Mask of Flies (11 page)

Elias climbed up the
stairs, and stopped in front of Angeni’s room. His canine shadow
sat at the foot of the stairs with his tail between his legs.
One-two-three
. Not
knowing the reason why, he counted his attempts on his great
grandmother’s life. Perhaps it was guilt. His people, the
Haudenosuanee
, where
taught to show their elders the highest level of respect, Elias held
nothing but contempt for Angeni; the cancer that destroyed his entire
family. He had never known the claimed beauty that once was his great
grandmother, only the horror of a woman whose mind was a beacon for
the strangers that lie dormant, outside of life or death.

* * *

One—
after
father died, Elias collected rotten crab apples found all around the
Kingbird land and boiled the seeds into a deadly concentration. He
put the cyanide in great grandmother’s water, enough to kill a
bear. She vomited through her shattered mouth shortly after ingesting
it. But she awoke—all the same—the next morning.

Two—
when
Meni had taken her own life, Elias unlatched the belt from Meni’s
neck and laid her corpse on the bed. He took the belt in hand into
Angeni’s room across the hallway. When he wrapped the belt around
her neck, a burning orange light flashed in his eyes, and he lost
consciousness, awaking four hours later in the barn with a splitting
headache. Something protected her wretched existence, but Elias had
no idea what it could be.

Three—
a
year later, the Kingbird estate was haunted lonely. A mason jar of
white tea and shine provoked thoughts of fire.
The
diseased flesh of house and horror should be burnt in unison
.
But Elias fell asleep with his dreams of destruction, at the
workbench inside the barn, once his family’s ancestral longhouse.

The next day, he found
his car parked at a severe angle, and the screen door in the front of
the house slammed open and close, with the wind. And the awful
presence willed away.

* * *

Inside the empty
room, the air was clean and light. Elias walked in and looked around.
Always in a rush to exit Angeni’s presence, the furnishings seemed
foreign to him. The bed tucked into the corner, and a small writing
desk sat against the far wall.
I
don’t remember this being here.
Elias sat down at the
desk for the first time and stared at the wall. Running his hands
across the edges of the old teak desk, he noticed hinges behind the
top surface. Without hesitating he opened it, examining the contents
of the inner compartment. Inside lay a large skeleton key, once
polished brass, but now drab metallic. The key’s handle, an
ornament of an eye surrounded by an Ouroboros—a snake eating its
own tail. In his hands it felt at least two or three pounds. He set
it aside and found two leather bound books stacked in the far corner.
The smaller had the same symbol—Ouroboros surrounding an eye—on
the cover.

The inner contents
contained miniscule text, obscure characters unlike any written
language he had ever seen. Each symbol matched to a letter of the
alphabet.
A key to a cipher
.
He set it down in his lap and opened the larger book.

The binder far more
weathered than the cipher. A deep layer of dust coated the wrinkled
leather. A nylon strap wrapped the book’s width and ran through a
brass concho, securing the contents. He slid the stainless steel
pocket knife from his jean pocket, and sliced through the nylon.

Written on the inside
cover: “To the lovely Angeni on her 24th birthday. A place for the
brilliant thoughts to rest”. At the bottom of the inscription, the
writer signed in violent loops.
Roger
Graisley.

Elias took the book
down the steps. He set it down on the small pub table in the kitchen.
The bottle of Maker’s Mark sat on the windowsill over the sink, and
glimmered enticingly. He grabbed a glass, poured himself four
fingers, and twisted up a cigarette. Squinting to avoid getting smoke
in his eyes, he opened to the first page of Angeni Kingbird’s
journal.

October 30, 1904

Today I received a
journal from Roger. “For your birthday Angeni,” he said.
“Recollection can be a slippery thing. And it never hurts to
practice pen in proper English. Even a gifted mind requires a bit of
practical exercise from time to time”

I’ve been writing in
English since I was a little girl but took no offense from his
presumption. The Seneca people do not celebrate birthdays on a yearly
basis, so the gift surprised me. I appreciated it all the same.

“Won’t you come
visit with me in Lily Dale,” He asked again, while displaying an
address neatly written on the book’s inside jacket.

“I’m sorry, but I
cannot leave my family now. “I didn’t mention my recent union to
Aart. Or that he recently moved into my family’s house. All of
these things on my mind, wanting to break out, but I was afraid that
Roger would stop his visits to the reservation if I told him.

I left him in the marketplace, and
returned home to my old and new family.

Aart’s family was
one of the few left on the reservation who still made their living
hunting wild game. His sisters took the hide and constructed it into
traditional Seneca clothing. The men smoked and dehydrated the meat.
Their wares usually sold quickly at their booth by the train station.
It was a happy day for Father, indeed, when he was approached with
the proposition of the union.

When I returned home, a
doe skin dress decorated in turquoise beads lay strewn across our
bed. Then heavy arms wrapped me up from behind.

“A gift for you. Try
it on.” Aart’s bristled chin dug into my neckline. His breath
reeked of whiskey.

“Right now?” I went
towards the bed and broke his embrace.

He took the journal
from my hands. “What’s this?”

“Just a book for
notes and lists.”

He rubbed the leather
binding. “Looks expensive. How much was it?”

I saw his expression
harden, that easy grin turned into tight, white lips. “A gift for
my talents.”

“Talking to ghosts
again . . . All right.” He flung the book on the bed and walked out
of the room. Aart claimed to believe in the Great Spirit, in Great
Creation, but he laughed when I had told him of my capabilities.

I felt badly for
angering him. He simply wanted to see me happily try on the dress.
And it was beautiful. I put it on, and the beads bounced off each
other, sounding like rain. Then I took my hair out the braid and
brushed it straight. When I came out the room, Mother sat by herself
in the kitchen.

“Where’s Aart,” I
asked her.

She turned around from
chopping a variety of vegetables. “He went out hunting. And took
your father with him.” Aart had reinvigorated Father’s interest
in hunting. The trip to the south, in the Allegheny wilderness, had
good intentions. Aart wanted to discuss plans for the future and seek
Father’s wisdom.

I returned to my room
and shut the door. Alone. I sat in the chair by the window, and let
the silence in.

I heard my heartbeat,
heard my blood.

Mother, I heard her,
felt her in the kitchen, still chopping away. My blood. And I let the
silence in.

I heard a dead tree
branch snap and my teeth felt the cold. I heard Father, then Aart, my
blood.

“I’m tired of
scraping by,” Aart’s voice said. “The game grows thinner every
year.”

“Your family has done
well Aart. I know the winter is tough—” Father breathed heavily;
it had been some time since he traveled into the woods.

“They have done well
by contracting our land out for timber, but that well has run dry.
And the earnings from the booth are meager at best.”

Father sighed. “What
are you proposing boy?”

“With the railroad
running a straight line from town to Buffalo, I could take a factory
or construction job in the city, easily double our income. I want to
give Angeni a house and children,” He laughed. “Some
grandchildren for you.”

Father had always been accepting of
the changes and opportunities imposed by the white men; the Quakers
set up a school in Salamanca, when I was just a child, and Father
entrusted them to teach me. “It is an admirable gesture. I know my
wife and Angeni would be happy to hear of your hopes for the future.
But remember every new pathway bears new peril.”

The silence bore its
weight on my mind, until I withdrew back into the ordinary channels.
And the morning light woke me from bed. Aart lay next to me,
breathing raggedly, asleep. He must’ve tucked me in after the hunt.

I stepped out to Mother
and Grandmother grinding corn meal. Grandmother smacked her toothless
gums, making her face compress unto itself. She startled me by
cackling abruptly at something Mother said. I offered to help them,
but they looked at me like I was crazy. “Not in that brand new
dress,” Mother said.

Inside our bed room,
Aart still slept and snored. I sat in my chair, waiting for him to
awake. The rhythm of his breathing soothed me; how his energy waxed
and waned. Simplicity interwoven with the complexities of my new
husband: a passionate man with good intentions, but there lay a
nascent darkness within that passion, especially when he angered.
Looking up the pine trees outside, my mind gravitated to the silence
between his breaths. Nature wanted me to look through its lens.

Up the pine, a family of grey
squirrels prepared for the depths of winter. They gathered twigs and
needles to fortify their drey. My vision drifted outward: out the
window, up the tree. Amongst the squirrels, atop the great pine, I
could see the trading outpost, the markets and train station below. I
needed the squirrels to stay, to keep my mind from meandering into
the sky.

Reaching out to
animal life can be terrifying. I’ll never forget that skinny stray
dog Father used to leave scraps for. When I was coming to terms with
my gift, my mind had locked onto the dog. He did nothing resist my
intrusion. I felt the sickness in its guts, felt the worms writhe and
wriggle. A sick pang of hunger made me aware that I was eating for
many. That hunger consumed me, so much that I lacked the facilities
to break out of the dog’s mind. I wandered, looking for scraps,
lost on my own reservation, unsuccessful in satiating the wild
hunger. In the forest, the dog’s body began to shut down. Inside
the blackness of death the hunger faded away. I awoke in my bed, in
my own skin, the next morning.

The squirrels of the
great pine were proud of their home and the view. I kept my distance
and quietly observed through their eyes, like a looking glass, taking
in the panoramic view of the outpost.

The Trading Outpost was
all hustle and bustle as usual: money traded hands from laid over
passengers, awaiting their train on the Erie Rail, to booth
proprietors for local crops and tax free tobacco. Red’s Tobacco
stand had a line of customers that backed up into the produce carts
of the Marketplace. Shoppers with baskets in hand squeezed squash and
smelled sweet corn. Businessmen in their early winter top coats
sampled the fresh tobacco in their pipes. They read the papers and
listened for the next train.

The agrarian economy
still provided for most of the families that lived on the
reservation, but the train brought the allure of the city. Father
would tell me stories of when this was a small village with just a
few rows of Longhouses, and how he could have never imagined in his
wildest dreams the changes that have occurred in his lifetime.

The electric lamps
around the train station glowed into the dreary morning. Complex
mechanisms set in place by complex people brought the power harnessed
from Niagara Falls all the way to Salamanca. Some of the elders
feared electricity, thought it was the deadly byproduct of
manipulating nature, but most were in awe of its power.

Then I felt Roger’s presence
below. He was looking for me. I broke away, and left the squirrels to
their preparation for the oncoming winter. I opened my eyes, somewhat
wobbled by the abrupt change in perspective. And Aart still slept.

I got out of the
chair as quiet as possible, and crept out the door behind Mother and
Grandmother. I went to find Roger. He was a regular in Salamanca,
says he can’t find better produce at any of the local farmers
markets. Roger looked handsome enough, but my attraction to him is
mostly intellectual: his understanding of my gift. He always spoke of
the town north-west that borders Lake Cassadaga, full of people with
talents similar to mine. While tempting, I knew his request was more
than a friendly gesture. I could feel it in the way he looks at me. I
was spoken for and shouldn’t entertain such an idea. But still, I
continued to watch for him.

Roger inspected a small
pumpkin with a gloved hand when he spotted me. “You look absolutely
striking in that dress.” He paused and looked me over a second
time.

I took the pumpkin from
him. “This one is no good. It has a soft spot. You need to take
your gloves off to check these things.”

He smiled at me. “I’m
just looking around, killing time.” He never did buy anything. “Did
you have a wonderful birthday?”

“It was a day as good
as any.”

“In England, everyone
has to be nice to you on your birthday, and buy you gifts.”

I put his pumpkin back
into its cart. The attendant scowled at me. “Here in Salamanca, us
Seneca have only one birthday: the day we are born.”

“I can understand
that—my people view it as a reason to celebrate another year of
living on this planet.” He went silent and looked at the ground. “I
will be returning to teaching at the University for a semester, and
won’t be able to visit you for a while.” I remember him saying
that he specialized in Physical Anthropology: analyzing human
development over varied cultures of the world. I often wondered if
his interest lies within me as a person, or as a subject of a thesis,
a case study, a living sociological project.