by Brian Yansky
Running Bird calls me homophobic. He says that nudity is the natural state of man. Clothes are artificial.
“I’m not homophobic. I just don’t want to see a fat old man without clothes,” I say. “I’m fat-naked-old-man phobic, maybe.”
Catlin says, “Me, too.”
“Okay,” Running Bird says. “We’ll keep some clothes on. Always good to have a cute girl in the sweat lodge. Makes the heat less painful. It’s still going to be plenty painful, especially for the white boy. But less if he has his girlfriend in there.”
“She’s not —” I say.
“I’m not —” she says.
We both stop because we’re talking at the same time, and then we’re both embarrassed and confused about the embarrassment.
“Let’s go,” he says, and there’s that Road Runner smile again.
We follow him over to the sweat lodge, which is sort of like a giant beehive set back in a crevice between two large slabs of rock — a hidden place. The ground is uneven, and piles of fallen stones are scattered here and there. A small stream trickles through the hidden place. There’s a fire, a big one with a ring of rocks around it and several flat, smooth river stones in it. How can he have a fire in this no-fire zone? Then I realize that, because of the way the cliffs hang over the crevice and the caves up there, the smoke never makes it to the sky. It’s drawn into the caves. This place has been chosen carefully.
“You two go sit over there while I get the ancestors ready.”
“What ancestors?” I say anxiously. I half expect a gaggle of old naked men to appear, all ready for a good sweat.
He points at the stones in the fire.
“Ancestors are going to make us sweat. What is family for, anyway?”
I watch as Running Bird uses big iron tongs to take rocks from the fire and pile them inside the beehive. When he’s satisfied with the pile, he sprinkles water on it and closes the tent flap.
“It’s going to be like a sauna, I guess,” I say, kind of hoping he’ll confirm this so I’ll know what to expect, though I’m not exactly a big fan of saunas. I mean, I’ll sweat if there’s a reason, but I don’t see any point to sitting around just to sweat.
“Like a match is like a forest fire, white boy,” he says.
There’s a hole in the mud side of the sweat lodge, and I feel heat coming out. I say, “Is that to cool it down a little?”
“Good eye,” he says, and then he puts rocks where the smoke is escaping to hold it in. Not the response I’m looking for.
“Don’t people,” I say, “die of heatstroke?”
“What does not break the back makes it stronger. You ever heard that?”
“Yeah,” I say. That was one of my dad’s sayings, and I’ve heard it way too many times in my life. “I’ve heard that. I wasn’t really worried about my back.”
“You got the Warrior Spirit to protect you, Chosen One.”
“Not so sure about that,” I say.
“And we got us a healer,” Running Bird says. “She can probably bring you back.”
“Probably,” Catlin says, smiling that little crooked smile of hers. It’s a smile that isn’t quite a smile, or a smile that has something else in it that isn’t a smile. So why do I like it so much?
Running Bird actually high-fives her. He practically has to get down on his knees to do it, she’s so much shorter than he is.
“You need this,” Catlin says to me. “You need to sweat.”
I need it? I can think of a lot of things I need I’d put ahead of a sweat. A cheeseburger and fries would be way ahead of a sweat. Anyway, I’m fine. I killed an alien. He would have killed me and everyone I was with, so I killed him. I’m fine with it. Well, not fine, exactly, but okay. Well, not okay, exactly.
Fighting with gods, the man from the circus said. The aliens aren’t gods, though. They’re a long way from gods.
“Come on, girls and boys,” Running Bird says, taking off his T-shirt and revealing powerful shoulders and arms and a substantial muffin-top stomach hanging over his jeans. “Time to sweat. Strip down to undies, and let’s get going.”
So we do, and I have to admit at least one good thing comes from being here: I get to see Catlin in underwear. She is hot. Not that I’m looking, except in the way that any guy, even a guy with a sort-of girlfriend, would look. I appreciate hotness. Who doesn’t? Catlin has some cool tats. She has what look like Japanese symbols on her shoulder and a sunrise on her lower back just above her underwear line.
When she catches me looking at her, she smiles that not-quite-smile of hers. I smile back without thinking. Then I feel like I’m doing something wrong even though I haven’t done anything wrong.
“Let’s get this over with,” I say to Running Bird.
We step into the sweat lodge. It’s like stepping into a furnace. My face feels like it’s on fire. I can’t breathe. As I try to draw in a breath, something gets caught in my throat, and I try to cough it up, but I can’t. I’m like a cat with a hair ball. When I finally get that under control, I realize I can’t see anything because it’s so dark. I’m about to run from the tent because I’m a sane person — well, mostly — and this seems like a sane response to burning heat and fire, when Running Bird mindspeaks to me.
Control your pain, Warrior Boy. You have to breathe another way, avoid the heat. Breathe another way.
This reminds me of the dojo and working out with Grandmaster Kim.
“Control breathing!” he’d shout, his heavy Korean accent booming in the small, closed room. “Control pain!”
He was big on controlling your pain.
I can’t see with my eyes, but it turns out I can see with my mind, sort of. I find my way to a place next to Catlin. I feel her struggling like me. Her mind touches mine, and we both pull back. All of a sudden, after all we’ve been through, we’re shy with each other. Maybe because we’re in our underwear. Of course it’s because we’re in our underwear. I’m an idiot.
Running Bird starts chanting in a language I’ve never heard before. Then he sings. He has a surprisingly good voice. It’s getting hotter and hotter in the sweat lodge.
He sprinkles more water on the ancestors. This intensifies the heat, which I wouldn’t have thought possible. These are not benevolent ancestors. They have a mean streak.
Fortunately, Running Bird hands me a gallon jug of water. That helps a little, though several times I feel like I’m going to pass out. I’m surprised I don’t.
“Got to let yourself go, Warrior Boy. You’re fighting it. You’re here now, but you have been here before and will be here again. Don’t make distinctions among the three. You can dreamwalk without being asleep if you don’t make the distinctions.”
Crazy talk from the crazy man, but I try anyway. I use some of the meditation techniques from my martial-arts training, and suddenly I’m floating like I’m on the surface of water. Floating. Floating. I feel better, more relaxed.
“That’s right,” Running Bird says. “Now look at me. Follow me.”
I keep my eyes closed; it’s a different kind of seeing he means. I watch the way his mind pushes away from all that’s around him, like pushing off from the wall of a pool. I do the same.
He floats. I float. We’re not in a pool, though. It’s more like a big blue lake. It feels good. It feels like I’m there instead of in the oven-like sweat lodge.
I think back to that day at the circus again and that man. For a second it’s like I’m standing there beside my younger self and the man. Then something very freaky happens. The man turns to me.
“You have always been stronger than you think,” he says. “It is written, but you have a choice.”
I fall back — trip, I guess — and I’m back in the sweat lodge, sweating. Not floating anymore. Breathless and afraid — though I don’t know of what. I try to control my breathing again, slow it. Did I fall asleep? It feels like maybe I fell asleep. Honestly, though, it also feels like maybe I didn’t.
I try to se
e Catlin through the dark. I can see her in my mind: eyes closed, all one hundred pounds of her focused. Running Bird says it’s time for a break. He needs more ancestors, hotter ones.
We go outside. The air feels cool and soft against my skin. It tastes sweet, and then I hear a bird singing. A bird. The sound is familiar and strange at the same time.
Running Bird has several plastic gallon jugs of water in a row by the tent, and Catlin and I take one and drink like we’re dying of thirst, which we might be. Running Bird starts getting more stones from the fire and carrying them with the big tongs into the sweat lodge.
“Those ancestors must be angry about something,” I say.
“You know what I was thinking about in there?” Catlin says.
“How can I sneak out of here?” I say.
The almost smile.
“That day you found me,” she says.
Lord Vertenomous had Catlin locked away in a room. No one knew she was there until I heard her crying and saw her in a dream.
“I was lucky to find you,” I say.
“You saved me.”
“I did what anyone would do.”
She shook her head. “You risked everything to save me.”
Embarrassed, I change the subject. “Did you, by any chance, see anything while we were in there?”
“A lot of darkness. What did you see?”
“Me?” I say. “The same. I mean, hard to see much else, right?”
I try to sound normal. The fact that I have to make an effort, though, is probably a bad sign. Although it could be a good sign that I know it’s a bad sign.
“Ancestors ready,” Running Bird says way sooner than I want him to. “Pretty girl has to watch from the outside this time.”
“Then I’m putting my clothes back on,” she says.
“Better if you don’t,” Running Bird says. “Thinking of you out here in your underwear will give us inspiration.”
“I’m getting dressed,” she says, and starts putting on clothes.
Running Bird shrugs. “Sorry, Warrior Boy. You’re just going to have to inspire yourself.”
“Inspire myself to do what?”
“I think you know.”
He motions for me to go into the sweat lodge before him. Once I get back in, I feel bad again, as bad as before. I have to struggle not to run outside all over again. I’d gotten used to being able to breathe without suffocatingly intense heat. Imagine that.
Finally, though, I do start to feel better again. Then I start to float. I have to admit, reluctantly, that it’s a little easier than last time.
“Running Bird?” I say.
“You’re here and before here and after here,” he tells me. “Words keep trying to give order, but you can’t let them. Be all places at all times. This is the way.”
“It’s a pretty confusing way,” I say, because, come on, who could understand that? The heat just keeps getting stronger and stronger. I imagine a giant python coiling around me and squeezing. Not a good thought. I cough convulsively until my throat is so sore I can’t cough anymore. I say, “Just tell me where you want me to be.”
“Dreamwalk, only don’t dream. Same place but different.”
I’m beginning to realize that Running Bird isn’t capable of a straight answer. All of his answers are bent.
“Beep beep,” he says, and mindspeaks, Walk. We walk together.
I try to do what he says. I try to dreamwalk without dreaming, and I end up in a very strange place, a place I know and don’t know. What I mean is I’ve seen it on TV and online, but never in real life. I’m in a Road Runner cartoon.
A Road Runner cartoon! I can’t decide if I’m awed or freaked.
Or maybe equal parts both.
The land is bright yellow and the sky bright blue, with some puffy white clouds. The road is gray, and I’m on that road as the Road Runner whizzes by. Behind him is Wile E. Coyote, chasing him in a dragster. They go up a red mountain that has a road all the way around it like a coiled spring.
At the top, the Road Runner stops. It’s the end of the road. Beyond that is a long, long fall. He stops very suddenly in his typical Road Runner way, all springy like. Wile E. Coyote, unable to stop in time, drives his dragster right off the cliff. Fortunately, there’s a parachute. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work, and the car doesn’t hold together, and Wile E. Coyote, holding only the steering wheel, plummets to the earth faster than the rest of the car. Naturally the car lands on top of him, adding insult to injury. This adds more injury to injury, too, of course.
I wonder how it all started between them — if there is a reason the Coyote feels like he has to kill the Road Runner, besides just the fact that they exist here in this world and the Road Runner runs by him all the time and taunts him with that irritating beep beep. That could be enough. It could totally be enough.
Still, there’s got to be an easier meal somewhere in this desert. Someone should tell him that. Of course, I guess there wouldn’t be a cartoon then. The show would be over. One day the Coyote and the Road Runner learn to live in peace, THE END.
I hear Michael tell me to shut up. The first time he told me to shut up was when we got put on the same destruction crew, when the aliens had us tear everything down. Then he and I got chosen to go to Lord Vertenomous’s palace to be his personal slaves because we had some of the telepathic power the aliens value so much. He told me to shut up many times there. It got so I’d try to find ways to make him say it. I smile, remembering.
Then I see the dust rising off the road beyond the cartoon hill, and I know the Road Runner is coming again. I can see the Coyote up at the top of the next hill. He’s strung a trip wire across the road. On both ends of the wire are boxes marked TNT. He’s hiding behind a rock with a control button in his hand.
Of course I know what’s going to happen. Anyone who has ever watched the cartoon knows. Somehow the TNT is going to blow up the Coyote instead of the Road Runner.
But that’s not what happens. What happens is the Road Runner runs into the trip wire. The explosives go off. The Road Runner is transformed into something that looks like a cooked turkey in a pan. The Coyote comes out from behind the rock, looking dazed. He can’t believe it. Then a big smile comes over his face.
Something is wrong. The Road Runner is not supposed to die.
“You killed me!” Running Bird says to me.
“I didn’t. I —”
He laughs. “That’s a joke. You didn’t kill me, because you can’t cause what you can’t cause, which is everything since all is written. But I’m still dead.”
“We’re in a cartoon,” I say, shaken. “The Big Book isn’t a comic book, is it?”
“This is your way of seeing this message. It’s not always easy to know what messages mean, but this one seems pretty clear.”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I say.
“It’s okay. I told you. Everything is and was and will be. I’ll still be alive in some moments even if I’m dead in others. It’s life. And death.”
“It’s crazy.”
“Yes, it is. Your vision is vivid. Very strong. Might be you’re getting help. Might be the Warrior Spirit is in you. Maybe he even visited you long ago and said you’d be fighting aliens?”
“No,” I said.
“You sure? The Warrior Spirit might see them as something else. He’s only half-god, you know. Might have thought you’d be fighting gods or other spirits.”
“So you’re saying he’s in me? You feel him in me?”
“Might be.”
“Might be?” I say. “I thought you were finally going to tell me something.”
“We’re going to join and see if we can read some helpful message in an immediate way. Something that might tell us how to live our next few thousand thousand moments. Maybe that will help me be sure.”
I’d like to say “No, thanks,” but I’m feeling guilty because of what I just saw — whether it was my fault or not.
“Fine,”
I say. “Lead on.”
He does. He leads on. I follow.
We’re back at Lord Vertenomous’s palace again, which is not a good idea, but I can’t — we can’t — control our walks. I can feel what it was like being here, feel the way I was afraid, feel how powerless I was when I was a slave. Any order the aliens gave I would have to follow. Go to bed. Get up. Eat. Talk. Don’t talk. Before the aliens came, I sometimes felt like people were telling me what to do all the time, but when I was a slave, I realized how much freedom I’d had. When it is all taken away, you see things differently. A slave has nothing. I had nothing.
We’re downstairs, and I realize that I’ve moved through time. I’m at a moment I’ve been in before. I see myself sitting at a table, eating. There are people with me, and people at other tables, too. I see Betty get up and walk over to Anchise, the psycho alien handler. I shout, “No, Betty!” while the other me whispers it because we both know what’s about to happen. She slaps Anchise, and he kills her. But she blocks him once. I remember how seeing her do this made me realize they, the aliens, weren’t invincible. We’d thought they were after all they’d done, but Betty’s slap was the sound that woke me up. We could fight. They would probably squash us like bugs, but they weren’t invincible. They weren’t gods.
“Why are we here?” I say to Running Bird.
“Don’t know. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we do.”
“I couldn’t save her. Not then and not now.”
“It’s already happened.”
“What use is dreamwalking, then?” I say.
“Sometimes no use,” he says, shrugging, and I feel something dark and heavy trying to pull him down. It is so dark and so heavy that I can’t imagine how he can carry it, but he does. “Sometimes, like when you saw the alien fleet, a dreamwalk can be important. Knowing things is sometimes important.”
“Dreamwalking failed you once, didn’t it?” I say. “With your wife?”
He doesn’t speak right away. When he does, his voice is soft. “Saw her die but saw it too late. It was already written in the book. It happened a long time ago. Many years to me, anyway.”
“I’m sorry.”