Songs of the Dead Read online

  There’s a fire somewhere. I can smell more than see it, but my eyes trick me, with a slight sting, into pretending that I see the smoke. I don’t, of course, except when I do, and even then, like all of us, I’m never sure if what I see is what I see.

  There is a haze in the distance, but it’s just the sky settling back to earth at the end of the day. It’s July, and it’s hot. I’m sweaty, wet beneath my arms, on my lower back where my shirt touches my skin, and under the elastic band of my underwear.

  I’m in Hangman Valley, in the western part of Spokane. I’m walking, as I often do, near Hangman Creek, which used to be Latah Creek before any of this began, and certainly long before any of it began with me.

  Or maybe not. That’s one of the things I often have difficulty with. Before. During. After. Sometimes I don’t understand what any of it means.

  But it’s hot. I understand that. It’s hot enough that the leaves on the trees hang limp, except when a hot breeze makes the air quake with their paper rattling. Edges of these leaves are turning brown, and the grasses beneath have long since died or gone dormant, used up for and by the summer, and dry as tinder. Even the needles of the pine trees seem to have lost their strength and their shine.

  It’s cooler by the creek, though not as much cooler as I’m sure it once was, back when the creek was a creek, deeper, wider, stronger. I go there often. It’s a reasonably long walk from my home—probably a couple of hours—and a longer walk back since I have to go so much uphill.

  I sit by the creek, take off my shoes and socks, roll up my pants, and put my feet in. I lean forward to search for tiny fish. None. I close my eyes, then open them again quickly, just to see if this will make the salmon appear. I know that’s not how it works, but it’s never stopped me from hoping. And sometimes I do see them. They haven’t been here since the Grand Coulee Dam was built back in the thirties, but sometimes I still do see them.

  Every fire has a life of its own. I’ve known this as long as I can remember, since long before any of this began. The flames speak, not so much to me as to each other. Sometimes they do speak to me, although I never can be sure what they are saying. But I do know that each flame is alive, individual, as much as any other being.

  There is a woman. She takes a shortcut through an alley. She is thinking, or not thinking, but seeing inside of her what she saw that morning, which was a puppy she gave her son for his birthday four days before. When the puppy wagged his tail he did not so much wag his tail as wag his whole body when he squirmed toward her son, who in turn did not smile so much with his lips and teeth as he, too, smiled with his whole body. This is what she is seeing when she hears the sound that is not a sound but the movement of a sound throughout her whole body, the sharp cracking of lightning as it strikes inside her brain, but does not stop after the bolt has gone; it keeps expanding outward until there is nothing left of her skull and of what was inside her skull, and she is flying, having been struck, and there is nothing but the sound that keeps expanding, and no longer can she see the puppy or her son or anything but the sound that is no longer a sound, but everything she knows.

  That is what I hear. When I walk where the car struck her, that is what I hear.

  Not every time. But often. And if the truth is that while I see salmon not nearly often enough, this I see far too often.

  I haven’t always seen like this, and even now I often do not. I used to not see anything more than anyone else, or maybe I should say not more than any of my neighbors, or maybe I should be even more precise and say not more than any of my human neighbors. I think nonhumans—and some humans—see this all the time.

  For example, just a few days ago a huge submarine earthquake caused a tsunami that rocked parts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, and India, killing more than a hundred thousand humans. Just today I read a news report saying, “Wildlife officials in Sri Lanka expressed surprise Wednesday that they found no evidence of large-scale animal deaths from the weekend’s massive tsunami—indicating that animals may have sensed the wave coming and fled to higher ground. An Associated Press photographer who flew over Sri Lanka’s Yala National Park in an air force helicopter saw abundant wildlife, including elephants, buffalo, deer, and not a single animal corpse.” The response by one person was, “Maybe what we think is true, that animals have a sixth sense.”

  I’m not saying I have a sixth sense. Sometimes I’m not even sure about the other five, and my girlfriend Allison will tell you I sure don’t have much of the common one. But I see things, and hear things. No, I see places, and I hear places. Places where I’m standing. Places where I’m sitting. Places where I’m sleeping. Sometimes I hear what the place says to me.

  It’s not something I can force, by any means. It just happens. It used to scare me more than it does now, but even now I do not understand it, and even now sometimes it terrifies me.

  The first time was in a forest. It was a couple of years ago. I was driving our old yellow pickup, and Allison was in the passenger seat. We were going to collect firewood from slash piles in clearcuts left over from logging in the national forest. We did this often. I wasn’t particularly tired, but somehow with no discernable transition I fell asleep behind the wheel. I’ve done that a few times driving late at night, only to jerk awake as I slip onto the shoulder, but this time there was no sliding onto the shoulder, and no jerking awake. This time I didn’t even close my eyes. But I was asleep, and I began to dream with my eyes open. I saw a logging truck come down the road toward us, and I pulled over slightly to let it pass. I saw Allison shift and start to ask something, but then stop. I saw my hands turn the wheel to the right to maneuver around a corner, and then bring themselves back to ten and two o’clock for the straightaway. Another logging truck, and again I pulled slightly over. Again Allison shifted, and this time she asked, “Are you all right?”

  “I think so.”

  “Why are you swerving?”

  “What?”

  “Swerving.”

  “The trucks.”

  I looked at Allison, and beyond her to the beauty strip, and to the old clearcut on the other side. I remembered that clearcut because we had been there a couple of years before to pull wood from those slash piles, and we had stopped in our work to make love. In the time since, that’s become part of our wood gathering ritual, but that time had been the first. I felt my foot ease off the gas pedal and onto the brake. I felt my other foot push in the clutch, and my hand slide the gearshift into neutral. “Allison.”

  She looked at me.

  I heard the crunch of tires on rock. “Look at the forest.”

  She turned to look outside. “I know,” she said. “I hate those fuckers who do this.”

  “No,” I said. “The clearcut. It’s gone.” It was. There was no thin beauty strip of trees masking a clearcut. There was nothing but a thick forest quickly turning dark from shade and crisscrossed branches and leaves and trunks.

  She looked back at me. “Derrick,” she said.

  “I don’t understand.” I felt the car roll to a stop, felt my foot leave the clutch, felt my other foot stay on the brake. I saw Allison looking at me.

  Do you want to know why I love Allison so very much? She did not tell me I was wrong or crazy—I was thinking both of these things quite well on my own. She did not tell me that the forest was gone. She said, “Tell me what you see.”

  I’m awake, but my eyes are closed. I don’t know how long I’ve been lying here. I used to sleep with the drapes shut, but not anymore: I don’t know many feelings more delicious than drifting with the morning sun on my shoulders. I hear footfalls, that seem to be more from the dream side than the waking side, then a voice, definitely from the waking side. It’s Allison.

  “Good morning.”

  I smile and open my eyes. “How’s the painting?”

  She smiles—like the puppy, like the little boy—with her whole body. “It is so good. I’m doing the dagger. I’ll finish today.”

  I
t’s my favorite painting of hers. Perhaps I was wrong when I said I love Allison so much because of what she said to me. Perhaps it’s because of paintings like this one. It’s a stroke for stroke reproduction of Peter Paul Rubens’ The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, with one small change. And as is so often the case, one small change changes everything. Instead of the two women being defenseless, they’re fighting back: the first is raking her attacker with her fingernails, and the second is about to plunge a small dagger into the breast of the other man. Her new title: “The Attempted Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus.”

  “Your timing was perfect,” I say. “I was just about to get up.”

  She smiles slyly, “This isn’t the first time I checked.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “In a while.” She stands near the edge of the bed. I know she wants to sit, but is wearing her work clothes. I notice her breasts beneath her shirt, the way they move slightly with every breath. I notice the sun on her hair and her hair falling over her shoulders. I notice her hands, long slender fingers smudged with paint. I move up to her face, and let my eyes follow the smooth line of her cheek down to the slight square of her jaw, and then up to her lips. She’s still smiling.

  “You have the face of an angel,” I say.

  Her smile broadens. I can see it in her shoulders, and in her hips. “Would you like to see god?” she says.

  “Of course,” I say. “And you?”

  “Always.”

  “Look at me.”

  “I want to come home.”

  Allison says again, “Look at me.”

  “I’m scared.”

  She grasps my hand, places it in the middle of her chest. “Look. Feel. I’m right here.”

  I’m still dreaming, and my eyes are still open. I shake my head, stare at her eyes. My head clears for just a moment. I see the clearcut behind her, and know where I am. But then I begin to slide back into the dream. The forest rematerializes. I see it. I do not see the clearcut. I still see the inside of the truck. I still see Allison. But everything beyond has changed. Again I shake my head, stare at Allison. Again I return. Again I slide back into the dream.

  I hear a voice—not Allison’s—say, “Don’t fight it.” But I do, shaking my head.

  I take my hand from Allison’s chest, and slap my own face to wake up. No, that’s not true. I focus on my hand, will it to move itself from her chest, will it to recoil and strike. It complies, slowly at first, and then with force. I don’t wake up, and suddenly Allison is holding my hand between her own.

  I hear the voice again, still not Allison’s. I don’t know whose it is or where it comes from. “Don’t fight it.”

  I hear my voice say, “I’m slipping.”

  I hear Allison’s voice, saying to no one I know, “Let’s get you to ground.” She squeezes a hand at the end of an arm I see coming from a shoulder at the edge of my vision, then lets go. She opens her door, walks around the front of the truck. I will my eyes to follow her. She opens my door, leans across to unfasten the seatbelt, grabs the keys, takes a hand I think is mine. I am watching this dream, this movie of a dream, as a left foot that looks like mine comes into view. It reaches for the ground. A right foot follows. I seem to stand. She shuts the door. She leads, and I see my feet take step after step following her.

  “Here,” she says. “Sit down. Lean against this.” She lays her palm flat against the gray trunk of a big cedar.

  She helps my body sit. I feel the texture of the bark through my shirt against my back. I stare straight ahead, away from the road, into the forest.

  I am neither so stupid nor so arrogant as to believe that what we see is all there is, nor that the world is so simple as we insist on pretending.

  To pretend, for example, that trees don’t want to heal; or to pretend trees don’t feel angry, scared, joyful, grateful; or to pretend salmon do not speak, or to pretend they do not feel all these things, is to be willfully unaware.

  To pretend there are not places we do not see, unseen folds in the fabric of what we call reality, hideaways and homes into which plants and animals slip as surely and secretly as they slide into holes in ancient snags, to pretend there are not places these plants and animals go to get away from us, places they go anyway, places that are as much their homes as are the forests, rivers, mountains, deserts that we normally see, is to suspect them of living in only a tiny portion of their habitat. It is to confine ourselves to a tiny portion of our own habitat.

  four

  power

  I know where and when the sickness began. Anybody who thinks about it knows the answer to that one: several thousand years ago in the Middle East, the cradle of civilization, with other irruptions of the sickness in other civilizations in Asia, Central America, and a few other places. As to why it began I can’t say. I’ve written several books on this culture and its destructiveness, and I still can’t even pretend to understand the genesis of these horrors. Sure, we can recognize that many indigenous cultures did not and do not destroy their landbases, and we can describe the differences between this culture and those that might lead to these widely disparate behaviors. We can recognize that many indigenous cultures had and have very low to nonexistent rates of rape, and that in many indigenous cultures both women and children are treated well. We can describe the differences between those that lead to the rapes and mistreatment on one hand, and the relative egalitarianism on the other. We can know that many indigenous cultures had no rich and no poor. Many practiced relatively nonlethal (and downright fun) forms of warfare. We can ask what it is that makes this culture promote certain behaviors and other cultures promote other behaviors. We can be clear about all of this.

  But where did it start?

  Jack Shoemaker stares at the table, at the tools arranged on a white towel folded once lengthwise. Handcuffs. Duct tape. Rubber gloves. Blackjack. Knife. Scalpel. Hypodermic and syringe of ketamine. He’s already laid plastic over the basement floor, and a plastic tarp is in the back of his truck. He looks at his watch, then back to the table. He won’t use the rubber gloves or the scalpel till he gets back, and might not have to use the knife at all, but it’s always better to be prepared. He pats his shirt pocket: cash. Everything’s ready.

  He slides the scalpel into a cardboard sheath and blinks twice. His lips slightly relax into the barest open-mouthed smile. He’d read somewhere that the word vagina is Latin for sheath, a sheath for a man’s sword. So he looked it up.

  Jack tears off several small pieces of duct tape and attaches each tool to the towel. He rips off two more pieces and returns the roll to its spot. He uses one piece to attach the roll to the towel and sticks one corner of the other to his left hand. Then he steps to the end of the table and rolls up the towel. Holding it tight with one hand, he pulls the tape free with the other, then attaches it, securing the bundle enough to prevent accidental opening without hindering accessibility.

  He looks again at his watch. It’s almost time to go.

  Kristine looks at her watch. Time to go to work. She opens her wallet to look at the mirror inside. Not great, she thinks, but good enough. She runs her hand through her hair, feels the slight stickiness of her scalp and the texture of her hair made thick and brittle, like straw, by dirt, sweat, and hairspray. She looks again at her watch. Yeah, there’s time, she thinks, there has to be time. Otherwise she’s never going to make it. She rummages through her canvas bag of clothes, but can’t find what she’s looking for.

  “Fuck.”

  Kristine keeps digging. She sees a black tube top and realizes she hasn’t worn it for a few days. She remembers the tip she got the last time she did. She could use the money. Maybe it’s a lucky shirt. She puts down the bag, unbuttons and pulls off her fuchsia blouse, stuffs it into the bag, and shimmies into the tube top. She looks again in the mirror, and again she runs her hand through her hair.

  Back to the bag. She finds a small black chunk of heroin wrapped in plastic, along with a pocketknife, syringe,
bent spoon, and a lighter. She unwraps the heroin, and the stench makes her salivate. She uses the pocketknife to scrape a little into the spoon. Not much, just enough to remove the edge. Then she pours in a little water and stirs the mix with the tip of her needle. She flicks the lighter, holds it under the spoon. The tar dissolves. Using the cotton ball as a filter, she fills the syringe. She sits cross-legged on the ground, then extends her right leg while keeping her hips open so she can see the back of her knee. The needle finds its own way into her vein, and the plunger finds its own way down.

  She feels good. Not so good she can’t move or do anything but stay here under the bridge—just good enough that now she can go to work.

  Nika is awake, but the apartment is silent, so she lies in bed with her opened box of memories. So long as she keeps her eyes closed and doesn’t move, doesn’t hear anything, she can pretend she’s in bed at home, that she is somewhere and someone else, a world away from where and who she is now. This is how she gets through each day. She takes each memory out of the box, holds it, turns it around and around in her mind, tries to re-create its feeling in her body. There’s her little brother Petya playing with his dog in the field behind their home, and there are the flowers in the field. There is the sun on her shoulders as she watches. Even the sun somehow felt different then: it’s hard to believe it’s the same sun shining now. There is her mother giving her the pendant cross given to her by her mother, whose mother gave it to her. There is the feeling of her mother’s fingers on Nika’s neck as she attaches it, the smell of her mother, the smell of the kitchen. There is her father’s smile as Nika tells him her marks at Lyceum.

  She lies there comfortably, almost drifting, almost smiling, as image after image bubbles up. Blood sausages with her grandmother. Bathing her great-grandmother, cutting her hair, clipping her toenails, listening to her stories of the German occupation and holding her when she got confused over what year it was and thought the Nazis were coming to the door. Nika remembers her first kiss with her boyfriend Osip, how neither had known what to do but had learned so quickly and easily. She remembers watching Petya practice ballet.