Blind Panic (20 page)

Gradually, the flashes grew faster and faster, and Jasmine could see that they were coming nearer, too. She could also make out the silhouette of somebody walking toward them.

“I don’t like this,” said Auntie Ammy. “I don’t like this one teensy little bit.”

The baby twisted around and pointed at the flashes in excitement. “
A gah!
” he said, excitedly. “
A gah!
”

Out of the smoke, a stockily built man appeared. Jasmine flicked on the Titan’s full halogen headlights. The man stopped, dazzled. On his head he carried a strange lumpy hat that looked as if it had been sewn together out of half-a-dozen squirrel skins, complete with dangling tails. A dark red blanket was fastened across his shoulders with a long pin that looked like a bone, and underneath it he was wearing a yellowish leather jerkin and leggings that were bound around with leather thongs.

In one hand he held a stick decorated with feathers and beads and birds’ skulls.

He squinted at the headlights with his brow furrowed, but he didn’t make any attempt to shield his eyes. He looked irritated and full of contempt, rather than angry.

“So who the hell is
this
whacko?” said Jasmine. “Look at him—he looks like Geronimo.”

But Auntie Ammy pulled at her sleeve in a breathless panic. “Jazz—get us out of here, quick!”

“Come on, what’s the matter? He’s probably escaped from some nuthouse.”

“
Get us out of here!
” Auntie Ammy screamed at her. She sounded terrified. “
I’m serious! Get us out of here now!
”

“Okay! Okay! Keep your darn wool on!” Jasmine started the Titan’s engine, and gunned it. As it roared into life, three more figures emerged from the smoke and assembled around the man in the squirrel-tail hat, and then another two.

“
Whoa,
” said Jasmine. The five figures were very tall, with dead white faces—more like
masks
than faces—and bodies like rectangular wooden boxes, crudely hammered together and painted black. For some reason Jasmine couldn’t work out how near they were or how far away, or even whether there were only five of them. One second they seemed to be clustered close to the man in the squirrel-tail hat, but when she blinked they seemed to have jumped away, to stand ten feet in front of him, almost close enough to touch the Titan’s front bumper. Another blink, and they were standing behind him, half hidden by smoke. She blinked again and she could see seven or eight of them, or even more.

She yanked the Titan’s gearshift into reverse and backed up faster than she had ever backed up before. Instantly, a dazzling array of lights came flickering out of the figures’ eye-slits, but Auntie Ammy kept her head turned away, and covered the baby’s face with her hand.

“Don’t you turn around and look at them!” she warned Jasmine. “You look at them just once, that’ll be the last-ever thing you ever get to see!”

Jasmine kept her eyes fixed on the Titan’s rearview TV monitor, and sped back nearly three blocks. Then she spun the wheel and the tractor slewed around, its ten tires howling in a rubbery chorus.

She jammed her foot on the gas and they roared away,
turning south. At speed, the bobtail tractor was much more difficult to handle than a tractor with a loaded trailer, and when Jasmine reached the intersection with East Slauson, it went into a wide sliding skid and sideswiped a parked car with a thunderous bang. She straightened it out and headed east toward the Long Beach Freeway.

“Those
things
,” she said. “What were they?”

“I don’t rightfully know,” Auntie Ammy told her. “But I know that they’re evil and I know that they ain’t of this world. I also know that they can strike you stone blind.”

“So who told you that?”

“My orisha told me—Changó. He was taking real good care of me. I take real good care of him, with offerin’s, and with sacrifices, and I call him with invocations, and in return he speaks to me, and warns me of any danger, and ‘splains in a way what it is.”

“Maybe I should convert to Santeria.”

“It’s what you truly believe, girl. That’s what counts.”

They reached the Long Beach Freeway, which crossed over the Maywood district on grimy concrete pillars. The left-hand side of the on-ramp was cluttered with burned-out cars and SUVs, but Jasmine drove up the right-hand side, with the Titan’s wheel-arch panel scraping against the retaining wall and throwing up fountains of orange sparks. In low gear, the Titan was powerful enough to push aside any vehicles that obstructed them, with a loud crunching and squealing of metal.

The freeway itself was deserted, although a few cars and vans had been left abandoned in the middle of the road, including a police squad car and a burning ambulance.

“Where we headed?” asked Auntie Ammy. “I think this little fella is getting hungry.”

“I don’t know,” said Jasmine. “But I think we need to get away from LA, don’t you? We’re heading north, so let’s keep on heading north.”

They drove for a few minutes in silence, and then Jasmine
turned to Auntie Ammy and said, “That was an Indian, wasn’t it? Like a real cowboys-and-Indians Indian.”

“I don’t know how real he was.”

“What do you mean by that? He was just wearing fancy dress?”

Auntie Ammy looked across at her with a strange expression that Jasmine couldn’t read.

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean he had no
aché.
No power in him, no life.”

“I still don’t understand what you mean.”

Auntie Ammy held the baby closer, as if she didn’t want him to hear what she was going to say next.

“I mean, girl, that he was long-dead. I mean that he was what you might call a spirit, of sorts. But he was wearing a disguise. He wasn’t wearin’ the face that he wore when he was alive. He was wearin’ somebody else’s face. Like as if you looked in the lookin’ mirror one morning and saw that you was me.”

She gave a deep, dry sniff, and then she said, “I could tell by his eyes, Jazz. The eyes that were lookin’ out of that face didn’t rightfully belong to that face at all. And there was so much hate in those eyes. That was the scariest man that I ever saw, ever.”

Washington, DC

The president was asleep, and he was dreaming about his parent’s house in Cincinnati. He could see the orange, beady-eyed cicadas crawling out of the soil in his parent’s backyard and clustering in the trees, endlessly chirruping. They had always frightened him when he was a child. They had been like alien invaders, thousands of insects struggling out of the earth and nothing that anybody could do to stop them.

His mother had driven him to school and there had been so many dead cicadas on her windshield that the wipers had eventually stuck, and she could barely see where she was going because of the beige cicada slime and broken wings.

He felt a cicada on his cheek. He jerked his hand up and tried to flick it away. But it wasn’t a cicada, it was a man’s fingertips, touching him. Cold, dry fingertips.

“
Have you decided?
” the man whispered, so close to his ear that he could feel his chilly breath.

The president opened his eyes. Misquamacus was leaning over him, a negative black-and-white image, just as he had been yesterday evening. The president didn’t move at first, or speak, even though he could hear insects dropping onto his pillow.

“You know that you could save countless numbers of your people, if you so chose. And perhaps, if your people learned
our ways and observed our beliefs, we could live together in harmony, as children of the same gods.”

An insect that felt like a cockroach dropped onto the president’s cheek and scuttled underneath the collar of his pajamas. Abruptly, he sat up, slapping at his neck.

“Am I dreaming this?” he demanded. “Tell me—this can’t be for real, can it?”

“What do you mean by ‘real’?” asked Misquamacus. “Everything that can be seen and heard and felt is real. You are real. I am real. The Great Old Ones who wait in exile beyond the limits of the stars—they are real, too, and it is time for their return, whatever you decide.”

The president said, “What you’re asking, it’s impossible. People simply won’t do it.”

“If they refuse, I will have no choice but to force them, and those who refuse will have to die.”

“You can’t expect a whole nation to give up its way of life, just like that.”

“Why not?” asked Misquamacus. “
You
did. Or at least your forefathers did. And they massacred all those who stood up to them. I am simply doing the same.”

The president pressed his call button and shouted out, “Johnson! Kaminsky! Get in here!”

“That will do you no good,” said Misquamacus. Even though he was a negative image, the president saw him smile.

The door opened, and he heard Johnson and Kaminsky come into the room.

“Something wrong, Mr. President?”

“He’s here. He’s right here in front of me. Don’t you
see
him?”

A lengthy pause. Then, “Who exactly do you mean, sir?”

“The goddamned Indian! He’s right here!” The president jabbed his finger at Misquamacus, standing in the blackness of his blindness. “Him and his goddamned bugs! I can even
smell
him, goddammit!”

Another pause, punctuated by a cough. “I’m sorry, sir. I can’t see anybody. Maybe I should call your doctor.”

The president dragged back his bedcovers and swung his legs out of bed.

“Mr. President, sir—for Christ’s sake, be careful!”

But the president lunged at Misquamacus and seized the lapels of his coat. Misquamacus made no attempt to pull himself free, but looked down at the president with pity.

“He’s here, goddammit! He’s real! I can feel him! I can feel his coat!”

Kaminsky came up to the president and gently but firmly laid a hand on his shoulder. “There’s nobody there, sir. Why don’t you get back into bed and let me call Dr. Henry?”

“It’s probably shock, sir,” Johnson put in. “After what happened yesterday, we talked to Dr. Cronin. I’m sorry; we didn’t mean to overstep our authority. But Dr. Cronin told us that people who suddenly lose their sight can suffer all kinds of delusions. It’s like the rest of their senses go into overdrive.”

“Come here,” said the president, his voice trembling. “Give me your hand.”

Kaminsky held out his hand and the president grasped his wrist. Then he lifted Kaminsky’s hand toward Misquamacus’s face, so that his fingers appeared to be touching Misquamacus’s cheek, and then his nose.

“Don’t tell me you can’t feel him now.”

Kaminsky said, “Sorry, Mr. President. Like Dr. Cronin said, it’s probably some kind of self-suggestion. Your brain overcompensating for your eyes.”

“You can’t feel him? Why can’t you feel him? You’re
touching
him, for Christ’s sake!”

Kaminsky guided the president back to his bed. The president sat down, and then looked up at Misquamacus, shaking his head in bitterness and bewilderment. Misquamacus was right there; the president could see him. He could hear him; he could even smell him. Why couldn’t anybody else?

Maybe Dr. Cronin was right. Maybe Misquamacus was nothing but a delusion caused by the trauma of losing his sight. Maybe his brain was simply inventing this Native American spirit, in the absence of any input from his optic nerves. After all, amputees could still feel the ghosts of their severed limbs. They could even feel excruciating pain in a foot that was no longer there. Maybe this image of Misquamacus was the same kind of ghost.

As if he could read the president’s thoughts, Misquamacus whispered, “I exist only in your darkness, my friend. You see me because I want you to see me. But you can see nothing else, and nobody can see what you see.”

“I want you to go away,” the president told him, turning his face away.

“Don’t you want us to call Dr. Henry?” asked Kaminsky.

“No, Kaminsky, I don’t. But I wasn’t talking to you.”

Johnson said, “Maybe we should call Dr. Cronin, too. With all due respect, sir, we don’t want you to suffer some kind of a breakdown.”

“I am not suffering from any kind of breakdown. I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine. Now why don’t you leave me alone for a while? Thank you.”

There was another long pause, as if Johnson and Kaminsky were conferring with each other by pulling faces and making gestures.

“You
deaf?
” snapped the president. “I could have been suffering some kind of delusion or something, but now I’m okay. So leave me alone. And I don’t want to see any doctors.
Comprendo?
”

“Got it,” said Kaminsky. “But please don’t hesitate to call us if there’s anything else you need, Mr. President, sir.”

They left the room. The president remained where he was, sitting on the edge of his bed in his blue-and-white-striped pajamas. He looked up at Misquamacus and said, “You’re not a delusion, are you? You’re real. At least you’d better be real, or else I’m a loony.”

He could see Misquamacus in even sharper detail now,
even though he was still a negative image. He could clearly see his face, even though his skin appeared black and his eye sockets appeared white, with white crow’s-feet around them. He could see the necklaces around his neck, and the bracelets around his wrists. He could see the black-and-white feathers hanging from his buffalo-horn headdress, and the black skulls of animals, too.

Misquamacus whispered, “The day is coming very soon for the final reckoning. Many thousands of your people have been blinded and they will be defenseless when we start to slaughter them, just as our people were defenseless all those years ago when you came from the east and started to slaughter us.”

“Please,” said the president. “I’m asking you not to do this. I can make your people an offer.”

“An offer? What manner of offer?”

“Listen, I’ve been thinking about this. For beginners, I can set up a federal commission to return some of the land your people lost. Then I can arrange for millions more dollars in federal and state funding for Native American education, and hospitals, and recreational facilities.”

Misquamacus let out a hiss of amusement, like a snake. “You think that you can bribe us with our own forests? You think that you can teach us our own legends, and our own religion, and for that we should be grateful? You think that you can treat us with your drugs and your chemicals instead of the sacred healing magic that we learned from the gods?”

He swept his skull-topped medicine stick from side to side to show his contempt. “This is our land, and your people stole it from us with lies and with cruelty and broken promises. We will take it back from you by fighting again all of those battles in which you defeated us. But this time you will be the losers. This time it will be
your
blood that soaks the ground at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, and up in the Infernal Caverns.

“We will start with Memory Valley, where you massacred so many Hupa, and then we will make our way eastward,
turning back time, battle after battle, and we will reclaim every plateau and every forest and every lake that you stole from us.”

The president lowered his head. “I think I’m going mad," he said. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”

Misquamacus came up close to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. His fingers were so cold that the president gave an involuntary shiver.

“Tell your people that their time of supremacy is over," Misquamacus whispered. “Tell them, and I will spare as many as I can.”

“I can’t,” said the president. “This country was founded on freedom. Religious freedom. Political freedom. Maybe racial freedom came later than it should have, but now we have that, too.”

“You talk of
freedom?
” said Misquamacus. “What freedom did you grant to the Apaches you murdered at Salt River Canyon and Turret Butte? What freedom did you give to Chief Joseph when you pursued his entire community of Nez Percé for nearly two thousand miles? Where was your freedom when Dull Knife’s people escaped from Fort Robinson, and your soldiers went after them, and killed them—men, women, and little children? I spit on your freedom, and I will spit on your grave.”

“Well, if you really think that you can beat us, that’ll be your privilege,” said the president. “But I’m still not going to tell my people to give in to you. Americans—and that’s us—we
never
give in.”

Misquamacus lifted up his medicine stick and tapped it against the president’s forehead. “There will be much blood, then. And much darkness. And it will all be on your head.”

The president said nothing. In his heart, he found it impossible to believe that this was really happening, in spite of all the airplane crashes and the highway pileups and the hundreds of people who had drowned or fallen off buildings or stepped blindly into traffic.

Misquamacus said, “I will grant you one favor. I will restore
your sight to you so you can witness the destruction of your society and the scattering of your people, just as I did, and Chief Joseph did, and Tecumseh and his brother Tensk-watawa, and Crazy Horse, and all of my brothers and sisters, and all of our children, too.”

He held out his right hand and said, “Close your eyes, my friend.”

The president hesitated, but then he did what he was told. Misquamacus touched him with a cold fingertip on each eyelid and said, “
Wàbi, wàbi
”

The president opened his eyes. Gradually the negative image of Misquamacus began to grow darker, until he was absorbed into the overwhelming blackness altogether and disappeared. There was a long moment when the president thought that Misquamacus must have been deceiving him, and that he was going to stay perm anently blind. But after a while, he realized that he could see a faint misty light, and then the blurry rectangle of a window, and a red armchair, and a bureau with a large vase of orange roses on it.

He looked around him. Now he could see the end of his bed and the doors of a pale oak closet, and a large framed print of the seashore with yachts.

His heart thumped with exhilaration. He blinked, and he blinked again, and with every blink his vision became clearer. He was just about to call out for Johnson and Kaminsky when he became aware that there was somebody standing close behind him. He turned and shouted out, “
Ah!
” in surprise.

There was an Indian there, in an old-fashioned frock coat, with leggings underneath. He had gray shoulder-length hair and a faded red bandanna decorated with animals’ claws. His face looked like crumpled brown leather, and it was obvious from the way that his lower lip protruded that he had no teeth.

Around his neck he was wearing at least seven necklaces, all made of bones and beads and painted clay.

“What the hell are you doing here?” the president demanded. “You’re not Marcus.”

The elderly Indian gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “You speak of Misquamacus, the One Who Went and Came Back.”

“That’s right. But who the hell are you?”

“I am Graywolf, but I am also Misquamacus. Look into my eyes. The memory of Misquamacus lives inside me.”

The president stood up. “Whoever you are, old man, I think you need to get out of here. Kaminsky! Johnson! Come in here, will you?”

Johnson and Kaminsky came into the room. Johnson was eating a bologna sandwich, but his mouth dropped open when he saw Graywolf standing right next to the president. Kaminsky immediately tugged out his gun.

“You want to tell me how this clown managed to get in here?” asked the president.

“You can
see
him?”

“I can damn well see him, all right. I just got my sight back.”

“You mean, just like that?”

“That’s right. Just like that. And that’s when I saw—” He waved at Graywolf dismissively. “Get him out of here, will you? And lock him up. And have Gene Schneider interrogate him. And the FBI, too. I want to know how he managed to get past you two hotshots without you seeing him. And I urgently want to know what he knows about this blindness.”

Kaminsky said, “We should call in your doctors, too, Mr. President. Have you checked over.”

“Let’s leave that till later. I want you to deal with this guy first. You can call Doug Latterby, though. And John Rostoff. And General McNamara, too. I want them all here in twenty minutes flat. And call Mrs. Perry, as well.”