Текст книги "Dirt"

Автор книги: David Vann

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter 9

They were all in rocking chairs on the front deck.

He’s a chameleon, Jennifer said. He’s all white now. What happened to the red?

What did you do? his mother asked.

Fishing, he said, but his voice came out hollow and shaky. His teeth were chattering. He was careful up the porch steps, set his lance beside the door. He felt bony.

I guess we’ll be feasting on trout tonight, then, his aunt said, and Jennifer laughed.

Today was just to figure out where they’re at, Galen said.

They’re in the creek.

Stop, his mother said.

That’s okay, Galen said. I saw the creek today in a way you’ve never seen it, Helen. You have no idea what the creek is.

I’ve only been coming here my whole life.

That’s the problem. Your whole life you’ve been only half waking.

Honestly, she said. What are you going to do when you have to go out into the real world?

The way you’ve done? Don’t you live in a crap apartment paid for by Grandma? He was still having trouble getting the words out, his chest hollow. He really needed to warm up. I’m taking a bath, he said.

You’ll have to turn on the water heater, his mother said. Takes about twenty minutes to warm up.

Fuck, he said. I’m really cold.

Galen, his grandmother said.

Sorry.

Are we leaving today? his grandmother asked. She looked suddenly worried.

No, Mom, Galen’s mother said. We just got here. We have plenty of time.

Oh, she said, and settled back in her chair. I hate it when I can’t remember.

Galen stepped inside and ran into the hide-a-bed. Can’t you wait and put out the bed at night? he yelled.

You entitled little shit, his aunt yelled back.

Helen. It was a chorus from his mother and grandmother.

Galen climbed over the bed. In the bathroom, he flicked the switch for the water heater, closed the door and slumped against it and felt so sad suddenly. He’d never fought with his aunt, never in his life. The best of his early memories were with her, in fact. An inflatable pool on his grandparents’ lawn, and she ran around the edge of it dragging him by the arms, making a whirlpool. Her laughter then always generous and real. He didn’t know what had happened. Some mistake, something that shifted the wrong way in the last couple days. She’d made comments before, but he’d thought they were just in fun.

Galen didn’t understand how lives were supposed to overlap. He had brought each of these people into this incarnation to teach him a specific lesson. But if his aunt had a spirit or a soul, too, then she had her own lessons to learn, and how did all of this line up? How could it be synchronized?

Maybe a person could be put on pause. His aunt still angry about her childhood. She hadn’t realized yet that memory was only an illusion. Maybe you could remain stuck forever if you refused to learn a particular lesson. But she hadn’t seemed angry before. Maybe it was Jennifer growing older. Maybe that was the difference. She was fighting for Jennifer now. In his earliest memories of his aunt, Jennifer didn’t yet exist.

Galen’s T-shirt and shorts were damp. He hadn’t had a towel at the creek. His skin rough with goose bumps, shivering.

His grandmother, unable to remember anything, was definitely on pause. Someone taking a break from the game. Then there was the big question of what the game was even about. Why were we all trying to learn lessons? Galen knew it was so we’d finally be without attachment, but why did attachment ever have to exist in the first place?

Twenty minutes was a very long time. He stood and took off his damp shirt and shorts, grabbed a dry towel and rubbed himself with it, tried to get some heat through friction. The ceiling sagging in here, long planks hanging low in the center, a single bare bulb for light. This room an addition, not the original cabin, so apparently the old-timers didn’t need baths. Maybe they just washed in the creek. They had all been tougher in the past. Though of course the past didn’t really exist. History another illusion. It meant only what we made of it now.

Galen checked the tap a few times, and finally it was hot enough to run the bath. He sat in the tub while it filled, the most delicious heat. It was possible, of course, that he was the only real person here, the only one with a spirit or soul. It could be that each soul lived in a mirror-land with no one else around.

Galen dozed in the tub, sleepy from the heat, but then Jennifer was banging at the door. I’m next, she said. Hurry up. I want a bath before dinner.

So Galen rose and dried, careful on his thighs, which were hot and red again, and walked out in a towel.

I can see your ribs, Jennifer said. Even in your back. That’s gross.

This is only a shell, Galen said. It doesn’t matter.

We’ll see, Jennifer said. She had her hair up and was already wrapped in a towel.

Galen went upstairs and wondered what that meant. His aunt and mother and grandmother all on the porch still. They hadn’t started dinner yet, so it would be a while. He slipped under the covers and grabbed the Hustler from his duffel. He had to be careful not to come, in case she was planning a visit.

In the Hustler, the man was dressed as a musketeer, with a long feather in his hat. He was taking a break from his duties, and he had met several women who were short on clothing. The photo shoot was like a bad school play, but it didn’t matter. Galen felt turned on anyway.

He was listening for anyone coming up the stairs, and finally that stressed him out too much, so he put the magazine away and waited.

Samsara, attachment to the world. Sexual desire was the worst of it. A need he could feel in his spine, all the way up his back and neck, connecting to his mouth. It was crazy, absolutely crazy, and it made time crawl. Only a eunuch could feel peace. Neutered. That was the fastest path to enlightenment.

He didn’t really believe Jennifer would visit, but she did. She came up the steps and he turned on the bedside lamp. She was holding a deck of cards, wearing a skirt and T-shirt. I told them we’re playing cards before dinner, she said.

She sat on his mother’s bed and dealt pinochle hands on the bedside table. Her skirt was short, and Galen couldn’t help trying to peek. He was embarrassed.

It’s okay, she said, spreading her knees. You can look.

She wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

We have a few rules, she said. One is that you can only do what I say. The other is that you can’t make any sound. And of course you can’t tell anyone.

Yes, he said.

She smiled. Look at you. You’re so desperate. Twenty-two, and you’ve never had any pussy.

Have you had sex?

Of course, she said. Everyone has. Except you. Now lie back, and scoot down a bit.

He pulled the covers aside.

No, she said. Keep the covers on. And if anyone comes up the stairs, sit up quick and grab your pinochle hand.

Okay, he said. But what are we doing?

She climbed onto the mattress with her knees on either side of his head, then spread her knees and lowered down just above his face.

Wow, he said. She looked better than the women in the magazine, younger. So perfect, he said. So beautiful.

Don’t make any sound.

Can I touch?

You can.

He felt the inside of her thigh with his cheek, with his nose. So soft and warm.

Use your whiskers, she said, so he ran the edge of his jaw along her thigh.

I like that, she said. Turn your face to the side and hold still.

He did as he was told, and felt her wet lips on his cheek.

Sandpaper, she said. I like that.

Galen felt a little annoyed, because he couldn’t see with his head turned to the side. She was humping his jaw, which was kind of like she was having sex without him. He turned his face toward her but she pushed him back down, a hand on his forehead, and kept humping his jaw. He didn’t like this at all. The whole side of his face was wet.

Okay, she said finally. She pulled his face upright and sat on it. You can lick.

Galen could hardly breathe. He moved his tongue around, but it didn’t seem to matter much what he did. She moved up higher so that his nose was inside her, and she humped his nose. It didn’t seem like his tongue was even on her pussy anymore. It was lower than that.

Lick my ass, she whispered, and he realized that was what he was doing.

I like that, she moaned. I like that. She sped up, bucking harder against his nose, which was locked into a kind of groove, and he just kept licking.

Galen couldn’t hear well, the way she was humping his head down into the pillow in heavy swings, and he worried about someone coming up the stairs. The bed was probably knocking against the wall by now.

He was breathing through his mouth, and having to swallow. He felt like he was drowning. His entire face and forehead a slick.

I like that, she kept saying. She grabbed the back of his head with a hand and pulled him in closer. Shake your head as you do it, she said. So he shook his head back and forth as he licked.

Ooh, she said. Yeah. Keep licking.

He realized he had slowed down a bit with his tongue. It was hard to do it all at once: breathing, licking, shaking his head back and forth, trying to keep his whiskers in play.

Her thighs tensed, and she pulled his face up harder and slowed down. He could feel her trembling. She pushed into him hard enough once more to break off his nose, and then she was jerking in place.

Aah, she was saying. Aah. She rose off of his face and had a few more jerks. The muscles in her thighs, the soft lines, the beautiful pink. He couldn’t believe he was seeing this. He’d lost his boner at first, but he had it back now, and he couldn’t wait to put it in.

She climbed off, and he turned to the side to wipe his face on the sheet. Even his hair was wet.

Wow, he said.

She had her skirt back down and sat on his mother’s bed. He pulled his sheet and blanket back, and she looked at his boner. Sorry, she said. I’m done.

What?

You can’t have everything at once.

But I didn’t get anything.

So entitled. My mother’s right about you. You got my pussy, which is more than you deserve. Do you know how many boys at school would kill just to see my pussy?

Can I just look at it while I jack off, then?

No. I’m done. Pick up your pinochle hand.

Fuck, Galen said.

Don’t be a baby.

Galen felt very angry suddenly. But he didn’t want to say the wrong thing. So he sat against the wall, propped on his pillow, and picked up his cards.

There you go, she said. And you might want to wash your face before dinner.

Chapter 10

Dinner was not chicken and dumplings. That would come later, when it could cook all day in the stew pot. Dinner tonight was a tuna casserole. A jar of mayonnaise, several large cans of tuna, a large bag of potato chips, and squares of American cheese on top.

You’ve really gone all out, Galen said.

Galen’s mother was just setting the casserole on a hot pad in the center of the small table. The kitchen was tiny, and they were all elbow to elbow.

You’ve used an entire bag of potato chips, Galen said. Do you have any idea how much salt that is?

He was already starting to sweat, the cast-iron stove emanating incredible heat. They had the windows and back door open, but that wasn’t enough.

Maybe it’s time to throw away the white-trash cookbook, Galen said.

His mother grabbed his upper arm hard, pinching the skin, and yanked him out of his seat.

Suzie-Q, his grandmother said, and his mother let go. He sat back down.

Are we white trash? he asked. I’m never going to college, and none of us have jobs, and here we are out in the woods. Next thing you know, I’ll be sleeping with my cousin.

Stop, Helen said.

Jennifer narrowed her eyes and then looked down at her plate. Maybe this was how he could have some power over her. Maybe she needed everything kept a secret more than he did.

This isn’t you, Galen, his grandmother said. Your grandfather designed a bridge in Sacramento. You’re a Schumacher, and you can always be proud of that.

Sorry, Grandma.

A pile of mush on everyone’s plate, the wilted potato chips golden and oily.

Men are the problem, Helen said. First Dad and now you.

You won’t talk to my son that way, Galen’s mother said.

Weren’t you just trying to rip his arm off?

He’s not like Dad.

But I thought Dad was perfect. I thought he drank lemonade and had lovely lunches under the fig tree. Isn’t it good to be like Dad? What happened to that whole story?

Your father was a good man, Galen’s grandmother said. He worked hard all his life.

Yeah, we know, Helen said.

No you don’t. You don’t seem to understand. He provided for all of us.

I would rather not have been born, Helen said. Seriously. I would rather have skipped the entire miserable fuck-job of a life this has been.

Helen.

I’m serious. And I’m not putting up with your lies anymore. Why are you giving everything to Suzie? Why are you giving nothing to me, and nothing to Jennifer? I want to know, Mom.

Wow, Galen said. You can kick some ass when you get on a roll.

Galen’s aunt punched him in the shoulder, hard. She punched him again, looking him right in the eyes, pure hatred, and punched him again. He tried to block, but she was fast, and she hit hard.

And then the strangest thing happened. Everyone looked away. No one said or did anything in response to the fact that his aunt had just punched him. His grandmother was humming to herself, looking down at her lap, and his mother was eating. Jennifer had crossed her arms and was looking down also. His aunt had gone back to eating. And what Galen realized was that this was the first time he’d been punched, but everyone else in this room must have been punched many times before. Or in his mother’s case, maybe she had only been a witness to it, but a witness many times.

Galen’s shoulder was throbbing, but he served himself some tuna casserole and tried to eat a couple bites. The sound of the fire in the stove, popping of coals. The sounds of chewing and swallowing, wet and amplified. The taste of salt.

Well, he said. I guess this is who we are.

Would you like some more casserole, Mom? his mother asked.

Thank you, yes. This is very good.

Galen’s mother made a show of serving the casserole, raising the spoon high. Tomorrow we’ll have your chicken and dumplings, Mom. That will be such a treat.

Galen could see his mother was the reconstructor of worlds. That was her role. When all fell apart, she stepped in and made time move again.

Tomorrow we can take a walk down at Camp Sacramento, she said.

Oh, that will be nice, his grandmother said.

I’m still waiting for an answer, Mom, Helen said.

Would you like some wine, Mom? Galen’s mother asked.

Yes please.

Galen’s mother stood and turned to the counter beside the stove. There was no space in this room. The five of them bunched around three sides of a tiny old table that was built into the wall, covered in a yellow plastic tablecloth. The walls uneven planks painted white. A single bare bulb with a chain. The floor a faded brown linoleum. The stove like a furnace. All their faces wet with sweat.

Galen’s mother opened a bottle of white wine, Riesling, and the smell brought Galen instantly back. She poured glasses for herself and her mother and didn’t offer to anyone else. The two of them drank and ate while Galen and the mafia watched, and Galen wondered why they were all together here.

What’s the point of trying to be a family? he asked. Why are we doing it?

Galen’s mother sighed and downed the rest of her glass, then refilled it. Galen’s grandmother was staring at her own wine with a kind of wonder. She had rested it, nearly empty, on the table, just beyond her plate. The stem between two fingers, she was swirling it gently, her hand facing downward, open, as if she were waving her palm over something, as if the table were a looking glass and the wine upon it a kind of golden key. She looked mesmerized, her blue eyes wet and large, her lips moving slightly, as if she were reciting some invocation, something from long ago, something none of the rest of them would understand. She seemed about to announce something, and this was what kept the rest of them silent.

The bare bulb and its harsh light made it seem that if you removed his grandmother, you’d have to cut her from the fabric of the world and there’d be a hole left. Each of them felt that way to Galen, as if all were two-dimensional, flattened, and lodged in place. Jennifer with her arms still folded, looking down, unmoving, stationary. His mother with deeper lines around her mouth than he had noticed before, as if her lips were separate from the rest of her face, something added. Her eyes buried in sockets too large. The waves of her hair something sculpted and not attached. She looked fabricated, put together in pieces, invented.

Galen felt the unreality of her, felt it for the first time as something immediate and undeniable. She raised her glass again to her lips, but even that movement was jointed. The world put together with some kind of ratcheting action, each piece pulled into place under tension, all of it threatening to snap.

Galen wanted to leave. He wanted to get away from this table. This table felt extremely dangerous. He understood now that what held his family together was violence. But he was locked here, glued in place, unable to move. He could only watch, and the only movement was his mother’s glass, and his grandmother’s glass and palm moving in its slow circles, and the wavering of the light.

Chapter 11

Galen read Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, his most precious book, the one he studied when his attachment to the world became too much.

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

Galen knew this to be true. He was greater than his mother, meant for more. She needed to understand that she had no claim over him. Or the illusion of her needed to understand that, or he needed to understand that the illusion of her had no hold over him, or something. It was all confusing. In any case, he needed to break her attachment to him, because she was holding him back. And his aunt needed to understand that she was free from her parents, that her life was her own. If only everyone could understand Gibran, there could be so much less suffering.

It was difficult to be in a family of younger souls. Galen was an old soul, nearing transcendence, learning his last and most difficult lessons, his final disengagements from family, but the rest of them were just beginning. They didn’t know, even, that they were on the road. They didn’t know the road existed, and it was tiring to try to wake them up and pull them along. It was a kind of service Galen was having to perform, a selflessness that was also one of the final lessons. At the moment, though, he didn’t feel up to the task.

He rested The Prophet on his chest and looked around the small room in lamplight. The slanted ceiling, exposed wood, the vertical planks of the walls, painted dark brown. He wondered whether he might be a prophet, too. Perhaps that was his role.

Jesus had been a prophet. An ordinary man, a carpenter, but an old soul who was willing to help others see.

Galen loved this room, a place to remember who he was. It was easy to forget during the rest of the year as samsara worked away at him. But the room felt too small right now. Galen felt on the edge of learning something. He felt his soul expanding.

So he got out of bed, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and boots, since it would be cold outside, the mountains always cold at night. He tried to sneak down the stairs, but they were loud and creaking, and he didn’t know which way to turn. If he went to the left, he’d have to pass his aunt and Jennifer to get out the front door. If he went right, he’d have to pass his mother and grandmother sitting at the kitchen table. He didn’t want to go either way. He wanted a third door, but that’s exactly what life never provided, and perhaps it was a good thing. This is how we were confronted, how we were forced to learn our lessons.

Galen went left, because he couldn’t bear to be in that kitchen again with his mother and grandmother.

Jennifer and Helen on the hide-a-bed, leaning back awkwardly. There was a big gap between the mattress and back, so it was never possible to prop against pillows. They’d be getting kinks in their necks.

Let me guess, Helen said. You’re being called by Father Granite to sing the pebbles into bigger rocks?

Galen ignored her and stepped outside. Down the steps quickly and into the dirt road, the pine needles. Clear, cold air, the smell of wood smoke, everything traced in moonlight.

“You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.” Gibran was right. Galen needed only to learn how to look, how to feel. The pattern of moonlight through the trees. Everything around him a presence and a sign. The bodhisattva in all things. The Buddha in each rock and tree. Each pine needle better than a church.

Galen stopped and felt his connection to the ground, took off his boots and socks, concentrated on becoming lighter. Let the energy of the earth come up through his soles. He stepped forward again but tried to let it happen unplanned, tried to move authentically, tried to walk softly but not think about walking softly. Authentic Movement was something he was just learning about. There was a New Age bookstore near his grandparents’ house, where he had spent most of his years after high school, but they’d told him not to come back, called him a stalker when all he’d been doing was aligning his aura with a young woman who worked there. She was a younger soul, lovely but afraid, unable to see. He had been trying to help her. The alignment worked best when he stood close behind her and put his arms out, but she didn’t like that. The whole thing made him angry still, something he was trying to let go of. They were letting him order books by mail now, and the one on Authentic Movement was his most recent, letting the body find its own way, letting it speak back, learning from it, releasing attachment to self and past and anger, welcoming the connections to earth and air.

Galen’s neck was slumped, and he could feel his lips heavy, like a frog’s. For some reason, that always happened when he tried to concentrate, and it was distracting. Why was he even aware of his own lips? He wanted to be focusing on his movement.

He held his arms out, palms up, opened himself to the universe. Tried to let the movement happen, but somehow that just slowed him down and made his hips feel locked. So he tried a different stride, tried to walk the way he had over coals, more purposeful, longer strides. Only one workshop, one evening, and he had missed most of the talk because he’d agreed to tend the fire as a way to reduce how much he had to pay. Always having to beg his mother for money. A large bonfire, and it burned his face as the others talked about fear and using your fear as a counselor. He heard bits of it. Then he raked the coals into a bed fifteen feet long and three feet wide, the hot red embers and his face stinging.

Everyone gathered on the lawn in a ring around the coals, the grass cool and damp but the coals glowing. Galen felt afraid, but he was buoyed by the chanting around him, everyone with their arms out and palms up. Then they crossed the coals, one by one. Many of them jerked, a little hop after a few steps, burned. But some just crunched their way across.

When it was Galen’s turn finally, at the end, he felt the most beautiful faith, a sudden rush of knowing that the universe would take care of him, a feeling that his fear had become something else more powerful, more pure, and he walked across with only a curiosity. He could feel the coals crushing under his feet, could feel their heat, even. He could feel each piece of wood, how fragile it was, how the fire was a kind of net that had pulled the substance from the wood, and he didn’t burn. He walked across and was on the lawn again and felt he had received a great gift.

He helped clean up afterward, and he watched the woman who ran the workshop tend to her feet. He hadn’t seen her jerk or hop as she crossed, but the bottoms of both her feet were outrageously burned, long puffed areas of red skin like on a hot dog. She applied a white cream, then wrapped in bandages and stepped into large slippers. She popped a Vicodin.

What? she asked, and he didn’t know what to say. She was making probably $20,000 in an evening, so that was perhaps the motivation, and he felt cheated.

Walking now on the pine needles, though, he tried to remember what he had felt as he’d crossed the coals, because something about that had been real. Something had happened, and there was no reason he couldn’t enter that space again.

He tried to feel himself strung like a hammock between earth and moon. Wavering and catching the ethereal breeze, the wind from the shadow world. His body almost a tuning fork. His bare feet heavier on the road than he would have liked, so he tried to release them, tried to let them not carry any weight. He could feel sharp pricks from stones and needles, and he tried to ignore that, too. Ceremonial steps, a smooth movement, and he realized he was being pulled toward the wide, shallow water near the bridge, the open pool. He was being drawn there, and he didn’t yet know why, but he was following that.

The road a corridor, laced in moonlight and shadow. A journey. He kept his eyes half lidded, tried to see without looking. Felt the energy gathering. His crown chakra wide open.

He chanted. Heya hey hey, ya eh oh ee, ya eh oh ee, heya heya hey hey hey hey how. A song he had learned once in a sweat lodge, a beautiful song, meant to do something. A ghost dance or sun dance or something like that. Heya nico-wei, heya nico-wei, heya nico-wei hung-ee hei hei hei hei how.

He hopped a little as he sang, arms raised up, but then went back to a slower stride. That felt more real, more ceremonial.

And then suddenly he was in the open, in the full moon, the dirt road white and luminous and the wide pool of water shining before him. The moon straight ahead, beckoning. He felt pulled toward it, felt acknowledged by the moon, recognized. The song had become a moon dance, and the moon had listened.

The moon was offering him a gift, this water. This was why he had been drawn here. The surface of the water always in motion, the light never still, but evolving in pattern. This is what Siddhartha had seen. In the passing of the water was the passing of self, of attachment, and in the shapes on the surface one could find the face of all things. Every longing, every pain, all of it would form for a moment, a trick of the light, and then dissolve. It was when we looked at water that we dreamed, and remembered the tug of previous incarnations, and what we longed for was our true form beyond this body, beyond this incarnation, beyond this world of illusions.

Galen understood now what he was meant to do tonight. The moonlight a path across the water, the proof, finally, of what he was. He walked toward it, or was walked toward it by the universe. The stream of beautiful sounds, the bubbling and coursing, a voice reassuring, the light soft, and he had lost his feet. They had become one with the light and would cross the surface in the same way that the light lay upon the water.

Galen ecstatic, his entire soul rushing with love. His foot at the surface, cold, the breath of the water, and that was all right, it was happening, but then his foot plunged through and he tilted, trying to keep his palms up, trying to save this, trying not to lose faith. The next step could hold, so he threw his other foot out there, but it plunged, also, and his ankle twisted on rock below and he was falling forward, hit the water face-first in an icy shock, all his air gone. He breathed water and pushed against rock and sand to get up, thrashing with his arms. He was coughing, stumbled and fell again, his ankle twisted and too difficult to stand on, so he propped on his butt and arms and pulled himself backward toward shore. He crawled out of the water and just lay in the dirt. What the fuck, he said. When is it going to happen?