Songs of the Dead (3 page)

“I think so.”

“Why are you swerving?”

“What?”

“Swerving.”

“The trucks.”

I looked at Allison, and beyond her to the beauty strip, and to the old clearcut on the other side. I remembered that clearcut because we had been there a couple of years before to pull wood from those slash piles, and we had stopped in our work to make love. In the time since, that's become part of our wood gathering ritual, but that time had been the first. I felt my foot ease off the gas pedal and onto the brake. I felt my other foot push in the clutch, and my hand slide the gearshift into neutral. “Allison.”

She looked at me.

I heard the crunch of tires on rock. “Look at the forest.”

She turned to look outside. “I know,” she said. “I hate those fuckers who do this.”

“No,” I said. “The clearcut. It's gone.” It was. There was no thin beauty strip of trees masking a clearcut. There was nothing but a thick forest quickly turning dark from shade and crisscrossed branches and leaves and trunks.

She looked back at me. “Derrick,” she said.

“I don't understand.” I felt the car roll to a stop, felt my foot leave the clutch, felt my other foot stay on the brake. I saw Allison looking at me.

Do you want to know why I love Allison so very much? She did not tell me I was wrong or crazy—I was thinking both of these things quite well on my own. She did not tell me that the forest was gone. She said, “Tell me what you see.”

I'm awake, but my eyes are closed. I don't know how long I've been lying here. I used to sleep with the drapes shut, but not anymore: I don't know many feelings more delicious than drifting with the morning sun on my shoulders. I hear footfalls, that seem to be more from the dream side than the waking side, then a voice, definitely from the waking side. It's Allison.

“Good morning.”

I smile and open my eyes. “How's the painting?”

She smiles—like the puppy, like the little boy—with her whole body. “It is
so
good. I'm doing the dagger. I'll finish today.”

It's my favorite painting of hers. Perhaps I was wrong when I said I love Allison so much because of what she said to me. Perhaps it's because of paintings like this one. It's a stroke for stroke reproduction of Peter Paul Rubens'
The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus
, with one small change. And as is so often the case, one small change changes everything. Instead of the two women being defenseless, they're fighting back: the first is raking her attacker with her fingernails, and the second is about to plunge a small dagger into the breast of the other man. Her new title: “The Attempted Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus.”

“Your timing was perfect,” I say. “I was just about to get up.”

She smiles slyly, “This isn't the first time I checked.”

“Can I see it?”

“In a while.” She stands near the edge of the bed. I know she wants to sit, but is wearing her work clothes. I notice her breasts beneath her shirt, the way they move slightly with every breath. I notice the sun on her hair and her hair falling over her shoulders. I notice her hands, long slender fingers smudged with paint. I move up to her face, and let my eyes follow the smooth line of her cheek down to the slight square of her jaw, and then up to her lips. She's still smiling.

“You have the face of an angel,” I say.

Her smile broadens. I can see it in her shoulders, and in her hips. “Would you like to see god?” she says.

“Of course,” I say. “And you?”

“Always.”

“Look at me.”

“I want to come home.”

Allison says again, “Look at me.”

“I'm scared.”

She grasps my hand, places it in the middle of her chest. “Look. Feel. I'm right here.”

I'm still dreaming, and my eyes are still open. I shake my head, stare at her eyes. My head clears for just a moment. I see the clearcut behind her, and know where I am. But then I begin to slide back into the dream. The forest rematerializes. I see it. I do not see the clearcut. I still see the inside of the truck. I still see Allison. But everything beyond has changed. Again I shake my head, stare at Allison. Again I return. Again I slide back into the dream.

I hear a voice—not Allison's—say, “Don't fight it.” But I do, shaking my head.

I take my hand from Allison's chest, and slap my own face to wake up. No, that's not true. I focus on my hand, will it to move itself from her chest, will it to recoil and strike. It complies, slowly at first, and then with force. I don't wake up, and suddenly Allison is holding my hand between her own.

I hear the voice again, still not Allison's. I don't know whose it is or where it comes from. “Don't fight it.”

I hear my voice say, “I'm slipping.”

I hear Allison's voice, saying to no one I know, “Let's get you to ground.” She squeezes a hand at the end of an arm I see coming from a shoulder at the edge of my vision, then lets go. She opens her door, walks around the front of the truck. I will my eyes to follow her. She opens my door, leans across to unfasten the seatbelt, grabs the keys, takes a hand I think is mine. I am watching this dream, this movie of a dream, as a left foot that looks like mine comes into view. It reaches for the ground. A right foot follows. I seem to stand. She shuts the door. She leads, and I see my feet take step after step following her.

“Here,” she says. “Sit down. Lean against this.” She lays her palm flat against the gray trunk of a big cedar.

She helps my body sit. I feel the texture of the bark through my shirt against my back. I stare straight ahead, away from the road, into the forest.

I am neither so stupid nor so arrogant as to believe that what we see is all there is, nor that the world is so simple as we insist on pretending.

To pretend, for example, that trees don't want to heal; or to pretend trees don't feel angry, scared, joyful, grateful; or to pretend salmon do not speak, or to pretend they do not feel all these things, is to be willfully unaware.

To pretend there are not places we do not see, unseen folds in the fabric of what we call reality, hideaways and homes into which plants and animals slip as surely and secretly as they slide into holes in ancient snags, to pretend there are not places these plants and animals go to get away from us, places they go anyway, places that are as much their homes as are the forests, rivers, mountains, deserts that we normally see, is to suspect them of living in only a tiny portion of their habitat. It is to confine ourselves to a tiny portion of our own habitat.

four

power

I know where and when the sickness began. Anybody who thinks about it knows the answer to that one: several thousand years ago in the Middle East, the cradle of civilization, with other irruptions of the sickness in other civilizations in Asia, Central America, and a few other places. As to why it began I can't say. I've written several books on this culture and its destructiveness, and I still can't even pretend to understand the genesis of these horrors. Sure, we can recognize that many indigenous cultures did not and do not destroy their landbases, and we can describe the differences between this culture and those that might lead to these widely disparate behaviors. We can recognize that many indigenous cultures had and have very low to nonexistent rates of rape, and that in many indigenous cultures both women and children are treated well. We can describe the differences between those that lead to the rapes and mistreatment on one hand, and the relative egalitarianism on the other. We can know that many indigenous cultures had no rich and no poor. Many practiced relatively nonlethal (and downright fun) forms of warfare. We can ask what it is that makes this culture promote certain behaviors and other cultures promote other behaviors. We can be clear about all of this.

But where did it start?

Jack Shoemaker stares at the table, at the tools arranged on a white towel folded once lengthwise. Handcuffs. Duct tape. Rubber gloves. Blackjack. Knife. Scalpel. Hypodermic and syringe of ketamine. He's already laid plastic over the basement floor, and a plastic tarp is in the back of his truck. He looks at his watch, then back to the table. He won't use the rubber gloves or the scalpel till he gets back, and might not have to use the knife at all, but it's always better to be prepared. He pats his shirt pocket: cash. Everything's ready.

He slides the scalpel into a cardboard sheath and blinks twice. His lips slightly relax into the barest open-mouthed smile. He'd read somewhere that the word
vagina
is Latin for
sheath
, a sheath for a man's sword. So he looked it up.

Jack tears off several small pieces of duct tape and attaches each tool to the towel. He rips off two more pieces and returns the roll to its spot. He uses one piece to attach the roll to the towel and sticks one corner of the other to his left hand. Then he steps to the end of the table and rolls up the towel. Holding it tight with one hand, he pulls the tape free with the other, then attaches it, securing the bundle enough to prevent accidental opening without hindering accessibility.

He looks again at his watch. It's almost time to go.

Kristine looks at her watch. Time to go to work. She opens her wallet to look at the mirror inside. Not great, she thinks, but good enough. She runs her hand through her hair, feels the slight stickiness of her scalp and the texture of her hair made thick and brittle, like straw, by dirt, sweat, and hairspray. She looks again at her watch. Yeah, there's time, she thinks, there has to be time. Otherwise she's never going to make it. She rummages through her canvas bag of clothes, but can't find what she's looking for.

“Fuck.”

Kristine keeps digging. She sees a black tube top and realizes she hasn't worn it for a few days. She remembers the tip she got the last time she did. She could use the money. Maybe it's a lucky shirt. She puts down the bag, unbuttons and pulls off her fuchsia blouse, stuffs it into the bag, and shimmies into the tube top. She looks again in the mirror, and again she runs her hand through her hair.

Back to the bag. She finds a small black chunk of heroin wrapped in plastic, along with a pocketknife, syringe, bent spoon, and a lighter. She unwraps the heroin, and the stench makes her salivate. She uses the pocketknife to scrape a little into the spoon. Not much, just enough to remove the edge. Then she pours in a little water and stirs the mix with the tip of her needle. She flicks the lighter, holds it under the spoon. The tar dissolves. Using the cotton ball as a filter, she fills the syringe. She sits cross-legged on the ground, then extends her right leg while keeping her hips open so she can see the back of her knee. The needle finds its own way into her vein, and the plunger finds its own way down.

She feels good. Not so good she can't move or do anything but stay here under the bridge—just good enough that now she can go to work.

Nika is awake, but the apartment is silent, so she lies in bed with her opened box of memories. So long as she keeps her eyes closed and doesn't move, doesn't hear anything, she can pretend she's in bed at home, that she is somewhere and someone else, a world away from where and who she is now. This is how she gets through each day. She takes each memory out of the box, holds it, turns it around and around in her mind, tries to re-create its feeling in her body. There's her little brother Petya playing with his dog in the field behind their home, and there are the flowers in the field. There is the sun on her shoulders as she watches. Even the sun somehow felt different then: it's hard to believe it's the same sun shining now. There is her mother giving her the pendant cross given to her by
her
mother, whose mother gave it to her. There is the feeling of her mother's fingers on Nika's neck as she attaches it, the smell of her mother, the smell of the kitchen. There is her father's smile as Nika tells him her marks at Lyceum.

She lies there comfortably, almost drifting, almost smiling, as image after image bubbles up. Blood sausages with her grandmother. Bathing her great-grandmother, cutting her hair, clipping her toenails, listening to her stories of the German occupation and holding her when she got confused over what year it was and thought the Nazis were coming to the door. Nika remembers her first kiss with her boyfriend Osip, how neither had known what to do but had learned so quickly and easily. She remembers watching Petya practice ballet.