Moonlight & Vines (29 page)

Bear gives her a friendly whack on the back of the head but it doesn't
budge a hair. Jolene's not looking like much this year, standing about halfway to nothing, but she's always solidly built, doesn't much matter what skin she's wearing.

“Let's take that walk,” I say, but Bear catches hold of my arm.

“I smell something old,” he tells me.

“It's an old place,” I tell him. “Fell down here a long time ago and stood above ground even longer.”

Bear shakes his head. “No. I'm smelling something older than that. And lower down.”

We're on an underground street, I'm thinking. Way down. Can't get much lower than this. But Bear's looking back at the building we just came out of and I know what's on his mind. Basements. They're too much like caves for him to pass one by, especially when it's got an old smell. I look at the others. Jolene's game, but then she's always game when she's wearing this skin. Alberta shrugs.

“When I want to dance,” she says, “you all dance with me, so I'm going to say no when Bear wants to try out a new step?”

I can't remember the last time we all danced, but I can't find any argument with what she's saying.

“What about you, Crazy Crow?” Bear asks.

“You know me,” I tell him. “I'm like Jolene, I'm always game.”

So we go back inside, following Bear who's following his nose, and he leads us right up to the door of that empty stone room down in the cellar. He grabs hold of the iron bolt, shoves it to one side, hauls the door open, rubs his hand on his jeans to brush off the specks of rust that got caught up on his palm.

“Something tried hard to get out,” Alberta says.

I'm thinking of the other side of the door. “And in,” I add.

Jolene's spinning around in the middle of the room, arms spread wide.

“Old, old, old,” she sings.

We can all smell it now. I get the feeling that the building grew out of this room, that it was built to hold it. Or hide it.

“No ghosts,” Bear says. “No spirits here.”

Jolene stops spinning. “Just us,” she says.

“Just us,” Bear agrees.

He sits down on the clean stone floor, cross-legged, rolls himself a smoke. We all join him, sitting in a circle, like we're dancing, except it's only our breathing that's making the steps. We each take a drag of the
cigarette, then Bear sets the butt down in the middle of the circle. We watch the smoke curl up from it, tobacco with that pinch of sweetgrass. It makes a long curling journey up to the ceiling, thickens there like a small storm cloud, pregnant with grandfather thunders.

Somewhere up above us, where the moon can see it, there's smoke rising, too, Devil's Night fires filling the hollow of the sky with pillars of silent thunder.

Bear takes a shotgun cartridge out of his pocket, brass and red cardboard, twelve-gauge, and puts it down on the stone beside the smoldering butt, stands it on end, brass side down.

“Guess we need a story,” he says. He looks at me. “So we can understand this place.”

We all nod. We'll take turns, talking until one of us gets it right.

“Me first,” Jolene says.

She picks up the cartridge and rolls it back and forth on that small dark palm of hers and we listen.

Jolene says:

It's like that pan-girl, always cooking something up, you know the one. You can smell the wild onion on her breath a mile away. She's got that box that she can't look in, tin box with a lock on it that rattles against the side of the box when she gives it a shake, trying to guess what's inside. There's all these scratches on the tin, inside and out, something trying to get out, something trying to get in.

That's this place, the pan-girl's box. You know she opened that box, let all that stuff out that makes the world more interesting. She can't get it back in, and I'm thinking why try?

Anyway, she throws that box away. It's a hollow now, a hollow place, can be any size you want it to be, any shape, any color, same box. Now we're sitting in it, stone version. Close that door and maybe we can't get out. Got to wait until another pan-girl comes along, takes a break from all that cooking, takes a peek at what's inside. That big eye of hers'll fill the door and ya-hey, here we'll be, looking right back at her, rushing past her, she's swatting her hands at us trying to keep us in, but we're already gone, gone running back out into the world to make everything a little more interesting again.

Bear says:

Stone. You can't get much older than stone. First house was stone. Not like this room, not perfectly square, not flat, but stone all the same. Found places, those caves, just like we found this place. Old smell in them. Sometimes bear. Sometimes lion. Sometimes snake. Sometimes the ones that went before.

All gone when we come. All that's left is their messages painted or scratched on the walls. Stories. Information. Things they know we have to figure out, things that they could have told us if they were still around. Only way to tell us now is to leave the messages.

This place is a hollow, like Jolene said, but not why she said it. It's hollow because there's no messages. This is the place we have to leave our messages so that when we go on we'll know that the ones to follow will be able to figure things out.

Alberta says:

Inside and out, same thing. The wheel doesn't change, only the way we see it. Door opens either way. Both sides in, both sides out. Trouble is, we're always on the wrong side, always want the thing we haven't got, makes no difference who we are. Restless spirits want life, living people look for something better to come. Nobody
here
. Nobody content with what they got. And the reason for that's to keep the wheel turning. That simple. Wheel stops turning, there's nothing left.

It's like the woman who feels the cage of her bones, those ribs they're a prison for her. She's clawing, clawing at those bone bars, making herself sick. Inside, where you can't see it, but outside, too.

So she goes to see the Lady of the White Deer—looks just like you, Jolene, the way you were last year. Big woman. Big as a tree. Got dark, dark eyes you could get lost in. But she's smiling, always smiling. Smiling as she listens, smiling when she speaks. Like a mother smiles, seen it all, heard it all, but still patient, still kind, still understanding.

“That's just living,” she tells the caged woman. “Those aren't bars,
they're the bones that hold you together. You keep clawing at them, you'll make yourself so sick you're going to die for sure.”

“I can't breathe in here,” the caged woman says.

“You're not paying attention,” the Lady of the White Deer says. “All you're doing is breathing. Stop breathing and you'll be clawing at those same bones, trying to get back in.”

“You don't understand,” the caged woman tells her and she walks away.

So she goes to see the Old Man of the Mountains—looks just like you, Bear. Same face, same hair. A big old bear, sitting up there on the top of the mountain, looking out at everything below. Doesn't smile so much, but understands how everybody's got a secret dark place sits way deep down there inside, hidden but wanting to get out. Understands how you can be happy but not happy at the same time. Understands that sometimes you feel you got to go all the way out to get back in, but if you do, you can't. There's no way back in.

So not smiling so much, but maybe understanding a little more, he lets the woman talk and he listens.

“We all got a place inside us, feels like a prison,” he tells her. “It's darker in some people than others, that's all. Thing is, you got to balance what's there with what's around you or you'll find yourself on a road that's got no end. Got no beginning and goes nowhere. It's just always this same thing, never grows, never changes, only gets darker and darker, like that candle blowing in the wind. Looks real nice till the wind blows it out—you hear what I'm saying?”

“I can't breathe in here,” the woman tells him.

That Old Man of the Mountain he shakes his head. “You're breathing,” he says. “You're just not paying attention to it. You're looking inside, looking inside, forgetting what's outside. You're making friends with that darkness inside you and that's not good. You better stop your scratching and clawing or you're going to let it out.”

“You don't understand either,” the caged woman says and she walks away.

So finally she goes to see the Old Man of the Desert—looks like you, Crazy Crow. Got the same sharp features, the same laughing eyes. Likes to collect things. Keeps a pocket full of shiny mementos that used to belong to other people, things they threw away. Holds onto them until they want them back and then makes a trade. He'd give them away, but he
knows what everybody thinks: All you get for nothing is nothing. Got to put a price on a thing to give it any worth.

He doesn't smile at all when he sees her coming. He puts his hand in his pocket and plays with something while she talks. Doesn't say anything when she's done, just sits there, looking at her.

“Aren't you going to help me?” she asks.

“You don't want my help,” the Old Man of the Desert says. “You just want me to agree with you. You just want me to say, aw, that's bad, really bad. You've got it bad. Everybody else in the world is doing fine, except for you, because you got it so hard and bad.”

The caged woman looks at him. She's got tears starting in her eyes.

“Why are you being so mean to me?” she asks.

“The truth only sounds mean,” he tells her. “You look at it from another side and maybe you see it as kindness. All depends where you're looking, what you want to see.”

“But I can't breathe,” she says.

“You're breathing just fine,” he says right back at her. “The thing is, you're not thinking so good. Got clouds in your head. Makes it hard to see straight. Makes it hard to hear what you don't want to hear anyway. Makes it hard to accept that the rest of the world's not out of step on the wheel, only you are. Work on that and you'll start feeling a little better. Remember who you are instead of always crying after what you think you want to be.”

“You don't understand either,” she says.

But before she can walk away, the Old Man of the Desert takes that thing out of his pocket, that thing he's been playing with, and she sees it's her dancing. He's got it all rolled up in a ball of beads and cowrie shells and feathers and mud, wrapped around with a rope of braided sweetgrass. Her dancing. Been a long time since she's seen that dancing. She thought it was lost in the long-ago. Thought it disappeared with her breathing.

“Where'd you get that dancing?” she asks.

“Found it in the trash. You'd be amazed what people will throw out—every kind of piece of themselves.”

She puts her hand out to take it, but the Old Man of the Desert shakes his head and holds it out of her reach.

“That's mine,” she says. “I lost that in the long-ago.”

“You never lost it,” the Old Man of the Desert tells her. “You threw it away.”

“But I want it back now.”

“You got to trade for it,” he says.

The caged woman lowers her head. “I got nothing to trade for it.”

“Give me your prison,” the Old Man of the Desert says.

She looks up at him. “Now you're making fun of me,” she says. “I give you my prison, I'm going to die. Dancing's not much use to the dead.”

“Depends,” he says. “Dancing can honor the dead. Lets them breathe in the faraway. Puts a fire in their cold chests. Warms their bone prisons for a time.”

“What are you saying?” the caged woman asks. “I give you my life and you'll dance for me?”

The Old Man of the Desert smiles and that smile scares her because it's not kind or understanding. It's sharp and cuts deep. It cuts like a knife, slips in through the skin, slips past the ribs of her bone prison.

“What you got caging you is the idea of a prison,” he says. “That's what I want from you.”

“You want some kind of . . . story?”

He shakes his head. “I'm not in a bartering mood—not about this kind of thing.”

“I don't know how to give you my prison,” she says. “I don't know if I can.”

“All you got to do is say yes,” he tells her.

She looks at that dancing in his hand and it's all she wants now. There's little sparks coming off it, the smell of smudge-sticks and licorice and gasoline. There's a warmth burning in it that she knows will drive the cold away. That cold. She's been holding that cold for so long she doesn't hardly remember what it feels like to be warm anymore.

She's looking, she's reaching. She says yes and the Old Man of the Desert gives her back her dancing. And it's warm and familiar, lying there in her hand, but she doesn't feel any different. She doesn't know what to do with it, now she's got it. She wants to ask him what to do, but he's not paying attention to her anymore.

What's he doing? He's picking up dirt and he's spitting on it, spitting and spitting and working the dirt until it's like clay. And he makes a box out of it and in one side of the box he puts a door. And he digs a hole in
the dirt and he puts the box in it. And he covers it up again. And then he looks at her. “One day you're going to find yourself in that box again,” he says, “but this time you'll remember and you won't get locked up again.”

She doesn't understand what he's talking about, doesn't care. She's got other things on her mind. She holds up her dancing, holds it in the air between them.

“I don't know what to do with this,” she says. “I don't know how to make it work.”

The Old Man of the Desert stands up. He gives her a hand up. He takes the dancing from her and throws it on the ground, throws it hard, throws it so hard it breaks. He starts shuffling his feet, keeping time with a clicking sound in the back of his throat. The dust rises up from the ground and she breathes it in and then she remembers what it was like and who she was and why she danced.