Songs of the Dead (16 page)

And I remember reading the words of Ted Bundy, “He should have recognized that what really fascinated him was . . . to a degree, possessing them physically as one would possess a potted plant. . . . Owning, as it were, this individual.”

And I remember reading the line by the Canadian lumberman: “When I look at trees, I see dollar bills.”

And I remember reading the murder of runs of salmon described as the loss of fisheries resources. I remember reading deforestation described as the wise use of timber resources. I remember reading the damming of rivers described as the capturing of wasted hydroelectric resources.

And I remember reading the words of serial sex killer Edward Kemper, “If I killed them, you know, they couldn't reject me as a man. It was more or less making a doll out of a human being . . . and carrying out my fantasies with a doll, a living human doll.”

I remember also more words from Ted Bundy: “With respect to the idea of possession, I think that with this kind of person, control and mastery is what we see here. . . . In other words, I think we could read about . . . people who take their victims in one form or another out of a desire to possess and would torture, humiliate, and terrorize them elaborately—something that would give them a more powerful impression that they were in control.”

I think again about God, and I wonder what He is so afraid of. I wonder, like Queen Aunt James wondered about the
wétikos
, his servants, “Why doesn't God accept things as they are and leave the world alone?”

And then I read the words of Mark Twain: “The portrait of the Almighty Father revealed in the books of the Old Testament is substantially that of a man—if one can imagine a man charged and overcharged with evil impulses far beyond the human limit—a personage whom no one, perhaps would desire to associate with now that Nero and Caligula are dead. In the Old Testament his acts expose his vindictive nature constantly. He is always punishing, punishing trifling misdeeds with thousandfold severity, punishing innocent children for the misdeeds of their parents, punishing unoffending populations for the misdeeds of their rulers, even descending to wreak bloody vengeance upon harmless calves and lambs and sheep and bullocks as punishment for inconsequential trespasses committed by their proprietors. It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere.”

And finally, I think again about Erich Fromm, and his fundamental question: “Is necrophilia really characteristic for man in the second half of the twentieth century in the United States and in other highly developed capitalist or state capitalist societies?”

And I think about his answer: “This new type of man, after all, is not interested in feces or corpses; in fact he is so phobic toward corpses that he makes them look more alive than the person was when living. (This does not seem to be a reaction formation, but rather a part of the whole orientation that denies natural, not man-made life.) But he does something much more drastic. He turns his interest away from life, persons, nature, ideas—in short from everything that is alive; he transforms all life into things, including himself and the manifestations of his human faculties of reason, seeing, hearing, tasting, loving. Sexuality becomes a technical skill (the ‘love machine'); feelings are flattened and sometimes substituted for by sentimentality; joy, the expression of intense aliveness, is replaced by ‘fun' or excitement; and whatever love and tenderness man has is directed toward machines or gadgets. The world becomes a sum of lifeless artifacts; from synthetic food to synthetic organs, the whole man becomes part of the total machinery that he controls and is simultaneously controlled by. He has no plan, no goal for life, except doing what the logic of technique determines him to do. He aspires to make robots as one of the greatest achievements of his technical mind, and some specialists assure us that the robot will hardly be distinguished from living men. This achievement will not seem so astonishing when man himself is hardly distinguishable from robot.

“The world of life has become a world of ‘no-life'; persons have become ‘nonpersons,' a world of death. Death is no longer symbolically expressed by unpleasant-smelling feces or corpses. Its symbols are now clean, shining machines; men are not attracted to smelly toilets, but to structures of aluminum and glass. But the reality behind this antiseptic façade becomes increasingly visible. Man, in the name of progress, is transforming the world into a stinking and poisonous place (and this is not symbolic). He pollutes the air, the water, the soil, the animals— and himself. He is doing this to a degree that has made it doubtful whether the earth will still be livable within a hundred years from now. He knows the facts, but in spite of many protesters, those in charge go on in the pursuit of technical ‘progress' and are willing to sacrifice all life in the worship of their idol. In earlier times men also sacrificed their children or war prisoners, but never before in history has man been willing to sacrifice all life to the Moloch—his own and that of all his descendants. It makes little difference whether he does it intentionally or not. If he had no knowledge of the possible danger, he might be acquitted from responsibility. But it is the necrophilous element in his character that prevents him from making use of the knowledge he has.”

Earlier I asked who is in charge. I ask now, What is God so afraid of, that he must through his servants destroy all life on earth?

thirteen

confusion

I'm at Wal-Mart. I'm supposed to buy something. I don't remember what. I'm confused. Wal-Mart doesn't normally confuse me so much as it infuriates and demoralizes me, but today I'm confused. Time is shifting quickly, jumping, not like before.

I see a small man with dark hair, walking alone, wearing a red shirt with the slogan “Butt man.” The shirt has a five-by-five grid of stencils of people in different positions having anal intercourse. He's carrying a case of diapers, a case of Sam's cola, and a bag of Doritos.

I see a woman wearing sweats, a “Jesus Saves” t-shirt, and a gold ring with a large diamond. The skin on her face is stretched. She has too few wrinkles for her age. Her hair is blond, her eyebrows dark.

I see fantail guppies swimming back and forth in tiny tanks.

I hear two different pop songs piped in to different parts of the store.

And then I don't see or hear any of this. I'm standing in an open ponderosa pine forest. The grass is sparse, dry, brittle. There are few bushes, lots of large orange-bellied pine trees. I smell vanilla. I hear a flicker call, then a woodpecker drum. I see a blue lizard on a rock.

And then I don't. I see an overweight father and mother and their three overweight children standing next to a cart filled with electronic equipment, dvds, peanut clusters, potato chips, more Sam's cola, two rolled-up posters, and a handful of slender white paper bags of prescription medicines.

And then I don't. I see empty shelves, broken aquariums, pieces of paper and plastic, old feces, and the disarticulated skeleton of a rat.

And then I don't. I see a man, rail thin, speed thin, with long greasy hair, teeth rotted by crank. I see him carrying 2-cycle oil, the sort used in lawnmowers.

And then I don't. I see rubble. The sun is bright. The wall where moments ago I saw tanks of tropical fish has collapsed. Beyond, I see other buildings, some fallen in, some still standing, all with broken windows.

And then I don't. I see a forest. I see a man—obviously an Indian—walking quietly by. Of course he doesn't see me. It's cloudy, and the air is cold. I feel the first stinging spits of freezing rain.

And then I don't. I can't move. I don't know where or how to step. I don't know if I'm perceived by the butt man or the woman without wrinkles. I'm guessing they didn't notice me. I'm guessing they saw me no more than did the Indian or the meth addict or the red-shafted flicker.

I continue to flip through time. Backward and forward. I see Indians making love. I see whites building houses. I see deer and elk and bears. I see stars at night, more stars than I've seen in my life. I see forests, I see fires, and then I see forests. And then I see the aisles of Wal-Mart, and I see people, and I see people, and I see people. I know I'm back where I started. I walk, at first carefully, and then with more confidence, out of the store and into the day.

I don't know what causes these dislocations, or what triggers them. I've tried to find patterns, but there are too many variables. I don't know if
I
cause the dislocations or someone else does, or many someones, or no one at all. Does fatigue, hunger, restedness have anything to do with it? How about location? Do some places call me more strongly to fall through time? And if I do fall, what determines how far forward or back I see? Is it all chance? Or are there those beings who want me to see certain things?

Not all of the dislocations are unpleasant. Some are beautiful. The salmon I see in Hangman—Latah—Creek. Of course the salmon make me cry, not only at their beauty, but at the sorrow of them no longer being there. I see the region as it was long before it was destroyed by our culture. And sometimes the dislocations are pleasant for other reasons. Several times over a few day period I walked into the bedroom and saw Allison and me making love. The first time felt slightly intrusive, but that night I asked Allison if she minded me watching, and she said of course not: she just wished she could get dislocated, too, and we could watch ourselves together. So the next couple of days I watched. Over the next few weeks I popped into the bedroom far more often than usual (I'd say fifteen or twenty times an afternoon is more than usual, wouldn't you?) but it hasn't happened again since.

Damn.

The dislocations don't happen at regular intervals. Sometimes they happen many times in one day—for shorter or longer periods—and sometimes they don't happen for weeks. I also can't tell if they happen in clusters. I began graphing the occurrences, but I ran into the problem we run into with any set of even slightly complex relationships: how do you separate signal from noise?

I realized, though, that I was facing an even deeper problem, which has to do with my reasons for wanting to separate signal from noise. In this case it was because I wanted to control these dislocations, when and where and how they occurred. I realized that instead of trying to figure this all out, maybe I should just experience it, and see what these experiences could or would teach me. Saying it like this, it seems so obvious to me, but the truth is that allowing myself to fall into experience—allowing myself to learn—is often much harder than I would like to think.

Allison and I go for a picnic. For once, our story doesn't include sex. We're going to a public place, and though we make jokes— hinting in a restaurant, for example, that we're going to sweep the dishes onto the floor so we can make better use of the table—the truth is that we're both quite shy and modest, and would be mortified if someone else saw too much of our skin, and even moreso if someone else saw us
doing
anything. It's one thing for me to watch us, and quite another for someone else.

We're going to where Latah Creek runs into the Spokane River, beneath the Interstate. In retrospect, it was stupid of me to suggest we go there. I should have known what I might see, what I might hear. But I—and I suspect this is true for many of us—have paid so little attention to the land where I live, and to the scars it carries, that I actually thought I could go and have a nice picnic with Allison. I did not mean to see a man die, and I certainly did not mean to see a people lose their land.

We arrive. We park. We get out of the car. I hear a gunshot. I turn to Allison. She doesn't stop reaching into the back seat for the paper bag of sandwiches.

I hear another shot, and another. She doesn't flinch at any of these.

“It's starting,” I say.

“Do you want to sit?”

“I'm okay.”

And then I hear the boom of cannon. I've never heard cannon before, but I know this is the sound they make. I think I see smoke, but I'm not sure.

And then nothing. Back to normal. I grab the water from the car, and begin to walk away from the road, down a small road that has undergrowth on either side.

I stop.

Allison: “What?”

“Nothing,” I say. And we walk.

We get to a small ledge overlooking the river, perhaps ten feet up. The road ends here. We continue down a path to the river. I hope to see salmon, but I do not. For a few moments I don't see anything unexpected.

Then suddenly it begins. I see men running for the river, men riding horses painted with brown and red figures of animals. I see men with feathers in their hair and blood on their skin. I hear gunshots. I hear cannon-fire. I hear whoops, and I see men in blue uniforms riding horses, chasing these others. I see men jumping into the river, trying to cross. I see other men stopping on the banks to shoot at them. I see many of the fleeing men fall.