Celia's Song (26 page)

The serpent fears boys with courage. He must swallow them before their first song. He must partner with them before their first dance. He remembers. He wants to find the boy with so much cokscheam. That boy who swallowed the soul of the mountain is his enemy. He hunts for a way to make him let go of that mountain, let go of Cheam. Blowing himself up and stretching himself
out, he wraps himself around the house the boy lives in. If he can
just find a way to open the door to their dreams, find someone
sleeping, their jaw slack; he will loosen those tongues, get their
words going in the wrong direction, and slip inside that boy before
they burn that cedar and the boy will be all right.

XXI

CELIA TAKES GREAT CARE
in preparing for the burning. She fusses over her hair, even paints her lips and nails. She fusses in lieu of waiting.

Alex arrives well before the appointed time. She invites him in with a wickedly nice hello. They exchange niceties. He did not have the good sense to stop bragging about what he had been up to all these years for even five minutes. Celia had left one photograph on the wall: Jimmy looking almost the same as his father, twenty years earlier. Alex is so full of himself that there is no room left in his mind to see that the picture bears so much resemblance to him. She wonders what in the world she had seen in this man. After a while, she asks him if he would like to take a walk. He says he would.

Celia likes the way the cottonwood line the road, making a pretty, sweet-smelling hallway. Their leafy green dresses fill the
space between the trunks, making a nice wind break. Today the green leaves face their silver side up. It's going to rain, the leaves say. Celia secretly hopes that it will be a good rain — a violent rain. Booming thunder and lightning would be nice.

Alex walks with his hands in his pockets, prattling on about his life. Halfway to the graveyard, he tells her he wants to see her, and Celia says it would be all right — if he still felt that way at the end of the day. She cautions him not to be in too much of a hurry. He mistakes her meaning. A lone purple iris grows in the ditch on the side of the road. He pulls out a small pocket knife and clips it. Celia wants to laugh. How appropriate: he offers her a ditchplucked flower and thinks it's romantic. He can put it on his son's grave. He hands it to her. She tells him to hang on to it. He is disconcerted, but he hangs on to it, twirling it as they stroll.

A single mass of grey-black cloud scoots in the direction of the sun. Alex checks his watch. Just like a white man, Celia thinks. Alex looks up and points at the cloud. “Just rain,” Celia says and laughs. He says he's not dressed for it. She assures him he'll be all right. “No one drowns from rain,” she teases. She feels his resistance. The hand holding the iris wants to be in his pocket. He plays with the coins in his pocket. He casts a sidelong glance at the coming storm and, just as they turn the corner to the graveyard, there's lightning across the sky. He sees the crowd of people standing under a canopy, by the grave.

“What's going on?” He stops dead in his tracks.

Celia slips her arm through his and grabs his wrist with her other hand. She holds the sensitive part of his wrist and urges him forward.

Alex wants to run now. He isn't as dense as Celia thought. Some
feeling of empathy for Alex comes up in Celia, but she shoves it aside and tells her dead son, “This is for you, Jimmy.” In her mind she says to Alex, “This is for your son,” and to Jimmy, “Your daddy is here, here at last.”

“I want you to meet someone.”

The singing starts. Alex resists, but Celia has a good grip on him. The more he resists, the more she digs her fingers into his flesh.

“Hey, girl. You're hurting me.”

“We'll all hurt you, if you don't keep moving.”

“What's going on?”

“You'll see when we get there.”

“I think you ought to let me walk on my own,” he says. “Let go of my wrist.”

“I don't think so.”

He stops resisting and walks with Celia to the grave. In front of it, the men in black funeral suits circle him without saying any kind of hello. The old man starts to talk. The thunder booms out a halloo between the old man's words and the lightning flashes. Alex figures out what's going on. There are pictures of a boy sur rounding the grave. Some are under glass in frames, others are loose. Alex's legs weaken. As each family member takes turns talking to Jimmy, unravelling the story of this fatherless boy, Alex realizes this Jimmy was his son. He leans on Celia, his head shifting from side to side.

As the last man in Celia's family finishes, a car pulls up and a group of people from Mission step out. In between a middle-aged couple is a young girl, also dressed in black.

The men look at Melvin.

“I'm not asking for forgiveness, Jimmy. I just want you to know I am so sorry.”

He huffs, then carries on. “I couldn't let you know that through it all I did love you. You were hard not to love, but some crazy jealousy had a hold of me and pushed my love aside.” He stops.

The young girl walks over to the photo stack and takes one. Everyone but Alex stares at her, but no one moves to stop her. Celia clenches her fists, not wanting to know that Jimmy had been loved by this girl, but it was obvious who she is. Alex falls to his knees and looks at the photos of the boy who so looked like him. It overwhelms him that he has a son he will never know. He tries to tell himself he that hadn't known about him — and then he remembers the phone calls, his suspicion and his conscious decision not to return the calls. He had known. He tries to assuage his guilt by saying he was young, but nothing worked. He falls to his knees, unable to satisfy himself with lies.

The family takes the photos to a fire not far from the gravesite — all but the one the young woman still holds. Celia stands in front of her with a menacing look on her face. The young woman clutches the photo, the middle-aged couple move closer to the girl, and Celia backs off. Alex lunges, attempting to stop them from throwing the photos into the fire. He screams, “WAIT!” He is too late; the photos curl at the edges as they are consumed by the fire. As the last photo
burns, he utters a pathetic “No!” Celia walks away from him and the fire. She glares at the young woman and swings out, onto the road, back straight, legs strong, her teeth fixed in a wide smile.

The old man falls in step with Celia and the family follows him. The middle-aged couple join the procession, determined to be a part of what the family is doing to set things right. They leave Alex behind, alone in the rain by the grave of his son.

The storytellers are at it, pumping up the laughter about Jimmy's antics. The family is feeling freer than it has for a long time. Steve wraps his arms around Stacey's waist and whispers, “I think I was wrong about me. I can do this.” She rocks him. “I think so too.” She leans up to kiss him. The young woman with the photo walks toward Celia when the storytelling is in full voice. Jacob is going on about a memory of Jimmy; he ends it with a delicious laugh, which is interrupted by a knock at the door. Jacob, still laughing, opens the door.

Alex stands there, looking like a crazy man who after months of spending time in a trapper's cabin has lost his sense of reality. No one expected to see him again, least of all Jacob; seeing him now stops his laughter and he just stares at him. The old man walks to the door and ushers Alex in. He takes Alex's arm and whispers
something to him that covers the crazed look on his face with one of desperation and fear. The young woman whispers in Celia's ear and she freezes. Alex starts to speak, takes a look at Celia, and decides against it. He fills himself a feast bowl and stands in the corner instead.

“There was this woman,” the old man says. “Two men were fighting over her.” He struggles a little with the English he is using to tell this story. “She kept telling them not to fight over her. It was up to her anyway which one she gave herself to. They carried on fighting. She went to the lake near where she lived. That time. Lake, humans, animals all spoke the same language. She told Lake how sad it made her feel to see these two boys fighting over her like that. Challenge them to a canoe race, Lake told her. She did. They did. Out in the middle of the lake they were. Lake swallowed them. ‘What did you do that for?' she said. ‘Now they are both dead.' Sometimes to move ahead, you have to go back to the beginning.” The old man laughs. Momma, Celia, and Jacob join him, but the others just smile and wonder what the story was about. “Sounds funnier in the language,” the old man says and laughs some more.

XXII

UNCLE JIM WAS RIGHT
. Four days on that mountain make Jacob feel like he can do anything. This is what the old man's story is about, he thinks. He swallows the tea Momma gives him. The old man is at his elbow, gently urging him outside. Ned and Jim fall in behind. He hears Celia asking young Alice to read a poem as the door closes behind him.

I'm not sleeping, Momma

And I can't quite seem to die yet

I float trapped between the endless pages

Of confusion my death seems to represent.

This floating is light

And strangely slow.

Clouds appear and disappear.

The sun rises and sets, but I'm not dead yet.

There is this wisp of thread

Tying me to the world below,

Each time I move in the direction of the other side

The thread tenses and I return to the sky above your head.

But my feet can never again touch the ground

I can see you hanging on to the other end, Momma

And I am asking you now to let me go.

The thread in Celia's hand feels sticky, spider-web sticky. She lets go, but it's stuck. The spider weaves its sticky web with slow deliberation; she means to entrap the small world in the design of
her murderous home.

“I'm pregnant with your son's child,” rings in her ear, over and over. Celia feels small. She had brought her son and his father together, thinking it would end her yearning. This was not what Jimmy wanted. He wanted to be let go. Now here he is, showing himself again in this woman. She had thought him too young to know who his father was when she refused to tell him, but he was never too young. Jimmy had beaten a retreat, exited, and freed himself of becoming a negligent father by hanging himself. Celia had held her son too close and too tight, strangling the life out of him. Momma is right. She is lonely. She had this child, hoping to close the door on her yearning for her momma. Alex had closed the door on his son, yearning for success. Her son had closed the door on his progeny, yearning for freedom from this terrible neglect. All this time she thought it was about Alex and how he had cast her adrift. The serpent was off the house front and each and every one of them had grabbed some terrible thread of bitterness from the restless head that stopped them from becoming who they needed to be. As long as each of them holds onto some bitter thread, they cannot really give life.

Momma watches Celia for a while. She moves over to her, wraps her arms around her, and whispers, “You take your time, child. You take as long as you want.”

Celia has to let her mother go. She can't embrace her without letting that thread go, and yet she so needs her momma now. The thread of bitterness is in her hand, the young woman stands squarely in front of her, challenging and certain. Celia's eyes drop to the woman's belly. She opens her fist, holds up her arms. “Haitchka
siem
,” the song rolls out.

“Jimmy. Say hello to the first Alice when you see her.” The thread breaks.

JACOB MAKES HIS WAY
to the front of the bar. He sits next to Amos who is already half lit up. The bartender asks him what his pleasure is. “Coffee. Yeah, give me a cup of that java.” Amos turns to face him; “Wuss,” he says. “Think so?” Jacob says and serves him up a winning smile. “Difference is, in a minute I can order a beer, drink it and leave, you can't.” The smile makes Amos squirm. It makes him feel like Jacob sat next to him on purpose, that he wants something from him. He says as much. Jacob says he does want something. He wants to know why Amos keeps his hair long. Amos thinks this is an odd question and looks back
at Jacob.

“I know why I grow mine.” Jacob tells Amos the story of Cultus and asks Amos if he knows that story. He finishes his coffee and orders a beer. Amos does not feel like admitting he doesn't know the story. Jacob pulls his own hair. “My hair is about truth, about beginning and about never ending. What's yours about?”

“If that's the case, what are you doing in this bar?”

“Talking to you, Amos. I came here to tell you I am going to the longhouse. We are building a longhouse. First one erected in decades. Your hair will get in, but the dance will likely kill you.” He points at the beer. Then he drains what is left of the beer he'd ordered.

“Fuck you.”

“I don't think so.” Jacob gives him another smile, tosses change at the counter and swings off the barstool. He walks out the door, smiling back at Amos. It unnerves Amos, who drinks more than he intended, much more, so much that the bartender has to throw him out.

ON HIS COT IN
his rooming house, drunken pictures of other binges whirl. He leans over the side of his cot and vomits. Traces
of his empty stomach lace the bed. Images of Jacob's smile, the little girl's whimpers, the crazy woman he beat half to death drive his sleep to distraction. He wakes up, cussing as he realizes he had slept in his vomit. He lies there, no sense in moving. He looks around. Besides this cot, there is nothing much in this room. He has an old shirt and a single pair of pants hanging over the back of the cot. Both reek from want of washing. No dresser, no sink, no stove, nothing to make this stinking place look like anything but what it is, a stinking hole.

Amos looks up at the ceiling. Jacob's face comes into view. He is telling that story about the lake that swallowed two men. “Lakes don't talk, fool.” Amos says it out loud as if Jacob is standing in the room. He rolls over, to go back to sleep, and his face hits a streak of last night's sickness. “Shit.” He wipes his cheek and gets off the bed. In the corner of the room is a rat. Well, that about sums it up. I'm sleeping in my own puke and my only company is a rat.

Amos grabs his hair. It's one massive rat's nest. This makes him laugh. It makes some kind of crazy sense. He reaches into his torn pocket and pulls out the rest of his money — two twenties. He can't remember the last time he had a good cup of coffee or decent company. They've all been rats of one stripe or another for years. Amos starts to realize how absurd this sounds. He's fifty-nine and he's been drunk and keeping company with filthy rats for years, decades.

What did that sonofabitch want? He fingers his money and decides to hit the Sally Ann for some new threads and maybe get himself a coffee. He cusses Jacob out as he does so. How did that sonofabitch know his name?

JACOB IS STANDING ACROSS
the street from the rooming house. Amos can't believe his eyes. Great, now I got the fuckin' DTs. Jacob saunters over.

“Say, Amos. What you up to?” Just like they were old friends.

Amos fakes, “Not a lot, bro. Thought I would head to the Sally Ann for some new threads.”

“I'm heading that way myself. Mind if I join you?”

Amos isn't sure if he minds. He hasn't been asked that for a long time. He tries to think, but the only words that keep popping up are that Jacob could drink a beer or a coffee and he couldn't. He thrusts his hands in his pockets to hide the shaking and decides to tell Jacob about the puke and the rat. It's a story. Indians can't seem to stop telling stories and they love hearing them. He puts it out there, like it's a damned happy piece of shit, only Jacob doesn't laugh.

At the Sally Ann, Jacob turns and gives Amos that smile again. “You know, my old auntie Celia says black slacks and a white shirt are sexy. Must be because she's nearly forty, huh?” Amos laughs. Jacob has him; it's just a matter of time. He watches Amos stew over the price of every shirt and jean he fingers, finally settling on a couple of shirts and two pairs of jeans. It comes in under ten dollars.

On the way out the door, Jacob says he's heading back home. “Got things to do and people to see.”

Amos is about to invite him for a drink, but doesn't think he can handle another talking lake story, so he says, “Sure man. Later.”

THERE IS A WOMAN
in the bar. She looks like an old she-cat from any local rez; older maybe, but still looking good. She's sitting at the bar alone. In front of her is a book; she's scribbling on its blank pages. There's a cup of steaming coffee in front of her. Amos decides to begin with coffee and end with beer and this woman.

“Writing love letters?”

“Poems.” Celia smiles. Amos thinks he recognizes the smile. Celia keeps him entertained all afternoon. She orders coffee and declines beer with “It's too early.”

“Yeah,” Amos agrees, stupidly, he thinks right after he's said it. Now he feels like he has to stick with it. The bartender is surprised. Amos is a regular here, but he rarely drinks coffee. Matter of fact, the bartender has never seen him drink coffee. Man will just about do anything to get laid, he thinks, and keeps the coffee coming. About four o'clock, Celia swings off her stool and says she has to go.

“You going to give me a phone number or something?” Amos asks. “Or you just going to eat and run?”

“That would be ‘drink and run.'” She scribbles her number onto a page, tears it out of her book, and slides on out of the bar. Jacob is waiting for her. She smiles.

“He's ours.”

The serpent is desperate. The air is cooling off. Fall is being pushed back by winter's tide. The snake can't slither so easily, but he is so hungry his eyes bulge. He must make one last foray out into the village to find something he can swallow, some piece of
madness to satiate the cannibal spirit consuming him. His skin tightens. Each head threatens to eat the other, he is so hungry. All summer long he chased Jacob, but Jacob wouldn't budge. That mountain is inside him. He is too big. On the bridge, just before white town, a boy stands. He holds a rope. At the other end is a cat, his tail tied to the rope. The boy hangs it over the bridge. The cat screams, and his squirming loosens his tail from his body. He falls to the stone below. The little boy opens his mouth to laugh. The snake enters and fills himself up. The snake returns to his pit. He can barely move. He hasn't much time before the air will be too
cold for him to move.

The old bones have managed to sing the new ones into hopeful cooperation — the longhouse will see that they are buried properly in time. They begin to sing the old songs.