliding. But the place is a mess. You wouldn’t even recognize it. Shit.’
‘Chicago’s not much better. Most of the downtown area has been wasted.’
E.C. Dude leaned forward in his seat and said to Papago Joe, ‘You practically scared the shit out of me, you know that?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Papago Joe.
‘Well, sending those guys
to collect me. I couldn’t believe it when this big black limo turned up outside the trailer. These two Apache guys got out, with headbands and sunglasses and Armani suits, right, they’re built like adobe shithouses, right? They told me they were taking me off for a ride. I thought I was dead, man, I mean it. I thought they were going to take me out to the desert and put a bullet through my ear.’
‘Sorry,’ said Papago Joe. ‘But the phones were out, and the best I could do was to call Jim Grey Wolf in his car. How was your flight?’
‘Little bumpy. But those Learjets, they’re something, aren’t they? I wish I had one.’
‘Jim Grey Wolf has two,’ Papago Joe explained to me.
‘Useful friend at a time like this,’ I remarked.
Papago Joe systematically cracked his knuckles. ‘He owes me sort of a favour.’
I looked at E.G. Dude but E.C. Dude pulled a face that meant, ‘Don’t ask me, man.’ I was beginning to think that there was more to Papago Joe than met the eye. But then, isn’t there always more to everybody than meets the eye?
We had booked a room at the Four Lakes Lodge a mile west of Downer’s Grove. ‘What a downer, man,’ E.C. Dude remarked. But it was quiet and it was anonymous, just one of those tedious Chicago suburbs; with nothing to distinguish it but a shopping mall and acres of concrete parking-lots and orange sodium lights that stained the sky the colour of Fanta. At least the Indians, out on the Plains, had seen the stars.
We ate dinner in our room, steaks and fries. E.C. Dude ordered a salad because he had decided (yesterday) to become spiritual, and at one with nature, which meant that his digestive system had to commune with lettuce-leaves and Belgian endive and nothing else. I told him that the President was a Belgian endive enthusiast but that still didn’t deter him. ‘Vegetables aren’t political, right? Did you ever see a fascist carrot?’
Papago Joe explained to E.C. Dude what we intended to do. E.C. Dude munched lettuce and green peppers and alfalfa and nodded. ‘Okay, that’s extra. That’s cool. I’ll do anything, man, believe me.’
All the time we kept the television switched on, in case there was any more news of what was happening in New York. From the time that we had visited Mama Jones’ apartment, no more major buildings had gone down, although the city was still jammed with smashed-up automobiles and mountains of loose debris, and the toll of dead and missing was running into tens of thousands.
I tried calling Amelia but for most of the evening the lines were busy, and when I did get what sounded like a ringing tone, nobody answered.
Papago Joe said, ‘We may have taken out the black souls that gave Aktunowihio his extra strength, but don’t let’s forget that he’s still a formidable spirit to deal with. I mean seriously powerful, the god of darkness. And don’t let’s forget that Misquamacus means business, too. He’s cruel and he’s wily and he’ll do anything to stop us. Absolutely anything.’
‘Sounds cool to me,’ said E.C. Dude. ‘When do we leave?’
We slept for two-and-a-half hours; and then, at seven minutes past three Central Time, we dressed and sat around the table, while Papago Joe carefully divided out our remaining death-powder.
‘I just hope the heat don’t decide to rush in,’ said E.C. Dude. ‘I’d hate to be busted for sniffing up somebody’s sacred remains.’
Papago Joe sniffed first, then E.C. Dude, then me. Then we all sat back and looked at each other.
‘Hey man, this is a downer,’ said E.C. Dude. ‘No wonder they call it Downer’s Grove. I’m not even high.’
But in the next instant, he turned and stared at me wide-eyed and yelped, ‘It’s all gone dark, man! Who switched off the fucking light?’
Papago Joe reached out and took hold of his wrist. ‘It’s all right, E.C. No need to panic. We’re all experiencing the same experience. We’re dead.’
‘I don’t want to be dead!’ E.C. Dude shouted, jumping to his feet. ‘Fuck this, man! I don’t want to be dead! I changed my mind!’
I grabbed hold of his sleeve and pulled him down again. ‘For Christ’s sake, you’re not really dead! Your brain is hallucinating that you’re dead, that’s all. If it didn’t do that, you wouldn’t be able to get through to the Great Outside, would you? Living people don’t get to Heaven, no matter how much they may want to go there.’
E.C. Dude petulantly tugged his sleeve away. ‘All right, I’m not dead. All right. That’s extra. Let’s forget it.’
Led by Papago Joe, we walked Indian-file out of the Four Lakes Lodge, and across the parking-lot to a scrubby building-site. The concrete foundations had been poured, but it looked like the developer had run out of money. The rest was wild grass and rusting concrete-mixers and reinforcing rods and broken fencing. The night wind whistled mournfully through the chicken-wire.
Papago Joe said, ‘The reason I chose the Four Lakes Lodge was because of this site.’
‘Well, it’s cool,’ said E.C. Dude. ‘But, you know, I wouldn’t spend the summer here or nothing.’
There was a dark drainage trench dug into the soil; and we climbed down into it; glowing as dark as the dead men we were; and broke through the crust of the soil with a rusty-bladed shovel. Below the soil was darkness, and emptiness — an emptiness that fell as far as infinity.
E.C. Dude peered down into it, and then looked at Papago Joe, and then at me. ‘No fucking way, man. That’s eternity.’
Calmly Papago Joe said, ‘Harry and I have been there. Harry and I have both come back. You can do the same.’
I slapped his arm. ‘Come on, E.C. You can do it.’
‘I can’t do it, man!’ screamed E.C.
For the first time since he had opened that trailer door and blinked at me sleepy-eyed, E.C. Dude annoyed me. I took hold of his shoulders and pressed my nose flat against his nose so that our eyes were so close that we couldn’t even focus on each other.
‘You’re going to do it, okay?’ I breathed into his face. ‘You don’t have any fucking choice.’
E.C. Dude took a deep, quivering breath, and then he said, ‘Okay … okay. I just freaked out is all. I’m okay now. No problem. Everything’s extra, okay?’
Papago Joe went first, climbing/slipping/falling into the blackness. E.C. Dude went next, clutching onto my hand as he did so, and I heard him scream out, ‘Oh, shhiiiitttttt!
Then I followed, dropping into darkness, dropping into death. There was something familiar about it now; something soft and warm and welcoming, like dropping into bed. Maybe death welcomed you, when you were older. Maybe death knew that you would soon be joining it, ashes to ashes, darkness to darkness.
We found ourselves on a dark windblown prairie, under the stars. Lake Michigan was too far away for us to see, but we could feel the breeze blowing off it. Papago Joe said, ‘Come on, now, let’s gather together. Let’s call up those spirit guides. Let’s get this Ghost Dance finished, once and for all.’
He took out his sticks and tapped in rhythm. E.C. Dude watched him in fascination. ‘That’s a cool rhythm, man. That really is. We could make a demo of that, you know, with some kind of rap. You know, the Death Rap or something.’
I gave a cold-rivet stare, and so he shrugged, and sniffed, and said, ‘I’m sorry, okay? I wasn’t trying to be tasteless or nothing.’
Papago Joe said, ‘I’m calling on spirit guides … spirits to help us … I’m calling on Singing Rock and Martin Vaizey and one more spirit. I’m calling on William Hood, the shadow-catcher.’
We sat in that windy prairie, listening to the grass rustling, and then we saw two flickers of light. They were small and flickering and dim, way off across the prairie. But they were Singing Rock, no doubt about it; and Martin. Soon they were flickering lights no longer, but shining spirits, beautiful shining spirits, and they walked towards us through the grass, and we embraced.
And — as we embraced — they vanished inside us.
Possessed us.
E.C. Dude stared at Papago Joe and then he stared at me. ‘Pardon me for being nose
y,’ he said. ‘But those guys …’ He paused, and looked around, baffled. ‘Where did those guys go?’
‘They’re still here,’ said Papago Joe. ‘They’re right inside of us.’
E.C. Dude peered into my eyes. ‘I don’t see nothing.’
‘I know,’ I told him. ‘But I feel something.’
He shook his head. ‘That’s extra, you know? That’s something extra.’
I felt Martin inside of me, sharing my brain-cells, sharing my consciousness. I closed my eyes and said, ‘Welcome.’ The warmth of his personality flooded my arteries and ran through my veins, and together we were one.
‘Listen,’ I asked him. ‘What about the forks? What do the forks do?’
‘What does it matter? The forks are lost.’
‘But they’re not lost. I talked to Amelia. She went to the precinct house and rescued them. She has them now.’
‘She has them now? She really has them now? Then you can catch Misquamacus for good.’
‘How, for Christ’s sake? I couldn’t kill Misquamacus with a sawn-off shotgun. How am I going to get rid of him with two forks?’
‘They’re very simple … very logical. Celts made them, back in Wales, centuries and centuries ago.’
‘Yes, great, but how do I use them?’
‘Like dowsing-rods, like lightning-conductors. The Celts learned how to make them from the Egyptians. You see — when the Egyptian seafarers first discovered the New World there were demons and spirits walking the land everywhere. If they wanted to land, if they wanted to explore, they had to protect themselves.’
‘There were demons and spirits just strolling about? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Of course. They were able to walk about openly above ground because the land was innocent and the native Americans believed in them, and gave them food and milk and buffalo-blood. Columbus saw some of them … men without heads, and wild dogs who walked on their hind-legs. In those days, even Aktunowihio walked above ground, in the shadow of buffalo, and discontented men.’
Burial Page 48