Songs of the Dead Read online

  I don’t understand.

  Salmon, bison, ivory-billed woodpeckers, Eskimo curlews, Carolina parakeets, Siberian tigers, Javan rhinos, swordfish, great white sharks, blue whales, gray whales, Steller’s sea cows. Every stream in the continental United States is contaminated with carcinogens. There’s dioxin and flame retardant in every mother’s breast milk. There are more than 2 million dams just in the United States. It is entirely possible that global warming could enter a runaway phase that could effectively end life on this planet. We are told we must balance the “needs” of the economic system against the needs of “the environment.” And did I mention that deforestation of the Amazon is accelerating?

  I don’t understand.

  The good news, I suppose, is that the point is not and has never been simply to understand the hatefulness, the destructiveness, as though describing it well enough, writing enough books about it, will somehow make the hatefulness go away and the destruction stop. The point is to stop the destructiveness, stop this malignant form of hatred. Ultimately our attempts at understanding the destructiveness are only helpful insofar as they help to stop that destructiveness. Otherwise they’re a waste of time.

  If the destructiveness is caused by some cultural sickness or by some hitchhiker, then the magical hope of many mainstream activists for some spiritual transformation leading to peace, justice, and sustainability becomes even more absurd than it already is. Sure, we’ve all heard of people facing death from some horrible disease who undergo a miraculous spiritual rebirth that leads to remission of the disease and a long healthy life for the initiate, but we’ve also heard of those who undergo this rebirth and then die anyway. Sometimes diseases might be teachers for us, but sometimes cancer, Crohn’s, diabetes, leprosy, AIDS, tuberculosis, Ebola, smallpox, and polio aren’t teachers so much as they’re simply diseases that kill us. Similarly, how many psychopaths have suddenly become warm and loving individuals? I know that the recidivism rate among perpetrators of domestic violence approaches 100 percent. To be clear: could words stop a rabid dog? Could waves of loving kindness stop an infected cricket from reaching water? Could impassioned pleas and precise articulations stop a spider from spinning her own scaffold for the wasp who will soon kill her? Will entreaties and moral pronouncements stop the wétikos from turning this entire planet into a death camp—which of course from the perspective of the indigenous and of nonhumans they already have—and even worse, from killing the whole planet? worse, from killing the whole planet?

  These are questions with answers I understand.

  Yet another day, yet another picnic. You’d think I’d have learned. This day we’re going to visit some of the apple trees we planted. Planting trees for bears hasn’t worked like we’d hoped. The damn bears keep snapping off limbs, sometimes trunks. Don’t they realize we’re planting these trees for them?

  I have to admit, though, that when I think about it even for a moment, I realize that the bears don’t break all the trees, and in fact destroy a lot fewer trees in general than do wétikos.

  We drive toward Latah Creek, then turn right onto a dirt trail that heads sharply down. We stop next to one of Latah’s small tributaries. Allison turns off the truck.

  We get out, follow a path to our right. We see that bears haven’t damaged the three young trees we planted in a small clearing by the water. The trees are growing nicely. They should bear good fruit this year. We walk back a ways toward the truck, out of the sun, still by the stream.

  It’s a hot day, not a dry heat like you’d normally expect in Spokane, but beneath this covering of leaves and branches, a sort of green heat. In the clearing, or by the road, or above the trees, or in the city, the world is dry, crumbly, radiating a wilting, scorching, searing, killing heat that sucks the water—the life—out of your lungs. Here, under this canopy, the air, the ground, your skin, is nearly as hot, but the heat is heavier, wetter. It makes plants grow tall and slender in the shade. The plants sway in the slight breezes that always promise to cool you off but you so rarely seem to feel, and even when you do they just seem to make you hotter with their damp.

  We sit by the stream, shoes off, feet in. The water soon makes us cool all over.

  I’m a bit traumatized from our last two picnics, afraid to look up for what I might see, afraid to take a deep breath for what I might smell. I’m like the cat who’s been hit and who now panics with every sound or sudden movement. Every strange noise, every unexpected sight makes me wonder whether it’s beginning again. And I somehow know that if it does begin again it won’t be salmon or elk or a healthy forest that I’ll see, but something I’d rather not, something from which I would turn away if I had the choice.

  Allison tells me about some new galleries interested in her work. I nod. She trails off. We sit a moment. She tells me about her friend Deborah, who’s been calling several times a day to complain about her newest boyfriend, who never calls when he says he will, but then when he comes over she gets tired of him anyway (and he is going bald, and she never has liked the shape of his penis anyway) but do you think, Deborah asks every day, that he might be the one?

  I look at Allison out of the corners of my eyes.

  She says, “You’re bored.”

  “Deborah bores you. What makes you think. . . .”

  “Sorry.”

  We sit. I know something’s coming. I don’t know how I know. I just do.

  She starts to describe an argument with her sister. I don’t know what it’s about. I’m not listening.

  I hear the sound of duct tape being removed from cloth. It’s a very soft sound, but it fills my head. I don’t know how I know what it is. I just do.

  I look around. Nothing.

  Allison is still talking about her sister. I’m still not listening to her.

  Then I hear footfalls on the path from the truck. Two sets. One slow. The other faster. I turn again.

  Allison: “Why do I waste my breath?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t blame Deborah for you not listening. You’re not listening to me now.”

  “I—”

  I hear a soft grunt as a man—definitely a man—exerts some effort: pushes, pulls, lifts, or strikes. I look again at the path.

  “And you weren’t listening when I was talking about the galleries.”

  “Allison. . . .”

  The thud of something hitting bone. A soft exhalation.

  “How would you feel if I got distracted when you tried to read me your work?”

  A quick glimpse of a young woman, falling.

  “You’re still not listening.”

  She hits the ground.

  I say, “Someone’s dying.”

  Silence.

  I say, “Someone’s being killed.”

  The woman lies unmoving. A man stands over her. He leans down. Sticks a needle in her skin. The scene freezes, skips, backs up. I see him walking behind her. I hear him softly say something. I cannot make it out. He raises his arm. He holds a blackjack.

  I stand, walk toward the spot.

  Again the scene freezes. Again it skips, backs up. Some things I can see clearly. Some I cannot. I see the woman. Young, long blonde hair, pretty face, squarish jaw, small nose, tired eyes. Sorrow. Tension. The man I do not see as well. But this time I hear him. Not sentences. Just words. Clipped, lost, torn out of their context. His voice. Vagina. Sheath. Kill. Intercourse. Intercourse. Sheath. Vagina. Kill. I see the blackjack rise. Vagina. Sheath. That slight hesitation as the arm finishes cocking. Intercourse. Kill.

  It begins its descent, at first almost imperceptibly. I’m standing by the path now. I try to step between, to block the blackjack with my arm, with my body, but the whole scene explodes. The blackjack moves faster than anything I’ve ever seen. A pain shoots from the back of my brain to the front. I see this woman—this girl— standing with a boy on a moonlit country road. I see clouds behind black silhouettes of trees. I hear her call her mother.

  The scene freezes
, skips, backs up. The blackjack rises, falls, the pain shoots through my head. Again. Again. Again. I cannot make it stop. A body falls. The blackjack rises, hesitates, explodes, rises, hesitates, explodes. Vagina, sheath, kill, intercourse.

  My face is flat against the ground.

  The blackjack rises. Pain. It falls. Vagina. The girl and boy. The moon. Mother. Pain.

  The world goes black. Nothing.

  I hear a man’s voice, saying again and again, “Nika.”

  “Who was this woman?”

  I’m sitting with Allison in a room in a police station, talking to a cop. I’m thinking about what I’ve come to call the 90 percent rule, which is that 90 percent of all people are incompetent. This is as true for cops as it is for writers as it is for doctors as it is for killers as it is for auto mechanics as it is for psychotherapists as it is for poker players as it is for politicians as it is for grave robbers. Some of that incompetence is inherent no matter how much effort a person makes (see me, for example, when I bet on sporting) and some of the incompetence comes from people not caring about what they’re doing (see me, for example, when it comes to organic chemistry, car repair, and cooking). In this cop’s case I have my suspicions about the former, but I can vouch for the latter. He doesn’t give a shit—about me, about Nika, about his job, about anything other than the clock on the wall to one side of the room.

  I tell the cop again that I know only her name and what she looks like. He’s asked me four times. Not because he’s searching for an answer, but because he’s not listening to mine. He looks again at the clock. Ten minutes till shift change.

  He asks, “And when did she die?”

  I say again, “I don’t know that either. I’m not even sure she’s dead. I don’t think she was.”

  “Did she moan?”

  I’m starting to wonder if I’m falling through time. He asked me this before. I say, “She was thinking about her mother, and about a boy, and a moonlit night.”

  “She told you this.”

  I wouldn’t have minded if he didn’t believe me. I fully expected him not to believe me. I wouldn’t have believed me. I get notes all the time from people who want to tell me how we can dematerialize toxic waste vibrationally, or how space aliens give messages to us through a complex code where letters translate into numbers which you must add up and then break down into other letters, or how if we can only bring JFK’s real killers to trial, the United States will become a democracy, or a thousand other theories. They all want at- tention. I can’t give it. There aren’t enough hours in the day, and all of the attention in the world wouldn’t suffice to make these people feel heard. I’ve tried, and it only encourages them to keep sucking at my energy until I’m as empty as they are. I was prepared for the cop to be dubious, if not downright cold, but not incompetent and distracted. I’d hoped that if I was clear and precise and honest the cop might at least listen. Perhaps these other people feel the same when they write to me.

  I think for a moment about keeping my mouth shut, but then I just go ahead and tell the truth. I say, “I could see her thoughts.”

  He glances at the clock.

  I know it doesn’t matter what I say. The only thing that would have mattered would have been if I had brought Nika in here with me. Then he would have cursed me for making him work overtime. I’ve noticed that he hasn’t written down anything I’ve said, not even before it started getting weird.

  He asks, “Like in the funnies?”

  I blink.

  He says, “You saw her thoughts, in a bubble like in a comic strip.”

  “No, I saw her thoughts like I see my own. How do you see your own memories?”

  “And this happens all the time?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Do you see dead people, too, like in the movie?”

  I start to get up. “I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time.”

  Again a glance at the clock. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Find her. Save her.”

  “Who is she?”

  “I’ve told you, I don’t know. Nika. That’s all I know.”

  “Let me get this straight. You want me to find a woman named Nika who may have been kidnapped at any point in the past, or who may not yet have been kidnapped, but who may get kidnapped at some point in the future. Right? You want me to protect this woman who may very well not yet have been born. Right?”

  “You don’t even want me to look at pictures of missing women?”

  He shifts uncomfortably, looks at the clock.

  “Maybe I would recognize her.”

  Silence. He stands. “I’m off duty now. You find a body, and we’ll talk.”

  fourteen

  thunder

  Nika is dreaming. She’s dreaming of nights and days and the sounds of a stream. In her dream she feels the breath of willows on her cheeks and inside her bones. She feels ponderosa pine roots pulsing beneath the ground, and she feels the ground itself breathing its way into her. She no longer cares or even notices how long these breaths last. She merely takes each one in and lets it back out.

  She feels herself settling deeper into the spot where she lies, like a cat on a lap, like a river in a canyon, like being in bed after a hard day of playing when she was young.

  Nika is dreaming, and sometimes she sees other people, people she doesn’t recognize. They walk like ghosts, and sometimes notice her. Most often they don’t.

  Nika is dreaming, and sometimes her dreams are filled with yearning, yearning for her mother and father, and yearning also for other things she has never known, yearning for things she cannot yet name, and does not know if she ever will.

  Nika is dreaming, and she’s filled with yearning. She’s dreaming of fish longer than her arm and bigger than her thighs, and they’re swimming shoulder to shoulder in a stream. She’s dreaming of grizzly bears walking humpbacked along the bank. She’s dreaming of the weight of ancient trees pressing down on her chest, and she’s dreaming of fire and rain and snow and willows and more birds singing than she ever imagined existed. The songs fill her rib cage and leak out of her throat, and sometimes she cannot hear her own voice over the songs of the birds, the bears, the salmon, and the trees.

  Nika is dreaming.

  I’m lying in bed. Allison says, “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too. I’m not much fun this way.”

  “That’s okay.” She smiles, says, “What do you think is happening?”

  I shake my head, say, “I’m scared, for Nika, for myself.”

  “What do you want to do about her?”

  “What can I do? Wait. Maybe I’ll learn more.”

  “And what about you?”

  “And us,” I say.

  “We’re fine,” she responds.

  “You’re losing patience. The other day wasn’t the first time. I’m a mess. I can’t drive. You have to run all the errands. I can’t always attend to what you’re saying. I feel like I can’t do anything. I’m falling apart, and I don’t want to bring you down with me.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I can’t control this. If I could turn it on and off at will—if there was some button I could push or incantation I could speak— this would be a good thing. But I’ve lost control of my life because of this.”

  “Have you?”

  “I have no continuity. I could fall through time at any moment. Do you know how scary that is?”

  “My cousin has MS. Your mom had a car wreck. I have a friend who gained a hundred and fifty pounds and hasn’t had sex in a decade since she got raped.”

  “That doesn’t help.”

  “None of our lives are in control.”

  “That still doesn’t help. I don’t want to hear other people’s stories, and I don’t want to hear theory, and I don’t want to hear that the belief that we have control is the problem, and I don’t want to hear that the notion of personal control is meaningless when the culture is killing the planet. When I had the prostate infecti
on you didn’t tell me that other people have pain, too. I don’t want that.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want it to stop.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes.” A pause. “No. I don’t know.”

  “What do you want?”

  In 2003, researchers set up remote cameras in the Lanjak-Entimau Wildlife Sanctuary in East Malaysia. In August that year, one of the cameras snapped a single picture of a Borneo bay cat, a wild animal the size of a large domestic cat with an extremely long tail. The sighting was significant in part because the Borneo bay cat had not been observed by humans since 1992, and had been thought to be extinct.

  In 2005, in swampy forests in Arkansas, scientists videotaped an ivory-billed woodpecker, the largest woodpecker in the United States. On seeing the woodpecker, one of the scientists put his head in his hands and began to sob: although there had been many rumored sightings of the bird over the last seventy years, this was the first undeniable proof that the ivory-billed woodpecker lived.

  Also in 2005, a botany graduate student at UC Berkeley found a dozen Mount Diablo buckwheat plants blooming on the side of that mountain. This was the first time a human being had seen this plant since 1936. No human knows where the plants have been in the meantime, or why they chose to bloom right then.

  And yet again in 2005, an ecologist found a species of grass—california dissanthelium—who hadn’t been seen by humans in more than ninety years on Santa Catalina Island. The grass used to grow on three different islands, but had not been seen since 1912.

  All over the world, in jungles, in mountain lairs, in swamps and desert caves, in other places, too, places they are safe, plants and animals are lying low, ghost dancing, waiting for their time to return. Perhaps the cannibal sickness—perhaps God—isn’t so powerful as we fear, isn’t so powerful as it wants us to think.

  Or perhaps it is.

  Have you ever considered how extraordinarily lucky the Europeans were—how lucky they had to be—in order to conquer the Americas? Have you ever considered the delicate thread of circumstance—of which the fraying and snapping of any part could have doomed the whole endeavor—that led to these stunning European victories? European civilization was at the time of Columbus on its last legs, having already hyper-exploited much of that continent’s resource base well past the breaking point. Without a massive influx of resources—in other words, without the discovery, conquest, and exploitation of new continents—European cities and cultures would soon have begun to collapse.