Wichita (9781609458904) (12 page)

Abby comes in, shoulders her purse, searching around the kitchen and breakfast nook for her keys until she finds them in the purse. “I'm going out for groceries. Any requests?”

“More beer, I guess,” he says. “And a bottle of Dewar's?” He'd like to have the option of going on a bender if in fact he can't snap out of the post-V. blues.

“Okay,” Abby says blithely, jotting it on a Post-It. He could ask her to pick up an eight ball of cocaine and, assuming she had a source for it and the money, she probably wouldn't blink. People should be able to pursue whatever it is they want to explore.

“Oh, I just got off the phone with Astrid,” she says. “You remember Astrid.”

He does: yoga instructor, plain verging on homely but with a memorable, lithe body.

“When I told her you were back in town, she asked whether you would mind coming along to the Celebration we're having tonight—did I tell you about that?”

He searches his brain carefully lest he appear absent-minded and shakes his head.

“It came together rather quickly, which is what I love: how these things just
move into being
.”

“Aren't they women-only?” he asks. “What's my role?”

“Well, they are, technically. Astrid's just having a little ex-boyfriend trouble.”

Ex-Boyfriend Trouble: sounds like a band. “Meaning what?” he asks.

“It's just Astrid's feeling a little worried he'll show up and make a scene. He won't, of course. Really. You would just sit nearby, or at the bar, for her sake. Dinner on us. It's the best place in town.”

“So I'd be, like, security?”

“I can ask Donald if you're uncomfortable with it.”

“Right,” he says, scoffing lightly, though he's not sure why: Donald's big enough for the gig. Assuming he's well-rested enough to be vigilant, given the sleep-eating. Does Abby know about that? He doesn't feel like getting into it.

“Fine,” he says. “Sure.” And feels a surge of sexual anticipation: Astrid in his chivalric debt.

Abby thanks him warmly and heads out to go shopping.

Lewis drinks his tea looking out at the backyard. He forgot to ask about her position on the weeds. At how many houses is that necessary? But they look for the moment, swaying in the wind, right and good.

 

 

O
n his way to his room and the green German grammar, Lewis looks in on Seth and Cody. Seth is fast-forwarding through the opening credits of a TIVO'd National Geographic Channel documentary about tornados. Beckoning to Lewis, he presses “play” at the appearance of an enormous soot-gray twister turning in slow-motion, chunks of black debris wheeling past in the foreground, then images of corn and wheat fields shot from above. “June 23rd, 1998,” intones the fateful voice of the narrator. “The heart of the American Heartland.”

“God's talking about
us
!” Seth calls, elbowing Cody along the couch. “Sit! Check this out!”

Lewis hesitates then sits down between them on the couch. Reenactment shots of a man in plaid shirt going about his rural chores.

“7:02 in the evening,” says the narrator. “Farmer Arlen Wilke notices a dark cloud taking shape a few miles south of his farm.”

Seth leans forward. “Yo, hurry the fuck up, Farmer Willie!” Lewis gets the impression they've watched this more than a few times.

“This guy's
dead
,” Cody says, rubbing his hands together.

The farmer's voice says, “The sky didn't look right.”

Cody and Seth cackle. “It didn't look right
because there was a fucking tornado about to touch down
!”

Wilke says, “And then we watched the tail come down and a tornado start. Someone suggested we grab a video camera.”

“Uh, that would be Satan,” Seth says and again the footage of the enormous soot-gray funnel cloud turning, two telephone poles and a small white house in the foreground.

“Growing in size and charging across nearby fields,” the narrator says in his sonorous voice, “it seems to be heading for Wilke's home. He's lived in the area all his life and knows the dangers of Tornado Alley well. ‘Please don't hit my place!'”

Snickering Cody and Seth, lean forward intently. Shot of Wilke beside cornfield. “You could really start to hear it roar. And it really got to be spinnin' faster and it really, really built in size. It just got huge.”

“Some kind of
size queen
, this guy,” Seth remarks and Cody titters, shifting around on the couch with embarrassment. Seth pats his inner thigh. “Yo, I got your huge tornado right down here, Farmer
Willie
.”

Seth fast-forwards as if looking for something specific and there flashes a stuttering sequence of witnesses and survivors shot from the waist up then funnel clouds, whirling debris, aftermaths of ruin and destruction, over and over, like a kind of insanity.

“We ARE in Kansas anymore!” Seth says, switching off the TV, which goes black with a static-electric sigh. “This IS fucking Kansas.”

He looks from Cody to Lewis. “Are you with me?”

“No,” Lewis replies.

“God is right out there,” Seth says, waving vaguely at the front door, the roof of the house. He stands up. “On your feet!”

Lewis stays pointedly put but Cody follows Seth through the living room. Then, rather than actually begin reviewing German, Lewis brings up the rear, curious to see what Seth will get up to.

The air outside is humid and close. Seth is standing in the front yard, which is shielded from the street by scraggly evergreen hedges, looking up, arms spread in a V. The sky overhead is clear but there are darkish clouds approaching from the southwest.

Backing out of his driveway, Oren brakes to stare frowningly, going on when Seth waves him over eagerly.

He then draws Lewis and Cody into a football huddle. “Close your eyes.” He squeezes Lewis's neck with his arm. “Do it!” Lewis closes his eyes.

“I want you to
feel
a twister.” He's silent for a beat. “Feel
cyclonic
.” He squeezes Lewis's neck. “There's a doubter in our midst. Do you know who I mean, Cody?”

“It ain't me,” Cody says.

Seth holds them in the huddle. The stench from Cody's mouth-breathing and blown-out Nike high-tops is only partly diffused by a breeze. Seth releases them, spreading his arms wide again.

“Now look up!” Overhead, blue sky. Seth watches for a moment then shrugs, undeterred. “I'll do a twister dance.”

He begins whirling in place on one foot with his arms out then begins striding in widening circles bent at the waist, a mosh-pit step. “I have Indian blood!”

Cody looks for confirmation at Lewis, who shakes his head.

“Course I do,” Seth says, beginning to sweat. He pauses to hawk up phlegm, which he spits into the hedges then resumes mosh dancing. “
I have Indian blood
. I do, you do, Cody does. I mean, please:
we are all Indians
, tribal, big dicks, war paint.”

“Sounds good,” Lewis says blandly.

“You just
forgot
,” Seth says, flashing that volatile street-fighting light. “Forgot who you are. Forgot who your
shaman leader is
.” Nodding, he jabs a thumb at his own chest.

“You, Lewis,
left the tribe
!” He points into distance. “Went
out there
and
believed
what the sick white cousins said about self and world. ‘Is that so bad, really? That's just an education, isn't it?' Well, let's look at the evidence: you came back
weak
and
thin
and
white
as a cave salamander and your
bitch
—well, I'm not even going
there
.”

He pauses as if to give Lewis a chance to react and Lewis reacts by showing no reaction and Seth resumes the mosh-pit dance. “Killing in the name of!” he sings. Rage Against the Machine. Their juvenile anthem. Cody plays the three hard licks on air guitar: DOOH-dooh-dooh!

“Now you do what they
told
you!” Seth wags his finger at Lewis as he goes around and seems more like a harmless prankster again. Cody plays the licks: DOOH-dooh-dooh! “Now you do what they
told
you!”

Seth points out storm clouds beginning to reach fingers across the sky over head. “Have to go down to the
base
ment in a minute!” Seth predicts in a sing-song told-ya-so voice.

They all sit on the stoop to watch the sky. Cody points to something on Seth's right hand. “What's that?” he asks as if both miffed and remiss for not knowing every mole and mark on Seth's body. He bends down and reads. “D - D - P.”

“Dominicans Don't Play,” Seth says, looking at it. “My homeboys gave me that. When we got popped they thought I was headed to Riker's too. I was sort of in their gang.”

“Dude, did you get jumped in?” Cody asks with big eyes.

Seth pauses as if contemplating concocting a story for Cody's entertainment then says simply, “Nah, one of them just gave me the tat. Big Biz.”

Cody squints at him. “Weren't you afraid of getting ass-raped in there?”

Seth makes a nonchalant moue. “Nah.”

“Damn, I woulda been!”

“Ass-raped?” Seth says, looking with concern at Cody. “Repeatedly?”

“No,
afraid
!”

“Butt-raped until you
screamed with ecstasy
?”

“Fuck you, Seth!” Cody says, raising his fist. Seth rolls his eyes at this and Cody settles back as if he's defended his honor adequately. “Seriously, dude.”

“What about your
new
tat?” Lewis says and Seth looks at Cody, who shakes his head emphatically: I didn't tell him anything!

“It's not ready to be revealed yet,” Seth says.

“Sounds momentous,” Lewis says.

“Tornado
Ally
,” Seth says, snapping his fingers. “That's what Mom should call the company.”

“Won't people just think it's a typo for ‘alley'?” Lewis says.

“Just fag-ass English majors.”

“Castañeda!” Cody says approvingly, catching the allusion. They high-five each other.

“You know, don't you,” Lewis tells Cody, “Castañeda made all that stuff up, right?”

“Bullshit!” Cody cries but looks at Seth, who hesitates then nods and shrugs as if to say, Yes, but so what?

“It's fiction,” Lewis says.

Cody sits frowningly digesting this information while Seth shakes his head disappointedly at Lewis for, in effect, ruining Christmas for Cody

“Well, it don't really matter,” Cody concludes finally. “It's still some rad shit you can apply. Like the
stalking technique
? That's punk as fuck!”

“Of course it matters!” Lewis says. “The whole claim of those books is that there are actual wizards doing actual supernatural things. That's the basis for all the excitement. Otherwise, it's just fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons, and no one cares.”

“Hey, a
lot
of people care about Dungeons and Dragons,” Seth says. “More people care about Dungeons and Dragons and Castañeda than will
ever
care about Virgil or John Clarence the pig-fucking farm poet from the 17th Century. Now why is that?”

Lewis concentrates on Cody. “It's like: did Jesus really and truly rise from the dead or not?”

Seth holds up a hand. “I'll handle this, Cody.”

“He totally did!” Cody says, eyes huge with outrage and belief.

“Cody, what did I just say?” Seth says, shaking his head, and is about to reply to Lewis when a volley of shouting male voices can be heard through the ajar front door. Seth gets up and dashes inside, in the direction of the kitchen.

 

 

I
t's a strange scene. Donald is shakily spooning coffee from a filter in the Braun coffee maker back into a clear molded plastic container. Bishop is seated in a chair at the table in the breakfast nook, shaking his head, eyelids at half-mast, as if disappointed by a child's misbehavior.

Seth has taken up a wide martial-arts stance in the middle of the floor, looking from Donald to Bishop with an open-mouthed smile. “Yo, what the hell is
going on in here
?”

Donald goes on grimly spooning ground coffee back into the plastic container as if baling water.

On the floor between Bishop's legs is a large shopping bag filled with eye masks in cellophane sheathes. Bishop has a pair on, Lewis sees now, pushed back on his head like riding goggles. “I Don't Do Mornings” is printed in white script across it.

“Hey, someone tell me
some
thing!” Seth says, shoving Donald lightly.

“I simply came in to make a cup of coffee—” Bishop begins.

Wheeling around, Donald shouts, “You make yours OUTSIDE!”

Seth slides over to block Donald's view of Bishop. “Whoa, whoa,
whoa
!”

Donald stands glaring past him at Bishop, face red, shoulders rising and falling with big breaths.

Seth pinches a sleeve of Donald's T-shirt and gives it a provocative tug. “You keep your voice
down
in my house, mister!”

Cody glances at Lewis: this is gonna be good!

To Donald Seth says, “Hear me? You keep it down in my house or I'll kick your ass to the curb
.
You're homeless. You're living in a Hefty bag, fat man.”

“Oh, Donald's all right, Seth,” Bishop says soothingly. “Right, Donald? Donald's just having some issues around territory today.”

Donald has faced away from Seth, toward the counter again. He's picked up the spoon as if to resume ladling.

“I'm asking
do you hear me
?” Seth says, tapping the words out on Donald's back.

To prevent it all from blowing up into a brawl, Lewis grabs Seth by the biceps and drags him backwards but Seth hooks a foot around one of Lewis's ankles and they reel across the kitchen floor and crash through the swinging doors on the pantry, boxes and broom handles clattering down as Seth elbows Lewis hard in the chest and scrambles back out.

Donald is storming across the kitchen like a rampaging bear when Lewis emerges. He gives Seth a wide berth but forces Cody to jump aside to clear a path, going out through the door to the garage and flicking the door so that it slams shut then bounces back open, vibrating on its hinges.

Seth looks around. “Yo, was he
growling
?” He slaps his knee, wheezes out a laugh. “He was fucking
growling
!”

“Dude, I was almost roadkill!” Cody says. He opens the door after a moment and peers out into the garage, pulls the door closed, locks it.

As if on second thought, Cody unlocks the door, opens it and trots out into the garage and on into the driveway, the low-slung jeans forcing him to scuttle like the man fleeing the exploded outhouse. Turning up toward the street, he disappears from view.

“Bishop!” Seth says. “What the hell—”

Bishop plucks a pair of eye masks from the bag and fiddles with the strap. “We can work this out,” he says.

“Yeah?” Seth says, delightedly unconvinced.

“We do have an agreement,” Bishop says with less assurance.

Cody scuttles back inside and closes the door behind him. “Think he went to get a gun?” he asks Seth, who rolls his eyes.

“There's stuff he could use right there in the damn garage,” Cody tells Lewis. “There's a ax and some gnarly
prunin' shears
and big-ass framin' hammer.”

Seth says, “The man seems pretty upset by your very
existence
, dude.”

“Word, Bishop!” Cody chimes in. “Your, like, whole
right to exist
is being questioned, son!”

Bishop closes his eyes, composing himself. He sighs, giggles with embarrassment, looks at the floor, shakes his head. I'm sixty years old, Lewis hears him thinking. What am I doing? “God.”

Lewis has been warily waiting for Seth to take some sort of shot, verbal or physical, for his interference in the disciplining of Donald. But with an air of having lost interest in the whole affair, Seth opens the refrigerator and fishes out a loaf of banana bread. He unwraps the cellophane, breaks off a hunk and tosses it to Cody, who catches it like a seal clapping and jams it into his mouth.

“So hey, Seth,” Bishop says, tidying up his sack of eye masks. Bishop's hands are shaking, Lewis notices. He would like to move on, pretend what's just happened is already behind him but hasn't recovered from it yet. “We need to get you into the clinic for your
physical
.”

Seth sniffs the banana bread and stares in a hooded, unreadable way at Bishop, who smiles his mischievous eyebrow-waggling psychonaut smile, scrubs at his white beard excitedly with one hand. “I talked to Jesse about maybe
leaving out the blocker
for one session? Pure DMT for Seth!”

The door to the garage flies open, banging against the wall and startling everyone, even Seth, who flinches.

But it's not raging-bull Donald, it's Abby, struggling in with grocery bags in each hand, her face lighting up with pleasure at the sight of so many of “her boys” gathered in the kitchen. “Hello!” she greets them.

“Gosh, you think this might be
the one
?” Seth says to Bishop, ignoring her. “The
ultimate ride
in the amusement park?”

Bishop squints in bemusement at the scorn, smiles as if Seth is surely pulling his leg, ceases smiling. Unpacking one of the bags, Abby is following the exchange with a serious expression.

“May
be
,” Bishop says, adding, almost pleadingly, “I mean, my God, it's the most powerful psychedelic known to man—”

“Nah,” Seth says, to Lewis's surprise, shaking his head decisively. “Count me out.”

Bishop's face falls. “You don't want to participate?” It's as if the whole worth of the project were riding on his being able to give Seth this supernal drug experience, to hear Seth's report, to debrief him.

Seth drops his half-eaten hunk of banana bread through the hinged white plastic lid of the tall trash can. “Right, I
don't want to do the study
, Bishop.”

“May I ask why not?” Bishop asks.

“Bishop!” Abby says. “You know I was never overjoyed about it.”

Overjoyed? Lewis thinks. Why didn't she forbid it? Then he remembers that you don't forbid Seth things. You either kick him out or lock him up.

Holding up his palms to signal reasonableness, Bishop says, “I just wanted to hear Seth's thoughts on the matter.”

“Sounded to me like arm-twisting,” Abby says, resuming her unpacking of the grocery bag.

“My thoughts?” Seth says. “I've seen enough.” He lets that sink in. He shrugs, turns down the corners of his mouth. He can't think of a better word: “
Enough
,” he says again.

Bishop inclines his head, nodding respectfully as if to say, “Okay, that's acceptable. I've felt that way myself from time to time; many psychonauts have. It's a place we all come to.”

At some point, Stacy has driven her wheelchair up the ramp to the threshold of the kitchen and is listening to Seth with an alert, fawn-like expression.

“Been down enough rabbit holes,” Seth says, taking backwards steps toward the dining room. “Had enough ‘visions' and ‘experiences,'” he says, hooking his fingers into quotes. He pauses to look around the room as if including everyone there under the category: they are inextricably part of this pathetic, substandard realm or reality he has had the misfortune to find himself marooned in.

With that, he turns and walks out of the kitchen, followed by Cody, looking in his low-slung jeans like some royal dwarf out of Velazquez.

Stacy rolls forward into the house then stops and hits a switch and reverses nimbly down the ramp and leaves without a word.

Lewis and Abby and Bishop look each at a different part of the kitchen in silence. Now the sound of the stereo in Seth's room comes on, the undertones of the music reaching across the house in jagged strokes, like the needle of an EKG.