West of Here (48 page)

“I have seen the many worlds,” he said. “And they are here.”

And the Siwash looked around at one another, puzzled and frightened.

“Aya hosca d’ ayahos,”
Storm King sang.

But they could not be made to sing in their confusion.

“There is no there,” said Storm King. “All paths lead here.”

“Are we here?” said George.

“We are here,” Storm King said.

“Where will we go from here?” said Abe Charles.

“We will go here. Always.”

“And the spirits, where will the spirits go?”

“They will be here always.”

“What if we cannot see them?” someone said. “How will we see them?”

“By believing,” Storm King said.

Now the Siwash mumbled among themselves some more. And when they fell silent, and the popping of the fire was audible once more, the boy held a finger aloft.

And the people looked at his finger.

“How many fingers is this?”

“One,” somebody said.

The boy opened his hand. “Now how many?”

George saw three fingers. “How many do you see?” he whispered to Tilly Houghton, next to him.

“Three,” she said.

Suddenly the boy went stiff as a board and began to tremble in the firelight. When his shaking ceased, his whole manner changed. He folded his arms and tapped his foot impatiently, then heaved a sigh. “Look,” he said, in a different voice. “You can’t just stand there holding shit, Little Chief. You gotta move.”

The Siwash looked at one another in confusion. They looked at their hands to see what they were holding, but they were holding nothing.

“What does it mean?” Tilly whispered to George.

“He wants us to move,” said George, uncertainly.

“Move where?”

“Move like he moves,” George said, straightening his posture like the boy’s.

The boy looked straight up at the sky, and George looked up at the sky, and Tilly Houghton, too, looked up at the sky with her nearsighted gaze. The moon was high on the horizon, washing out the stars with its purple light.

“Doon-doon, doon-doon,”
the boy said.
“Doon-doon, doon-doon.”

“Doon-doon, doon-doon,”
said George, dropping to his knees.

“Doon-doon, doon-doon,”
came another.

And another. They were all looking at the sky.

From down the beach, Hoko saw them all gathered around Thomas in the firelight, and squatting by the light of her own dying fire, she felt alone. Gathering her shawl around her for warmth, Hoko moved toward them in the darkness. When she was within several hundred feet, the hypnotic chant reached Hoko’s ears, and she found herself drawn toward it. It was the sound of the Siwash speaking in one voice. When she stepped inside the ring of firelight, Hoko dropped to her knees, like the rest of them had dropped to their knees, and looked to the sky.

“Doon-doon, doon-doon,”
she said.

And kneeling before the fire, Storm King listened to the sound of the Siwash singing in one voice. The moment had arrived to act. Entranced, the Siwash watched as Storm King reached into the fire and pulled out a burning bough. He stood tall before them and held the burning branch aloft like a torch.

“Ceqwewc! Ceqwewc!”
he said.

AUGUST
2006

The new specialist pulled up in a white Cadillac Escalade. Rita and Dr. Kardashian watched his arrival through the window.

“Ah, here he is now,” said Kardashian.

The first thing that struck Rita about the specialist was his age: he looked to be about two hundred — a little raisin of an Indian in a white suit, white vest, and a white ten-gallon hat. He wore his hair in a long white braid. He couldn’t have been three inches over five feet tall. When he sprung down out of the Escalade, the top of his hat settled a foot below the roof of the vehicle. He was agile for an old guy, and there was a catlike springiness in his step. His posture was that of a much younger man. When he passed under the window, only the top of his white hat was visible.

Rita wanted to be hopeful, she really did. All around her there was reason for hope: Randy was out of her life — a minimum of five hundred feet out of her life. On top of that, he was no more damaged (well, except for a broken jaw, two black eyes, and a fractured orbital socket) than he had been before she nearly staved his head in with a fire extinguisher two weeks prior. Furthermore, the Monte Carlo was up and running. It wasn’t even stalling. Krig installed a CD player. And Curtis did seem to be making
some
sort of headway. He had, after all, taken to the comics as though he’d recognized them, even if he did lose interest. The fact that Curtis was responding to anything was reason to hope according to Drs. Lilith, Broderson, Meachem, Fortnoy, and Kardashian. The fact that he’d made the funny little bell sound, the fact that he smiled at his own revelation. These were all reasons for hope. Still, Rita couldn’t rally much hope of her own. And the sudden appearance of a pint-sized Indian with a face like an old
russet potato did little to rouse her optimism, even if he was dressed in white.

YOU DID NOT
register the arrival of the new specialist. Nor did you recognize my mother. How could you? You stared straight ahead at the letters hanging on the wall. You tilted your head sideways to the left, then sideways to the right, then straight up again. You covered one eye, then the other. There was a letter
f,
and a letter
c,
but no matter how you looked, you could find no letter
k
pinned to the wall. The letter
k
seemed like the key to something. If you could find a letter
k,
perhaps you could order the universe once more, put everything back as it was supposed to be, make everything not quite perfect again.

When the specialist walked into the room, you finally abandoned your letters and looked at the strange little man in white — so different from the other men in white. Do you remember how the old man seemed instantly familiar? Was it the smell of him, like lavender and fir needles and something burned? Was it the little skin tags flowering all around his eyes? Or was it the smiling eyes themselves, which seemed to share your secret right from the start? You knew immediately he spoke in white spaces, knew that he would hear your voice where the others had failed. He spoke directly to you — without looking at the others. It was as though the others were not there.

“Hello, son. My name is Meriwether Lewis Charles. But you can call me Lew if you want. That’s what they call me at the casino. Or you can call me Running Elk. Nobody calls me that anymore, though.” The old man pulled up a metal stool and set it directly in front of you, and when he hopped up onto the seat, his white shoes did not quite reach the ground.

“They tell me you aren’t talking.”

“They aren’t listening,” you said.

“Ah, yes, the age old story. But I can hear you.”

“Who is he talking to?” demanded Rita. “Who are you talking to?”

Kardashian smiled uneasily. His eye twitched.

“Shush,” snapped the old man.

The woman and the doctor exchanged glances, then promptly turned their attention to you.

“They told me you had a dogfish,” said Meriwether.

“The shark is the truth,” you said, just like George told you. You reached for your shark-tooth necklace and it was still gone.

“They told me you’ve been shaking. When they told me that, I knew I had to meet you. I hope you were clean for the
tamanamis. ‘Qway ya?nenict.
”

“What’s that?” said Rita. “What’s he talking about?”

“Shush,” said the old man.
“Aya hosca d’ ayahos,”
he sang.
“Aya hosca d’ ayahos.”

“Is this some kind of joke?” demanded Rita. “What is he saying?”

“Silence,” said the old man. “How did you burn yourself?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” you said.

“It’s better if you do. Trust me.”

“I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

“How long?”

“Too long to remember.”

“I see. Are you sure you can’t remember anything?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Was it a fire?”

“I don’t remember.”

“It was a fire, wasn’t it?”

“It was nothing.”

“Tell me.”

You covered your ears, my ears, and closed your eyes, and gritted your teeth, and began to swing your dangling legs and sway side to side in your stool.

“Tell me.”

“Stop,” said the woman. “Leave him be.” She reached out for you.

“Ceqwewc! Ceqwewc!”
you shouted. You pointed to your arms. Your heart was beating in your ears. You smelled the burning flesh and creosote, heard the dull groan of the planks as the ceiling collapsed.

“Ceqwewc! Ceqwewc! Ceqwewc! Ceqwewc!”
you shouted. You pounded your fists in your lap like hammers.

But the woman didn’t understand. She only looked frightened.

“Ceqwewc!”
you shouted as they tried to calm you.
“Ceqwewc! Ceqwewc!”
as you watched the woman’s hope turn to fear and then to tears and finally to revulsion. You fought the white-coats when they came for you, clawing and lashing out at them with a fire in your belly and a fire on your tongue and the flames of an older fire consuming your memory.

RITA WAS SOBBING
inconsolably as the attendants wrestled Curtis out of the exam room.

“What happened to my baby?”

“It’s okay,” assured Dr. Kardashian. “It’s okay. This is good, we’re making progress.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Rita choked. “What did you say to him?” she demanded of Meriwether.

“Just part of an old song I thought he might know.”

“What song? Why would he know an old song?”

“He’s a traveler,” said Meriwether.

“What does that mean? What are you saying?”

Kardashian’s expression seemed to ask the same questions.

“He walks between worlds,” observed Meriwether. “I don’t know what that means to you. We do not see things the way they are, we see things the way we are.”

“What was he carrying on about?” said Kardashian.

“A fire.”

“The burns?”

“That’s where things are complicated. His burns are fresh. The fire was much older.”

“None of this makes any sense,” groaned Rita.

Kardashian concurred with a furrowed brow.

“Many things do not make sense in my experience,” said Meriwether.
“Sense cannot explain everything. Why are the sharks dying? Why are the chinook changing sexes? How does a pigeon find its way home? I once met a man in Peru who knew everything. I was on a twelve-day Andean trail tour with my cousin, until her phlebitis started acting up. I met this man in a small village. He was not a clean man. He frequently walked about with food on his shirt, and often throw-up. His feet were caked with mud, his clothes were ragged. He smelled like a goat. Every night he drank rum until he was spinning stupidly in circles and slurring his words and spitting up on himself. His own family would not let him into their house.”

“What does this have to do with my son?”

“I’m getting to that. You see, this man had never even left his village. He had no education. And yet he knew everything there was to know. He knew how far Anacortes was from São Paulo. He knew the train schedule for Laramie, Wyoming, in 1869. The elevation of Albuquerque, the population of Dover, the name of every mosque in Pakistan. This man had dined on betel nuts in a thatch hut in the Solomon Islands, and beer nuts in a sports bar in Milwaukee. He spoke Klallam perfectly. He spoke Mandarin, Portuguese, English, Arabic. He knew the name of my cousin, the location of my house, the mayor of Nome, Alaska. He could recite the
Iliad,
count backward in Gaelic, tell you who won Super Bowl XII. And this is not hyperbole, what I am telling you. This was a real man in Peru. And this man knew everything there was to know, saw everything there was to see. Now, how is it possible to know everything and see everything without ever having set foot out of a mountain village? Can you tell me how this is possible, how this makes any sense? Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“How?” asked Kardashian.

Meriwether shrugged, and took a coffee nip out of his coat pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it in his mouth. “Beats the heck out of me,” he said. “Darndest thing I ever saw, though.”

“
What
does this have to do with my
son
?”

“He’s been places he’s never been.”

“So you’re saying he’s delusional?” said Kardashian.

“He has a better memory than most.”

“How can he remember what didn’t happen?”

“It did happen. Just not to him, exactly.”

“That makes no sense,” said Rita.

“As I said, everything does not make sense. Our memories are not ours alone. Our experience belongs to all that is living, and all that has ever lived. It even belongs to that which is not yet born and may never be born.”

AUGUST
2006

For nearly two weeks, Jared Thornburgh agonized over his Dam Days speech. Where was he supposed to begin? What the hell was he supposed to say? To christen something was one thing, sure, but to usher it out of existence? After all, it was official now. The feds had finally pulled the trigger. The news was all over town. The dam would slowly be undone. So was this spiel supposed to be hopeful like a toast or somber like a eulogy? And how do you shoehorn 150 years of history into a four-minute speech? And whose story do you tell, anyway? What about the Indians — should he talk about the Indians? What about those weirdos with the colony? Weren’t they socialists or something? Didn’t they put up a stink about the dam way back when?

In an effort to bring all this history into focus, Jared decided to pay a visit to the North Olympic Library, which he did one unseasonably dreary Wednesday on his lunch hour. Although Krig had done his best to tag along, hemming Jared in between Dee Dee’s cubicle and the Xerox machine on the way out, Jared was able, by the tactful employment of the word
we
on several occasions, to insinuate Janis’s presence in the afternoon’s affairs, at which point Krig bolted.