Shaman's Blues

by Amber Foxx

  “You have to. You can think straight. I can’t.”

  “You should talk to your folks. Your daddy knows a lot about this stuff. And your mama’s people must have—”

  “Old people out in the bush who’d teach me? Fuck. Can you picture that?”

  In a way she could, but not really. He wasn’t ready for that kind of immersion as a shaman. “But your folks could give you some guidance.”

  “If I told them, they’d be back here in a heartbeat taking care of me. Had to talk ’em out of coming back when I broke my hip, and then when I split with Lisa Mum was ready to get on a plane and come sleep on my couch. After I found Dusty—Jesus. They got so worried I had to stop telling them my fucked-up-ed-ness or I’d have ruined Dad’s sabbatical. Mum’s chance to be home for a whole year.”

  “But you can’t put it all on me, sugar. You can’t ask me to decide. If someone sneaked up on me and took away the sight, I’d be—I don’t know what. I’d be mad, I’d be—like I’d been robbed. And you didn’t like it when I tried to heal you without asking.”

  He made an exasperated sound. “You’re expecting me to make sense.”

  She brushed his hair and thought. Could she make sense of him, when he couldn’t do it himself? The spiritual perception seemed to burden him, but he’d said, If you get the gift, it’s who you are. He accepted that her gift was her destiny. What about his own? “I think you might be a healer, sugar. You did something for me today, when I was crying after I talked to my family. Felt like you healed me.”

  “Nah. Loved you, that’s all.”

  “It felt like more.”

  “Love.”

  Was his love that powerful? She didn’t want to think about that. Love she couldn’t return the way he wanted her to.

  What if what he called love was more like a healing power? “Do you feel like you can love people differently, or stronger, when this door is open?”

  “Maybe ... But I was a little kid. Can’t remember.”

  “I mean, this time.”

  “Dunno. I’ve been alone a lot. Maybe something’s different, but—I’ve always loved strong. Four talents. That’s it. Sing, dance, cook, love ya. No good at anything else.”

  “Well, you’re real good at all of that. If I closed this door for you, if I can, could you love the same way? You wouldn’t feel like you missed anything?”

  He tipped his head back far enough that he could look into her eyes. “I’d miss a lot.”

  “So I shouldn’t try to do this.”

  He let his head relax again, squirmed his shoulders, and resettled. Mae resumed brushing his hair, letting him gather himself. Jamie exhaled and seemed not to inhale for a long time. “I’d miss seeing your soul, love, it’s beautiful ... But,” he glanced up at her with an unexpected twinkle, “I could still see your bum. It’s almost as nice.”

  “Sugar, I’m taking my bum back to T or C tomorrow. What about your life? Are you better off if I try to close the door, or leave it open?”

  “I can’t think.” He slouched, and then pushed himself back up where she could reach his hair better. “I can’t decide.”

  In silence, waiting for him to calm down and become capable of thought, she kept grooming until the former mass of knots and braids was fluffy and soft. As she finished, she felt him go slack. He’d fallen asleep.

  Though he’d made no decision, it was good to see him truly peaceful. Resting her hand on the crown of his head, she wondered again if she could do what the mudang had done. Wondered if she should. Maybe Jamie would be capable of deciding after he’d slept. No. He’d marked the book and waited for a sign. That was his decision.

  She let go and closed herself in the bedroom again, and put on her yellow dress and gold jewelry. Although she’d deliberately not dressed up in the morning, trying not to look like they were on a date, she needed to look more formal for this evening’s event. She dressed slowly. Ten minutes without Jamie felt like the air after the storm, clean and clear over ground still damp from what had passed. Did he ever get that kind of relief from himself?

  Mae returned to the living room and sat in the other chair, watching over him. He leaned against the wing of the chair’s back, his normally hyper-vigilant body softened. Yet even now something crossed his face, a shift into a frown, a tightening of the jaw. What was it like to be him? He looked so odd and different, a cross between bizarre and beautiful. He came from so far away, and had lived such a disrupted life with a troubled mind. He said he was happy ten times a day, but how long did those moments last? They seemed deep, like the glorious view of a vast canyon or forest clearing, but the stretches of chaos, pain, fear, anxiety, and confusion seemed to crowd them out. Was there room for visions? Did he have the strength to endure a spiritual opening? Would closing it off be the stroke that undid him completely, or the first step on a climb to wholeness?

  Mae searched for any indication that his gift would help him survive, but she didn’t see it. Without it, he’d been through hell but at least partially recovered. Now, he’d had a year of hard times, and when his visions re-emerged he’d fallen further. Though he strung little threads of strategies around her, he spent more time in a tumult of emotion than in coherent thought. His career had tanked, and he couldn’t handle the simplest things. He couldn’t think straight, and he knew it.

  Still, how could he put this decision on her? If only there were someone she trusted to guide her now, the way he trusted her. She wished she knew his parents and could ask them—but he didn’t want their advice or he would have asked them. He wanted Mae to decide. Another person with a strange gift.

  It was like being a surgeon. Should I operate? No, that was ridiculous, this wasn’t life or death—or maybe it was. Without his gift he’d been suicidal, and when he was supposedly well later, he had crashed off cliffs and rocks while climbing. Even as a child, bitten by a rabid puppy, or breaking a tooth in a bike crash, he’d been accident prone beyond what any normal person could fit into one life.

  Was he still suicidal at some level now, or was his risk-taking with cars his version of the shaman walking on knives and biting bulls’ balls to show her strength to the spirits? No telling what he was doing, dancing with death the way he did. He didn’t seem to understand it himself.

  With logical analysis getting her nowhere, Mae turned to her crystals. They were lying on the coffee table with Jamie’s flutes and the corn mother, and the now-dried sage and lavender Jamie had offered to the fetish. She would have to let the spirit world guide her. Let the spirits advise her.

  Mae chose a clear quartz point. Tree agate and Apache tear, for healing trauma and grief, she left on the table. He didn’t want her to try to change him, fix him, heal him. Didn’t want to be her “patient,” as he’d put it, didn’t want her to see him as sick. She would only approach the spirit door—if she could—and see if anything from his visionary world spoke to her and helped her.

  Hoping Jamie stayed asleep, she stood behind him and rested her hand on his head again. She wished she could bring in the power of that shaman who had done this before. The mudang had made such a clear decision, and known why and how. Mae closed her eyes, concentrated on the energy of the crystal, and what she felt around and coming through Jamie.

  It was like a white fire. Was this his gift, or his normal energy? Or was that the doorway itself? Silencing her questioning mind, she tuned into the white fire again. She had to let the rational thinking part of her mind go, and let the needs of the person she sought to help guide her, to draw what was needed through her and through the crystals. Stilling her thoughts, she waited.

  Something seemed to jolt and shift, as if she had fallen through the tunnel that brought her visions so fast she missed it. When her energy steadied again, she saw an Asian woman in a long, bright, multi-layered dress with three-quarter sleeves and a strange crown-like hat. From four-year-old Jamie’s view, carried on his father’s shoulder, Mae glimpsed Stan Ellerbee as an ear, dark curly hair and the edge of
his beard and neck. He towered over the shaman. The woman’s eyes gazed up, fierce and brilliant in her round, girlish face. She reached up to Jamie and touched his head. Too soon. Close off. Mae sensed a heavy pull through her hand that touched Jamie, and a quieting of the fire. The vision vanished.

  Jamie stirred, eyes still closed, ran a hand over his soft cloud of hair, and smiled. “Thanks, love. That felt wonderful.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  What had she done? Second-guessing her decision to trust the spirit world, Mae feared she had done something irreversible, something Jamie might regret. Then again, it was also possible she’d helped him—or affected nothing. She might have only had a vision of his past. What would he see now? Would he be disappointed? Relieved? Unchanged?

  Hearing Pie mewing in the bedroom—Mae had forgotten to take her off the bed—she briefly left Jamie to fetch the elderly cat and carry her back to the living room.

  Jamie curled up tighter in the chair, half-stretching, half-contracting. “Jeezus, I could lie here for a hundred years. How long did I sleep?”

  “Not long.” Mae lowered Pie into the chair with him, and the cat rubbed her head against Jamie’s hip and then walked on his thighs, purring as he petted her. “You didn’t miss much of your grooming.”

  “Good. Hate to miss that.” He uncurled, lifting Pie to his chest and rubbing his face in her fur. As he looked up at Mae, his soft smile and dreamy eyes reassured her. But then he kept looking at her, as if discovering something, and narrowed his eyes with a slowly deepening frown. He glanced down at Pie, back up at Mae, and let out a sharp breath, his look changing to awe. “Fuck me dead. You did it.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He looked her over again. “It’s all right. Fuck, I can see you better, like—your face, your body. It’s ... it’s nice.”

  She thought he sounded like someone getting used to a new haircut on a woman. “I hope I did the right thing, sugar.”

  “You did. I like that dress on you ... Yeah. Seeing just you, y’know?”

  “But you said the visions come and go, that you get days or hours without ’em. Are you sure I really did anything?”

  “Yeah. Even when it’s off there’s always a little,” he gestured a rapid vibration, “hummingbird sort of thing. Hard to describe.” He looked down at Pie again, stroking her very slowly, lifting her tail to complete the long sweeping line all the way to its tip. “Jesus.” He let Pie’s tail drop. “It’s really gone.”

  Was he soul-checking the cat? Mae had just closed off an extraordinary spiritual facet of his being. Maybe she’d saved him from drowning in it, but she couldn’t tell if he was entirely relieved, or of some part of him felt regretful.

  “Are you happy? Are you mad at me? Is it okay that I did it?”

  “Dunno.” Avoiding Mae’s eyes, Jamie slid Pie off his lap and drifted out to the kitchen. She heard the refrigerator open. “Jesus, we’re out of grog. Didn’t we get beer?”

  “No, we drank Ruth’s stuff. You did.” Rattling and rummaging sounds, as if he could force beer to come out of hiding. “We should talk about what I did for you. This was big.”

  “Nah. It’s done.”

  “Please—”

  “I want a beer.”

  “Not now, sugar. We need to get going soon.”

  “Right.” He reappeared in the kitchen doorway, dazed and sulky. “Go watch Muffie pretend she can see people’s souls.” Hands in his pockets, he looked at the back door, the front door, and then at Mae. He shook his head as if shaking off water. “Fuck. I’m still asleep.”

  “No. You’re awake. You just went to look for a beer.”

  “Yeah, yeah ... Hard to come back, that’s all.”

  His comment about Muffie’s fake aura reading worried Mae. “Because of what I did?”

  “Nah. Just tired.” He looked down, dropping inward. “Really fucking tired.”

  Mae’s heart sank. He said she’d done the right thing, but she felt like she’d done wrong.

  With Jamie giving directions, Mae drove down Canyon Road and parked at a long, low-slung pink-brown adobe building with apricot trees shedding fruit onto the graveled parking lot. The lot was almost full, and more people, some in suits and dresses, others attired in a style reminiscent of Sanchez and Smyth, arrived on foot.

  “This is big,” Mae said. She hoped she would be able to find Muffie and talk to her in such a crowd. It might be hard to get something from Ruth for a psychic search, too. “Ruth Smyth is really someone, then?”

  Jamie stopped and collected a few small apricots off the ground, popped one whole into his mouth, and spat out the pit. “Best ones are off the street sometimes. Yeah, Ruth is kind of a celebrity. For the clothes and the Muffie bit as much as her art.” He ate another apricot, offered the remaining one to Mae. It was unwashed and overripe and she didn’t move to accept it. “Sorry. You don’t eat off dirt—what am I thinking? There’ll be good food here. She really caters, y’know, does the Muffie menu.”

  “They’re that tight? I wouldn’t have thought that, looking at the junk Ruth ate.”

  “What are you talking about? I thought you knew her act. Kind of an in-joke here, but you were on to it.”

  He ate the third apricot, spat the pit a good six feet, and opened the door for Mae. She stopped and stared at the sign near the door. Framed in turquoise metal, it read: Ruth Smyth: Life as Satire: the Further Adventures of Muffie Blanchette.

  “Fuck,” Jamie said with a frown, “You look like something’s wrong. Isn’t this what you wanted to see?”

  “I thought ... Oh my God.” Roseanne had said the guru’s words would only be good if they were a joke. It was a joke. Bryan had been told to take down the Muffie web site over intellectual property rights. Muffie herself was the intellectual property. “Jamie. You have no idea what she’s done.”

  “After what she did to your house and to Pie, I’d believe anything. And what she probably did to Dusty—fuck. Can’t think about that.” He nodded toward the interior of the gallery. “Tell me later.”

  Mae stepped inside, still stunned, and Jamie pulled the door shut behind them.

  This was the gallery from her vision, with the elaborately detailed chakra imagery hanging on the walls. Visitors talked and laughed as they examined the drawings, carrying drinks and snacks from a large table tended by two servers and a bartender. Mae glanced through the doorway into a second room and saw a large flat screen TV mounted on the wall, and chairs and tables set up like a cocktail lounge or comedy club. At the far end of that room, near the screen, Ruth Smyth, unmistakable with her spiky multi-colored hair and little green glasses, wearing an unflattering skin-tight camisole and Lycra pants on her sausage-shaped body, talked with a tall, thin man. He had his back to Mae, but his hair looked familiar. Sandy brown hair in a ponytail of fat dreadlocks. Bryan.

  Recovering from the shock and distraction, Mae noticed Jamie completing the purchase of tickets at a small table directly inside the door they’d come through. It wasn’t a free event like all the other galleries. Her heart sank with dismay. He shouldn’t be spending money on her, like a date. She wanted to argue with him over it, but they were in a crowd, some of whom he seemed to know. Jamie waved and called greetings as he stuffed a few bills back in his pocket.

  Taking Mae by the arm, Jamie approached a short, stocky Native American man with thick eyebrows, a gentle face, and grey streaks in his long black hair.

  “Mae, this is Alan Pacheco. He teaches art, same college where my dad works. He knows Niall of course. Alan, this is Mae Martin-Ridley, Marty’s daughter.”

  Alan smiled, shook Mae’s hand. “A loss to Santa Fe when they left. Nice to meet you.” He asked Mae about Niall and Marty, and after some small talk with her, turned back to Jamie. “Do you hear from your parents?

  “E-mail every day.”

  “Good. I’m sure they like to hear from you.” A hint of parental concern in his own voice, Alan seemed to approve of Jamie s
taying in touch with his parents. “How’s life treating them down under?”

  “Not bad. He’s working, she’s playing. Y’know. Being a happy grannie.”

  “You doing all right?” Alan looked at him with a worried expression. “You’ve lost a lot of weight.”

  “Triathlete. Swim, bike, dance.” The two-part shrug. “So, does Ruth get a good review, or what?”

  “For the drawings, yes. That’s what I’m most interested in. But since Muffie is at center stage tonight, I’ll cover her as well. Should be interesting.” The art professor went on at some length about Ruth’s integration of southwestern imagery into the chakra symbolism from India, and how perfectly the combination captured the current spirit of Santa Fe, even if she’d done it as part of a satire. “Ruth calls the state of things here ‘the New Age spiritualization of formerly intact cultures’,” he explained to Mae. “And I get it. I’ve got nothing against yoga, of course, I’m dating a woman who does it, but there is a Muffie element in the city. Preppy white girl gone mystically overboard.”

  A gallery employee took Alan aside, and Jamie turned to introduce Mae to more friends of his parents, a couple who stood at the cash table purchasing a Sri Rama Kriya book from the rack Mae had seen in her vision. This couple also remembered Mae’s father and Niall and seemed happy to make the connection.

  After some light chat, the woman, graceful but sunbaked and past the age to be naturally blonde, opened the little book to a random page and read aloud.

  “If worldly pollution dilutes purusha, pursuit of truth will push your future into the present and through again.” She stared wide eyed at her husband, and then both burst out laughing. “It doesn’t mean a thing!”

  “Meditate on it until it does,” her husband said in an imitation East Indian accent, and laughed again. “Mae, I’m surprised someone from out of town even gets the Muffie joke.”

  “Virginia Beach has some of the same stuff.” Mae had worked at Healing Balance long enough to see plenty of fringe spirituality. “But Muffie played it straight in T or C—like it wasn’t a joke.”