There I go again, Wolf thought as Grampa rambled on. Thinking like a white man. Maybe there is something to what Grampa is saying, even if it's not written down in black and white.
"The three chi-en and the human had been Nargat's slaves. They came from across a great ocean, from a place called Islen. Nargat was a wealthy landowner who wanted to start his own kingdom in the New World, but his armada of ten ships encountered a violent storm, and he lost all but the one ship. They were blown off course and discovered a warm land. Since they had lost their provisions, Nargat decided to explore. They followed the coast all the way to the rivers. Once they were inland, the slaves were able to tap the natural reserves of power on the land itself, and secretly build it until the right moment, when they unleashed it and broke their magical bindings. They rebelled while their masters slept, set the ship ablaze and cast it adrift down the river. Burning the ship was necessary to complete the breaking of Nargat's spell over them. Nargat escaped, however.
"The medicine man asked about the fire Nargat had disappeared into. That was a doorway to the spirit world, they told him. And only the most powerful of their medicine men could construct such a thing. Nargat had escaped, but it was unlikely he would come back. His plans were a failure.
" And what of you? the tribe asked. "What is to become of you?"
"They told the tribe they were far from their homeland, and had no way of returning. They had nowhere to go, and knew nothing of this lush, wild land. So the tribe struck a deal with the chi-en and the white medicine woman, to share their knowledge, and help each other to survive. They became part of the tribe, and from that time on the tribe was known as the Akaniwa, which means 'three peoples.' The white, the chi-en, and the rest of the tribe. All looked different. All became the same tribe. Akaniwa became Chaniwa, but it all means the same thing."
Wolf squirmed in his seat as he fished another cigarette out of the pack. "So what about the buffalo? Did they go back to their old lands?"
"No, the Chaniwa never did return to their buffalo herds. In their new land they found abundant game, deer, birds, wild turkeys. The chi-en taught them how to build houses out of logs, and established a community near where Nargat had been defeated. The women married with braves in the tribe, and the son took a wife. Those are our ancestors. That is how the Chaniwa began."
Yes, but what does this have to do with seeing through concrete?
By now the heat was becoming oppressive, working its way into the trailer gradually. Granted, drinking hot coffee didn't help matters; Wolf knew he would soon need to start consuming the water they kept in the refrigerator to keep from getting dehydrated. Sweat had beaded on his forehead, and he wiped it as surreptitiously as possible. If Grampa saw he was having trouble with the heat he might suggest a day in the sun, something he wanted to avoid. Unless, of course, he was on his Harley.
"That was not the last of Nargat, however. He did not return, but he sent a demon spirit in his place to haunt and harass the Chaniwa. This didn't happen right after Nargat's defeat, instead showing itself to the Chaniwa a generation later. Those of mixed blood, chi-en and human, were more vulnerable to attack. They had the sight to be able to see this spirit, but not the power of a full blooded chi-en to ward it off. This is what the following generations of medicine men were trained to do, to keep the spirit away. The spirit's one way to affect us is to block our powers, so we cannot use them to banish him to the spirit world.
"You are descended from the medicine men of the Chaniwa, Wolf, whether you like it or not. That your powers arose when you were far away tells me something else, something important."
Fast Horse whittled away at the carving, its form coming free from the wood. It was not a fetish; the limbs were too defined. Wolf knew this was going to be one of those one-sitting jobs, which also meant this conversation might take even longer.
"Our medicine men descended from the offspring of these first Chaniwa, their blood mixing with the white woman and the chi-en. This is why other tribes thought us the enemy, this is why the Chaniwa lived in isolation. Since the beginning, the medicine men have made prophecies, and passed them down from mother to daughter, father to son.
"The most fearsome prophecy has to do with the death of the Chaniwa, and the ashes from which it rises. Its new birth. This prophecy is at hand."
The urgency with which Grampa had made this last statement drew him back into the lesson.
"When there is one Chaniwa left, there will be a new cycle. A cat spirit will try to kill the very last one of our tribe," he said as he glanced over Wolf's head, "and the chi-en will rise from their underworld, the good and the bad. Nargat will return to seek his vengeance, as will others who are his enemy. There will be a white brave, adept at wikka, but he will not know his true path until he goes on a great journey to the underworld."
"So who wins?" Wolf asked, trying to sound interested, but the heat was beginning to distract him again.
"That we don't know," Fast Horse said. "The battle has yet to be fought." Grampa was getting excited, in a way Wolf found disturbing. The old man was starting to sound irrational. Wolf considered ways to appease him. "The Chaniwa have a power, which sometimes skips generations. Your father didn't have it. But you, Wolf, you have something he didn't. You are something he wasn't."
"Which is?" Wolf asked, trying to sound polite. "What ami?"
"You are…" Grampa began reverently, "you are chakka. Shapeshifter."
Wolf's heart sank. The chakka were bogeymen of bedtime stories. Chakka were the Chaniwa equivalent of werewolves. Unacceptable. He was willing to accept his powers having to do with his own natural abilities, which obeyed only himself. Now Grampa was bringing in spirits and ghosts and shit, things he didn't accept, didn't believe in. At least not yet; if Grampa presented some convincing evidence he might accept the notion of spirits, and make the knowledge his own. That he was a true chakka was beyond belief.
Grampa is starting to unravel.
"The evil cat spirit, the one Nargat summoned, her name is Ha-Sowa," Fast Horse said, looking above Wolf at the trailer's ceiling. "Never speak it unless you are gazing into the Hand. The Hand will keep the spirit away. Otherwise you may invoke the spirit. As a chakka, you may discover your other self."
"Okay, sure," Wolf said, half listening. He wasn't convinced.
Grampa gazed at him with an intense, hostile look that chilled his blood. "You can believe me now, or you can believe me later. Either way, you will believe! When the spirit challenges you, you will become what you do not believe. You will find that the spirits are not as kind as I am!"
Fear turned to anger, once Wolf realized Grampa was doing something he had agreed not to do, and that was to force his beliefs on him. Wolf should have known the old man would have trouble knowing the difference between religion and facts. Perhaps in Fast Horse's world there was no difference. In the hot, steamy trailer in the middle of the desert, Wolf's patience ran short.
"Kind or not, I've never seen the spirits," Wolf blurted. Fast Horse's eyes narrowed. "All I have seen and felt is some weird energy that came from inside myself. I came here to learn about that, not the entire mythology of the Chaniwa tribe."
"Because of the spirit, your powers are restrained. When you were overseas in the war, you were far from the spirit and its influence on your powers. The powers emerged when you needed them the most, and you put them to use. You haven't seen them since you've returned home, have you?"
Wolf shook his head stubbornly. "That doesn't prove anything," he replied.
Grampa shook his head, disappointed. "So many white man ways you must unlearn."
"Why unlearn them?" he asked, his patience snapping like a dry twig. "So I can become a Chaniwa and live in a shitty little trailer in the middle of nowhere? There's something I don't think you understand, and that's we're the last two of this damned tribe! I'm sitting out in the desert, getting sunstroke staring at the rocks, when I should be out looking for work, or better yet go back to school
. I've got VA benefits for that."
"Money will not protect you," Grampa said evenly. "You must be ready for the spirit, to know what you are—
"You mean a damned chakka? I think I can see the advantages. Hell, we could buy one of those twenty-five pound bags of dog chow, that would last me at least a week. But the shots and the vet bills and all that… I mean, have you really thought this through? And out here in the desert will I need a flea collar?"
"Why do you think your parents named you Wolf?" Grampa said softly.
The comment stopped him short. "What do you mean, they named me? Wolf is a nickname."
"No, grandson. It is not. Wolf is your real name. Your white foster parents named you Paul, but they changed it from Wolf."
Interesting, he thought, wondering why he had never been told this before. "So it's my Chaniwa name. Big deal. What does that have to do with silver bullets and my occasional wild urges to chase cats up trees? If there were any trees around?"
"You still don't see," Grampa said sadly. "Go on. Go into town. I don't have the strength to talk sense into a child."
The old man got up suddenly, leaving the woodcarving and his knife on the table. While they were arguing he had finished the carving, and Wolf hadn't even noticed. It appeared to be a mountain lion or cougar; the lines of the cat followed the swirls of the pinyon grain. But it was too manlike to be a cat, and it was standing upright.
"What's this?" Wolf asked, picking the carving up.
Fast Horse glanced at the carving, and while looking into the Hand of the dreamcatcher, said, "Ha-Sowa."
Wolf set it down as if it were poisoned. Grampa looked tired, and tottered over to a chair in front of an ancient black and white TV. "Oprah Winfrey," he said, as he turned the set on.
The comment about being a child still stung, try as he might to let it go. Suddenly the Harley seemed the ideal solution to the conflicting feelings he was juggling.
Get the hog up to a hundred. Everything in the world goes away. Instant Zen.
Yeah, that was the ticket. Go riding. Screw the shopping list.
As he got up to look for his motorcycle garb, he glanced down at the carving again, and did a double take. Had it changed positions? he wondered. It was in more of a crouch than standing up. But now the light was hitting it directly. That was it. Play of the shadows. Where are my damned leathers?
Behind the trailer was a small shed built with scrap lumber and about a hundred odd pieces of rusted sheet metal. Inside this Grampa kept miscellaneous junk— an oily transmission that had come out of the truck, an old trunk with Chaniwa relics, a box of battered tools, a few dried up cans of paint. But the important items were Wolf's Harley and Grampa's Indian. The Harley ran perfectly, but the other hadn't turned over in ten years. The front fender of the Indian had been removed for some reason, and put in the corner, where it lay like a wilted, dusty rose. The rest of the old 1946 Indian Chief lurked under a piece of canvas, but Wolf remembered what it had looked like when he went over it months ago. He didn't even try to start it, knowing it would need a thorough restoration, from the engine out, before it would go anywhere. Right away he had found something wrong with the ignition, or possibly the battery. Finding all the necessary rubber parts would be a real trick even if there were any Indian clubs around, and probably impossible if there were not. To do it right one would need to sink five or six grand into it, and six months of uninterrupted time. It was the perfect project for an idle, wealthy man, and Wolf wasn't wealthy.
The Harley, though, that was another matter. His baby was a legendary 1957 Harley-Davidson XL Sportster, in decent but not cherry condition. It needed a paint job pretty bad, the muffler was toast, and the forward handlebar bearings had to be replaced, but the bike ran like a champ. His friends in Texas had disassembled it and shipped it to his grandfather when Wolf had enlisted in the army, and it was still in the crates when Wolf returned after the war. It needed new tires and an oil change, but everything else was still in pretty good shape. After a week of scrounging for a used muffler, he had gotten it tagged, inspected and insured, gave it a poor man's tuneup, and fired that muther up.
Which is precisely what he had in mind now. Wolf had thrown on a pair of old black Honcho cowboy boots and a pair of jeans, waiting until he was on the bike before zipping on the leather jacket. She started on the second kick. Her throaty roar filled the shed with life. He eased the sunglasses on his face and eased her cautiously onto the dirt drive. By the time he reached the highway she was warmed up enough to back the choke off, and he turned her loose.
It happened whenever he rode the machine, no matter how bad the weather was, or how angry he might be, or if he was having a nicotine fit, or just plain in a bad mood. Once he had the bike on a highway, unimpeded by traffic, he felt freed of his emotions. The anger went away, as if blown off his body by the winds. Seventy-five, eighty miles per hour… the jacket ballooned around him, the wind stinging his bare chest. Ninety, ninety-five… and he was no longer mortal. Nothing in the universe mattered except the bike, the pavement, and the two rubber tires keeping them separate.
Instant Zen…
No traffic whatsoever. His mirrors were tilted too far down, giving him a good view of the highway passing beneath him, but he didn't want to fiddle with them now.
Nothing in front of me, nothing in back of me. Freedom… Ninety-five, one hundred. He quit looking at the speedometer. Nothing mattered except the road directly in front of him.
One-ten…
He had the sudden feeling that something was behind him. Backing the speed off to about ninety, he pulled the rear view up into position, where it should have been. Behind him was a cop car, lights flashing and eager to pull him over.
Oh shit… he thought, knowing in that split second that he had probably been pacing him since he got on the road. He's paced me at one-ten, at least… I'm in deep shit.
The cop was so unexpected that for a moment he'd forgotten what to do. This was his first encounter with the law since his return from the Gulf, and he was substantially rattled.
Shit shit SHIT! he thought, taking the handlebars firmly. He was slowing down drastically now, as was the cop car. Still going at a good clip, he pulled over on the shoulder. Can't let him think I'm trying to outrun him… Such tactics would only land him in jail, a place he never wanted to see again.
But the shoulder was gravel…
Too late to pull back on the highway, he felt the bike going sideways, the rear wheel slipping out and away from him. His last act of control was to put the bike into a slide, lest he begin flipping end over end. The bike screamed its pain as it connected with the ground, and Wolf reluctantly pushed himself away from it, hoping it wouldn't end up on top of him.
For an eternity he slid alongside the bike, the jacket taking the brunt of the impact. Nevertheless he knew he was hurt, and hurt bad, before he came to a stop in some hot, spongy sand.
Then the darkness seized him, and Wolf knew what it was like to die.
Chapter Seven
His first thought was of his bike, of whether or not he should turn the engine off.
But he couldn't find the bike anywhere, which was the first indication that something out of the ordinary had happened to him. The second sign was that he felt no pain. I must be in shock, he concluded. And unconscious. But if I'm unconscious, then why am I thinking?
The desert came into sharp focus around him. As he viewed it from a slightly elevated position, he noted something terribly wrong; he had either grown twelve feet in height, or he was flying. The latter became apparent when he looked down at himself, and saw only sand and a sparse scattering of juniper.
I must have died, he thought, feeling strangely unalarmed. During his rigorous meditation in the desert, in which he concentrated on a single tiny object, he had learned to tune out his body, surrendering his being to the object of meditation. This was a similar sensation, he thought, now knowing the purpose of the meditation. He had some clue as to what
was going on, whereas a year before he would have been utterly lost, floating above the desert like a balloon, not knowing what had happened. Grampa claimed to be able to leave his body for extended periods, and that Wolf would also learn this trick. But he doubted Grampa meant for him to accomplish this with the quick and dirty method of dumping his bike while doing a hundred.
Then he saw the twisted remnants of his Sportster, and felt that pang of death all over again. Its frame had contorted into an impossible angle, and the front tire had flown off somewhere. She's dead, he thought, shuddering with grief; then, I'm dead?
Wolf saw his body lying some distance away, face up on the sand, looking as if he'd just decided to take a nap alongside the road. Rather peaceful, he looked. Only his sunglasses were missing, no surprise given the magnitude of the crash. Wolf idly wondered if he'd suffered any broken bones.
The Sheriffs car had pulled up in front of Wolf's sleeping body, idling with the lights still flashing. The deputy was talking into a mike. He had turned pale, and didn't look well at all.
Wolf felt detached from the whole scene, feeling like an observer. Then he became aware of another observer, someone or something that had only now made its presence known.
He appeared as a lone motorcycle rider, off in the distance. The sound was a thin, constant drone that sounded like a cross between a diesel engine and a chain saw. But the bike's tires didn't connect with the sand; it, like himself now, was some feet off the ground, riding an ether Wolf could not yet see.
The rider drew nearer, pulling up to a stop near Wolf, who stood entranced by his bike. It was not an old but an ancient Harley, circa 1920s or '30s, with the famous Harley-Davidson name on the thin, tubular gas tank. No lights, signals, or windshield… the only accessory appeared to be a crude speedometer affixed to the front wheel fork. The rider was relaxed, almost bored as he dismounted and pulled the bike up on a rear kickstand; which seemed rather silly, since they were both in some other world where gravity and matter didn't, well, matter. Both rider and bike were transparent, the juniper and pinyon being vaguely distorted when viewed through him, as if his body were a lens.
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