Songs of the Dead Read online

  “Now, do you love me?”

  Nika just looks at him.

  “Say it. I need you to love me.”

  But she can’t do it. She can’t do any of it anymore. After Vilnius, Amsterdam, New York, Spokane, after Linas, Viktor, Jack, and the thousands of other men, she can’t do it. She can’t pretend anymore. She has nothing left. “No, Jack, I don’t.”

  He leans over her.

  “I used to hate you,” she says, “and part of me still does, but I just don’t care anymore. I want to go home and I will never get to go home. I should have seen that all along.”

  He moves his face closer to hers, “You don’t love me?” He is trembling, she can tell, with anger.

  “No, I don’t.”

  nine

  falling through time

  We’re in the truck, driving home. We never did get any firewood. I don’t see the forest anymore. I see clearcuts. I’m glad to be back in my body, but I hate what I see outside.

  The return was gradual at first, with me sitting against the cedar, Allison sometimes talking to me and sometimes silent, and me seeing first the forest, and then the forest being overlaid by a blurry, indistinct clearcut that slowly grew sharper while the living forest faded. Then the forest returned the same way—reimposing itself over the clearcut—and I saw animals walking unafraid, as they do when we the civilized aren’t around. I watched them, wide-eyed, until they began again to fade, to be replaced by the relative sterility and monotony of the clearcut.

  The whole time I couldn’t think. The whole time I clung tight to the thread—thread of what?—that connected me back to the world I knew. The whole time I feared this shift in perspective— beautiful as the forest was—would be permanent.

  It wasn’t. In time the waves where I saw and experienced myself in the clearcut became stronger, longer, until at last they flooded out the forest entirely. And then I slept. When I woke I was back to normal, only a little shaky. Allison helped me to the truck, helped me in.

  And now she’s driving. I’m looking out the window. I’ve already told her what I saw, what I experienced.

  She asks questions. I expand.

  Then a silence, until she says, “I’m glad you’re back.”

  Then a silence, “Me, too.”

  Another silence.

  “But it was beautiful. The forest was beautiful.”

  It happens again. This time I’m not so scared, since I know that last time I came back. That knowledge, however, doesn’t keep me from continuing to cling to the existential thread reaching back to everything I know.

  This time I’m sitting next to Hangman Creek. I hear the Pullman Highway not far behind me. Ahead of me, across the stream and across a field, I see a cluster of newly-built luxury houses that abut a golf course. Hangman Creek is maybe fifteen feet wide and eight inches deep. Once it ran strong. No longer.

  I’m thinking about what it would take for the stream to recover—the removal of upstream houses, golf courses, and farms would be a good start, as would the removal of downstream dams that impede fish passage—when it begins again. It starts with the highway. The sounds fade. At first I think it’s just a lull in traffic, but it goes on long enough that I start to hear: insects, birds, some scurrying in the underbrush. I look up, across the stream, and the houses are gone. Pine trees stand in their place. I close my eyes, and when I open them again the houses are back, the trees gone. I’m not so scared this time, only confused.

  I close my eyes and as I do I hear a thrashing in the water in front of me. I open my eyes and see that the stream is full of water, a couple of feet deep, and the bottom has turned from the light color of cobbles to a dark gray. Fish. The river is filled with fish. If I stepped into the water I would step on a salmon.

  I have read about streams full of salmon—which included essentially all streams in the region before the arrival of civilization, before the arrival of the wétiko sickness—but of course I have never seen this.

  I don’t make a sound. I can’t. I don’t move. I can’t. I notice my cheeks are wet. I don’t know what gift I am being given, and I do not know why.

  I look up again to the houses near the golf course, but I see only trees. I look beyond, to a steep slope that rises to suddenly flatten at the top: South Hill. I’m used to houses lining the edge of the slope, but they’re no longer there. I see forest. I like what I see. I still don’t hear the sounds of the highway. I hear fish, birds, insects. I hear the slight wind in the pine trees. I like what I hear. I am not afraid.

  That time ended more suddenly than the first. The fish just disappeared, the houses reappeared, and the sounds of the highway came back. As simple as that, all of this other was gone.

  I wasn’t quite so tired this time as last, and after a short rest I walked on home.

  Nika is dead, stabbed through the heart with a knife. Nika is dead, and she is dreaming of rain. She is dreaming of rain coming down so hard she cannot see the trees outside her windows. She is dreaming of rain coming down to pound on the roof. She is dreaming of falling asleep to these sounds. She is dreaming of dreaming about it raining so hard she cannot see the trees outside her windows. She is dreaming of the rain, and she wants to go home.

  A few days later, Allison is hanging out at my mom’s, a couple of miles away. I’m on my computer, editing what I wrote the night before. I hear Allison’s car pull into the driveway, so I get up, walk outside. She opens her door. I say hello. She ignores me, walks to the barn to check that the dogs have food.

  “I already fed them,” I say.

  She looks inside, says absently, “He already fed them.”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  She starts toward the house.

  I say, “Hey, gorgeous. How are you . . .”

  She ignores me, walks past, goes inside. Shuts the door behind her.

  I wonder what her problem is. I start to follow her, open the door, and hear her say, “Hey, lover, thank you for feeding the dogs.” I stand, blink, step inside, and. . . . Well, nothing. I don’t see her. I wander room to room, but our place isn’t that big, and there aren’t many places she could hide, even if she wanted to. I check the closets, under the bed. I go back outside. I see that her car is gone.

  I have to admit, I’m a little concerned, not so much about being existentially stuck in some strange place, but instead that I’m just plain going crazy.

  I go inside, sit at the computer, pretend to work.

  A little later I hear Allison’s car. I’m kind of scared to go outside. I don’t know what will happen, and don’t really want to find out.

  I hear her car door open, then shut. Then I don’t hear anything for a while, and when I do, it’s Allison opening the front door. I hear her footfalls through the entry, then I hear her putting down her pack. She walks to the door of the room where I’m sitting, and says, “Hey, lover, thank you for feeding the dogs.”

  I sit a moment, staring at her, or more precisely staring through her at the wall behind. I start to understand something, lose the understanding, and gain it again. I start to stand up, sit back down, then start up again. I do this one more time.

  Allison smiles tentatively. I can tell she wants to laugh, but daren’t for fear I’m having another of my spells.

  I stand up. “No, it’s okay,” I say. “I got it now.”

  “No,” she says. “You already did.”

  “What?”

  “The dog food. I thanked you.”

  “No, the spells.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The spells. Getting firewood, seeing the forest. Then a few days ago at Hangman Creek.”

  “Yes?”

  “I understand.”

  “What?”

  “Time.”

  “I don’t. . . .”

  “I’m falling through time. I know what you did before you came in here. You got out of your car, walked into the barn, looked at the dog dish, said to yourself, ‘He already fed them,’ and cam
e in.

  Right?

  “How. . . .”

  “I saw you. I was standing right there.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “That’s because I wasn’t there.”

  “Where were you? At the window?”

  “In the driveway. You walked right past me.”

  She stops a moment, thinks. That’s something else I love about Allison. I’ve known lots of people—women and men alike— who at this point would have made a joke or taken offense, anything to discharge the energy of the conversation. These are people who are incapable of sitting with any sort of discomfort. This is true of physical discomfort, it’s true of emotional discomfort, and it’s especially true of cognitive dissonance. It takes a sort of faith to sit with any of these, a faith that your body or heart will heal, a faith that dissonance will synthesize into something comprehensible. Or maybe not. Finally she says, “Tell me.”

  “When I saw the logging trucks that you didn’t see, and when I saw the forest where you saw a clearcut, I was seeing the past. It’s the same the other day. I slipped into a time before dams and logging and agriculture killed the salmon. I saw it. Now, this time was the same, except it was the future.”

  She looks at me, almost getting it.

  “Those were in the past. You seeing me in the driveway was in the future.”

  I move my hands in small circles each around the other, as the Indian elder had done when she’d told me about time.

  “But I couldn’t see you.”

  “Neither could the animals in the forest. Do you remember? They were unafraid.”

  She thinks, then smiles with her whole face. She gets it, grabs me by the shoulders. “Do you think you could go back in time and stop the dams from being built? Or maybe we should move to the East Coast, and you can go back and tell the Indians to kill every white person they see, tell them what will happen to them and to their land if they don’t.”

  I catch her enthusiasm. “I could—”

  We both say, “No.”

  She says, “They wouldn’t be able to see you.”

  “They wouldn’t be able to hear me, either. I was talking to you outside, and you ignored me. I thought you had some sort of a problem.”

  She thinks, asks, “What do you think triggers it? Why do you think it’s happening?”

  I don’t have an answer. We just look at each other.

  It’s late, but not late enough to bring a chill. We’re outside. I’m on my back on a blanket. Allison kneels atop me, straddling me, holding me inside. We don’t move, just feel. There’s no moon, and I don’t see her face, only her black form against the stars. I have never seen anything so beautiful. She settles down tighter. I look at the silhouettes of trees, feathery black against the studded pillow of the sky.

  Allison says, soft, her voice throaty and slow, “When we were talking earlier. . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you really got to a primary difference. . . .”

  She shifts slightly. I shift in response.

  “. . . between men and women within a patriarchy.”

  We don’t move. There’s the slightest breeze, and I can tell she’s feeling it on her back, listening to it in the trees. I ask, slowly as well, “How so?”

  “You perceive me as ignoring you, and you immediately wonder what’s wrong with me.”

  “I thought you were mad or something. Maybe you and my mom got into a fight.”

  She laughs. I feel her laugh all through her body and into mine. She says, “No, we had a delightful time. She wants you to come over and help her weed, by the way.”

  “If you would have told me that, I would have ignored you.”

  She laughs again, says, “If we reverse the situation, so I perceive you as ignoring me, I don’t start wondering what’s wrong with you, but rather what’s wrong with me. I’m wondering what I did wrong to deserve or at least cause you to ignore me. The masculine focus is that there is something wrong with the other—that others are responsible or to blame for everything that goes wrong—and the feminine focus is that something is wrong with me—that I’m responsible or to blame for everything.”

  I think a moment. “You’re right about that difference.”

  “Of course I’m right. Women are always right, remember?”

  “No, that’s men.”

  “Oh, sorry, I forgot.” And then she laughs and laughs, and I feel her laughter all the way through me, and deep into the ground.

  Seeing god isn’t just a cute name between Allison and me for having sex, like for some people it might be “catching the train” or “docking the ship” or “visiting the thatched cottage.” It’s literally true. Of course in some ways that’s not a big deal: the divine is everywhere, and if you can’t see it you’re probably trying hard not to look. Naturally it’s easier to experience the divine in some circumstances than others. I see it more clearly, for example, in a pond, with the backstriders and tadpoles, the gnats who spiral above the surface and the newts who come up for great gulps of air, than I do in a shopping center, airport, or skyscraper.

  The former are encounters, however slight, with some others, while the latter are cathedrals honoring nothing more than ourselves. It’s back to that same old masturbatory relationship.

  I also don’t want to say that all sex leads to an experience of the divine. I’ve had sex before that is physically or emotionally painful, cold, reserved, half-hearted, distant, boring, ill-advised, sincerely regretted, embarrassing, and even so awful it’s hard to keep from laughing. I’ve had sex that created more distance than closeness, and I’ve had sex that didn’t engender, but substitute for, communication. I’ve had sex that blocked, rather than revealed, the divine. I’ve had sex that removed me from my body rather than bringing me deeper into it.

  But that’s not how it is with Allison. Have you ever had one of those dreams where the sensations and emotions are especially intense, where everything seems closer, brighter, stronger, more vivid, more meaningful, more alive? And then you wake up and you’re disappointed because the world around you now seems so drab, or to step away from my masculine habit of putting all blame on others, you wake up and you’re disappointed because you’ve lost the ability to live in a blaze of reality? If we see a horse in a dream we wonder what it means, what it tells us, where it comes from. It is alight with meaning and drama. Then we wake up, get in our cars, and see a horse in a pasture beside the road, and if we notice the horse at all it’s just another goddamn horse.

  Entering Allison is like entering that dream. It’s like waking up to find I haven’t lost that ability to perceive. She says it’s the same for her.

  ten

  the problem is god

  The night is dark. It’s very late. The headlights of Jack’s truck are off. He coasts the truck to a stop in the small parking lot between the golf course and Hangman Creek. The lot is perfect, hidden by trees from all eyes, and paved, making it impossible for police to get tire imprints.

  Jack is confident. He’s wearing boots two sizes too big, which he’ll throw away afterwards. He’ll also burn his sweatshirt, sweatpants, and socks.

  He gets out—he turned off the domelight before he left his home—and quietly shuts his door, then walks to the back of the truck. He looks one last time for headlights before he opens the canopy and gate, then reaches in for the tarp.

  Nika was ultimately a disappointment. She’d made him so angry at the end that he’d killed her quicker than he’d wanted, and hadn’t been able to ask her any questions. But she wouldn’t have answered anyway. She had become too uncooperative.

  He hefts the tarp-wrapped body, then carries it away from the truck, using a maglight held in his mouth. It’s a good thing she’s slender. Of course had she not been he would have dumped her elsewhere. But her body is perfect for this. He’s always wanted to bring someone here.

  He carries her toward the creek, through a tangle of wild roses that tear at his sweatshirt.
That’s why he’s going to throw the sweatshirt away. Between the wild roses and the creek is a maze of willows. At this boundary, surrounded on all sides by thick brush, he lays down the tarp, unrolls it. That, too, he’ll throw away. He looks at her face, calm now, still beautiful. He looks at the blood on her chest, and at the blood further down.

  He’s excited about leaving her here, about learning how long it takes anyone to find her, or if anyone even does.

  It’s time to go. He turns to leave, looks over his shoulder one final time, shines the light on her face, and says, “Good-bye, Nika.”

  Nika is dreaming of falling. She is dreaming of not being able to find the ground. She is dreaming of ravens flying toward her, then flying away with pieces of her in their beaks. She is dreaming of ants. She is dreaming of being carried away. She is dreaming of being carried home.

  She dreams of her mother the last time she saw her, her mother waving and waving until Nika could no longer see her. She dreams of her own body.

  She dreams of soil, of touching it with her fingers, her feet, then with the backs of her legs, her back, the back of her head. She dreams of tiny rocks, and she dreams of the sounds of water moving through the night and into the day. She dreams of the stars, and of the sun. She dreams of a cloudless sky she cannot see.

  The German victories in Poland and France made more distant the possibilities of victory for any coup attempt, as the regime became more popular and the resistance lost support: then as now, there were many who did not mind a dictator, so long as he was successful. But there were others who persevered in attempted to kill Hitler. Eugen Gersenmaier and Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenberg were two of these. Together, they assembled a group of officers to arrest Hitler, killing him if, as presumed, resistance was offered. Despite many attempts, they were never able to get close enough to pull it off. The closest they came was in Paris in 1940; they planned to attack Hitler during his victory parade. But at the last moment, Hitler decided against having this parade. Instead he flew into Paris at five o’clock that morning and visited the Champs-Elysées, the Opéra, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and the Invalides (including Napoleon’s tomb) before catching an 8:00 a.m. flight back to Prussia.