Songs of the Dead Page 21

  “Kind of like your or my muse,” she says, excited.

  I nod. “I once asked an Indian friend where dreams come from, and she said, ‘Oh, everyone knows the animals give them to us.’ I think it’s plants, too.”

  “And dreamgivers, and muses, and others.”

  “And others.” I pause, then say, “In areas with a lot of plants, this joyriding—which I’ve read is often beneficial or at least entirely benign but sometimes harmful—can get to be incredibly distracting, almost like being with someone you love to make love with, but at some point you’ve got to carry in the firewood for the winter. . . .”

  “I know that one,” she says.

  “Me too.” I think a moment, smile, then continue, “I’ve heard that in some places that constant joyriding has led people to incorporate into their cosmologies certain spiritual practices necessary to keep the plant and animal joyriding manageable.”

  She laughs. I love her laugh. Then she says, “Why does the land share memories specifically with you?”

  “I think this might happen to everyone, but most people don’t notice, at least consciously. Most people don’t even pay attention to other humans around them, much less plants.”

  “That’s one reason,” she says, “that I always touch and say hello to trees in the city. I want to acknowledge their existence, let them know that someone thinks they’re beautiful, that someone’s sorry they’re in prison.

  “Yes,” I say. “Me, too.”

  “But why don’t I perceive the land’s memories?”

  “You probably do. Just not the same way I do. And remember, I didn’t start perceiving them this clearly until a couple of months ago. Why did I start then? I wish I knew.”

  Suddenly I hear a voice, clear as Allison’s, yet different: solid, sharp, short, certain, slightly hissing, male. It says, “You will.”

  I say, “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  I tell her what I heard. She didn’t hear it.

  Silence. Finally Allison says, “What about seeing the future? If you’re seeing memories, how do you see the future?”

  I bring my hands directly in front of me. She catches on before I can do anything, and brings up her hands to make the circular motion the Indian elder made to show me how time winds around itself. I think of the snake who was curled around herself in our kitchen.

  Allison says, “I don’t mean to be contrary, but I’ve got another question. What about the man who grabbed you at the river, the man who died? If it was a memory, how did he grab you? You wouldn’t have been there at the time.”

  I make that motion with my hands. I say, “That’s part of the answer. But also, if a memory is alive, why can’t it affect us physically, just like any other hitchhiker? A virus can affect us physically.”

  “You’re right,” she says. “Memories do affect us physically.”

  I’m thinking of what I saw at the river: Allison’s body, mine. I feel the memory tightening its hold on my back, the sides of my neck, my stomach. I say, “They can grab us tight, even tighter than the man grabbed me.”

  “Or,” she says, “they can make us smile. Sometimes memories of you and me make me smile. They touch me.”

  We take a walk. It begins like any other stroll through hell. Heat. Pavement. Concrete. People on cell phones. People driving cars. People in line for restaurants. Billboards. Advertisements. Automobile exhaust.

  In the middle of our third block I stop, take Allison’s arm, say, “It’s happening.”

  “Do you want to sit?”

  “No.” I step to the side, out of the stream of people, against a building. The building becomes a deciduous tree that stretches up through thick leaves farther than I can see. I’m instantly cooler. I touch the smooth bark, look down at the duff and forest litter. I am transfixed by the beauty and by the embodied knowledge that this place was not always hell. Not even so long ago it was someplace completely different. I see oaks, tulip trees. In front of me I see a meadow, and a reach of open sky. I close my eyes and breathe deeper than I have since we arrived in this city. The air smells so good, so rich, so moist, so clean. I hear the delicious sound of a slight breeze in the trees, and I open my eyes. I take two small steps so I can hear the leaves beneath my feet.

  And then I hear something else. Distant thunder, perhaps, but it doesn’t stop. A train, but I know the land is sharing with me a memory of a time before trains. The sound grows louder, and louder still. I can’t imagine what’s making it.

  And then I see a dark river in the sky, moving like clouds, but ever so much darker, and moving ever so much faster. This mass pulsates, splits, rejoins, covers the sky from horizon to horizon. The thunder, the train, the roaring, the tornado, grows louder and louder still.

  And then I see what they are. They are birds. They are passenger pigeons. Millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of birds. And they are flying closer and closer. The mass is tumbling, shimmering, covering the entire sky.

  I have spoken before of seeing god in Allison, and hinted at seeing god in salmon. Now, as much as ever before, I know that once again I am in the presence of the divine.

  I begin to sob.

  And then. . . .

  I am back in hell. I am still sobbing. I cannot catch my breath.

  I cannot live like this. I cannot live in hell.

  Allison asks, “What did you see?”

  “The beauty. The beauty.” And I know that this place was not always hell. And I know also that seeing this land’s memory, just like seeing other lands’ memories, has made this hell even less tolerable for me than it ever was before, has made me understand more than ever before that this hell cannot, will not, must not last.

  twenty one

  dr. kline

  That night I dream of Dr. Kline, whose name I’ve never heard before. I dream I’m supposed to go to his office, and I’m supposed to go alone. I dream I know where it is. I dream that when I get there I am surrounded by many sad women. They do not want to be sad.

  When I wake up, I know what I need to do.

  I do it.

  That evening, I say to Allison, “Dr. Kline was the professor who raped you.” It’s not a question.

  She blinks, starts to ask, “How . . .”

  “I went there today.”

  Silence.

  “When I was there, I saw others.”

  She takes a deep breath. “Why are you doing this?”

  “I’m just telling you that you weren’t the only one. This has to do with more than you.”

  “How many?”

  “Lots.”

  “Why did you go without asking me?”

  “A dream.”

  She thinks a moment, then says, “I want this to stay buried.”

  “Okay,” I respond. “I’ll help you re-bury it, or I’ll butt back out, whatever you want.”

  “No. . . .” she says.

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t know what to do with this information.”

  I don’t say anything.

  Finally she asks, “Are any of them recent?”

  “Yes. I could tell when different memories took place from his calendar on the wall.”

  “I remember that calendar,” she says. Silence, then, “What else did you see?”

  “More than I wanted.”

  “Did you see. . . .”

  “No.”

  A pause before she asks, “How are you doing?”

  “I’m not the same man I was this morning.”

  “And there were a lot of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “And recent?”

  “Yes.”

  She doesn’t speak for a while. Then she asks simply, “Did you write down his office hours?”

  Allison and I are outside Dr. Kline’s office. It’s late in the evening. Apart from Kline, we’re probably the only people in the building. Allison and I are acutely aware of the irony of this. We’re also acutely aware of the reason Kl
ine schedules his office hours so late.

  The door is slightly open. I can see Kline’s back. He wasn’t here when I entered his office before, but I know what he looks like from the memories.

  Allison looks at me, takes a deep breath, and silently pushes the door a bit more open. She quietly steps inside, leaves the door cracked, and moves to the left. I stay outside. I can see him clearly. She is not in my view.

  She says, “Dr. Kline.”

  He jumps, turns in his chair. “Good God. You startled me.” His face softens, moves from her face to her breasts to her hips, back to her face. She’s wearing a loose-fitting long-sleeved shirt and baggy pants.

  She asks, “Do you remember me?

  He looks at her more intently, then slightly shakes his head. “Remind me,” he says.

  “You said I was beautiful.”

  He laughs. “And?”

  “Do you remember what you were doing when you said that?”

  “I’d hate to venture a guess.”

  “I’ll tell you.”

  He raises his eyebrows.

  “You were holding me against. . .”

  She continues, “That wall. You were raping me.”

  His face slightly hardens. That’s his only external response. Then he says, “I have no idea who you are.”

  “I was your student.”

  He responds, “I’ve had many.”

  I wonder if I should step in. Allison and I didn’t script any of this. She’d just said she wanted to go in first, and that I should be there to help if necessary.

  “You raped me,” Allison says, “and you don’t even remember who I am?”

  He answers, “I never raped you. I don’t even know who you are.” Then, softly, “You need help. Maybe you were my student. Maybe you had a fantasy. I don’t know. But it isn’t real. And I don’t want to be involved in your fantasy. I’m going to stand up now, and I’m going to take your elbow, and I’m going to guide you to the door. I’m letting you know so that when I touch you now you won’t think that I’m sexually assaulting you. Are you ready?”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Then leave on your own.”

  He stands. But when he stands he’s not the man I just saw sitting, a man in his mid-forties. Instead he is as he was fifteen years ago. I hear a voice—Allison’s—say, “No.” I step in and I see him pressing her against the wall. She isn’t wearing baggy pants, but a long skirt. She’s much younger. Again she says, “No,” and then it is not her saying no, but someone else, and Kline is in his late thirties, and the woman has been turned to face the wall, and he is holding the back of her neck with one hand and hiking her skirt with his other. And then she is another woman and she has been pushed back onto the desk. And then she is another and she is on her knees and her eyes are closed and she is eager, but there is still something wrong, and when the memory shifts I know what it is, and I see him leaving the office and I see her alone in the room standing up and then blinking hard several times, then wiping her hand across her eyes to keep away the tears. The memory shifts again and I see another woman, it’s Allison against the wall, and again she says, “No.”

  And then I’m standing next to Allison.

  Kline looks at me, says, “Who are you? Get out now. Both of you.”

  I shut the door.

  He reaches for the phone.

  I say, “Not a good idea.”

  He picks up the handset.

  I say, “Does the name Theresa Ray mean anything to you? She was last fall. Or how about Dee Miller? She was this spring.”

  He holds the handset.

  I say, “Dee Miller was against the wall there. Theresa Ray, on the floor here.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then call security. Call the cops while you’re at it. We’ll wait.” I pause. I hear the dial tone. When he doesn’t move I say, “Do you want more? Jennifer Hancock, six years ago. Before that there’s Melanie Marshall. She slapped your face.”

  “I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about.”

  “Then make the call.”

  He says to me, “She says I raped her and you buy her story. Or are you going to say you’re a former student and I raped you, too?”

  “You should know,” I say, “that we put up flyers all over the city saying that you’re a rapist.”

  “What?”

  “We didn’t use the women’s names, but we used yours, and your face.”

  “This is too much.” He slams down the phone, steps toward Allison.

  She says, “Don’t touch me.”

  He grabs at her left arm with his right hand. She bats away his hand. “For the last time. . . .” I see her demeanor shift the way I’ve seen it shift when she trains for self-defense. He reaches for her again. She blocks his hand easily and hits him in the face, then gut, then face. Her last punch throws him against the same wall where he once held her, and she stops, pulls him up by his shoulders, and knees him in the groin.

  She lets him drop to the floor. She says, “You’re lucky I don’t kill you.”

  I say, “The reason you’re not going to call the cops is the reason you didn’t call them already. The names I’ve given you are just a start.”

  He looks up, gasps. “Why?”

  “Payback,” says Allison.

  I ask Allison, “Do you still have that knife in your backpack?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you hand it to me please?”

  She opens her pack, hands me the knife. I open it.

  He says, “You’re all wrong.”

  I say to Allison, “You could beat him to death, and you’d never get the truth. That’s just not possible. Or if you did get an apology it’d be phony and manipulative.”

  I turn back to Dr. Kline, say, “I don’t care whether you believe you’ve done nothing wrong. And I know you don’t care about the pain you’ve caused, so here’s the deal. If you ever again have any inappropriate interaction with any woman—our definitions of inappropriate, not yours—we’ll come back and we will make certain you never do it again. Is this clear?”

  “You’re fucking crazy.”

  I look at Allison.

  She says, “I think we’re done here.”

  “For now,” I respond. I turn to Kline, say, “See you later.”

  We leave.

  On the way to the hotel, I ask Allison how she feels.

  She says. “It feels so good to fight back.”

  Of course we were bluffing. I wasn’t going to kill him. If I killed him there would be a body, and if I didn’t kill him he wouldn’t go to the cops: he had more to lose than we did from the police. But if he had called the police, we would have run away: I knew what happened to the other women, but I didn’t know them, and even had Allison and I known the women there’s no way we would have asked them to submit themselves to re-rape by the court system.

  It wasn’t a bluff, though, about coming back to check on him. The next time we were in hell, we would be sure to visit.

  twenty two

  demons

  Allison has finished installing her work at the gallery, and the opening party is (thankfully) over. She’s going to spend the next few days introducing herself to a bevy of other gallery owners, and then she has one final commitment: a couple of free art and feminism classes for kids at an alternative high school. After that ends our tenure in hell.

  We take another walk. We see the same sights: cars, billboards, people, more people, and still more people. Stores, more stores, and still more stores. The place is one giant shopping mall. The point of city life, it seems, is to shop.

  We start back to our hotel.

  I smell something burning. I mention this to Allison, who says she doesn’t smell anything but car exhaust, pavement, and fried food. She normally has a stronger sense of smell than I. But I’m not wrong. I smell it.

  We walk another block. The smell gets stronger. I ask Allison. Still no
thing.

  I’m scanning for smoke when a woman catches my attention. She is a block ahead of us on this slightly crowded street, but still I see her clearly. She is staring directly at me. I immediately know who she is. I take Allison’s hand, say, “Let’s go.”

  We walk toward the woman.

  Allison asks, “What do you see?”

  “My muse.”

  When we’re half a block away the woman turns and walks down the cross street. We get to the corner and I look right. I see her, standing in the middle of the block, again looking at me. Allison doesn’t see her. We walk more quickly now. When we get within about ten yards she points to the far side of the street. At first I only see a man and a woman on a bench. Then I see a small line of smoke creeping along the ground in front of them. The man and woman don’t seem to notice, although it’s directly in his vision. She continues on her cell phone, he continues to stare absently. I look back to the muse. She points and points and points. Each time I see another line of smoke.

  I look away, see a tired horse pulling a carriage, and I see a tired woman walking a poodle. I see lots of dogs. Lots of people. And then more smoke.

  I say to Allison, “I don’t. . . .”

  She doesn’t say anything, and I turn to look at her. She’s gone. So is the muse. So are the people on the bench. So is the woman with the poodle. So is the carriage. But there’s another carriage, another tired horse. Another couple on the bench. Different people. Different dogs. Different cars. I see more lines of smoke crawling along the ground. I hear a hissing I recognize from somewhere I cannot place. I hear a voice I similarly recognize but also cannot place. It says one word: “Feed.”

  A man in his twenties walks by me. The back of his shirt reads The Best FCUK Ever. A line of smoke emerges from the ground through the solid sidewalk, stays low as it moves in his direction, then begins to rise up just behind him. Out of the corners of my eyes I see lines of smoke everywhere, hugging the ground, then rising in swirling, curling columns. They begin to coalesce.

  No one else seems to pay attention. People talk. They eat. They smoke cigarettes. They walk their dogs.