Tapping the Dream Tree (35 page)

Walking Elk nods. “You came through for me,” he says. “On both counts.”

I know what he's talking about. I can hear his voice against the northern winds that were blowing that day without even trying.

Don't let me be forgotten.

Be a warrior for me.

But I don't know what to say.

“Even counted some coup for yourself,” he adds.

“Wasn't about that,” I tell him.

“I know. I just wanted to thank you. I had to come by to tell you that. I lived a lot of years, just looking for something in the bottom of a bottle. There was nothing else left for me. Didn't think anybody'd ever look at me like I was a man again. But you did. And those people that came to the funeral? They were remembering me as a man, too, not just some drunk who got himself killed by a cop.”

He stands up. I'm curious. Is he going to walk away through the wall, or just fade away like he did before?

“Any plans for when you get out?” he asks.

I think about that for a moment.

“I was thinking of going back to painting boxcars,” I say. “You see where painting buildings got me.”

“There's worse places to be,” he tells me. “You could be dead.”

I don't know if I blinked, or woke up, but the next thing I know, he's gone and I'm alone in my cell. But I hear an echo of laughter and I've still got the last of that cigarette he gave me smoldering in my hand.

“Ya-ha-hey,” I say softly and butt it out in the ashtray.

Then I stretch out on the bed again and contemplate the ceiling some more.

I think maybe I was dead, or half dead, anyway, before I found John Walking Elk dying in the snow. I was going through the motions of life, instead of really living, and there's no excuse for that. It's not something I'll let happen to me again.

“Do you understand the charges as
they've been read to you?”

“Yes sir, I do.”

“How do you plead?”

“Guilty, your honor.”

“Get your head outta them comic books,” Daddy'd say. “They're gonna rot your brain.” And I guess they did.

Or something happened to me that don't have any kind of an explanation that makes a lick of sense ‘cause there's a mess inside the bones of my head that's been giving me a world of grief pretty much ever since I can remember.

I hear voices, see. Sometimes they're only pictures, or a mix of the two, but mostly it's them voices. Words. People talking. The voices show up inside my head with no never you mind from me and I can't shut ‘em out.

They come to me about the same time I learned how playing with my pee-stick could be a whole lot of fun. I never knew it was good for anything but peeing until I woke up one night with it grown all big in my hand and I never felt anything near as good as when out comes this big gush of white, creamy pee. I felt bad after— like I was doing something dirty—but I couldn't seem to stop.

But when I finally did, the voices didn't.

For the longest time, I thought I was imagining them. I didn't have me a whole lot of friends, living out by the junkyard like we did, so it makes sense how maybe I'd get me an imaginary friend. But they was just voices. They didn't talk to me; they talked at me. Sometimes them voices used words I couldn't tell what they meant—they'd be too big or in some foreign language. And sometimes the pictures that come to me were of things that I'd never seen before—hell, stuff that I couldn't even start to imagine on my own—and sometimes they were of things I didn't
want
to imagine. People doing things to each other. Mean, terrible things.

I figured maybe the voices were punishment for all that playing I done with my pee-stick. You know, instead of growing hair on my palms, I got all this noise in my head.

But because they wasn't telling me nothing personal—they wasn't talking
to
me, I mean, like telling me I'd been bad or something—I come to realize that maybe I got something broke in my head. It was just something that happened, no accounting for it.Like I'd become a kind of radio, tuned to a station only I could hear, and these voices was just coming to me outta the air.

I can't remember when I finally worked out that they was other people thinking, but that's what they are, sure enough.

Funny thing about ‘em is how they come with a smell. Like, take Blind Henry, lives on the street, same as me. His thinking's like the tobacco juice usta build up in the spit pot in Daddy's office. It was my job to dump it. I'd take it out to that cinderblock building at the back of the junkyard where we been dumping all manner of things. Oil and dirty gas, yeah, but other stuff, too. You'd go into that building and your eyes'd start to sting something fierce and the taste of puke'd rise up in your throat.

I remember the first time I saw the pirates come—I knew they was pirates because they had the Jolly Roger on the side of the barrels they brought in that big truck of theirs and they come late at night, secret-like. I looked hard but I never saw no one with a peg leg or a parrot, still they had the skull and crossbones, so I knew ‘em for what they was. That first night I snuck outta the trailer and followed Daddy and them pirates to the cinderblock building and stared in at ‘em through the window. But they wasn't hiding any treasure. Them barrels with the Jolly Roger on ‘em only had some kind of watery goo that Daddy dumped into the pit.

Anywise, I was telling you how every voice's got its own smell. Daddy's was sweaty leather, like that old belt of his he used to whup me whenever he got in a mood. Mama's was like fruit, rotting on the ground. Kinda sweet, but not right.

The best voice is Jenny Winston's. It smells just like she looks, fresh and kind, like apple blossoms and lilacs when the scent of them comes to you from a few backyards over. Not too strong, but you can't mistake it.

I learned pretty damn quick to hide the fact I could hear what a body was thinking. People don't like it. It don't make no never mind that I can't stop from hearing it. They just assume you're a-doing it on purpose.

But I'd give anything to make it stop.

I can't never make ‘em go away completely, I guess, not unless I went to live on some desert island where there was nobody else to do any thinking, but how would I live in a place like that? I can't do much for myself ‘cept look for handouts as it is.

But I can tune ‘em down some by listening to music. I don't know why it works, it just does. That's why I always had me spare batteries for this little transistor radio of mine—I'd make sure I got batteries afore I saw to getting me enough to eat.

It's hard in here without that radio. The voices that fill my head are cold and mean and hurting.

But better ‘n the radio was live music.

Sometimes, afore they put me in here, I'd go in back of the Rhatigan, that little jazz club over on Palm Street. I'd sit in the alley by the back door and listen to the house bands play. It was best in the summer when they got the door propped open and them cool, moody sounds come floating out—they don't just take the voices away; that music makes me feel good, even when the band's playing a sad song, or the blues.

“Bernie—can I call you Bernie?”

“Sure. That's my name.”

“You know I'm here to help you.”

“Sure.”

“The court may have appointed me to represent you, but that doesn't mean I don't care about winning this case.”

“Sure.”

“I think we need to send you in for psychiatric evaluation.”

“I'm not crazy.”

“Bernie, copping an insanity plea is the only chance we're going to have to save you from long-term incarceration or worse.”

“I'm not crazy.”

“This state still has a death penalty.”

“I know that.”

“If we don't do something, Bernie, you could end up on death row.”

“Maybe that's the best place for something like me.”

Daddy died first of the cancer. It just started growing in him one day and afore you'd know it, it was spread all through him. He was in a lot of pain by the time it finally took him, which made him real hard to be around. My head was filled with the screaming of his thoughts the whole time. That was an ugly time.

Mama died not long after—cancer took her, too—but she went quietly. Like a long, drawn-out whimper.

Cousin Henry took possession of the junkyard and become my guardian until I turned sixteen. Then he sent me packing with hard words and meaner thoughts.

That's how I come to be living on the street this past couple of years. I tried to find work, but nobody wants something as ugly as me to look at, day after day.

See, I never had no chance at a normal life. It's not my hearing the voices—I learned pretty damn quick to keep that to my ownself. It's that I look like a freak. Got no meat on my bones, but I got a head big and round as a damn pumpkin, and my skin's all splotchy with big red marks like I got me freckles on steroids. It made the kids laugh afore I dropped out of school, but now people just stare, then look away, like I turn their stomach or something.

I always had that big head and I never did grow into it. There's times I wish it was even bigger so that I could get a steady gig in a sideshow or something. People'd still make fun of me, but it wouldn't be the same, would it? It'd be like my job. I'd be getting paid for being a freak.

In them comic books I used to read, I'd've been a hero, what with being able to read people's minds and all. I woulda got myself some fancy clothes and a mask and I'd go out and save people's lives ‘n' stuff. It wouldn't matter if I looked like a freak ‘cause I'd be part of some gang of superheroes, saving the world ‘n' stuff and people'd admire us and like us, even me. In the comic books, a freak like me can still live a good life. Hell, sometimes they even get them a girl.

But I don't live in no comic book and the only time I tried to be a hero is what put me in here.

I ain't saying I didn't mean to do what I done. Hell, I'd do it again if the situation come ‘round same as it done before.

How it happened was I was panhandling outside the gates of Fitzhenry Park. It's mostly women give me money. I guess, ugly as I am, they still want to mama me. Or maybe they're mamas themselves, thanking God their own kids didn't turn out like me and they drop a couple of bills in my cap like they would an offering of thanks in church.

I don't ask. I just keep my head down and say thank you ma'am, earphones in my ears and the music from my radio keeping me from hearing too much of what anybody's thinking.

The day it all went down, Jenny Winston comes by like she often does. She's one of Angel's people, them sorta social workers who help street people ‘cause they care, not ‘cause it's some job.

Jenny's good on the inside and out. I should know. She's the prettiest woman I ever saw, but anybody can see that. But I hear her thinking and there's not a bad thought in her head. She can look at me and all she sees is a person, not some freak with an oversize head.

This day she gives me a sandwich and a little carton of milk, asks me if I need anything, so I take the ‘phones outta my ears to answer her properly. That's when I hear the thinking of the guy standing behind her.

The look of me turns his stomach, but that's no big surprise. It's what he's thinking ‘bout Jenny that makes my blood run cold.

Lotsa people think bad things. The difference between bad people and good is that good people don't act on ‘em. If you didn't know better, you might get confused as to which a fella might be, but I've got so's I can tell the difference.

And I can see in his head, he's done this afore. Courted a pretty gal and then done away with her. He's got him a whole set of graves, laid out in a nice little row, way back up in the mountains.

How come he never got caught? You'd think somebody'd have figured out he's got all these girlfriends disappearing on him. But there he is, standing behind Jenny, not a care in the world, just kinda daydreaming of the day he's gonna do her in, too, so I guess he's got something working for him.

There's folks like that. There's folks get away with pretty much anything. It's like common sense just turns its head away from them, don't ask me why. And the more I listen to him, the more I see he's a sly one. Not many folks know how serious him and the gal's getting. Usually he pretends he's getting a divorce so they can't let on how it is between ‘em until the paperwork's done. So this gal, she's got herself a true love, they're gonna get married and all, but she can't tell anyone just yet.

I see all that in his head. It's something he thinks ‘bout all the time—these are the things that make him feel good.

And this time he's gonna do it to my Jenny.

I don't mean I ever thought she'd be interested in the likes of me. Hell, I'm just an ugly freak; I ain't stupid. But she's been kind to me. She's kind to everyone. She's not like some of the others who work with Angel to help us street people. Most of the others come up offa the streets and it's their chance to give something back. But Jenny wasn't like that. She's helping ‘cause she's got her too big a heart. She wasn't hurt as a kid. She didn't live on the streets. The thing is, she just can't stand by when others are in need. It's as simple as that.

So she's ripe for the plucking of a man like the one standing behind her now, accompanying her on their rounds afore they go to dinner, pretending to care so much for her. She don't see through him ‘cause she can't read what's inside another's head like I can. ‘Cause she only sees the good in people. While he, oh he's a-glorying in what's to come.

How come somebody as good as her attracts that kind of person?

I don't know. Same reason that people like my parents are allowed to have them kids, I guess. There's no sense to it, not unless we were really bad people in some other life and this is payback time. But I don't buy that. Life's just the way it is. Kids get born into families that don't even want ‘em, never you mind love ‘em. And good always attracts evil. The strong feed on the weak. Guess if there's any rule to living, that's what it is, and it's up to each of us to put what charity and kindness we can muster back into the world.

So I get up off my feet and I walk over to him. I reach under my coat to where I got me a sheath hanging under my armpit and pull out that old Randall knife I stole from my Daddy's office afore Cousin Henry sent me packing. It's got an edge sharp enough to shave with, which I've done a time or two. I don't say a word. I just whip the blade across his throat and cut him deep.