The Singing Bone (15 page)

“Aren't you having any?”

“What?”

“Coffee.”

“Coffee makes me nervous. I'd like you to sign a waiver.”

“You get nervous?”

“With coffee, yes.” This seems to fascinate Jack Wyck. He squints at Hans and takes a sip of his coffee. Hans talks him through the waiver and at the end, Jack is eager to put his name on it. He signs his full name: Ivan Alexander Wyck. Left-handed, Hans notes. “Why Jack?” he asks.

“Ivan is John. Jack is a nickname for John.” His voice is flat, as if he's explained this many times.

Hans nods. “And you prefer Jack?”

“Jack is my American name. It's all I've ever been called. I don't know that I prefer any name to any other. It's just the one I was given.”

“And your last name, Wyck, is it Polish?”

“Derived. Shortened.”

“What was the original name?”

“Wierzbicki.”

“Ah.” Hans nods again.

Jack unwraps the chocolate, breaking the squares apart with the foil still on. When he opens the wrapper, the squares are perfectly broken. “Would you like some?”

“No, thank you.” Hans looks over the documents to make sure they're properly signed and then sets them aside. “I'm going to turn the camera on now. Is there something you'd like to begin with?”

“We'll get there. Did you like the letter I sent you?”

“I do. But I'm curious,” Hans says. “Who is it you're addressing with ‘you'? Is it someone in particular?”

“Sure.” Jack nods, but he doesn't say anything more.

“The camera is on now.” Hans points to the tattoos of snakes on Jack's arms. “Do they represent something?”

“You be careful with that book. It's the only one. Don't try to sell it.”

“I wouldn't.”

Jack lifts his hands and straightens his arms, turning them so the camera captures the work. “Snakes are a symbol of rebirth. I was reborn in Vietnam. I got these after. Can I smoke?”

He doesn't wait for an answer. He holds a cigarette between his teeth, his lips pulled back. Hans thinks Jack would be menacing in a bar or on a dark street. He lights the cigarette. He rubs one of his arms as if he was cold. The snakes slither.

“Reborn?” Hans is curious. “I have heard bits of this story—that you were brought back to life after an accident.”

“No, no, no. Everyone gets this story wrong.” The smoke curls towards the ceiling.

“Can you tell me, then?”

“I got to Nam right off in 1965. Shit. Thirty years ago and some change.” He shakes his head. “I am a United States marine.” Jack laughs, gives Hans a salute, the cigarette between his fingers. “Bet you didn't know that. I was part of Operation Rolling-fucking-
Thunder
.”

“You don't seem like a typical marine.”

“I was once, but that was a long time ago. That war was a wicked thing. Ariel there—” He lifts his chin towards the camera. “She wouldn't know anything about it. Too young.” Jack stubs his cigarette out and reaches for another. He puts it behind his ear. He opens his mouth and closes it again. “Let's see. You had Vietcong doing all kinds of sneaky shit. We had no choice but to shred that country. I was a farm boy from New York. I knew how to put together a car, shoot a rifle, and milk a cow. You know what I learned in Nam?”

“What?”

“How to stand waist-deep in dirty water for days at a time and not complain when the bugs bit me and the rot set in. I flew a Jolly Green Giant. I can still hear her propeller.” He looks at the ceiling. “But Nam is where I learned about rebirth—about magic.”

“Tell me.”

“I was shot down—must have been near the border of Laos. I don't remember much—smoke, fire. I was burned.” Jack stretches his arms out, turning his palms up to the ceiling and then down again. There are no scars, just tattoos. “You can't describe pain. Pain eats your body from the inside out. It's hollow and bottomless and takes up all the space inside and around you. The people who found me understood my screams. They covered me with this sticky paste. Guava leaves.” He laughs. “I thought they were trying to kill me. I didn't know about any of that then. I lay there on the ground in a hut, naked as the day I was born but for a suit of crushed herbs and guava.” He smiles. “That's it.”

“This was the cure?” Hans asks. “Guava leaves?”

“Wouldn't that be the shit?” Jack says, cracking a smile. “No, it wasn't the guava leaves.” He takes the cigarette from behind his ear and brings it to his mouth. “It was the light.” He strikes a match and holds it in front of him, watching it as it burns down to his fingers. He brings the thumb and index finger of his free hand to his mouth, licking them, and then presses them into the flame. The smell of sulfur fills the air. “When the light came”—he lights another match, this time bringing it to the tip of his cigarette,—“the pain vanished. I knew it was something special, that light. I started waiting for it. One night I woke up and the whole hut was filled with light and the light told me to stand and I stood. It told me to peel the leaves away and wash the paste from my skin. I did. I stood and looked down at my body and my flesh was new. I was newer than before the accident, even, no scars.” He holds his arms out again. “Nothing. And then the light said
Come into me
. I stood in the center of that white light and I knew I was clean. It
told me
I was here to do something.”

“What do you think that was?”

“To impart that truth. To teach. The light said the whole universe was inside me and the universe is perfect, and then the light disappeared and I was alone again, but I was still whole, unmarked. The villagers came the next day to change the dressings and found me. They thought someone had come and replaced that broken man at night, and that day they smuggled me to Saigon. The whole way they kept staring at me. I think they were afraid, but I wasn't. I knew I was made whole for something. I was going home.”

“Why do you think you were chosen?”

Jack shrugs. “We are all gods. We are all worthy. We are all perfect.” His hands are coarse. His fingers are short. He is not a tall man. Hans guesses five foot ten inches. But he is a densely made man. His shoulders are broad. One would move out of his way. “I am that I am,” he says.

“The tattoo you have across your chest. Is it in reference to that light?”

“I am that I am,” he says again. “I will be what I will be. Do you know what that's from?”

“Isn't it how God answers Moses when he asks him who he is?”

Jack nods. “I have no name. I am not a fixed property. None of us are.” He pulls at the collar of his shirt. Hans can see the blue-inked words running over the pale skin.

“And your arms,” Hans says. “You have snakes tattooed there. Snakes have many meanings—is it also a biblical reference?”

“Snakes aren't evil.”

“I don't think that they are, but many people do.”

“Like your Christian Fundamentalists? What did they call themselves?”

“The Doing.”

Mr. Wyck lifts his hand to the side of his head and rotates his index finger.
Crazy.
“I heard what they did at the movie.”

Hans nods. “It was terrible,” he simply says, and looks back at Jack Wyck's arms. “Much has been made of your tattoos.”

“I think I'd like to see
Death Christ
.” Jack smiles. “When I get out. People think
I'm
evil.”

“Yes.” Hans waits. He smiles at Jack. It is important that Jack think they are on the same side, but Jack only looks at him warily. When he exhales, he does so slowly, letting the smoke creep out of his mouth and his nostrils. They are two animals circling each other. Hans sits back in his chair. He is a cat rolling onto his side. “You have a lot of followers,” he says. “Do you hear from them? The Wyckian Society?” He crosses his legs and dusts an imaginary crumb from his trousers. It's a fussy gesture. Hans guesses it will make Jack Wyck feel superior, larger.

“Yes,” he says, leaning forward. “Great kids. They've done a lot for me. Did you talk to Genie about coming to see me?”

“I did.” Hans makes himself count to three before he answers fully. “Why do you want to see her so much?”

“Me and her—” Jack shakes his head, exhales. “Wooh,” he says. “Me and Genie. We got some business.”

“But do you think threatening her is the best way to get her attention?”

“Listen,” Jack says. “Me and Genie go back. You don't know that girl the way I know her. Believe me when I say it is the
only
way to get her attention.” He points his cigarette at Hans. “The only way.”

They look at one another without speaking. Jack is smiling. It's vulgar, his expression. Hans would like to continue, but he doesn't want to risk Jack's alienation from the project. He smiles back. “The Wyckians,” he says. “They believe in you.”

“They're free thinkers. Their minds aren't chained by popular opinion. They're not into all the bullshit.”

“What is the bullshit?”

“Do you know the word
anomie
?”

“No,” Hans lies. “Tell me what it is.”

“When you have a very rigid social system, not everyone can get behind that, you see? Not everyone can be a follower. Some people are going to break—to break away. And if they can't break away, they just break. They feel this tremendous pressure, you know?” Jack is leaning forward. He moves his eyes between Hans and Ariel's camera. His voice has depth, a sonorous quality. He touches the table as if he's moving something invisible with his fingertips. He brings the cigarette to his lips. “They can't conform. They're trapped between social adherence and disobedience. This is a state of anomie.” He sits back. “I give them a place in between. A place to
be
.”

“Do you think your friends are in a state of anomie?”

Jack shrugs. “That I don't know, but I know they can't relate to what's happening in the world around them. They can't see why we should know who the president's fucking or why Iraq shouldn't have bombs if we do. They see the lies like no one has before them.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Oh—” Jack waves his hand. “I don't know. They've had religion jammed down their throats like everyone else.”

Hans can see the appeal of Jack Wyck. What he says, in a way, it's true, but the consequences of following him into anything—whether it's logic, a belief, or even a room—lead to devastation. “When I think of anomie and young people, I think of those children who went into their high school with guns and killed all those people last April. You must have heard about that.”

“Now that is some serious shit,” Jack says. “And see? I keep telling people I'm innocent.” He bangs his hand on the table. “You don't have to turn a kid who's already a criminal into a criminal. No one
told
those boys, ‘Load yourself up with guns, dress in fatigues, and kill every goddamn baby who says
boo
.' ” He shakes his head. “They did that because they
wanted
to. Now that—” He points his finger at the camera. “If I had done
that,
yes, lock me up.”

Hans nods. “So you did not tell Alice and her friends to commit crimes?”

“Absolutely not. I have said it once. I have said it a million times. Absolutely not.”

“The Wyckians—” Hans's voice is quiet. “They tattoo themselves—in solidarity with you.” Hans has seen the tattoos on men and women—the curving black letters, the intricate flourishes:
Jack Wyck
. The Wyckian Society's tattoos are based on court documents—those grainy black-and-white photos of the inside of the left thigh—maybe Alice's, maybe ­Molly's. “I've seen them.”

Jack laughs and shakes his head. “I'm sure I'm somehow responsible for that, too. Like I'm in touch with every kid in America.”

“How did that begin? With Alice? Or Trina? Who did you tattoo first?”

“Ah.” Jack lifts his gaze to the ceiling, thinking. “I don't remember. I started it a long time ago.”

“Why your name?”

Jack opens his hands. “It's a name. It could be any name.”

“But it's your name. Did you consider them your property?”

“They don't belong to me, if that's what you mean. Nobody owns anybody.”

Nobody owns anybody
. Hans turns the phrase around in his mind. It's a puzzle. If “nobody” is an entity that exists, then “anybody” exists as well, and so Anybody is owned by Nobody. It's the kind of thought he puts himself to sleep with at night—turning the phrase around, assigning names and values until nothing makes sense, until he falls gently away from the world and into his dreams.

Jack is staring at him. He rubs the stubble on his chin. He smiles and nods as if he's seen Hans's thoughts. He puts his elbows on the table. He squints through cigarette smoke at Hans. “Did you ever have a dog?”

“No.”

“Well, let me tell you. Dogs are wonderful.”

“Have you had many dogs?”

“Yes, yes. But I had one really mean dog that was my favorite. She wouldn't have anything to do with me. I got her from someone who was unkind to her. I didn't try to touch her. I fed her, I gave her water. I let her wander out in the yard with me when I was doing work. I didn't try to put a collar on her. I waited. I brought her bones. I even let her bite me once. Just so she could see that she could. She only bit me once though. I gave her a place to sleep. I gave her a name.”

“What was her name?”

“Bonnie.”

“Bonnie?” Hans smiles.

“Soon Bonnie started sleeping in my room. Then she slept at the foot of my bed. Then she slept on the bed at my feet, and then finally she slept next to me in bed. The next day I got up and put a collar on her with a nametag so she would always come back to me.”