The Witch Tree, page 12
They turned to the moon, an awkward silence between them. With the tip of her finger, Sally made a circle in their breath that had condensed on the windshield, dotted the center of it. He touched the top, bottom, right side, and left side. The figure, lit by the moon, radiant.
“Does it mean something?” Sally asked.
“Gitchi manido,” he said, “you know, all that… hoo-ha, the Big Gipper, the unmoved mover, the I AM THAT I AM.”
Grinning, Sally said, “And what does The Gipper have to say, since you brought him up?
“Well, The Gipper says, ‘Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.” It was something Seraphim’d said, and too often, and at the most impossible seeming times.
“Why?” Sally asked.
“If you’re going off to Seattle, do you want to get entrenched here? Come on, don’t you have the gas money?”
“You need a new pack,” Sally said. He lifted it, and Sally put her finger into the hole the bullet had made, said, “It’s a holy pack now, right? Since were getting all… Biblical.”
Unable to get the pack on for the album in it, he’d held it up behind his head, the bullet stopped by the case of allen wrenches.
“I’m not going to ask how that got there,” Sally said, “but it must’ve scared the daylights out of you.
“When I was little, I was scared like… all the time,” she added. “That’s how it was in the house.”
St. Mary’s had been like that. Until he’d done something about it, thanks to Seraphim.
“You don’t say much,” she said, “do you. And if I ask you about yourself, you really get quiet.”
A tall man in a ragged green Army coat trudged up the sidewalk, his hat pulled low over his face. Buck craned his head around, following him up the sidewalk until he was gone.
Sally set her hand on his forearm, then removed it. “It’s okay,” she said, “you don’t have to tell me.
“My brother, out in Seattle? He used to come into my room and scare me,” she said. “Maybe that’s when it started, this, thing that feels like it’s going to suffocate me? Like, it’s – or it was my uncle, only he’s dead now, but it’s way inside me, like….” She shuddered. “Anyway, this one night my brother snuck into my room and grabbed me from under my bed.
“Right there, when he grabbed my leg, I kind of split off from my body and… floated up near the ceiling in a corner.” She glanced over at him. “Which wasn’t the terrible part, the terrible part was I knew I’d done it before, only for something a lot, lot worse.”
“What?”
“That’s… what I can’t seem to…. If I try to see it, what it is, that’s when my attacks are the worst.”
She glanced over at him, a broken look on her face. “Do you think you can unlearn being afraid?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“No. You get around it by thinking of something else.”
“Like… what?”
“You think of something you love. Something… so worth living for that none of the rest of it matters.”
“So, what do you think of?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, his mind a hot blank, then got it – what might help her.
“Once,” he said, “when I was up at The Sioux Narrows, we climbed a butte and you could see these… little ribbons of rainbows, thousands of them, shimmering, and the wind carrying them over the water.
“The whole… sky was glimmering, alive. You can’t imagine…. It was… I don’t know….”
“What was it?”
“Assabi – tiny spiders, migrating. Flying on nothing but threads of silk and a breeze.
“You have to live like that,” he said. He glanced over at her, to see if she understood.
“How?”
“You have to do that next thing, anyway, even when it seems… impossible. Fly on a thread.”
Whistling to himself, headed home, he pulled the collar of his jacket up around his neck against the cold. Crossed into Tonto Town and, turning up an alley, heard someone behind him.
A wire cut across his neck, and he spun right, then left, the wire biting deeper, strangling him. He squatted, boosted whoever-it-was onto his shoulders, then sprang backwards, to land on him, and when the wire only bit deeper, he made a V of his fingers, jabbed them over his shoulder into his eyes, and there was a injured grunt, and the wire went slack.
He shot to his feet. Swung… whoever-it-was in front of him, glaring out of a ski mask, the right eye catching the street lamp, white, as if with cataract, and the other…. but he sprinted away. Buck bolted after him, dizzy, and his legs tangled and he fell, then got to his feet again. No doubt, someone wanted him long gone.
His neck stinging, he set his hands on his knees, breathed in deep, whooping breaths.
Thought: Sally. He’d have to get her moving.
24
Eli
In the vestibule of The Rainbow Cafe, he clung to the phone, as if it might somehow get away from him. The door swung open, a patron coming in out of the rain. Early morning, it was raining again. April, he thought, was the cruelest month. But even more so in the cities.
With a grinding rattle the phone ate the coins he’d fed it. Out of the receiver came, “The call you are making requires–”
He’d made five calls, each having accomplished nothing, and the patrons of The Rainbow pressing in on him, a mixed crowd of black leather, men in thin-lapelled suits, and women in pastels.
“Rash,” Buck had said about the scabbed line around his neck. No doubt, they’d gone after him. And they’d put someone in the apartment across the alley, too – Jenny had seen him.
The guy closest – pea coat, beard, big through the chest. Weird gray eyes. Was he one of Lester’s?
He thrust his hand into his pocket, for change. Scratched himself, Damn amphetamines, he was crawling out of his fucking skin. Fed the phone. Waited. Pressed the phone to his ear.
Ruben, before he’d run, had left him a message on the wall of his unit at Little Earth, one that made no sense. And it wasn’t just that it was in the old language – Ojibwaymowin – which he didn’t speak – it was, on top of that, a puzzle – or, more so, a riddle. He hoped.
Behind him, the Rainbow got yet more crowded, patrons nearly shoulder to shoulder. The big guy with the weird eyes shunted his chair closer, the legs barking on the floor.
He pulled the hood on his jacket over his head, the phone ringing, and ringing, and ringing. Please, please, please – he chanted, and then, just like that, the phone was answered.
“Boozhoo, Gene!” he said, “Don’t hang up! It’s Eli. Yeah, Old Joe’s son. You full up?”
The interrogative You full up? was like a chess move, put the listener in a tough position. To say no, at best, would be a show of ingratitude, an affront to spirit. It couldn’t be done.
“Yeah,” Gene said, wary. “We’re good. And you?” Gene waiting for the now certain-to-come request – for money, a place to stay, a “loaner” car for a few days or a week.
“Got visitors, and the fish aren’t biting.”
“Ah,” Gene replied, relieved. There was a hum on the line. “You want hot spots for them, that it?”
“No,” he said. “I’m checking on a location, one somebody gave me. Wanted to see what you thought.”
“So?” Gene said.
“Tani ma mitig,” Eli replied, the message Ruben had left on the wall for him over at Little Earth. When there was only an answering silence, he said, his voice rising, “Gene?”
“Tani ma mitig?” Gene laughed. “What are you smokin’ in your pipe down there, Eli? No, somebody’s pullin’ your leg on that one, Wabooson, you look for it, though, if you want to.”
“There isn’t any such place?”
“Sure, but it isn’t on any lake. ‘What tree’? That’s like sayin’ go screw yourself, hey?
“And you tell your brother Boozhoo for me; tell him we’ll be over to the lodge to visit. And sorry about Bear. Try Binishinook Bay, Nikan. The walleye are running deep since it’s been cold, and use sinkers and live bait.”
“Onwas!” Luck, he added, and the phone went dead.
Eli turned; the big man was gone – but what of it? They’d been on him since they’d gotten to Ruben.
He nearly jogged into the atrium of the IDS tower, so intent was he on finding Jenny.
She sat at a table, surrounded by potted plants and glass, a vast, high ceiling above, a brave smile pasted on her face. Well-dressed men were giving her glances from behind papers, Jenny this exotic, hothouse flower. She could be anything, Asian, Indian, Eastern Indian.
She checked her watch, drew her hair back, tossed her head, her molasses dark, glossy hair spilling over her shoulders.
Eli glanced into the florist’s to his left, studied himself in the glass. He’d gotten a hair cut – which had felt like nothing short of an amputation – ran his hand up the back of his head, his scalp like a brush.
He’d put on a suit, too, his best, and he straightened the tie–”a noose,” Buck called them – shot his sleeves.
– maybe, if he just told her, she could forgive him?
In the florist’s, he bought a long-stemmed rose, had the woman at the counter wrap it in tissue paper and fix a bow of ribbon around the middle, then stood behind Jenny.
He cleared his throat, and she looked up, only right through him, which was terrifying, and he held out the rose, said,
“For you, sweetheart.”
“Eli,” she said, and she took the rose, but her shocked eyes on him–”What did you do?”
He ran his hand over his head. “This?”
“Why?”
He swung a chair out and sat, then reached for her hand, tentatively, and she snatched it away.
“People are watching us,” she said. “You’re making a scene, Eli. People will see us.”
“I’m closer,” he offered. He had to say something; then added, “It’ll all work out, you’ll see,” which was worse.
“You didn’t say why you did it,” Jenny said.
“Got a job with the Fuller Brush Company, see?” He raked his hand over his, now bristled, head.
Her eyes had glassed up. “You don’t even look like you,” she blurted, a true hurt in it. “You look like–”
“Lester’s going to have me do business with some new people, and it’s way better money.” That much was true. “Okay? So, I have to look the–”
“Eli, sweetheart,” Jen shot back, “you don’t just look the part anymore – you are the part.”
“No,” he said, “really, I just have to do this until–”
“Let’s just… go, and now. Please?”
“Broke? And where to? Your mother’s place? Or would you have me go back up to the lodge?”
She glanced around them. Everyone was being reasonable, just taking a break. “Just… away. From all of it. Anywhere. Right now, let’s get up and go. Let’s go, while we still can.”
“Come on. All of this is just for now, Jen,” he said. “And with Buck to help, it’ll work out.”
Jenny held up the rose. “And then everything will be wonderful. Like you said, right?”
“I’ll make it right as rain,” Eli said, “you’ll see–”
25
Sally
Perched at the end of what had been the proscenium of the Crosby Milling Company’s employee theater, her arms crossed over her chest, The Dragon Lady glared up Row Ten.
“But you won’t fire me,” Sally sang bravely to herself, and bent again to the most difficult set of dentures she’d yet encountered at DPA, Dental Prosthetics Associates, LLC.
The Dragon Lady went by Kitty, only Sally had, just recently, discovered her real name, and she thought of her that way now, Sun, in it her identity outside DPA, something she was hiding, Buck assured her, in it the key to her problem – if she could use it.
Her problem being, today, the bite surfaces in the denture set Sun had given her didn’t match. Be tough, she told herself, then set the lower denture on the table, gums down, and pressed on it, front to back.
Yes, it rocked. So, warped. Christ!
To calm herself, she hummed a tune from Oklahoma! Though now a new version, I’m just a girl who can say no! and, under the table, her legs skipping out the dance routine she’d learned, one of many, and the sound score coming to her as if from some crazed calliope.
She glanced up from her table, and Sun, from the proscenium, grinned, her eyes hard as marbles.
Had she the time, repairing the dentures would be easy. She could transect the rear of the denture and use a wedge, and with her hot air gun melt the gum surface – if the molars were off on only one plane.
Which, measuring, Sally found they were not. They were warped sideways, too, not just front to back.
“Girl!” the Dragon Lady called out, in her strangled tongue, as always unable to pronounce the plural S.
She pointed to the clock on the wall. “Ten minute. You denture be finish and we break.”
Sally grinned up at her – Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, Buck’d told her – then down at the ruined dentures.
So, was the solution in broaching the issue with Sun? But what, if anything, could she say to her, if she couldn’t ask for more time? You’ve given me defective dentures?
Sun, she’d learned through Shorty, brokered walleye to Frogtowners’ restaurants, had been a “comfort girl” in Japan during WWII, and had risen to managing a “hotel.” She had a daughter, one Shorty hadn’t been able to locate. Maybe the daughter’d changed her name?
Something had gone wrong between the two of them, but Shorty hadn’t been able to find out what.
“Everybody in Frogtown is terrified of her,” Shorty’d warned her, “and she’s got connections. So, you be careful.”
To keep her from coming up her aisle, Sally took her Dremel polisher and began surfacing her dentures, to look busy.
The light cut dust motes through the stories-high windows, and beneath them, the others, gray haired and backs bent, labored quietly at their desks as they had since her first day.
Luckily for her, Sun was still pacing the proscenium, hands clasped behind her back, biding her time. Maybe the problem was that Luz, DPA’s Chief Operations Officer, had promoted her to be Official Keeper of the Supply Cabinet, when, before, that had solely been Sun’s job? Granted how expensive the materials were, especially the gold and silver, it was a genuine responsibility.
Or was it something else? Could she just… give the keys back now? Would that solve her problem?
“Sarry!” Sun said, standing in front of her desk. Good god, now what? Her hands on her head, she rearranged the pins in her hair, the pins like long, black-lacquered daggers.
“Yes?”
“You be done by time? Five minute?”
“Yes, Ms. Kitty, I will,” she replied. Never. Wasn’t going to happen. But what could she do?
Sun smirked. “So you done then now, yes?”
“Nearly,” Sally replied, smiling up at her.
“No?”
“Nearly.”
“Yes, or no?”
Sally bent over her table, her mind racing. Keep your enemies closer, Buck had told her. She’d do it. Risk it, and she lifted the ill-made dentures, the gums and teeth crooked. Looked over them at the Dragon Lady.
“Sun,” she said, “what a beautiful name. What does it mean?”
“Hah?” Sun said.
“Your name, Sun Mi. It’s… lovely. What does it mean?”
Sun frowned. Eyes wide. Stunned. Even fearful. She took a deep breath, then rose to her full, imperious height.
“So, how you know that?” she said.
“Oh,” Sally replied, brightly, “I have a friend who does business in Korea Town. Only, when I said how nice you were,” she smiled, in it a show of teeth, “he said, ‘Oh, that can’t be the Miss Kitty I know.’”
Sun grinned, in return. The bell rang and she swept Sally’s dentures into her hand, then pocketed them.
She lifted her head to the room, a flush in her face. “We break now!” she called out.
26
Buck
They had finished dinner, and no one was saying much of anything, least of all Eli. Buck straightened his legs under the table. His feet touched Jenny’s and he pulled them back.
“Nervous?” Eli asked.
They were going to send him out on wrecker duty with Ambrose in the morning, which, he assumed, would be difficult.
“Here,” Eli said. He reached under the table. “We got this for you, it being Easter and all.”
It wasn’t that it was Easter, it was Wabigoni-gisiss, the Moon of Flowers and Blooms. Jenny slid the box across the table, a green ribbon clumsily wrapped around the middle.
“Hey, a knife,” he said, lifting it from the box. A Ka-Bar.
He went into his room. Chocolates for Jenny. A canister flashlight for Eli. And coins. If someone gave you a knife, or scissors – anything sharp – you gave them stones – or, now, coins. He handed one to Jenny.
“What?” she said, and laughed. “You don’t believe in all that old… superstition, do you?”
He eyed Eli across the table. His shorn head was disturbing. “They kicking you up the ladder?”
“It’s just business,” Eli said, and Jenny reached for his hand. That they were determined to stick it out, were willing to see this thing through to the end, both touched and pained him.
“Yeah, isn’t it always just?” Buck said.
At the Paradise, he slid under a car, set the cables, and got back out, waiting. There was a puff of warm breath on his neck, and he threw his hands up, banged them on the rack.
“Touchy, today. Aren’t cha?” Ambrose said. His welder’s glasses were crooked on his face, his braids out, his hat askew.
“No.”
“You jump like it. Worried about goin’ out?”
“Should I be?”
Ambrose lifted his hands. “Just,” he said, “don’t go telling me in the middle of it I didn’t warn you.”
On break they sat in Eli’s car.
“I mean, how the hell am I supposed to know what he meant?” Eli said, pouring coffee from his thermos. ‘Don’t go telling me in the middle of things I didn’t warn you.’ He’s certifiable.”
