Him Standing (3 page)

CHAPTER SIX

O
ne morning my hands took on a life of their own. I'd found a nice piece of cedar that was large enough for a life-size mask. I split it with a tree-felling wedge and a small sledgehammer. I had to be careful. I wanted a perfect half round to work with. I needed the grain in the wood to be consistent and clear. I carefully chiseled the bark off. I moved slowly. I tapped the end of the chisel lightly, then guided it forward with my hands so the bark would come off easily. It took some time, but I ended up with a glistening, reddish surface with a fine grain. I'd never done this before. But
somehow I knew how.

That didn't bother me. What bothered me was how I suddenly was able to just carve at will. Normally there was a subject, someone I could look at, that made the magic happen. But now there was nothing. There was only the recollection of the dreams. There was only the painted face. I tried to go through the specifics of the dreams. I wanted to figure out which legend Gareth Knight wanted me to carve. But all I could see was the dim painted face of the man in the wigwam. That's when my hands began to really move on their own.

I hadn't had a clear look at him since the first dream of the waterfall. Even that wasn't detailed enough. The face was flat. It had no edges or angles or hollows, and I didn't know what the bone structure was. All I saw was the leering, painted face. But my hands knew what to do. I sat there for hours every morning. It was like I fell into a spell. Time just disappeared. I don't know what happened to me during those times. But I do know that by the time I came out of them, there were shavings all around my feet. And I felt thick. Like my blood was sludge. Like my head was stuffed with cotton. Opening my eyes was like coming out of a coma. It was like I had left the world behind me. I felt odd, out of shape, not comfortable in my own body.

Every morning I would wake and sit with my coffee, looking out my window over the neighborhood. Every morning I would try to get a fix on the face. It wasn't a legend, but it was the one thing that kept coming to me. I couldn't shake it. I was worried Knight would call off the deal. I wanted that money. I wanted it bad.

Then I would move to my work table, and the day would disappear.

One day, after about a week of this, the telephone rang. I didn't answer it. I couldn't. Nothing existed for me but the mask, the face. I couldn't take my eyes from the work I was doing. It rang again. I let it ring. It rang three
times before I could break out of the trance I was in to pick it up. Finally I picked it up.

“Yes?” The word came out of me dully.

“Is that you, Lucas?”

“Yes.” It was the same thick voice.

“Lucas?” It was Amy. “Are you all right? You sound different.”

“Yes,” I said again. It seemed to be all I could say.

“Lucas, you're scaring me. I haven't seen you in nearly a week. You don't call. You don't answer voice messages, and you sound like you're stoned.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I'm coming over there right now.”

I lay the phone in its cradle and stared at the wall.

I was still doing that when Amy walked into the apartment. I turned slowly to look
at her. She shrank back against the door.

“Oh my god,” she said. “Lucas.”

“What?” I asked. I tried to smile, but the muscles in my face felt odd.

She walked toward me slowly. Her eyes were wide. “Your face,” was all she said.

“What about my face?” My mind was clearing now that she was here.

“It's different.”

“Different how?”

“It's older. It's definitely older.”

“Can't be,” I said, coming back to myself. “It's only been a few days.”

She looked around the room. Except for the mess on my work table, the place looked tidy. When she came to sit across from me, there was a worried look in her eyes.

“You haven't been eating,” she said. “There're no dirty dishes and your garbage is the same as the last time I saw it.”

“No time,” I said. “All I've been doing is
working. Sleeping. Dreaming. Working.”

“Dreaming about what, Lucas?”

“Don't know. Can't find the legend. Only got a face.”

“What face?”

“The painted man. That's all I got. Painted man's face.”

“Can you show me what you've done so far?”

I got up sluggishly. My body felt that same odd heaviness, and I couldn't get my feet to move. Finally I summoned enough strength to walk slowly over to the work table. The mask was covered with a black cloth. I didn't know where the cloth had come from. We stood side by side looking at it, and I could feel Amy's worry.

“That's it,” I said. “The mask. The mask of the painted man's face.”

“Is it finished?” Amy asked.

“No,” I said. “It seems to be taking a really long time.”

“Have you heard from Gareth Knight?”

“No. But he'll be pleased that I'm
working.”

“Even if it's going as hard and slow as you say?”

“Yes.” I said it in the dreamy, detached voice she had heard on the phone.

She looked at me. Then she reached out and slowly pulled the black cloth from the carving. I heard her moan. I heard a sob in her throat. She looked at me with eyes brimming with tears.

“Lucas,” she said shakily.

When I looked at the carving, I was staring at a blurred outline of my own face.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I
sat there in disbelief. I'd worked so hard. It felt like the hardest work I had ever done. Now, there was just my face. I thought I was carving the painted man. I thought I was entering the dreams and coming out with a better idea of how to bring him to life in the wood. Amy and I sat there not knowing what to say.
I felt beaten. I felt terrified. The week had been one long blur, and this was all I had to show for it. Amy looked scared. Plumb scared. She put both hands to her face and
stared without blinking at the mask.

“I don't understand,” she said quietly.

“Me neither,” I said.

“I don't think you should do this anymore.”

“I can't stop now.”

“Why? It's not good for you, Lucas.”

“There's too much on the line,” I said.

“It's just money. You're a talented artist. You'll get more work. This is just weird, and it's not affecting you in a good way.”
She reached out and touched me lightly on
the arm.

What happened next shocked both of us. I pushed her arm away with a sweeping motion and reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders. I stared hard into her eyes. The muscles in my face tightened so hard, I thought they would snap. I scowled. I shook her hard. There was a cold hardness in my chest. I was shaking. The voice that came out of me wasn't mine.

“The doorway is open. It will stay open,
girl child. When I emerge, you will see
real power!”

Amy scrambled out of my grip. She backed into the corner and stared wide-eyed at me. When I took a step, she held both hands out in front of her to ward me off. My feet were heavy, bulky. My arms and shoulders were tight. The scowl was still on my face. I put my hands up to my face and clutched both temples. I was terrified and sick and suddenly very weak. Before I knew what was happening, I had collapsed onto my knees in the middle of the room and was shaking violently.

“What's happening to me?” I howled.

“Not exactly feeling like yourself, Lucas?” I looked up. Gareth Knight stood in the doorway. We hadn't heard the door open. He was still dressed in black. The room felt colder all of a sudden. Amy strode over to kneel beside me. “The work is proceeding well, I see,” Knight said.

Amy put her arms around me, and we watched as Knight stepped over to my work table. He laid a hand on his chin as he studied the mask. There was a small grin at the corners of his mouth, and he nodded.

“Very good,” he said. “The spirit is growing stronger. Any interesting dreams lately, Lucas?”

“He's not going to do your work anymore,” Amy said, standing up to face Knight. “You can keep your commission.”

Knight smiled.

“Very bold, Ms. One
S
k
y,” he said. “I think I like that. But you see, Lucas and I have a
gentleman's agreement. Don't we, Lucas?”

He tilted his head a little and looked at me. His eyes seemed to swim. They were like black seas. I felt I was being swept up in their tide.

“Yes,” I said dully.

“You see, Ms. One Sk
y
? He understands the nature of our deal. And besides, you really want to see this through, don't you, Lucas?”

“Yes,” I said again. The word slid from my mouth with a hollow sound.

“Not a very wordy reply, but you can see he wants to do the job,” Knight said. “It's not a good idea to cross an artist when he wants to create. It's not good to get between them and their work.”

“He doesn't know what he's saying,” Amy said. “Can't you see that?”

“Oh, I think Lucas knows exactly what he's saying. Don't you, Lucas?”

I looked at him. I stared into his eyes. Now they were glittering. I couldn't look away. I felt pulled deeper into them. My head felt cloudy, dreamy. I held his look and stood up slowly. When I did, I felt the odd heaviness in my body, and the room seemed suddenly smaller.

“The doorway is open,” I said, and I heard Amy gasp.

Knight smiled again and broke the look.

“Yes. The doorway is open. You want to keep it open, don't you? And you won't let Ms. One Sky talk you out of it, will you?”

“The doorway will remain open. It will be finished. The girl child will not stop it.” The voice was cold and stern. Amy stepped away from me.

“Who are you?” she asked Knight. “Where did you come from?”

“I'm just a simple art lover, my dear,” Knight said. “As to where I came from, well, where do we all come from, Amy child? Are we not the same?”

“We're not the same,” she said. “We don't walk around scaring people for the thrill of it. And I'm not a child.”

“No. You're not. You're an adult. Just like Lucas is an adult. Free to make choices, free to decide what he wants and what is good for him.”

“You've got him under some kind of spell or something,” Amy said.

Knight laughed. It was a wild, rollicking laugh.
But his eyes showed no humor. They were cold and flat and hard. He crossed one leg behind the other and leaned on the cane he carried.

“There is no spell. There is only desire. Your desire is to finish the mask, isn't it, Lucas?”

“Yes,” I said dreamily.

He nodded. Amy looked at me and
I felt my head clear. When we looked at the doorway, Knight had vanished.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"I
'm so worried,” Amy said.

Soon after Knight left, my head had begun to clear. I recalled everything that had happened, but I could make no sense of it. It felt as though I had only been an onlooker. Now, sitting at the table sipping tea with Amy, I was worried too.

“It's like I can't do or say anything when that guy's around,” I said.

“We need to find a way to get you out of this,” Amy said.

“I don't think there's a way. The guy scares me actually. I kinda think he's a half step away from crazy.”

“I think he's already there. But I think what we need to do is get out of here for a while. You need groceries anyway. Let's do the market thing.”

“Good idea,” I said.

I was starting to feel back to myself, glad for her company and eager for some regular routine. Going to the market was one of our favorite things. We always rode our bikes. We got to pedal through our favorite parts of the city, and both of us enjoyed the trips. I was more than ready for an outing.

“Let's do it. We can get some of those muffins you like.”

She smiled, but there was still a grave look in her eyes.

The day was brilliant with sunshine. There was only a hint of a breeze, and the sidewalks were filled with shoppers and people busy with their lives. It felt good to be out among them. We stuck to the bike lane and pedaled slowly, side by side. I took in the sights that I never seemed to grow tired of. When you're down to your last dime like I had once been, you get to like simple things. When your butt is on the sidewalk, even simple things seem a thousand miles away from you. Riding a bike and seeing so much activity was a pure pleasure.

The market was in one of those cool areas where there were bookstores, cafés, art shops, clothing boutiques and music stores. The people were mostly young, and there was a nice energy. No one ever looked twice at you, so you could just settle, feel relaxed and go about your business. That's why I liked going there. We found a rack to lock our bikes in and walked hand in hand to the market.

Amy had turned me on to really good food. I was just a regular Kraft Dinner and tuna kind of guy before I met her.
A can of beans and wieners was a big night for me. But Amy knew about all these different sorts of veggies and fruits, crackers, cheeses, soups and things I never would have imagined in a million years. So shopping with her was like exploring. I never knew what we'd come out with.

We separated, and I took my time browsing the aisles. I liked the language of food. There were all kinds of cool words, like
wasabi
,
cannelloni
and
gourd
. I liked the way they felt on my tongue. One of my favorite things was to grab a can or a box and repeat the words on the label to myself. I was doing that when I saw a tiny lady down the aisle, trying to reach something on the top shelf. She couldn't get at it.

She looked to be about eighty. She had big cheekbones, dark eyes, brown skin and long white hair tied back under a kerchief like the one my grandmother wore. She was obviously Native. I put the box I was holding back on the shelf and walked over to her.

“Let me help you,” I said.

She looked at me kindly. Then, as I got close, her expression changed. She looked scared. She started backing away from me quickly, with her hands up in front of her.

“No!” she said. “Get away!”

I looked behind me. I couldn't believe she was shouting at me.

“Lady,” I said, “chill out. I'm just trying to help you.”

“I didn't invite you,” she said. “You are not welcome here!”

She backed away faster, and when she tried to turn, her feet slipped out from beneath her. I hurried toward her. She scrambled to her feet and began trotting toward the exit. I couldn't understand why she was so scared. I wanted to show her that I wasn't a threat. Plus, I didn't want any heat from security or the cops. So I followed her.

She tried to round a corner and ran straight into another old lady's shopping cart and tipped it over. Amy came out of the next aisle to see what the noise was all about. She saw me approach the old lady, who was scrambling amid the cans and boxes and trying to get to her feet.

“Ma'am,” I said, “it's all right. I'm only trying to help you.”

“You're not welcome here,” she said again. “Go back where you came from.”

Amy looked at me curiously. The manager came hotfooting over and bent to help the woman to her feet. But his feet slipped in some spilled milk, and he
tumbled down beside her. Amy went to the
woman and knelt beside her.

“What is it?” Amy asked. “What can I do to help you?”

The old lady clutched Amy's arm. Hard. She pointed at me.

“Him Standing,” she said shakily, almost in tears. “Him Standing.”

“What?” I said. “Me?”

“You are not welcome. I did not invite you,” the woman said.

Amy helped her to her feet. The woman just stood there for a moment. Then she grabbed Amy by the elbows and looked into her eyes.

“The shaman has returned,” she said.

“What shaman?” Amy asked.

The woman pointed a shaking finger at me.

“There,” she said.

“That's my boyfriend,” Amy said quietly. “That's Lucas.”

“No,” the old lady said. “No!”

She broke Amy's grip and again made for the exit. We looked at each other. When
we tried to go after her, the manager and a security guard blocked our way.

“Sir,” the security guard said, “you're going to have to come with me.”