Wichita (9781609458904) (23 page)

“I was caught completely off guard by the whole episode,” Virgil says, sinking back into regretfulness. “But why was I cut off? I should have made a point to
know him better
. All those people who showed up today, for instance. I had no idea he had so many friends!”

They sit for a moment in silence.

“Well—” Lewis says, placing a hand on the door.

“I spoke with someone,” Virgil says now, holding him in place, “a friend of Abby's. She said that that was the very first time Abby had ever gone out on one of those ‘tornado chases.'”

“That's right,” Lewis says, thinking this can't be news and wondering where this is headed: somewhere. Virgil is not one to think aloud; he has a thesis.

“Tornado Ally, she called the company?” Virgil asks now. “A pun on Tornado
Alley
, I take it.”

Lewis sighs to show his impatience with this retreading of established ground.

“I tried to find out more on the website,” Virgil says in his defense, “but it had been taken down. Understandably.” Lewis glances at the house in the hope of being signaled to by someone, called inside.

“We did mushrooms once, your mom and I,” Virgil says abruptly, apropos of what, Castañeda/Ally? Maybe he
is
rambling. “Did she ever tell you that?”

Lewis shakes his head quickly.

“No, well, that doesn't fit so neatly with my stodgy professor image.”

He pauses, savoring Lewis's surprise. “It was in Rome, when I was at the Academy. You were, let's see, you would have been two. We left you with a sitter, went to a friends' house for the afternoon.” He turns down the corners of his mouth, shrugs. “I enjoyed it. It was like—being part of a sort of pneumatic mosaic.”

Lewis is trying to decide how he feels about this revelation—it's like hearing Virgil recount some sexual tryst—when Virgil turns toward him with narrowed eyes and asks in an interrogator's quick, jarring cadence, “Were there drugs involved that day, Lewis?”

“Yes,” Lewis says quickly, as if jolted into confessing, “lithium.”

A smile flickers over Virgil's lips and his eyelids droop in acknowledgment of the deftness of the evasion. “And Symbyax,” Lewis adds. “Seth had just started on that.”

“‘Recreational' drugs, I mean—mushrooms, LSD. Maybe Bishop and Abby? A little trip to spice up the experience?”

“No,” Lewis says, frowning: how absurd, no never. Meanwhile remembering the hits of Ex in his front pocket. And who knows, Bishop might have been
mildly
high on one of his designer concoctions.

“I know Bishop is a chemist,” Virgil says. “He has quite a web presence on sites devoted to psychedelics. And Abby was always so fond of her
Castañeda
.” Pronouncing the name with slight curl of the lip.

Lewis holds up his hands then drops them in his lap: what can he say?

“It just seems so
crazy
, to get that close to a tornado!” Virgil cries. He reaches suddenly towards the cut above Lewis's eye, causing Lewis to draw back. “
You
could have been killed too,” he says. “You
all
could have.”

Lewis considers objecting to the use of “killed” but thinks better of it.

Virgil tugs at one cuff of his white shirt with an expression of abstracted annoyance. “I just don't feel like I know the whole story,” he says finally.

Nudging open the passenger door, Lewis says, “Neither do I.”

 

 

L
ouise comes out through the sliding glass doors wearing a quilted robe, shiny purple and high-collared, with ivory toggles. It's printed with I-Ching-ish emblems and zodiacal figures. Her boots are upturned and elfin. Lewis is sitting on the stoop. When he asks whether she's not hot in that thing, she smiles tolerantly and pauses to lay a long-fingered hand on his shoulder, the touch passing soothingly into him as if across the barrier of his skepticism about her and this ceremony.

He watches her set up a card table next to the tree and from a National Public Radio canvas tote bag she removes various items and places them on the table—a lighter, an incense burner, an evergreen sprig, strips of white cloth, a shallow circular drum with tassels, a bundle of sage tied with white string, a wooden whisk.

Lewis hears the gate by the trash stall clank and Cody comes around the corner of the house in his low-slung jeans and tight white wife-beater T. He stands staring at Louise and the tree then, spotting Lewis, scuttles over and sits next to him on the stoop. He rubs his chin to show his approval of Lewis's clean-shaven face and offers a cigarette from a pack. Lewis takes one but refuses the light and holds it unlit in his fingers.

“Sort of weird, a
tree
thing,” Cody says in a confidential voice, speaking out of the side of his mouth. When Lewis says nothing, Cody leans closer and whispers, “I mean,
ain't that
—?”

Lewis closes his eyes and sighs and says, “Yeah, it is, Cody. And yeah, I think it's weird. But it's what Abby wants—”

“Nah, I hear you,” Cody says assuagingly. He drapes his arm over Lewis's shoulders. He smells of Tori's patchouli musk. Lewis wonders whether she's been giving consolatory lap dances. “I hear you, bro.”

Abby comes outside with the gray hexagonal cardboard box containing her half of the ashes and a stack of ceramic bowls. She sets the bowls on the ground and distributes the ashes evenly into them.

“Ash” is actually the wrong word, Lewis thinks, touching his portion: it's coarser, oilier, with bits and spurs that must be the remnants of bone. He wishes they'd found no body, that it had been translated into the sky Old Testament-style, atomized.

No he doesn't.

Midsummer night has fallen, almost fallen. Abby has Lewis and Bishop and Cody stand with their arms around each other in a kind of huddle, a silent tuning in to Seth's spirit. Lewis feels only the familiar heaviness, along with a dull impatience to get all this over with. Then they move off into the yard in separate directions, scattering the ashes wherever they like. Lewis wanders to the toolshed, flings a bit over the fence into Oren's yard on a mischievous impulse. On the far side of the house, Bishop lets out a whoop of what Lewis imagines Bishop imagines is Seth's joy at being free of his body. Which seems tone-deaf to Lewis but who knows.

They meet back at the stoop and Abby collects the empty clay bowls and takes them inside. Now Louise comes out leading the other people who will participate in the tree ceremony. They form a circle around the birch: Abby, Lewis, Cody, Bishop, Harry, Astrid, the lesbian couple whose names Lewis will never get straight, along with their infant asleep in its sling, Stacy in her wheelchair, looking less drugged now.

Louise lights the incense on the card table then the bundle of sage. She moves around the tree waving the smoking sage then directs them to take up the strips of white cloth, one strip in the right hand, one in the left. Other than Lewis, only Bishop knows about the tattered pieces of sheet caught in the tree they found Seth in. Or Abby, if he told Abby about it. But if Bishop sees the connection, he isn't letting on. But then Bishop looks pretty smashed on his Ex.

“The
barisaa
, or prayer tree,” Louise says, sounding like a solemn PBS documentary, “is an important site of worship in the Siberian–Mongolian tradition. By performing this ritual, we will be creating a
barisaa
of this beautiful young birch and it will bring peace both to the area, including the house, and to Seth's spirit.”

She goes to the table and lights the evergreen sprig and walks around fanning the smoke outward. Watching her, Lewis thinks: she has my five-thousand dollars; I want my five-thousand dollars back; I want to go to Bali.

“Nature spirits of this place,” she intones now, returning to her place in the circle, “
Suld
souls of the recently departed! Having forgiven what has happened in the past, be aware that you can do good for all living things, inspire people with visions of the future, bring calm and confidence, fill their hearts with peace and love. Hurai! Hurai! Hurai!” She makes a wide clockwise gesture as she says, “Hurai!”

She takes up the shallow drum and playing it with her hand leads them all slowly around the birch three times, Stacy's wheelchair whirring. Then she has them take up the strips of cloth again. Lewis stands with his eyes closed but he can sense Louise circling the tree and flinging liquids and powders, can hear the salt or sugar sprinkling over the ground. This goes on for a while, accompanied by “Hurai's,” then there's what sounds like a final “Hurai!”

He opens his eyes as Louise pours out the rest of the vodka around the trunk of the tree. The smell of it makes him want to get drunk but it seems he's barred from getting drunk today. She has everyone sip from the dish of water. It's over.

Lewis follows Bishop and Cody inside for another shot of whisky. After a minute the others drift into the kitchen.

Abby approaches with an entreating expression, strokes Lewis's arm. It turns out there's yet another rite Louise would like to perform. Lewis nearly lets his head roll backwards with weariness and disgust.

“It involves calling Seth's spirit,” Abby says. “I'm actually not real clear on it but it's nothing too elaborate. Louise felt it would be appropriate tonight. You're free to opt out.”

“I'll just sit out back then,” he tells her. “If that's OK.”

“Of course it's OK!” She hugs him and goes into the dining room, followed by Louise and the others, who have been hanging back deferentially. Lewis goes out to the stoop, sits down with the bottle of whisky but feeling a sudden revulsion at the idea of another shot stands up and goes out through the gate.

He walks to the end of the driveway and looks up at the sky. The stars are out, the trees barely moving in the wind. He walks down the street, past the tight-lipped houses with their bass boats under taut, snapped-down tarps.

He walks to the bottom of the neighborhood and stands looking into the stand of trees by the creek. Cottonwoods, maples, birches. Which tree was it they sat by? He closes his eyes, expecting to feel Seth's presence here at his morning-glory spot if anywhere. He waits for a while then gives up and turns to go back to the house.

When the tornado passed, silence fell instantly and the grass of the field lay still. The last red light of the setting sun shone in through the Escalade's broken windshield, through the dirt caked on the windows, cast a warm light over the figures huddled there. Drew stayed behind with Abby, whose ankle was twisted. Calling Seth's name, Bishop and Lewis searched the field. The earth was pocked and cratered, the undersoil churned to the surface. When they found no sign of him, they followed the swath of debris, crossing a creek with steep banks thick with cottonwoods, a few sheared in two low on the trunks. They went on through a backyard strewn with mangled gutters and tin siding hanging like skin in flaps from the body of the houses. Part of the roof of a house was missing. Telephone poles leaned at hard angles and sparks spewed from the tip of a dangling power line.

There was a fire truck parked in a driveway, its light bathing the house and driveway in red. They were pointing flashlights up a tree, rags and shreds of cloth caught in the broken branches flaring in the beams. Now the beams shone steadily on something. Lewis approached in a kind of trance and stood looking up with the others, unable to speak. Two ladders were set side by side against the tree.

“That's my brother,” he finally told a fireman. Everyone turned. Lewis climbed one of the ladders, someone else the other. Seth's head swung to one side and Lewis caught it with one hand and cradled it against his chest. The gauze bandage was gone from his head, the one for the blisters on the chest tat gone too, half his shirt ripped away.

They lay him on a blue plastic tarp spread on the ground. Wet leaves were stuck to his chest and shoulder.

“We found him,” Bishop said into his cellphone.

Lewis peeled a leaf from the flesh of Seth's shoulder. It left a fine, detailed welt—branched veins, serrated edge.

“No,” Bishop said. “No, honey, he's not.”

 

Lewis goes into the backyard through the gate. Cody is sitting on the stoop smoking a cigarette. Lewis sits down beside him. Cody asks him whether he took the Ex. Lewis shakes his head.

“Me neither.” Cody snickers in surprise at himself. “That's gotta be a first.”

“Seth!” they hear faintly through the open sliding glass doors. It sounds like an invocation.

“Just didn't feel like it,” Cody says quizzically.

Then, hanging his head, he says quietly, “All I keep thinking about is how I should've been with you guys.”

He looks over at Lewis. “
You
heard me asking your mom. I said, ‘Can I come?' There was all them empty seats!”

Lewis says nothing. Darkness has engulfed the yard but the strips of cloth hanging from the branches glow. “I would've got on that bike with him, man,” Cody says now.

In the light from the kitchen, Lewis can see tears on Cody's cheeks. “Don't say that, Cody.”

“I mean it,” Cody insists.

“Well, don't say it,” Lewis tells him. “Not to me.”

“All right,” Cody says after a moment. “I'm sorry.”

“You can't say everything that comes into your head,” Lewis says gently.

“Hurai!” they hear above a general murmur coming from the dining room.

Cody says, “But I mean, what am I supposed to do now?” He seems to expect an answer.

“I don't know,” Lewis says.

“He was the only person who ever gave a shit about me. Him and your mom. What am I supposed to do now?”

Lewis puts his arm around him and Cody slumps gratefully against him, his face pressed into Lewis's chest. Lewis pats him on the back. After a bit Cody seems to gather himself. He sits up and lights a cigarette but puts it out after a single drag.

“Seth!” floats out through the sliding glass doors. “Hurai!” Lewis wishes they would give it a fucking rest now. He considers going for another walk.

Cody lets out a sigh and Lewis glances over to check on him and where Cody was, Seth is sitting.

Lewis stares, thunderstruck.

Seth simply sits there, turned slightly away. The right side of his face is clear of the tattoo.

Lewis stares. It's all he can do. It's as if he's paralyzed, might pass out. But where is Cody? Has Seth possessed him, replaced him? Has Cody given his assent to this? What has happened?

Seth says nothing. But he is here and, fighting free of amaze­ment, Lewis reaches out and wraps him tightly in his arms. He has him now, he's holding his dead brother who is somehow not dead. The problem of Cody can be worked out later. Now he's going to haul Seth into the astonished light of the house, where everyone there will see him too and nothing, not a mote of dust, will be left unchanged.