quavering duet:
Βάζω μια φωτιά
σ’όλα τα παλιά
όλα θα τ’αλλάξω
[I set on fire
all past events
I’ll change everything]
Picking her way through the debris of other lives, sidling past the suddenly motionless line of others to whom the debris belonged, Jane ignored the landlord, who came forward with a piece of paper in his hand. It was the clinic report with her test results. She didn’t remember dropping it. Oh well.
“Missis, I didn’t know. You should have said. Συγχαρητήρια!” [“Congratulations!”]
Jane reached above the front door to grab the Uzi cradled there on two hooks. Behind her, she heard muffled cries of alarm and terrified whispers. She didn’t turn around, just lifted the weapon over her head as she marched down the garden path. One faint, derisive word came floating back, echoing the song that had not quite ended. The ghost of a word: “OPA!”
2 Somewhere Near Texas (I Lost My Man)
As the daylight drained out of the sky, the dead buck on the picnic table turned a darker shade of black.
“Oh. Fuck.”
“Yeah,” John said, leaning against the side of a Chevy pickup many moons past its better days. Vinnie for once was speechless. John smiled, wincingly. “What, no high five? Who was it used to say I oughta kill that lying bitch.”
“That was before. Holy shit. How bad is it?”
John bowed his head, shifted the piece of hay to the other side of his mouth, and stared into the dented truck bed, which was rapidly becoming a bottomless well on that moonless night. “Pretty bad.”
“OK, for those of us just tuning in, are we talking - ‘I want to hit a strip club, get shit-faced, and things will probably look better in the morning?’ Or - ‘I’m going to sleep with every slut from here to Detroit and if you’re my pal you won’t let me sober up until the divorce papers come through?’”
“She doesn’t know about Detroit. Correction. She refused to consider Detroit.”
Vinnie did a double-take. “That’s - that’s like Princess Leia refusing to consider the Rebel Alliance.”
John shrugged and quoted Jane quoting Sun Tzu: “’He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious.”
“Oh right, advice from a dead Chinese guy.”
“Ummm - you can kinda see her point? It was a whole lot easier when we were wearing white hats for the empire. In and out of countries hassle free, best hardware money can invent, and if all else fails, the Marines have your back.” He tossed the piece of hay aside. “All of that is gone.”
“You mean - ‘all that is on the other side’,” Vinnie corrected him.
“I mean ‘just who the fuck do we think we are?’” John said. “So, for the record and for the sake of what remains of my marriage, I’m here because of you and the ‘rents. If anybody asks.”
“Uh huh. I see. And if saving the world is no longer on the agenda, you’re supposed to spend the rest of your lives doing what exactly.”
“My dear Watson, there you have the situation in a bally nutshell.”
“That guy was so gay.”
“Bi maybe.”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” they repeated in unison.
“Brooo - mance, if I loved you more I might be -“ Vinnie stopped short mid-refrain, feeling a presence at his elbow.
“Julio,” John stepped to one side to acknowledge his friend, little more than a shadow on the chalky road.
“John Whitehorse,” the shadow replied, by way of greeting. Half his face glowed dead white with phosphorescent paint. He wore an eagle feather in his hair.
Vinnie tried to explain. “We were just getting into bachelor party mode.”
“We were just getting into war party mode.” Julio nodded over his shoulder toward the village that sat maybe a quarter mile away across dry, flat land. A bonfire in front of the traditional bent-branch houses tongued the desert night. Stick figures etched themselves against the flames as the chanting rose and fell. The women began to keen, and beneath it all beat the hypnotic tempo of the drums. It was a song of loss, catastrophe, collapse. Far from Europe, where affluent societies were breaking down, far from Tahrir Square and Tunisia where people were defying the unjust order of their human universe, there was this ancient music. To John it sounded like the soundtrack to the end of just about everything.
“Ow!” Julio yelped. Behind him, a deep voice spoke slowly and at length, in Algonquin. Julio rubbed the spot where a sharpened stick had gone drilling for his ribcage. “The chief says I am a bad host and a worse liar. Also that you must walk with Wisaka, John Whitehorse, for there are no deer left in this country.”
“I was thinking that Wisaka sent the deer as a gift for the chief,” John said, returning compliment for compliment, as his father had taught him. “We got his truck out of hock and brought along some supplies. Flour, coffee, the usual.” The chief limped to the picnic table and let his hands wander over the fifty pound sacks heaped like so many big-bellied white sows beside cardboard boxes of canned peaches and corn, cartons of Lucky Strikes, a 5-gallon stand of lard. He nodded his approval, the white stripes on his face moving quickly up and down. The eagle feathers of his war bonnet were the palest whisper of white above his head. “But the deer ran across our path just outside of town,” John added.
“One shot,” Vinnie said. Not too archly. Not too De Niro.
“One shot is what it’s all about,” Julio agreed, without cracking a smile.
“I like the trees, you know?” Vinnie said, getting into it.
“I ain’t gonna hunt with no assholes.” Game, set, and match to Julio, who had gone line for line and capped out with an insult. “Ow!”
The chief and his stick had hobbled back and wanted to begin another speech. A long one this time. He spoke in careful, measured sentences underscored by the drums and the ritual wailing of the women. Julio faithfully translated, and John listened politely, with Vinnie following John’s lead. As if they were not two ex-pat desperados itching to run the border. As if they had all the time in the world.
“The chief says you know our history. Our tribal name means ‘he who wanders from here to there.’ We came from a northern country of forests and lakes, forced to move many times over many seasons to reach this final home, far to the south. And even here we have no peace, for land that once was open is cut by fences, the deer have run beyond the farthest hill, and since the miners began to take the water we can no longer irrigate our fields. Our people believe they were placed on this side of the Earth to take care of the land through their ceremonial duties, just as other races have been placed elsewhere around the Earth to take care of her in their own ways. Together, we have held the world in balance. The old ones have always said when we can no longer do these things, when we can no longer fulfill our tasks as guardians, a great purification will come to destroy this world, as previous worlds were destroyed. Today we have welcomed the New Year. It was the smallest gathering in the chief’s lifetime. Two clans have died out in the past six months alone and today their sacred bundles were buried forever. This is sadly in keeping with the prophecies.”
John listened with a sinking heart. Well, here was another fucking reason to celebrate. He knew his father, a full member of the tribe, would take it hard. About the clans, that is.
To Vinnie it was just so much mumbo-jumbo. He looked impatiently and inquiringly at John, who gently nudged him with the toe of his boot. The chief went on.
“You wonder why I bend your ears with an old man’s tale. It is not for the sake of my people, who have kept the old ways and have been promised a place in the next world. We have kept to the path of nature and of spirit law, while your people have pursued technology and material things. For a little time remaining, there is a bridge between these diverging paths.
If everyone on your side will cross that bridge and join us here, we can use the best of your science and the best of our ancient learning to make a paradise for all. It will take a great turning among your people to change course in this way. It is said that a man from the south and the east may arise to lead them. We do not know his name. Or the hour of his coming. So I tell every stranger I meet. Until the message, like an arrow, finds its mark.”
“Don’t look at me,” Vinnie said. “I’m from the Bronx.”
The chief examined Vinnie critically as Julio translated. When Julio had finished, the chief crossed his arms and sighed.
“But - speaking of paradise,” Vinnie said, more to fill the uncomfortable void in conversation than anything else, “we’re headed for your casino. On the other side of the Rio Bravo.” As if Julio and the Chief needed that piece of information. “Maybe the Chief would like to join us. Top-of-the-line VIP treatment, all expenses paid, right there on the Texas side of the reservation, convenient to hearth and home. Broads. Booze. Blackjack. We were already planning to party like there’s no tomorrow.” Struck by a sudden thought, he said to John, “Is it me or is getting married like some kind of total fucking Apocalypse?”
“The case can be made,” John acknowledged, remembering Jane’s face when she entered the kitchen. The shocked disbelief.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“Misery loves company.” For the hundredth time,