Indian Country Noir (Akashic Noir) (9 page)

I grabbed her arm. She brushed me off. "Don't touch me,"
she said, like it was the worst thing that had happened to her
so far that day.

You can't touch the moon.

Great, Grandpa.

I said, "Hey, I just saved your life." Getting pissed now. Like
when you take fire from people you're supposed to be saving
and you want to lob a few shells back to say, You're welcome.

Somebody with training interrupted from above and got
me to answer her questions: no blood, moving my limbs,
breathing regular. "The woman's fine too," I added.

All I got back was "What woman?" and "Stay calm" and
"Help is coming." After a few whispers, the voice asked, "What
meds are you on?"

My heartbeat woman was still staring at me, hard, reading between my lips and holding on to steel-smoking motor
mounts that looked hot to me. But her skin wasn't blistering
and I figured, well, I don't know what. She had to be in shock.
I was. So I told the voice from above, who identified herself
as a nurse, what had happened: I saw a man chasing a woman
through the crowd, tried to stop him, couldn't catch up, and
he pushed her into the train tracks. I jumped down after her.

I didn't mention the vision I had of that man, or that I was
in love with the girl in the tracks.

This is the stuff of heroes, I was thinking. I mean, I'm a
Marine. A vet. Doing my warrior thing. That meant name in
lights, spot on the Late Show, cash rewards. I'd have to play
down the Java programmer angle, though. Nobody wants to
know about a smart vet.

"You saw the monster," my heartbeat woman said.

"Yeah. If that's what you call it."

My father killed something on high steel when he was young.

Thanks, Grandpa, but I'm busy right now.

"I'm real to you." She looked into my eyes like she was
trying to see through them.

"Shit, yeah."

He killed something like that. And afterwards, the bridge came
down.

Yeah, Grandpa. Quebec Bridge. Mohawk disaster. I remember. Can we talk about it later?

"You're not afraid to die."

"Right." Easy to stay loose about the death end of life
when the living part doesn't stick.

Its blood's a curse. Mixed with ours. The dealing with it is our
duty. Even down to you.

Blood? What? Never told me that one, Grandpa.

"I can't save everyone," she said, and in that dark place
tears shone in her eyes. "I can't do more for you. I have others
to take care of."

In that small space she seemed to be crawling backwards
away from me. I reached for her again, but this time I missed,
like my hand went right through her.

I thought it had to be that thing's blood that drew me to you.
Hard as it is to believe.

And here I thought I was special.

You are. Though I've been wondering if that thing was ever
going to show up. You carry the responsibility.

What responsibility?

There aren't many descendents left. Seems like you're all that's
left.

For what?

Did my best to show you the way. Wish your father'd lived
long enough.

And then she was already halfway under the subway car,
folded over but still facing me almost between her own feet like
a circus contortionist, sliding back without making a sound or
moving a muscle. Her eyes were darker than any space in the
tunnel or under the train, darker than a night without stars
and moon, or a dreamless sleep. But when I looked into them,
I gave that darkness a touch of light and she nearly cracked a
smile. That's when I knew I'd been talking to the wrong ghost.
Family just never knows when to get out of the way.

"Wait, what's your name?" If this had been a Manhattan
lounge maybe she would have said something like Cinderella
and I'd never have seen her again.

"Medicine Snake Woman."

"What the hell kind of name is that?"

"You're welcome," she said, and flashed me a small, sad smile like she'd already read everything she needed to know
between my lips and she was moving on to bigger and better
things.

Then she was gone, and it hit me. She was the one who
should have said thanks, and "You're welcome" should have
been my line.

I woke up dizzy back in the real world underneath a train
with police and EMTs talking to me through the crevice between the platform and the train, rats piling up around the
third rail wondering if the lunch buffet had arrived.

Sucks to be you, don't it.

At least I'm alive, Grandpa.

Alive. Yeah. That woman, she made me feel alive. I didn't
care what was happening or if I was finally coming down with
PTSD. Screw all that. I needed her.

I crawled out on my own while they warned me to stay put.
The rest of the day was a fancy necklace of diamond reality
moments strung on a flimsy line of breaking-heartbeat woman
dream-emergency room, police report, psych eval, criminal
and military record check, even a call to my old foster home
to confirm I had no psychiatric history. There was also that
golden call to the boss saying I wouldn't be working the Java
today because I just jumped in front of a train.

Through it all, I couldn't get Medicine Snake Woman
out of my mind. When we married, what would I call herMedicine? Med? Snake? What would we name our kids? How
would we be in bed-a dance, a firestorm, a tsunami? Would
I be able to support her, or was I expected to stay home while
she went on with whatever it was she did for a living?

Would my mixed heritage be a problem for her family, who
obviously took pride in their lineage? What would it feel like
to be scared of losing her?

Hell, I already knew that answer.

The dream came apart and was replaced by another when
I fell asleep after a beer later that night.

Bet you think you're something special.

Grandpa likes to talk from out of trees most times, but this
night he was a big-ass bear standing on two legs taking a dump
in the woods. His paw was bigger than me. So was his dump.

I studied the acorns by my foot and said, No, just crazy,
like everybody says I am.

You can't let her go, can you?

I didn t answer because I knew it was going to be one of
those dreams, like the one that took me to Afghanistan for four
years to make a warrior out of me. Or the time in junior high
when I landed in the hospital for standing up to older bullies
picking on a skinny black kid who was also in a foster home.
Or, best yet, who can forget popping my nine-year-old dream
cherry the first time Grandpa paid a visit and convinced me my
real mother lived in the next town over and I needed to see her
because blood called to blood. Maybe I'd seen her last when I
was two or three. Couldn t remember her much, or my father.

Things didn't stick to me even back then.

Grandpa even showed me where my foster parents kept
the real cash stash and what bus to take when and where and
the best time to go over to catch Mom. Ran away on a Friday
night with a forged note for the bus driver just in case, and
sure enough I found my birth mother, who told me about how
my daddy died in the service with honor even if it was an
accident. How she fell apart and had to give me up and was
too ashamed of letting me and her husband and their families
down to ever stay clean long enough to take me back. So she
left me with people who could love me the right way until she
got herself together.

Said she'd been trying. Told me, "You know how it is."

By Monday I was back in my foster home, and we all knew
that was the best place for me after that weekend. She gave
me tip for adoption. My foster parents made me theirs.

After the Marines, I never went back. Sent them a postcard every now and then. Guess they didn't stick either. Sweet
folks. They were a comfort, making me feel like I was loved.
And I thought Mom loved me still, so that made two places.
But not everything that loved was true.

Not sure what exactly made me stop owning my life and
maybe my death. Might have been seeing my mother in her
drunken junkie glory. Could have been afterwards, when
Grandpa sent me to my father's military cemetery and I saw
Dad standing there on a Sunday morning, trees and grave
marker visible right through him. Looked like he'd been waiting for me, seeing me coming from years away. Didn't say
nothing. Not that kind of spirit, Grandpa said. Killed before
his time came to pick up the fight.

I never asked what Grandpa meant by that. I mean, bad
enough I was doing whatever a voice in my head told me to do.
Dad looked at me like he knew what was coming and couldn't
do anything to protect me. We couldn't talk no matter how
hard we tried, and Grandpa didn't translate or act like a telephone between us. Dad did try touching my face. All I felt was
cold. Wish it was him in my head instead of Grandpa. But apparently there wasn't enough First in him to carry on that part
of the tradition either. Well, I guess that was Grandpa's fault.

Wish I'd cared enough to run away again and look for my
daddy's family. Ran away for everything else that popped into
my head. But Grandpa told me they had enough problems
without me, and I still believe him.

Wish a lot of things I can never have.

So here I was again in dream time, feeling Grandpa trying to steer me away again, but this time I wasn't having it. I
wasn't letting life go through me again. And I wasn't going to
wait for that blood-cursed monster to hunt me down somewhere down the road. It was here, and so was I. I was going
after it.

You're going after it, aren't you.

I still didn t say anything. Didn t ask about responsibility
either. I knew I'd get a load of tradition and spirit talk. Grandpa
came down on all fours with a thump that almost woke me up
and stared at me through one eye, up close, so that it seemed
I was peering through a furry porthole at a wooded landscape
of rolling hills and bright streams under a golden full moon. I
wanted to hump the moon.

What's wrong with that?

You can't have her.

Why? Because I'm not Indian enough?

Nobody gets her. She's from the other world.

Same place as the monster?

Yes.

So the ones from the other world get us but we can't get
them?

That getting is a transgression. That's why the ones who get
us are monsters. If one of us caught her, that one would become a
monster.

I held her.

That's sweet. But it wasn't getting. Do you need a talk about
the difference?

I didn't bother answering. Instead, I climbed up on to
Grandpa's back and rode while he walked through the woods,
grabbing a beehive full of honey and gurgling up fish by dipping his jaws into a stream and snapping them closed when they swam over his tongue. Didn't mind the fishing, but the
pissed-off bees were a pain.

She likes me.

She likes everyone who's brave and strong and full of medicine.

She ever like you?

Never saw her in my life.

Then you're just jealous.

She's going to be the death of you. Or the life. Either way, it'll
be the hardest thing you've done with your life yet.

Why?

This time it was Grandpa who didn't answer. He shrugged
me off on a hilltop and left me sitting on a rock. Waiting for
a vision.

You ever fight the monster? I asked Grandpa.

But he didn't answer that question either.

I woke up too late to get to work on time and thought I
deserved a sick day to recover and said so when I called in.
Showered, dressed in the nice jeans and shirt, the clean boots,
just in case I found her. Put the 1911 .45 under my shirt, just
in case I found the monster too. I call it a memento from the
service, but of course they don't issue .45s anymore.

I went out into the busy city day looking for my heartbeat
woman.

I started at the train station where I'd made my jump.
Scene of the crime. Works in old movies.

The train was pulling out just as I went through the turnstile. After rush hour and a train, the platform was empty,
except for the requisite homeless guy on a seat with a bag
between his legs, head down, asleep.

I walked yesterday's walk. Saw her running through again,
and the thing. Felt her bump. Smelled her smell. Retraced the
path I'd taken to the edge. Went back down, slow and easy this time. Looked for clues. A scarf. A shoe. A tiny stone from
a piece of jewelry. A purse with ID. The kinds of things left
behind in old movies to get the hero to the woman who was
going to be the death of him.

No train was coming, but the minute I spent down there
was sad and crazy and made me feel as vulnerable as a blasted
bleeding body in a combat zone. I struggled to get back up on
the deck, searching for the Homeland Security camera and
thinking I'd better use the other exit, when the homeless man
hooked me under the armpit and helped me up.

A sign of life. Maybe this station was home. He could've
seen something. The clue.

I brushed myself off. "Thanks, guy. I know this looks weird,
but I was here yesterday, the guy who jumped down there,
maybe you saw me? I'm trying to find the girl," I explained,
reaching into my pocket to pull out a fiver, whether he knew
anything or not. "She fell down first, but nobody believed me-"

"So am I."

Yeah. It was that kind of movie.

The homeless man looked like a braided rope of sinewy,
dried meat nearly lost inside a soiled overcoat, face hidden
under a massive beard, smelling like an open sewer. He picked
a crisp, fresh shirt and pants out of the shopping bag next to
him, slipped out of the coat, started changing.

I headed back the way I'd come, figuring the token booth
clerk had already called the cops about the terrorist on the
tracks who he'd spotted in his monitors. But the booth was
closed. Could have sworn it was open when I came down. I
went for the exit, but the gate was locked into place. Darkness
flooded the stairs leading to the street. The lights went out
on the MetroCard machines, then in the overhead fixtures.
Something pushed my chest and I fell back into the monster, fully dressed and itself again: overlapping out-of-synch images
of a blond slab of muscle and a thatch of shadows grinning
teeth and blazing laser-painting eyes.