Landslayer's Law

by Tom Deitz

  “Sorry I’m late,” Dale apologized, as he deftly avoided the slowly uncoiling doormat to join them inside. “Power went out for a spell while these were cookin’. Hope it didn’t ruin ’em.”

  “Happens in the mountains,” Calvin sighed. “I know.”

  “What does?” Sandy yawned from the door to the bathroom. She stretched languidly, and combed absently at her preposterous fall of hair.

  “Storms,” Dale replied, handing her a biscuit (ham, by the slab of pink-red meat hanging out on every side) and a steaming mug. “Power’s never been real reliable up here,” he added, shucking a well-used raincoat. “Lines gotta cross lots of mountains, for one thing. And in spite of all these dams, our power comes out of Knoxville, so if anything happens along the way, out go the lights down here, more ’n likely.”

  Aikin was up by then—and so, at a minimal level, were Darrell and Gary. Food was already being consumed in heroic portions. There was plenty of yawning, blinking, and scratching of assorted body parts. And a lot of complaining about the weather.

  LaWanda had returned to the window and was gazing out again. It was raining harder. Sandy joined her there. Scott was getting restless. But just as he started to insist they consider their situation, Sandy spun around abruptly.

  “We’ve got this wrong,” she proclaimed with conviction. “Bitchin’ about the rain, I mean.”

  Scott stared at her as though she’d just turned purple. “It’s a damned inconvenience, is what it is! You don’t have to be out in it!”

  “That’s debatable,” Sandy retorted. “But you’re right about the other. It is an inconvenience.”

  Calvin’s face lit up, as though he’d followed her thought, but had now raced ahead of her. “Oh, right! When it rains, it’s hard to survey. It’s also hard to work construction.”

  “And you can’t run power tools without power,” Aikin added brightly.

  Calvin peered at Dale. “What’s the forecast, anyway?” Dale grinned back. “Rain for the next two days. Hard rain.”

  Sandy stroked her chin. “And what happens if it rains hard for two days? To the lake, I mean?”

  A shrug. “Water rises—’less they open up the gates of the dam and let it out.”

  Sandy poked Scott in the ribs—he was getting damned sick of that, too. “Can you survey in the rain?”

  “Not…well,” Scott admitted. “And you really kind of have to have a crew. Other guy’s supposed to be up here tomorrow—Monday, I mean.”

  “And what were you gonna do ’til then?” LaWanda purred.

  “I was gonna go back to Athens, feed my pet ferret, and tell my friends I had this neat job workin’ outside in the mountains. That was before I made a certain stupid promise.”

  “What about your job? Didn’t you say something ’bout prospectin’? Lookin’ for gold, or whatever?”

  Scott nodded. “Gotta pace the shore a mile either way and check out the stratigraphy.”

  “Can’t pace no shore if the shore’s underwater,” LaWanda laughed, through the widest grin Scott had ever seen.

  He gaped at her in confusion. “What, dare I ask, are you talkin’ about?”

  “Rain!” LaWanda chortled. “Rain here. Rain in Knoxville. Rain in all them places in between. Rain on the dams and the power lines. Rain on Ralph Mims and his fancy notions. Rain on two miles of lakefront property!”

  “Oh hell yes!” Calvin chimed in. “Goddamn, girl, you’re a genius!”

  Scott stared at his mug stupidly, wondering if his batch of brew lacked some crucial additive that was making his companions think so bloody quickly. Himself, he didn’t start hitting his stride until noon. Which was probably why Mims had been able to con him so easily.

  Evidently Calvin noticed his confusion. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  Scott shook his head. “’Fraid not.”

  “Rain!” Calvin echoed LaWanda. “It’s rainin’ now. When it rains, you can’t get much outside work done, and neither can anybody else.”

  “And when it ends?”

  Calvin’s face split virtually from ear to ear. “That’s just the point! It ain’t gonna end—not as long as I have anything to do with it!”

  “Oh, gimme a break!” Scott growled. “You can’t make it rain!”

  “Oh yes he can!” Sandy countered. “If he’s thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’ he’s thinkin’.”

  “And,” LaWanda added with a thoroughly nervewracking cackle, “I’ll bet I can help out too—but first I gotta call up my granny!”

  (near MacTyrie, Georgia—Monday, June 23—early evening)

  The Explorer’s door slammed with the satisfyingly solid thunk of something new, expensive, and well-made. Calvin barely noticed it, so attuned was he to other noises—natural noises—like wind and rain and thunder. Next to them, the sloshy crunch of big all-terrain tires and the muttery growl of a healthy Ford V-8 merited no acknowledgment. White noise. Like the slap of windshield wipers. Like—almost—the sound of someone slogging across the muddy yard of Aikin Daniels’s family’s mountainside cabin to keep him company he wasn’t sure he needed.

  He’d never tell Sandy as much, however. Besides, she wanted to help; and, he very much feared, he—and everyone else he knew who’d gotten mired in this sorry enterprise—needed all the assistance they could muster.

  “Hi!” she sang out with clearly forced cheeriness, as she ambled up behind him, where he perched on a chair-height maple stump on the north side of the cabin. He was gazing north, too—hadn’t turned around. And he was frowning.

  He reached up to grasp the hand she laid on his shoulder, but didn’t otherwise acknowledge her. She was used to it. It was a necessary adjunct to psyching for the ritual.

  “Have a good trip?” he murmured, to be polite.

  “Not bad. Rained—of course. Otherwise…school was school. I begged off that self-study meeting and came on over. Figured we could find someplace to eat out when you’re done.”

  “I’ll need it. Fasting’s not my favorite occupation.”

  She stroked his back. It was bare—all of him was, save where the white deerskin breechclout covered his loins, the garment a war-naming gift presented to him by Uki, his mentor in Galunlati. The hand halted shy of his waist-thong. Sandy knew better. Sex was a distraction. Women themselves could be, when a man was about…certain business. A mensing woman was anathema, because women’s power was stronger than men’s to start with, and with the bleeding came the need to replace that blood—figuratively, of course. Sandy was safe, as far as that went; they’d learned their lesson a couple of years back.

  “What’s the forecast?” he inquired, gazing once more at the sky. It was still raining, as it had since Saturday. Still, the storms hadn’t lasted as long as predicted—damn it. He hadn’t planned to come out here until tomorrow.

  “Front’s moving in,” Sandy supplied, easing around so that he could barely glimpse her from the corner of his eye: a tall blond fire limned by sunset against the darker pines. “Clear weather behind, and cooler.”

  “How’s the lake?”

  “Up two feet, according to Scott. Nearly in the trees.”

  “He gettin’ anything done?”

  “Is he supposed to? No, seriously, he’s being real careful to wander around outside a lot, be seen doing it, and be very wet when Mims’s crowd happens by—thank God they gave him a pager. He’s scribbled some stuff on maps to keep ’em happy, and he spends a lot of time showing ’em ore samples—which are really handfuls of dirt, since they basically don’t know anything about geology. He’s not giving ’em encouraging news.”

  “They takin’ it okay?”

  “Gettin’ frustrated by the rain and the power-thing, but they’re not giving Scott grief about it…yet.”

  “What about that other surveyor?”

  “Scott told Mims to tell him to wait ’til the weather cleared up. Guy didn’t seem to mind.”

  “Better and better.”

  “One problem, t
hough…maybe.”

  “What?”

  “They say that if they can’t trust the power here, they may install their own generator.”

  “We’ll have to see what we can do about that, then,” Calvin replied, slapping his thighs. “Now, since you’ve gone to all the trouble to get here, I guess we’d best get started.”

  “Only as an observer,” Sandy emphasized. “Seeing Newtonian physics debunked before my eyes isn’t exactly my favorite occupation.”

  “Sorry ’bout that.”

  She pinched his butt. “No big deal.”

  Calvin took a deep breath and inspected the sky.

  It was true, as he’d sensed was the case: the weather really was turning. And, he supposed, most folks hereabouts would be glad to see that happen, seeing how the rain had come down in absolute buckets for one day solid, and in nasty, wind-blown sheets for a day and a half since then. The lake was full. Streams were starting to finger their banks, while rivers reassessed their courses. The lowest-lying land was already flooding—including a field that belonged to David Sullivan’s folks. Calvin regretted that—for all their narrow-minded, redneck ways, Bill and JoAnne were good solid people, and Little Billy was going to grow up to be exactly like David—but that was the price you paid. A little rain now could stave off a flood further down the road.

  His job was to make sure that road was a whole lot longer.

  In spite of his initial confidence, it would take considerable doing—if for no other reason than because he was going to attempt something no one he’d ever heard of had tried before. Being kin to who he was at Qualla, and knowing who he knew in Galunlati, he’d picked up more than a smattering of Cherokee—well, white folks called it magic, but he’d never liked that term, because it implied something unnatural, when it fact it was the centermost part of the natural world, as much a function of being alive as breathing. It was only when those forces were used for ill that there was trouble. And God—or somebody—knew he was acquainted with that aspect as well.

  Still, he hoped recalling old things and refining them into new was more than the arrogance of youth, or the last ditch fumblings of the truly desperate.

  Practically the first thing he’d learned from his grandfather was the formula his people used to turn aside a storm. He knew that formula worked, because he’d used it more than once himself and seen it used by others, and the way it worked was simple. Everything in the world was alive on some level, to some degree. And everything also, at some level, had human emotions and reactions to those emotions. Therefore, to turn a storm, you personified it. You told it that its spouse was fooling around somewhere else and it had better go set the matter straight.

  That was if you wanted to turn a storm. What he wanted to do was to bring a storm—better yet, a bunch of storms—and tie them all together—in one place—for a good long while. Unfortunately the old Cherokee homeland—the southern end of the Appalachians—was the second rainiest spot in the lower forty-eight (after the Pacific northwest), and while it was possible the formula he needed existed, he’d never heard of one. He’d therefore spent the last two days designing what he prayed would be a workable alternative.

  And now, at sunset (which was a Power time because it was a between time, which meant it partook of the essential essence of more than one agency), he was ready to test his skill.

  He’d already constructed his Power Wheel. It had taken some doing, actually. One usually drew them, or inscribed them on the ground, but that hadn’t been viable this time for the simple reason that anything so rendered would quickly be washed away. He’d therefore dug one instead: a circular trench a foot deep and wide and ten feet across, with four equal spokes meeting in the center and oriented toward the cardinal points. It was full to the brim now, and running over, the water nigh as red as blood, courtesy of good old Georgia red clay. He’d placed sticks at the ends of those lines, too: staves from a graveyard cedar tree that had lately been blasted by lightning. Each stick also wore its designated color: red to the east (fresh deer blood for that, and no one had better ask how he got it); blue to the north (the juice of the year’s first blueberries); black to the west (charcoal from the fire at Dale’s house: dead fire to honor Tsusginai the Ghost Country, which lay in the west); and white to the south (white ashes mixed with bear fat). It would all wash away if he was successful, but that would merely transfer the power to the earth, and the power of the earth was one of the things he needed.

  Taking another deep breath, he squared his shoulders and turned toward the east, whence came victory. Then, raising his head, so that his long hair tickled the middle of his back, he pointed one hand heavenward and addressed the sky. And though he’d carefully rendered the words in Cherokee, he’d first puzzled them out in English, which was still the way he thought them:

  Yuhahi, yuhahi, yuhahi, yuhahi, yuhahi

  Yuhahi, yuhahi, yuhahi, yuhahi, yuhahi—Yu!

  (That wasn’t English, or any other tongue, but it was necessary to attract the storm’s attention.)

  Listen! You have drawn near to hear me, O great storm, oh most magnificent ruler of the sky. It is a fine storm, you are; the very finest—so fine I would have you remain here so I may admire you. I have tricked you before, but I swear that I speak truth today. You act as though you would leave now, would follow the lies of some other shaman, but I say you should stay here. Your wife will be here soon, and she will bring her sisters! You should call your brothers and meet them and have a dance. Oh how the sky should dance! We will see how mighty you are! How magnificent! The Red Dog of the East will see you and know your might! He will see the red blood of the land which washes from your sweat, and lap it up like the blood of the hunt and be grateful. The Black Bird of the West will also see you, and be flattered by the blackness of the cloak you cast across the sun, dark as that Black Bird’s wings. The Blue Fish of the North will see you and be pleased that you make more cold blue places for him to swim. And the White Tree of the South will see you and welcome the hot white trees of your lightnings and they will dance together. Hear me, O storm, and heed me. Hear me, O storm, for I welcome you and all your brothers here to these mountains, where I would have you dwell as long as you like and dance!

  And so he repeated thrice more: once in each direction. And at every quarter he pointed to the clouds that roiled and rippled through the fitful air, and gestured them in a long, slow circle, back to the center of the sky. And every time, too, he exhaled a puff of his own breath, and stirred it with the wind that was already whipping through his hair.

  Twice he repeated that circuit, and then once more; and every time he completed a rotation, the sky drew darker and darker and the clouds piled thicker yet. Abruptly, the rain returned, falling in sheets that slashed at Calvin’s streaming flesh like silver knives. Thunder roared, and lightning seeded the clouds with naked electric pines. And when that storm was fully involved in its fury, Calvin stretched both hands as far above his head as he could and swung them around in a circle, as though he would gather the forces conjoined there—and with one final downward sweep, pointed them southeast. “Dance,” he screamed, in Cherokee, “Dance in Sullivan Cove!”

  Three hours passed before Sandy could see well enough to drive. They passed that time in Aikin’s cabin putting an end to all that fasting.

  (Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Tuesday, June 24—sunset)

  Dale looked pretty damned funny, LaWanda reckoned, with all those cobwebs in his hair. Shoot, the old guy looked kinda like a spider himself, thin and kinked and knobby as he was, and with his shoulders all humped over like a spider’s little head hung in front of that great big lumpy body. He even had the eyes—spiders had lots of ’em, eight sometimes, or more. Except these were just round designs in the bandanna he’d bound around all that nice white hair.

  Not that she looked one whit better, except she supposed she oughta be a black widow, what with her black jeans and black leather jacket and the screaming red tanktop she wore beneath ’em; w
ith her hair all done up in tight braids just like a big mamma webster sittin’ right up there on top. Or maybe, she amended, like the scared little mate the big mama ’widows were supposed to chow down on when they finished fuckin’.

  “If I’d known I’d be spendin’ half the day slippin’ ’round under buildin’s,” the old man chuckled wryly, “I’d have wore me a hat.”

  He wiped at his hair for emphasis, then, for good measure, slapped gloved hands against the sodden gray walls of his derelict woodshed. Dust flew, absorbed instantly into air and soil that could scarcely become any wetter. The ground squished in the space between them: as much mud there as grass.

  She supposed she shouldn’t complain, as she joined Dale in a mad dash to the superior shelter of the nearby smokehouse. They needed rain, after all, and Cal had made it rain, and now it was her turn. Besides, rain was a tribute to Piper. She wondered how he was doing, never mind where he was doing it. The point was, he’d gotten himself all caught up in magic, and she knew he hated that stuff. It was a tribute to him that he endured it anyway. But Piper would do a lot for a friend—or a young, good-lookin’, south Georgia JuJu woman—who was the grandchild of a JuJu woman ten times over.

  As Granny had reminded her on the phone, before she’d told LaWanda what she needed.

  “Get any?” LaWanda demanded, forced to talk louder than she liked in order to be heard above the raindrop-rattle on the roof. It made her voice go harsh and shrill: irritating when she cultivated a low smooth rumble, half molasses and half river grit.

  Dale lifted a brow mysteriously, then smiled like a worn gate creaking open and reached under his shapeless khaki jacket to remove a large dusty jar with a screw-on lid. Something moved in there: many somethings. Dark ones, too.

  It was full of spiders.

  Hundreds and hundreds of spiders.

  ”Reckon that’ll be enough?” Dale beamed, fumbling around in his pockets—which produced an odd-looking, extravagantly curved bowl-pipe and attendant matches. “If not, I reckon we can go on up to Bill and JoAnne’s.”

  LaWanda accepted the jar and inspected it critically. Legs danced across the glass. The patterns they made in the dust there reminded her of those Celtic interlaces she’d seen so many of up at Lugh’s. Tiny eyes gleamed like evil beads. Watching.