Walking the Sleep (9 page)

He hops over sips a drink from a filthy puddle in the desert sand.

“You have to watch it now. Get out of the desert. Evil things here what…”

“You’ve been feeding. You’re not different. What the fuck are you talking to me for?”

“Wrong, wrong, wrong….well, right in a sense, but wrong. I’m only different in that my choice is more selective than the others. I read too. I like to read. I choose to feed only when I perceive one needs to be fed upon.”

“If people knew about ravens they would burn every one of your filthy oil ridden carcasses.”

“No doubt, mate. No doubt.” He cocked his head to the sycamore trees again.

“Just the same, mate, you need to walk.”

“What’s your name?”

“Ian.”

“Ok, Ian. Thanks, I guess. But why are you trying to help me?”

“Interesting you. I watched you before and listened to some things you blathered out when you wandered about. Figured you could use a hand….wing…hah!”

I stand and dust myself off.

“Ok, Ian. Thanks.”

“Nothing, mate. Walk now ehh.”

“Yeah.”

“Look for you again, Mate.”

“Do that, Ian.”

“Cheers.”

He Flies away and up.

Choose the path

Find it

Lift
the cup

Sip it

Drink the cup

The nectar is yours

Distilled in the pain

You gave

Drink it

It’s now yours to sip

So I walked again. Keeping the sycamore trees up to my north and down wind. I crept and moved between boulders and Joshua trees. I headed back south. Somewhere near the
California border I circled back and headed through the desert. Back up and towards Flagstaff Arizona… the hard way. Through the red clay and mud of the Colorado River, I made my way to the reservation I had visited so many times as a child. My grandparents were Navajo missionaries in the 1970’s. The reservations were not far from the hell of a hundred years before that time. Poverty was staggering. I was a poor child and going to the reservation made me think I was anything but poor. People pleased and thankful to get our government commodities: canned everything from turkey, to peanut butter, to bags of flour and rice. Happy and excited to see our trash bags full of jackets, blankets, and discarded clothes. Things my grandfather worked tirelessly all year to gather, every year, to bring to the reservation.

There was no good reason to be there either. I just walked onto the reservation I had visited with my parents as a kid. I see a large pond near a trickle of the
Colorado River.

It was humid, and gray thunderheads threatened another warm downpour. I was maybe ten. Some older Navajo boys stood around the pond and took turns chopping the heads off of huge grasshoppers.

They had tiny guillotines that seemed to be made with perfection to exactly fit the head of the huge grasshoppers that swarmed the desert in spring. In went the head, a push, and snip! Off came the head into a growing pile. I watched in disgust and terror. I only realized much later in life that it was a cigar snipper. For years I thought they made tiny insect guillotines.

I hear a yell and the boys tear off into the creosote leaving me with a juicy pile of grasshopper heads.

“What are you doing Red Pup?”

I was called Red Pup by the Navajo because my mom had flaming red hair and very pale skin. As a missionary’s kid, I was treated with love, and with hate, it depended upon where I was. The kids mostly hated me and tortured me when the elders were out of earshot and sight.

“I didn’t do it.”

He was a very old Navajo with deep ridges and lines in his face. Eyes chiseled out of sorrow and sand storms from ten thousand days on the reservation. He leaned down and looked at the pile of grasshopper heads oozing and twitching.

“These boys of ours no longer respect mother Earth, nor God’s creation, Red Pup.”

His black hat was encircled with beads and leather. His hands were covered in thick turquoise and silver rings. He kicked red dirt over the heads and motioned me back to the church area. My mother didn’t believe me and the look she gave meant one thing, I would get the belt later. My mother was regarded with a certain amount of respect by the lovers and haters of the missionaries.

Skin of alabaster, blue eyes, and red hair. And she was obviously the leader of our little tribe of half breeds. My dad was half Choctaw from
Missouri and it was obvious in all but three of his children. The Navajo saw it, we all saw it. Only one of my sisters was fish skinned, red haired, and angry.

The other two, as myself, were obviously half breeds, and we suffered at the hands of the more angry of the kids. Especially in private. They hated me the most. The only boy. A little half breed boy.

Red Pup. Son of the angry blue eye. The Navajo, at that time, were much more inclined to venture into the cities of Arizona than the Hopi, or the Zuni. The Hopi, especially those of the Third Mesa, stayed put. And it was with awe that the Hopi treated the guitar playing red haired blue eye. With respect they came up and touched her skin. The braver touched her hair. I heard the Hopi boys say she was spirit. For whatever reason, and I certainly had no idea at the time, the Hopi were much kinder to me and my sisters.

They revered my mother and treated me with kindness, if not with warmth, as they were not sure about us, or me. I think that was the first time I ever felt a little bit respected as a child. A look that I was different and special. Not different and deserving of derision or torture.

The Chief took us to the Third Mesa many times in his old International Scout 4x4. Up the long and muddy roads of red clay in treacherous conditions, I see that now, but for then it always seemed exciting and happy. Past the rows and hills with prayer sticks. Small shafts of wood decorated with beads and feathers. Thousands planted into the sides of the hills as we travelled up and up.

Then the children chasing the International Scout. And being greeted by the Hopi Chief, and the hugs for my parents. I felt very special then. And the children. They didn’t want to play with me, but they smiled and pointed. Once in a while a braver Hopi near my age would run up and offer me a small token. An etched stone. A carved piece of creosote root with feathers. As soon as we were there, we would have to leave. I would always wave and watch as we headed back down the road from the Hopi reservation. Clutching the gifts from friends that I never knew.

I walked and walked until I found the spot I had found an arrow head in. With my grandfather. He had taught me where and how to look. Had warned me that he had found very few arrowheads but assured me that if I continued, I would find one. And I did. A light brown small game arrowhead near the bank of a tributary of the Colorado River. I found one. I remember my grandfather smiling and saying, “Well what do you know!”

The thunderclouds were looming and the lightening opened up the sky. Cracks in the universe. Fire breaking apart the world above and God peeking through.

And then the rumble. The shaking that followed of thunder no one can know unless they feel the power of the waves hit the body. And you feel it pass through you. The electricity in the air and the first heavy drops of rain hit the parched red clay and soil. Because the sun and air will suck the water back. And the earth with suck it down. In seconds it can leave.

The heavy drops hit the creosote, and the lightening cracks electricity into the being, It fills every pore and ignites every sense making one puny. A bug in the universe. I see the riverbed start to flow, maybe six inches from a trickle in minutes. Trudging to the center of the riverbed I sit and let the warm rainwater envelop me. It pushes harder and rises. I wait. Now I know why I came here and I wait.

Soon it pulls me down the wash as desolate earth becomes river and life. Soon I am pushed and thrown about. The water rises and pushes. I tumble. I smash against the rocks and I do feel pain. This is something I have learned to experience now. I hear my body smash against the boulders and I feel the bones crack. I do struggle to upright my body but I am tumbled over and over. Swimming is useless. I am a discarded action figure in a storm drain. But I look up in time to smile, to see the flash flood of an easy ten foot rush of water. The flash flood has pushed ever loose tree, every bit of refuse the desert can muster, bones, and beer cans, and tires, and round rocks, they all smash into me with the glory of a freight train and the rumble of a hurricane swell wave.

And there is no longer a distinction between reality, DAY, NIGHT, or travelling now. I walk and I see. The fear and anger are gone. I feel no more frustration. As I leave the worry and anger, I become more aware and less aware. I know what walking the sleep is and I can feel the terror of being sucked into another’s consciousness, but now I accept it. I don’t fight the horror anymore as it will come. It might be my pain, it might be someone else’s. I used to shake and fight. I used to writhe in agony pulling myself from another’s, and then I stopped. I cannot not walk the sleep because it will happen. But I can gnash my teeth and struggle out of it. Awaking to a place I do not know. And just walk. Just wander. I no longer question a pull or call.

A reason for going where I do not know, nor thought of going to, because it doesn’t matter. I will walk and wander where I am called. The calling is a voice that I can hear in the wind, the rain, the thunder, and the early seconds of DAY. Voice without words.

When I am not called I wander back to the
San Clemente pier, or the pier at Newport, or the pier at Huntington. I stay there for however long I want to. I watch the summer filled with people, families, fishermen, dead people, and enjoy it. I know of no way to determine the years I have been here. Or the hours. Time is something of what I am not. It goes on, or it does not go on. I do not try and figure it out anymore. I did. I used to for hours. I looked at the fashions, the dress, the people, the food, the cars, the talk, but none of it gives any clue to any passage of time. And so I gave. I stopped trying to figure anything out. I am here. I walk. I feel. I smoke cigarettes and I drink whiskey. I walk the sleep. And I go where I have to go. Where I feel I need to go. And there is no anger now when I go, and there is nothing there for me.

“Hey, Sam.”

“Well, look who’s back. The Prodigal. Welcome home, son.”

“Fuck you, Sam.”

He laughs and lights a Camel. A bottle of Jameson’s whiskey sits on the counter half empty.

“Getting the drink on, ehh?”

He tosses a pack of cigarettes to me. “On the house, kid.”

“You’re a saint.”

“Shhh, not too loud.”

I light a Marlboro red and drag hard.

“Yep, took me a bit.”

“Yeah, takes a bit.”

“What’s new, Sam?”

He laughs now and it seems very real. A good laugh.

He stares hard at me with a glassy smile at the corner of his eyes.

“How’s the wandering?”

“Not wandering, Sam. Just travelling last I could tell.”

“Good. Good for you.”

“Met a raven. Ian was his name.”

Sam takes a long pull of the Jameson’s and eyes me suspiciously for the first time I can recall.

“What the fuck you talking to ravens for kid?”

“Not a choice. He could have been picking me apart, you know? I just woke up from the sleep and he was there. Started talking to me. Actually gave me a heads up to get out before the rest saw me.”

“Out in the desert?”

“Yeah, how’d you know? I thought you never left. You’re a fuckin stayer right?”

“Think I was always a stayer? I wandered around a bit before I became a stayer kid.”

“Uhuhh. That makes sense.”

“What this raven say…Ian was it?”

“Nothing important really. Fat fucker. Definitely feeder, you know? Just looked at me and told me to get the fuck out of where I was. I appreciated it.”

‘Hmmph…there’s no good ravens, kid.”

“Yeah, well if he kept me from waking up to being picked to shreds and the screaming of insults and sins, then he’s better than most here.”

“Give ya that, kid. Never ran into any that weren’t after the deepest sins in the soul. They’ll peck through every fiber to get to yer heart…deepest sins and regrets.”

“Yeah, I saw that, Sam. Been lucky so far, but seen them rip a woman’s heart into pieces to share. Lift their greasy gullets and swallow. Watched terrified as they
screamed her sins and tore at her flesh”

“
I know nothing more than you about the fucking ravens. I know they ain’t here.”

“Yeah, I notice they like the desert though.”

“Yep.”

“Problem for me is I get called there a lot sometimes. I end up walking the sleep there sometimes. Can’t tell you how many times I woke up in the desert.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem.”

“So the last time, this fat fucking raven with an Australian accent is hoping around and staring at me. You know? The terror. Like knowing it’s going to be twenty or thirty in seconds. Ripping and tearing….but he didn’t.”

“Fucking weird, kid.”

“Yeah. I know. Fucking weird.”

A couple walks into the liquor store giggling and drunk. Her head is hanging half off but she’s laughing and hugging her man. He’s twenty something in biker garb. His head is half gone and he’s laughing. Smiling through a mouth dissected in half with broken teeth. His head is gaping and open. I see his brain pulsing. Sam breaks away from me.

“Hey kids!”

She slurs and puts her bloody hand out to show a pawn shop wedding ring.

“We just got married!!!!!! Woooohoooo!” she laughs and he laughs with her.

“Hey congrats, you crazy kids!” Sam puts there bottle of Jim Beam in a sack. “On the house!”

“Thanks, Bro!” The half headed man smiles and a bloody tooth drops on the counter. They walk out into the night laughing.

“They came in yesterday from the other side. Nice Harley, Roadglide, I think, big bagger Harley. They were riding up to Vegas to get married. Heard they slammed into a semi at ninety outside of Baker on the way back. Damn shame. Seemed like good kids on that side.”

“They came in here before they rode out?”

“Yep. I sold them a few bottles of Beam and cigarettes. They were fucked up”

“Did you know they were going to smash that semi coming back?”

“Hmmmm I dunno. Maybe.”

“Where are you, Sam.?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you saw these guys come in. You sold them more booze and watched them ride away. You probably knew they were going to die. I mean where the fuck are you?”

“Huh. I dunno. Never thought about it much. I never talked to people much this side. You’re the first one that stuck around long enough.”

“Are you dead, Sam!?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Fuck you, Sam.”

He laughs and drains the bottle of Jameson’s.

“See you later, Sam.”

“Yeah, kid. Sorry.”

“No worries, Sam. Sorry.”

“Not a problem, kid. I don’t have many answers.”

“How long have I been here?”

“No clue.”

“How long you think I will be here?”

“Got some place to go?”

“Nah. Don’t think so.”

“No fucking clue kid. Hey!”

I stop as the bell on the door rings above my ear.

“Watch the ravens, kid. Don’t trust a one. Don’t be fooled by that fucking Australian raven. There’s nothing but evil there.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

I wander into the night. NIGHT.