Tree of Smoke (83 page)

The priest slapped his hands together once. Twice. Again, and he resumed the rhythm. The others took it up.

Men gathered in a third circle around them. The priest beckoned, and the headman came forth into the circle with Storm, the priest, and Mahathir. He carried an axe.

It takes what it takes, Storm promised the Powers.

The priest spoke loudly to the headman.

“He tells him to assemble the gods of the village.”

The headman raised a hand and the circles parted for a quartet of women, each clutching the corner of a blanket. They laid it before the priest—a pile of hacked wooden carvings, most no bigger than a hand, several others up to half the size of any of their Roo worshippers. The four women threw back their heads and bawled like children as the headman attacked the figures with his axe. As he worked at it, getting them all, and as the women knelt to collect the pieces and add them to the pyre, Mahathir said, “They break their household gods and throw them on the fire because the gods haven’t helped them. These gods must die. The world may end with the death of these gods. The sacrifice of the soul of the stranger may prevent the world’s end. Then new gods will rise.”

Storm observed the observers. Their faces barely showed in the light of the many candles strewn randomly at their feet. They looked not joyful, not solemn either—mouths hanging open, heads nodding as they clapped, clapped, clapped—looked ready in their souls.

Then the priest stood beside the headman and spoke loudly.

“Go there,” Mahathir told Storm. “They will undress you now.” Storm walked to the priest as Mahathir said, “God help you!”

The priest held the shards of the icons. The headman bowed and pointed at Storm’s soggy shoes. Storm kicked them off. The headman bowed lower and touched Storm’s foot and pinched the fabric of his sock. Placing his hand on the headman’s shoulder, Storm peeled off his socks and stood up straight. Two young women came forward and tugged at his buttons and his fly. He thought of making a joke, but he was speechless. They pulled his pack from his back and then his shirt and helped him step out of his shorts and his underpants and then retreated into the circle. The rhythmic clapping continued. Every pair of hands now. Storm stood naked.

Facing Storm, the priest reached into the flap of his G-string for a folded sheet of paper which he straightened and held up close to Storm’s face—Storm saw nothing on it—and spoke loudly to the Roo, and showed the page again to Storm. He spoke to the headman.

The headman called out. A man brought him a spear.

The priest spoke. The headman handed over the spear. The priest skewered the page on its point, marched to the pyre, and, extending the spear as high as he could, rising on tiptoe, he jammed the paper among the logs and scraped it from the spearpoint.

“Wait,” Storm said.

He squatted at his pack and found his notebook in its plastic bag. He tore out the last page and replaced the notebook and stood holding out the page.

“It’s a little poem, man.”

The priest came to Storm with spearpoint extended and accepted the offering and took it to the pyre and made it part of the sacred fuel.

Storm let it be known: “COMPENSATION, BABY. COMPENSATION TONIGHT.”

The priest spoke loudly and threw down his weapon. Storm bowed his head.

The blanket, only rags now, lay almost bare of the remnants of the gods. The priest scooped up the last few scraps in his hands. The headman dragged the blanket a few meters from the pyre, the Roo widening their circles as he did so. He made a careful business of straightening its edges and pausing to look up at the heavens as if navigating by invisible stars.

Against his chest the priest held the shards of the icons. He came to stand facing Storm.

He spoke again, and Storm heard Mahathir’s voice from beyond the rings of the Roo: “Kneel down.” He did so. The priest knelt too and spoke softly, and the headman assisted Storm in lying out flat on his back on the mutilated blanket. Onto Storm’s belly the priest let fall the few shards and made of them a small heap there.

He spoke, and Storm heard Mahathir: “He wants you to know this is only a symbol. It’s a fire on your flesh, but they will not light it. You will not be burned physically.”

Chosen to suffer penance because no one else is left. Traversing inordinate zones, the light beyond brighter or dimmer, never enough light, nothing to tell him, no direction home. One figure yet to be revealed in his truth.

Everyone had unmasked himself, every false face had dissolved, every dissemblance but one, his own.

Storm turned his head to follow as the priest returned to the pyre, where he stooped to pick up his soft-drink bottle and slosh liquid from it around the base. In the air an odor of diesel arose. The headman brought two glowing coconut halves and they each used a candle to set the fire.

The blaze began slowly. As it climbed the pyre, the clapping accelerated in rhythm. Damp wood cracked and shot in the flames. The conflagration devoured the peak. A cry went up. As the fire began to roar, Storm felt a breeze rushing over his bare chest and heard a woman screaming like a cyclone. The priest went back and forth through the intense heat tossing liquid into the orange flames. It hissed and steamed, and he moved from side to side casting a blue shadow on the vapors.

From the trees all around came the waterfall sound of scrabbling claws and the curses of demons driven into the void.

More women screamed. The men howled. The jungle itself screamed like a mosque. Storm lay naked on his back and watched the upward-rushing mist and smoke in the colossal firelight and waited for the clear light, for the peaceful deities, the face of the father-mother, the light from the six worlds, the dawning of hell’s smoky light and the white light of the second god, the hungry ghosts wandering in ravenous desire, the gods of knowledge and the wrathful gods, the judgment of the lord of death before the mirror of karma, the punishments of the demons, and the flight to refuge in the cave of the womb that would bear him back into this world.

His poem whirled upward as an ash. It said:

VIETNAM

I bought a pair of Ray-Bans from the Devil

And a lighter said Tu Do Bar 69

Cold Beer Hot Girl Sorry About That Chief

Man that Zippo got it all across

Man when I’m in my grave don’t wanna go to Heaven

Just wanna lie there looking up at Heaven

All I gotta do is see the motherfucker

You don’t need to put me in it

Turn the gas on in my cage

I drink the poison

Send me an assassin

I drink the poison

Dead demons in my guts

I drink the poison

I drink the poison

I drink the poison

And I’m still laughin

T
he wind was sharp, the afternoon sun quite warm, at least for late April, at least for Minneapolis. On a good dry day she could walk a quarter mile without discomfort, sit and rest for only a minute, and walk just as far before resting again. She left her car in a parking lot and her cane in the car and strolled three blocks to the Mississippi and crossed by the footbridge. Its action as vehicles passed below shuddered along her shins. Both knees hurt. She was walking too fast.

With the Radisson Hotel in sight she stepped into Kellogg Street to cross, and a truck, one of those small rented moving vans, came close to knocking her down, braking hard, failing to stop, whipping around her so closely the red lettering on its side was, for one-half second, all that existed. She leapt back, the blood sparkled in her veins—nearly dead that time.

She’d dropped her purse in the gutter. Going gently down on one knee in her polyester pantsuit, she suddenly remembered a time when the question of her own survival hadn’t interested her even marginally. That glorious time.

Ginger waited just inside the door of the coffee shop among potted ferns. One of those women everybody calls Mom, though she wasn’t any older than the rest. How long since then? Fifteen years, sixteen. Since Timothy had marched off to the Philippines, and Kathy had followed. Ginger had probably lived around Minneapolis for half a decade—both of them had, but had never made the effort.

“Can I still call you Mom?”

“Kathy!”

“I’ve got to sit down.”

“Are you all right?”

“A truck almost hit me. I spilled my purse.”

“Just now?—But you’re okay.”

“Just out of breath.”

Ginger looked around, waiting to be told where to sit. She’d gained thirty pounds.

Kathy said, “I’d have recognized you anywhere.”

“Oh—” Ginger said.

“But you can’t say the same.”

“Well, nobody’s getting any younger. What am I saying! It’s just that it’s so good to see you, and…” The work of lying twisted her features. She gave it up.

“I’m a little worse for wear.”

“It’s not crowded at all. Sunday.”

“What about over there?”

“By the window! No view, but at least—”

“I’ve got about thirty minutes.”

“At least there’s light. I mean there’s a
view
,” Ginger said, “but all we’re seeing is traffic.”

“I’m supposed to make a speech.”

“A speech? Where?”

“Or some remarks. There’s a recital of some kind next door.”

“Where next door?”

“At the Radisson. In one of the convention rooms.”

“A recital. You mean pianos and things?”

“I hope they have decaf.”

“Everybody’s got decaf now.”

They ordered decaf coffee, and Ginger asked for a cinnamon roll and immediately called the waitress back to cancel it. The waitress drew the coffee from an urn and brought over two cups. “If you don’t mind very much,” Kathy said, “can I have a little real milk?”

“Coming up,” the waitress said, and went away, and they didn’t see her again.

“What kind of recital is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s a benefit for MacMillan Houses. For Vietnamese orphans. So I’m on the chopping block.”

“Oh, right. Did you write a speech?”

“Not really. I just figured—I mean it’s only a sort of, ‘Thanks for the money, now give us more.’”

“The Eternal Speech.”

“So I’m sorry we can’t have a proper lunch.”

“No problem. I’m seeing a play across the river with John. A musical.
The Sound of Music
.”

“Oh, that’s a good one.”

“It is, it is.”

“I’ve seen the movie.”

“But I always thought it was a silly title,” Ginger said. “Because music is already a sound, isn’t it? They should just call it
Music
.”

“I hadn’t thought of that!”

Ginger’s purse, a small one of soft gray leather, rested beside her coffee cup on the table. She opened it and handed Kathy the letter. “I’m very sorry about this, Kathy.”

“Well, no. Why? I don’t see why.”

“It went to the Ottawa office and sat there a week. Colin Rappaport found it—”

“So you’re still with WCS.”

“Still? Forever.”

“How’s Colin?”

“I guess he’s fine, but we don’t have any contact, not really. He remembered you’d gone back to Minneapolis, and without calling or anything he just mailed it on to our office. I guess he tried finding your phone number, no luck. Plenty of Kathy Joneses, but he didn’t know your married name. Are you still married?”

“Still married. He’s a physician.”

“Private practice?”

“No. The ER at St. Luke’s.”

“I guess it beats Canada.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Socialized medicine, I mean, but I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m talking about!…What’s your name?”

“Benvenuto. What about you? Are you still with John?”

“Yep. No changing that, I guess.”

“It’s terrible! Asking after someone’s husband and saying, ‘Are you still together.’”

“Your husband isn’t Seventh-Day.”

“Carlos? No. He’s all science.”

“Oh, Carlos. Benvenuto.”

“He’s Argentinian.”

“How does he lean? I mean religiously.”

“He’s all science. Not spiritual in any way.”

“I’ve never seen in you in church. Where do you go? I mean…”

“I don’t go anymore.”

Tortured silence. Kathy noticed the large number of paintings on the walls. Nonrepresentational art. This was an art café.

“Have you fallen away?”

“I guess I have.”

Ginger still had that perpetually arch expression on her face, shaded by fear—she’d always looked worried and defensive, on the brink of guilty tears, always looked about to confess she hated herself—a false impression, as she’d always been a friend to everyone. “Maybe you haven’t fallen away, Kathy. Maybe not exactly. Our pastor says the healthiest spirit is one who’s been through the dry places. But even in the dry places, the church can help. In the dry places most of all, don’t you think? Why don’t we go next Saturday? Come with me.” She actually had a wonderful face, ascending and plunging, taking you with it.

“It’s been years, Ginger. I just don’t feel the pull.”

“Come anyway.”

“I think I never felt it. I think I only went for Timothy’s sake.”

“Timothy certainly felt it! It glowed right out of him. It engulfed everyone around him and lifted us right up like a tide.”

“I know,” Kathy said. “Anyway…”

At the next table sat an old woman and another of middle age, mother and daughter, Kathy guessed, the old woman talking in a monotone, the daughter listening in a hate-filled silence. Kathy made out the words “and…but…so…”

“Well,” Ginger said, “anyway”—indicating the letter by Kathy’s plate—“So Colin sent it on to St. Paul. And I’m still in St. Paul.”

“And I’m in Minneapolis.”

“How long have you been teaching at the nursing college?”

“Four, no five…Since ’77. Five years last October.”

“Was he a friend of yours?”

“Who?”

“Benét?”

“Oh!”

The white envelope, thickly packed with what must be several pages, its right corner covered with stamps in many colors, had come from Wm Benét, Pudu Prison, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Carefully she opened it. A newspaper clipping: a photo of a man in handcuffs. Wasn’t this the Canadian, William French Benét, who’d been sentenced recently by the Malaysian courts? Sentenced to be hanged for dealing in firearms? Canada had protested the sentence. Then he’d been hanged. The prisoner had written to her, the man condemned, here was his letter. Prisoners got all kinds of addresses, any kind of charitable organization, any strand for a man going down, but how had he come by the name Kathy Jones? The letter comprised several—many—handwritten notebook pages folded around a four-by-six snapshot: dozens of people and their wild miscellaneous luggage surrounding a Filipino jeepney with one of its rear wheels removed. Every face smiling, every chest expanded with pride, as if they’d brought down the vehicle with spears.