The World Wonders

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Synopsis:  This brief future history imagines a potential development in Middle Eastern politics.  

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The World Wonders

The bridge was a glistening behemoth of steel and glass.  Escarpments sloped out of the desert hills around the loading dock. To me, it was a bone spur jutting from a broken corpse and stretching into the horizon.

110 kilometers of reinforced glass and layered steel stretching from the hills south of Hebron to docking platform on the coast off Gaza City.  12 people per shuttle could travel without encumbrance between the bifurcated provinces of Palestine in 26 minutes and 47 seconds.  It is the greatest technological marvel of our time.

When I first read about the plan to resuscitate pneumatic tube technology, I laughed.  When I first read a proposal to bridge the West Bank and Gaza with such a tube, I refreshed the page, then I laughed.

No one is laughing now.  Today I am cheering, we are all cheering.

And why not?  Humanity has reached its pinnacle. At least, that’s what they told us.

I was near the back of the crowd the day it opened. That wasn’t a problem; my height has always been an advantage in situations like this.  I could see the platform and the ribbon with barely any obstruction.

Elon Musk was the man whose company first proposed the trans-provincial pneumatic shuttle.  He intended it as a method of transportation for commuters in Southern California.  “Avoid the hustle and bustle of freeway commuting,” he said. “It’s cheap, it’s easy, it’s safe,” he said.  It was all those things.  I guess that’s when some a-hole in the State Department started getting crazy ideas.

Did you know that the Hoover Dam spent over ten years in planning before any cement was poured?  Construction took another five years, and even then there was a massive workforce of depressed American workers to take advantage of.

I remember what he said when he got up to speak.  He is an odd man, Elon Musk.  People don’t generally say that about him, but he is, and we all know it.  He may be savior of the planet and the man who leads us to Mars, but he isn’t like the rest of us.

There are a few specific recollections I’ll carry with me from that day. The image of Musk handing the scissors to PM Barak with his sagging cheeks and President Meshaal, standing proud, is one of them.  The two men smiled for photos and sliced the ribbon like the thin piece of fabric it was.

The politicians all deserved a speech.  They earned it.  I think Hillary’s was my favorite.  It was the shortest.  But, Elon earned one too and his was the most memorable.  The news media like to replay the clip of him pointing his cane to the sky and promising Mars next, but the one that sticks out to me came earlier.  The desert wind was whipping over the crowd, but his gelled hair stuck in place.  He spoke with an inhuman conviction.

“We have finally figured out a way to solve our most divisive political problems with ultra-modern technology.  Our greatest shame as a species finally redeemed by our greatest strength.”

The official name was the Palestine Unity and Peace Bridge.  They painted it right there on the steel bulwark.  They painted that name all over the damn thing.  You can’t see any of those sings now.  After the separation wall came down, local graffiti artists needed a new canvas.  High above the skyscrapers of Sderot, there are tags from daredevils artists from around the world.  I would be scared to death of climbing halfway up one of those supports, let alone hanging by wires underneath the tube itself. Those brave men and women earned the right to name the bridge as far as I’m concerned.

So, Some artist sprayed the words, some expat punk like me translated them, and the Internet took over from there.  The Palestine Unity and Peace Bridge was forgotten and the Tareeq Mukhtasira was born.  Forever and always, the greatest technological achievement in history would be known simply as “The Way Around”.

 

 

Leviathan Wakes -James SA Corey (Science Fiction)

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Leviathan Wakes -James SA Corey (Science Fiction)

1/22

B

“Leviathan Wakes”, first of a planned trilogy, seeks to fill the gap between long-favored scifi set ups: A not too distant future on Earth and galaxy-spanning space operas.  This story of an idealistic former naval officer and a hard boiled detective navigating our solar system and the political and corporate bodies that populate it fits the bill.  But that’s all.  It is a workmanlike and professional debut for the writing duo Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.  That is not to say it’s not good.  I had fun with every cliffhanger and the action scenes were handled with a sense of pace.  But, I didn’t find any moments particularly epic and I doubt I’ll remember any of the characters.

Oh, it was nominated for a Hugo award in 2011.  That’s important, I guess.

Having said all that, I can see myself buying a copy of the sequel, “Caliban’s War”.

Pros: pacing, consistent prose, moments of humor, enough perspective, much more sophisticated depiction of romance and sexuality than most science fiction

Cons: fairly bland characters, not much nuance on the political side of things

 

Interesting note: co-author Ty Franck is billed as “George R.R. Martin’s assistant”.  Does this speak more to GRRM’s dominance of modern SF&F or to Ty Franck’s lack of experience?

One Long Walk in Jerusalem

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Shivering huddled masses stretched in front and behind her, their dark shrouds pulled tight against the winter winds and rain. She thought, I am so lucky.

Reem was not a young woman. Neither was she old. Though years of cleaning the dark, dusty corners of her father’s house had given her back its permanent twist. It was difficult for her to stand straight, so she leaned up against the sign on her right. It read:

By order of the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, entrance to the Temple Mount is expressly forbidden.

None of the other people waiting gave the sign a second glance, so Reem ignored it as well. The presumptuous tone gave it away. I hope no believers read this and walk away. Haram al-Sharif is here for all. If some choose not to go up and admire the beauty of its truth, that is their choice.

Up ahead of Reem, there was a small building with walls built of aluminum siding. It looked like a temporary blight on the elaborate stone barriers and arches that loomed over the metal detectors to its left. A much shorter line of tourists and Haredim waited to unload their pockets and enter the plaza in front of the wall. The mostly white, Western tourists had umbrellas and baseball caps. They were hastily scribbling messages onto hotel-branded stationary. You could come to the mosque if you want, Reem thought. God will listen to your prayers from there as well. The cracks of that wall are already full up of messages.

A mother and a father were herding their three daughters past Reem towards the metal detectors.

“Daddy, I’m cold!”

“Me too, Daddy! Can I have another chocolate?”

“The candy here is weird, Dad. Do you have any M&Ms left from the plane ride?”

“Chocolate won’t warm you up, dear.” The mother scooped up her youngest daughter and gently held her cheek, “You’re not so cold. You girls will live.”

“Kat, did you remember your brother’s note?”

“I told you. He e-mailed it. Any chance to use that fancy iPad of his…”

“That’s Duncan for you. Leave it to him to find out you can e-mail prayers in to be stuck in the wall.”

Reem couldn’t understand a word of what the family was saying, but they seemed happy. So she felt happy too. It warmed her heart, but her clothes stayed wet and cold.

She heard a shout from the front of the line and ripple of movement spread back through the crowd. I can’t believe I am finally here. It was worth it – all the paperwork, the border crossing, the expense – it was worth it. I wish my brother could have been here.

She went through her prayers as the line moved. Each family member must be mentioned. It was no trouble. Had they been able to come for themselves, it would not be her burden, but they could not.

Under the aluminum eaves, Reem took precautions before the search. She took her identity card from a pouch inside her jacket and clutched it with both hands. It was not easy to get this small card with her face on it, and she had no intention of misplacing it.

“Shalom.” A tall man in faded fatigues held out his hand. His eyelids were still weighed down with sleep and his voice came out in a dull drone.

“Good Morning.” Reem tried to give him a big smile as she entered the guard building. She was nervous despite herself. I have done nothing wrong. My paperwork came back all right. I am allowed to be here. I am allowed to be here. She repeated it to herself to make sure. I am allowed to be here.

Still, the faded green of the uniform made her uneasy. How many boys have worn that fabric before you? She thought, it is older than you are, to be sure. They can launder it all they want, but blood stains. It stains in ways that cannot always be seen.

He took her card and passed it to man sitting behind a computer. A few ambivalent keystrokes later the card was safely back in Reem’s grasp.

In front of her was a tall rectangle, ostensibly made from grey plastic. It was the bland kind of construction that portends so much meaning.

She stepped through the portico and felt a flutter in her heart. A single beat passed and she exhaled. No beep.

“Shalom.” The soldier was already taking the card of the next person in line.

Reem practically skipped out the back door. God is great! God is merciful and charitable!

One last passage remained before her feet would fall on the holy ground. The crooked wooden walkway hung suspended over the plaza of prayer shawls and Polaroid’s below. All those swaying rabbis and their swaying sons did their best to ignore the inconvenient eyesore above them. It rose from the guard house and bent towards the wall, sloping up without beam or brace to the ancient arched entrance.

Inside, Reem walked slowly. She savored the moments of anticipation, delaying her gratification to the last possible moment. Halfway up, where the walkway turned obtusely to the east, Reem tripped. Her sandal caught in a hidden crease in the path. The two steel strips formed a convergent fault, leaving an illusive step-up.

Fortunately, Reem was walking slowly. She did not fall. Instead, she steadied herself on a scuffed riot shield that had been left leaning on the wall. Ahhh I am fine. She reassured herself and caught the breath she had not realized she was holding. He makes the way difficult to test us. I am up to the challenge!

The rain poured around her, but did not come through the wooden slats that made up the walls. She focused on the pitter-patter of drops hitting the roof above her as she walked the final way. Drip Drop Drip. No matter how much rain falls, there is always a gap. God lives in the space between Drip and Drop, for he is infinite and one.

Her father always told her when she was a girl, “save your money, Reem. Save it up and go to Mecca. Next year never seems like the right year, but you will find the right year for both of us. And you will have the money. So, save well.” Reem smiled at the thought. She had scrimped and saved, working after hours for the druggist when his wife was pregnant. It was enough to come to Jerusalem. Not Mecca. No. But this was good enough, and surely, God understands. He understands and he will listen.

She could see the end of the walkway. It was less than 50 meters in front of her now. The opening was dark with shadows. Her heart sank. No more. They already checked. I did everything right.

Two uniformed figures stood in the opening. One standing tall in a black terrycloth uniform, bristles covered his face and a Waqf patch was sewn onto his shoulder. The other wore the same style of faded olive green fatigues as the boys in the guardhouse. She was lounging on a tall chair, preening. Her hair was dyed blonde and the strap of her rifle was adorned with a single baby blue ribbon, tied in a bow.

Reem walked up to them and made the first move. She held out her ID card to the tall Arab soldier and smiled at him. His round face bulged in a warm smile.

The girl on the chair let out a heavy sigh and looked up from her fingernails. Her eyelids were brushed with a thick blue powder and her lips gleamed with an eerily iridescent lacquer. She looked at Reem for a moment, adjusted the rifle on her lap, then her gaze returned to her nail polish.

The Arab soldier made no move to take Reem’s ID. Instead, he turned and beckoned her to step into the courtyard. “May peace be upon you.”

She stepped past him and tucked her ID back inside its pouch. “And also on you.”

She took a few steps onto the wet cobblestones then turned back and looked at the girl. “And you as well.”

Through the sheets of hard rain and buffeting blows of wind, she walked through the squares of grass and up to the central plaza between the mosque and the Dome.

Even without the rays of sun, the golden dome shone brightly and warmed her heart.

The Name of the Wind -Patrick Rothfuss (Fiction)

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The Name of the Wind -Patrick Rothfuss

1/1

C

Pros:
Interesting framing device leads to compelling storytelling about storytelling, moderately interesting treatment of social problems in a fantasy world, one good scene with the protagonist playing a song in a bar

Cons:
Bloated (I don’t need constant updates about the exact contents of the protagonist’s pockets), immature treatment of sexuality contrasts to thoughtful exploration of other mature themes (e.g. violence, drug abuse), bland characters, empty world, uneven prose

What Happened at Pine Ridge

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“You’re going to say I’m crazy.  Everyone says I’m crazy.”

“Remember, you called me.”

“Looking back, it is hard to imagine that version of myself so completely defined by naivete.  I was stuck in a vortex of conflicting progressive ideals, more a tourist picking and choosing highlights to see while ignoring the slums and industrial areas of hypocrisy.  Every one had an explanation and reason for why the world is the way it is.  How absurd it was, the way I used to think. Now I know.  I understand now that they were no geniuses.  Jefferson, Freud, Said, they were just men. Men like me. Men working inside a system. The truth is, the world is a much stranger place than all that.  Stranger than anyone cares to talk about.  Stranger than most people can see.”

Chris Nestoff sank deep into the leather armchair.  The pleasant, inoffensive tones of a pop-jazz quartet’s holiday album rolled over him, failing to cut through the scowl plastered on his face.  This was a tormented man.  With no trust left for his physical surroundings, he had retreated into his mind. It was thoroughly off-putting.  “I’m not crazy, you know.  When I talk like this, they say that it’s crazy.  I’m not crazy.”

We had been colleagues before his trip.  Not directly though, Chris was a globetrotting, impresario with the Daily Gazette, so he only occasionally walked by my office in the local news division.  Everyone thought he was a shallow prick.  He was so widely disliked, the uproar over his disappearance and later, his reappearance, was surprisingly riotous.  Everybody had a theory.  Some thought he went native on assignment, others figured him a victim of Stockholm Syndrome; now that I think about it, they were really all variations on a theme: a voluntary secession from society. My experiences with Chris had never contradicted the popular perceptions of him, in fact, I hadn’t participated much in the rumor mill at all.  I suppose the distance made me the obvious choice for this assignment.

My wife, Patricia, told me I should cancel. “We both read the e-mail” she said, “I don’t even know why you’re doing this.  If he wasn’t a colleague, you’d ignore this nonsense.  Take it out of context and he’s just another troll on the Internet.”  She made some good points.  I really don’t know why I agreed to meet him.  Maybe I thought I was getting complacent sitting in the office all day, maybe it was boredom, maybe I wanted to be king of the water cooler for once, and heck, there might be a story here somewhere.  It could be true, right?  Anything’s possible.

It was easy to see the man sitting in front of me was at least a physically changed Chris. He used to wear a pretentious tweed coat and a blue oxford shirt to the office. And in all the pictures of him eating root porridge in African villages or scribbling in a damp notebook on the deck of junk in the Sea of Japan he would be wearing his signature navy blue, over-pocketed, polyester vest.  His long, dirty blond hair always seemed to be whipping in a low wind.  To be diplomatic, I’ll just say, Chris used to value his appearance.

For a man who wears his heart on the thread count of his sleeve, the exterior change evident today must signal some incisive trauma. He came to meet me in the East 33rd St. location of a popular coffee franchise wearing grimy sweatpants and a bright orange rain jacket. The way he was hiding his head under a thick wool hunter’s cap, you’d have thought he was afraid of paparazzi. It was a sunny day. And hot as blazes, there was no need for extra polyester or earflaps.  Patricia would probably say that he was still an aspirational savant, and that he just calculated exactly how disheveled one of these characters looks, but again, it could be real.

“I understand you want people to know what happened to you?”  Before I let him respond I tried to casually take a drink of my iced latte and pull the pen from behind my ear.  I was tentative in my prodding. Too transparent and he might retreat completely inside himself; too opaque and he might not think I care enough to hear him out.

“You don’t have to badger me, Jim.  I know how these things work.  You’ll get the story.  I liked you because you didn’t mess with office politics, so just forget that stuff now too.  Just know, I’m relying on your integrity here.  You can tell both sides of the story, just make sure one of them is mine.”  His lips barely moved, but the words were tumbling out like loose shale under the boot of a mountaineer leaning over a cliff.

He was milking it, loving it.  This overblown hype has gone to his head. What world did he think he was living in? He called me and I’m probably going to have to fight an editor to get this in the paper.  It reminded me of something my father always said; “It only takes a little bit of water for a shallow man to drown.”

“My apologies.  I’ll just turn the recorder on and…  Keep it short, eh? I’ve got a word limit here” I tried to laugh.  We both knew this story would run on every news outlet in the country.  I gestured to Chris that he had the floor.  

He leaned forward, took a sip of steaming hot tea, looked me directly in the eye, and said, “Have you ever heard of the term ‘Cosmic Event’?”

I told him no, of course. It sounded made up.

“It’s a term that some use to describe the founding of religions.  Historians mostly, but others as well, talk about a certain set of conditions that preclude the rise of a great faith.  Arabian Peninsula, 600 a.d., two great empires, the Byzantines and the Sassanians had been fighting wars over the Fertile Crescent for four hundred years.  By the sixth century, they had begun using Arab tribes of as proxies for their disputes.  These tribes began to cater their entire existence to the enforced militarism of their patrons. They were submissive in every way, completely at the whim of the despot in power.  Cue the Cosmic Event.  Mohammad recited the Quran, claimed it was from God, and unified the Arabian tribes in a massive conquest that would eventually take over most of the world.

A lot of the stories about him are apocryphal and most of it is religious nonsense, but those basic facts are true. When faced with a hopeless condition, civilizations find a way.  And like all rules, the laws of nature were made to be broken. Keeping that in mind, Let’s jump forward to 1890, railroads have criss-crossed the Great Plains and hard men have started draining the earth of gold and oil. Pine Ridge, South Dakota, a man named Wovoka came to the Sioux and started talking about a way to end the struggle with the white man…”

* * *

            You wouldn’t guess it thinking about me, but I’m afraid of flying.  Not always, just sometimes.  The times when I can tell a pilot doesn’t have complete control.  Nothing makes me grip my hand rests tighter. So, in my travels I’ve come to appreciate the skill of a good pilot, knowing how to lay her down gently for all the helpless customers.

Western Airlines flight 777, New York to Bismarck, did not set down on the runway gently.  Inauspicious beginnings, you could say.  I tried to ignore my fear of dying in a fiery crash by chatting with the young woman next to me.

“A lot of writing is just being confident with nonsense. You can use nouns as verbs at will as long as the reader thinks you know what you’re doing I don’t think Philip Roth was slaving over the particular wording of all his endless sentences, he knew just how to write them the same way over and over.  If it looks intentional, people will think there’s a reason behind it. If there seems like there is a reason, no one will question it. That’s less true in journalism I suppose… “  I felt myself rambling, but she seemed engaged.

“But, that’s not what we were talking about.  Remind me, what was your question?” I said that, then gave her a big smile.  People love a nice, big smile.

“Thanks, Mr. Nestoff.  I don’t actually remember what we were talking about either.”  Then she grinned right back.  Plane rides can be made pleasant if you try to have a conversation with your neighbor.  It doesn’t matter what you talk about really: model trains, Starfish Tuna, Eric Clapton, romance, it’s all about sharing something with someone and taking your mind off the fact that you are traveling hundreds of miles per hour high above the earth.  The best part is, both are over when the plane lands.

Airports are airports everywhere; South Dakota is no exception.  The Cinnabon is always tempting as hell, but seeing a line drives me off.  I can’t give myself time to debate that decision.  The shameful stares and memories of fat, 15-year old me motivate me like nothing else, I’ll tell ya’.  If the people over at Cinnabon were smart, they would put big partitions up between the lineup area and the rest of the concourse.

So, I grabbed my little duffel at the luggage turnstile and picked up a couple bottles of water for the road.  In the bag I had some anxiety pills, a good suit, two spare pairs of this fancy, polyester/science blend underwear, and New York Mets ball cap.  I want to make clear to your readers that no matter what happens to me and no matter what I went through, I will always love the Mets.  Make sure you get that, Jim. It’s endearing as shit.

I had to rent a car to get to the reservation.  The company with the green logo had a couple of free tellers, grim looking faces, all weathered and sorrowful, but available for my business.

* * *

            I was getting irritated with Chris.  He was going into way more detail than I needed. It was getting self-indulgent.

“I have to interject here.  You’ve got to stop blathering on with this nonsense. Maybe we can move ahead to when you actually got to Pine Ridge? ”  I took a drag of my coffee and hit pause on my recorder. “You really don’t have to tell me about every single conversation you had in South Dakota.  Most of these little quirks are really distracting.  Can we just focus, please, on why you called me and what you really saw on that reservation? Also, it might be helpful to say why you went there in the first place.”

“Yeah, okay.  I was really getting into a groove there.”  Chris was right; he was getting worked up.  Some color had returned to his face and he was leaning forward in his puffy, faux-leather recliner. “I’ll skip ahead a bit.  I finally got a car rented and was driving down the interstate…”

* * *

            I don’t know if you have ever been on an Indian Reservation before, but I have, even before Pine Ridge.  I grew up in Oregon, and out West, well, that’s Injun country, as my granddaddy used to say.

But, that’s not why I went.

With my job, there’s a lot of pressure to maintain quality.  It’s hard; I don’t think people understand how difficult it is to continue to come up with opinions twice a week. When I was younger and still hungry I would go hunting down any old person and just figure something out by talking to them about their problems. That got to be tiresome.  People rarely want to talk about their problems with some prying stranger, especially one with graying hair.

So, why’d I go to Pine Ridge? Statistics. That’s the simple answer.  Ask anyone else with my job, the important thing is keeping your worldview constant, that’s your value to the paper, a consistent and reliable voice representing something. For me, I travel the world looking for human interest stories.  I guess it’s a populist kind of message that I push. With a group of people like that, the Gazette gets a rainbow of “experts” weighing in.

After the grunt work of finding some nice facts that fit in with your worldview, it’s a simple task of finding Alice Rosey-Cheeks and Jeremiah Soot-stain and tossing out 700 coherent words about their troubles.

I went to Pine Ridge because Shannon County, South Dakota, had the lowest per capita income in America in the 2010 Census Bureau statistics.  Poverty means crime, corruption, violence; poverty means stories.  I didn’t realize it at first, but eventually I saw a pattern in the date.  Crow Creek, Rosebud, Cheyenne River, and Shannon County were all on the list of poorest places in America. Those are Indian names.  The story practically writes itself.  The oppressive white man conquered the continent and now there is institutionalized discrimination living on as a legacy of the conquest that a so-called enlightened nation can’t manage to forget.  It’s a classic post-colonial story template, and I laid it over America.

That was my genius, if I ever had one.  Seeing the stories people wanted to read and figuring out ways to give people what they want, but with a comforting, not-too-surprising twist.

It was a couple hours in the car.  I started seeing signs for the Indian reservation by midday.

Pine Ridge looks exactly like what it is.  Poor as shit.

It’s not so much a town as it is a constellation of cement-walled, tarp-covered shanties and mini-malls with sleazy storefronts.  Every piece of signage I saw on the drive into town had somewhere blazoned on it the letters “XXX”; for sex or for liquor, it rarely specified. There was no proper highway running through the town and the population of South Dakota was so small, even the great economic hope of the modern Native American, mega-casinos, was denied to these folks.

If you read my series on the drought this year, you’ll know.  Middle America has been ravaged by one of the driest years on record. South Dakota is no exception to that delightful gift from Gaia.  Pine Ridge in particular looked like hell.  I remember seeing one field of dried and withering crops so derelict that I was inspired to pull over and make a note to myself: “Art from Adversity”.  I figured that the Dust Bowl of the 30s gave us Woody Guthrie, maybe the destitution here was fostering some new folk hero.

That did not turn out to be the case.  The Sioux of Pine Ridge were occupied elsewise.

I pulled up at the first gas station I saw after passing the county line. I needed a fillup, but more importantly, I didn’t have any contacts in town and I had to start working somewhere.

So I parked the rental and sauntered up to the convenient-type store attached to the pumps.  My first instinct was to go for the obesity angle and ask the guy behind the counter for sales numbers of Hostess and Sara Lee, but he was thin as a board and looked kind of grumpy.  Can’t rightly talk about structural defects in the food industry without a nice, fat victim.

I bought some smokes and a book of matches instead.  Normally I’m a Marlboro man, but American Spirits felt right for Pine Ridge. Those yellow boxes are sharp, eh? I stepped outside and lit one up, using my hand to block the prairie wind.

I was about to get back in my rental when I saw a big, red semi charging in from the horizon.  It looked out of place, all clean and shiny and bright in front of the barren plains stretching off on either side of the two lonely lanes.  It was almost too big for the road. Other cars would have had to slow down and swerve when they were going past in the opposite direction.

The incongruity was delightful.  And inspiring.  I only needed to pull out my notebook and write one more word before I could mentally check out of this investigation completely. “BUDWEISER”.  This trip was a veritable cellular mitosis, where once was one clever twist on an old perception, there now was two.  Who doesn’t like a good gang-up on an international corporate conglomerate?  Seriously? A hulking scion of the King of Beers marching towards me, it was perfect. The white, amoral imperialists pervert the pure indigenous Native Americans with liquor.  I was already writing it in my mind.  The hook could be an allusion to the British East India Company and how they sold opium to the Indochinese working in their factories.  Tom Friedman, watch out!

The Budweiser truck was the Persephone to my Orpheus. Once I stepped back from the barrel of Slim Jim Beef Jerky and turned around to start scraping that match across its box, I was doomed to follow that truck to Hades.

At this point, Chris had finished one cup of coffee and went to purchase himself an espresso and a bento box full of cheese cubes and crackers.  When he returned to our corner of the café, I encouraged him, once again, to speak plainly and to get to the point.

I followed the truck to a tiny mini mall across from a run-down fire station. There was a greasy spoon of a diner sitting kitty-corner across an intersection.

The rental’s GPS showed that the municipal building was still a mile or so south, but the hustle and bustle of the half full parking lot was undeniable. Relative to what I had seen so far, this was the Times Square of South Dakota.  I mean, the intersection had traffic lights.  Can you imagine the glitz and the glamour?

Anyways, the liquor store looked suitably run down to fit my narrative.  I even snapped a couple photos when I got out.

That’s when I found my first interview subject. Well, I suppose he approached me.

This kid was perfect.  He looked exactly like River Phoenix circa 1992.  That strong jaw line and the exact same thin black, shoulder length hair tied into a ponytail.  He was wearing what looked like an authentically weathered pair of jeans and some beaten up sneakers.  He was standing with a few other teenagers in the parking lot.  They were shooting the shit and passing around a canister of chewing tobacco.  They didn’t look me in the eye when I walked past, but River jumped in front of me and extended his hand for a shake.  He said, “Hello, stranger!”

“Hi.  My name’s Chris.  I love your vest, man.  Is that a bear?”  There was a faded, brown, four-legged beast sown onto the back of his leather vest.  Frayed strings and some dried mud smears were covering the design, but it was a classic Native American style.  It reminded me of some throw pillows in my grandma’s house that I wasn’t allowed to touch.

“Chris? Howdy, brother.” Twisting his torso to stretch the woven design between us, he said “Yup, can’t really tell so easy any more, can you?  But yeah, this here’s a brown bear. That’s my family’s doodem.  I call him Ursa.  Y’know, like the stars.”

I though it was kind of quaint when River mentioned the constellation, but the other boys snickered. Clearly this was the source of some childish teasing. River gave a playful shove to the one kid across from him and grabbed a tin of chewing tobacco out of the hands of another.  He sunk his middle and pointer fingers deep into the musky, smelling brown and pulled out a huge pinch.  “That’s why they call me the ‘Big Dipper’!” He pulled open his cheek, laid the tobacco between his gums, and flashed a big, lopsided grin.

“I’m just kiddin’, Chris.  You can call me Tucker. Don’t bother with these numbskulls.  They couldn’t tell a joke if you handed ‘em a full box of popsicle sticks.” Playful slapping and friendly roughhousing ensued; then Tucker asked me, “What are you doing in Pine Ridge anyway?”

I told him where I work and what kind of things I write. He seemed pretty interested. They probably don’t get too many journalists there.  When I asked him if he would mind being interviewed for the piece, he jumped at the chance.  “Ask me anything, reporter-man.  I got plenty to say.”

“Okay, we’ll start with this parking lot. Do you guys hang around here often?  Is this one of your family’s liquor store?

“I dunno. It’s a place like any other, I s’pose.  Old Sidney Waters owns it.  That’s him in the window. There.”  Tucker pointed through a musty and stained window to a crag-faced Indian standing stoic behind a counter.

I started walking towards the entrance of the liquor store, beckoning for Chris to follow.  “So, do you guys have any native language you speak? Or is it just English?”  We walked and talked up and down the aisles of the small shop.  I lobbed broad queries about poverty and alcoholism; he gave back a bevy of unsatisfying but usable quotes. I don’t remember what I asked him about specifically, but I do vividly remember feeling like something was off.  It was like there wasn’t quite enough to him.  He said he went to school and hung out with friends, sure.  But there was something else, something he wasn’t telling me.

For a liquor store in the center of a poverty-riddled town, it sure felt empty in there.  It was like the spirit had left the place.  If I know drunkards, and I’ve met a few, 3 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon is prime time for scoring hooch. Waters behind the counter was the perfect foil to the sanguine Tucker at my side.  He stood stock-still, not even following us around the store with his eyes.  It was doubly creepy because the lighting was so poor.  Sure, there is nothing quite so soul-sucking as working retail nine to five under flickering fluorescent tubes, but Waters had gone beyond that. Walking around in there, I was acutely aware of when I walked through his eye line because it never changed.  He just stared straight the whole time.  Spooky.

“So, this old man is a total weirdo, huh?”  I was trying to build a confidence with Tucker outside Waters’ earshot.

“Ha. Yeah, I guess so.  I never really thought about it.  He was always just Waters to me.”

A thick layer of dust covered every bottle in there.  And I mean every bottle.  It was well-stocked too and it looked like it had been since 1979. I picked up a half-liter of Jack Daniels and turned to Tucker, “I thought Indians loved whiskey.  Does no one buy this stuff?”

He flashed me a big smile and said “I’m not a hard liquor guy, myself.  Technically, I ain’t even legally allowed to drink it. Beer’s another thing. Sometimes the guys and me get my cousin to buy us a six pack and go on midnight tin can hunts.  Heck, I’ve been drinking beer since I was 12.  My daddy likes Whiskey, I think.  You want me to call him and see if he wants to be interviewed?”

Before I had a chance to answer, we both turned at the sound of an empty bottle crunching under a tire. When Tucker saw who it was, he raced out to meet them.  There was a girl about Tucker’s age in the passenger’s seat.  She did not look thrilled to see him.  The driver was an older gentleman, maybe ten years my elder.  He was wearing the softest looking leather jacket I have ever seen.  Tucker raced around to the passenger side and tried to open the girl’s door.

I walked the bottle of Jack up to Water’s counter and plunked it down next to a full box of Charleston Chews.  I dipped in my toes, “No one’s going for the impulse buys, huh?”

Waters did not warm to my candid opening.  I said, “Just this for me,” and sort of pushed the bottle closer to him.

He rang up my purchase and pulled out one of those slim black plastic bags from under the counter.  “Forty-two fifty.”

“Sure, sure, here ya’ go.  How is business in these parts?”  I have to admit, these folks were feeling like genuine Native American Indians and don’t I know it, but I was starting to play the part of the white man, half Jimmy Stewart, half John Wayne.  I’d need a good hat and maybe I’d ask the old man where he bought that jacket.

Waters was not interested in talking.  It didn’t bother me.  I could find another liquor store and Tucker had given me some good quotes.  With the census numbers I pretty much had enough of a story together.  There was one more thing. “Sure is a lot of Bud out there in the parking lot.  Do you have anyone to help you move it?  How often do you need to restock anyways?”

Waters continued to say nothing.  He didn’t even move. In fact, after ringing me up his posture had returned exactly to the way he was standing when I walked in. His eyes were looking through the back of my head to the Mike’s Hard Lemonade neon flashing behind me.  I didn’t waste too much time pondering his insanity.

A car door slammed outside.  I grabbed my newly anonymous bottle of whiskey and went out to see what trouble Tucker had got himself into.

The boy was leaning on the passenger door with his forehead against the window. “Come on, Sal.  Just talk to me! You don’t have to do this!”  The girl was flipping the lock on the door and miming as if she wasn’t listening.  She crossed her arms and avoided Tucker’s pleas.

“Young love.”  A deep, cavernous voice came from the man in the leather jacket; he was standing beside the door, holding a clipboard with a big Budweiser logo on it.  The driver of the Bud truck was offering him a pen.

“That Sally, I raised her right.”  The skin of his face looked as soft as the leather of his jacket.  I nodded and tried to smile knowingly.  He signed the invoice on the clipboard, handed it back to the driver, and extended his hand to me. “I’m Sally’s father, Chief Wilson.”

“Nice to meet you, chief. I’m Chris Nestoff with the Daily Gazette.  Actually, you are probably the best person for me to run into, can I ask you a few questions about Pine Ridge?”

The driver of the Budweiser truck opened the back hatch of his semi and started unloading pallets full of beer.  The chief crossed his arms and nodded afirmation.

“Well, first of all.  That is a lot of beer you just signed for.  Are you stocking up for some reason?”

The Chief sort of chuckled at me, “You could say that.”

I though he was being playfully evasive, so I played right back. “Sure is a lot for one man, Chief or no.”

Apparently I had said something wrong.  He wasn’t smiling when he said, “It’s Tribal business.”

“Chief, I’ll be candid, I’m writing a story about alcoholism in Pine Ridge.  Would you say it’s a problem here?”

“No.”

I don’t normally feel so uncomfortable conducting interviews.  “Okay, well, maybe it’s just me but, seeing you buy two pallets worth of Budweiser at one time and hearing you say that there is no alcoholism.  Well, those are conflicting ideas from my perspective.”

The truck driver was loading the beer into the back of the Chief’s truck.  “It’s Tribal business.” The Chief’s added emphasis was as red a stop sign as I’ve ever seen.  I changed tack.

“I’m a Stella man myself, but sometimes I go for craft brews.  Is Bud really that popular here? Do you guys get a deal on it or something?”

The Chief pulled a hand rolled cigarette out of an aluminum case in his breast pocket, lit up, and said “Anheuser Busch has been brewing Budweiser the same way for over a hundred years.  They have done more for the cultivation of American agriculture than any other organization in history. ”

He sounded like an advertisement.  Still, I could use it.  Nothing says poverty like a deficit of freethinking.  Jotting down notes, I continued, “I’ve got one more question for you Chief.  You said your name is Wilson, the boy is Tucker, the girl is Sally.  Forgive my ignorance, but how come you all don’t have ‘Indian Names’?  All I really know about tribal culture is that one Kevin Costner movie, and the characters in that were all named ‘Sits Under Raindrops’ and stuff like that.”

It was as if speaking to me was causing him physical pain.  He shifted his weight, took a drag on his cigarette and said, “Forgiven. Tucker and I gave you names we use, not out true names. My real name is Raging Bull.”

If I had had any sort of liquid in my mouth at that moment, I would have spit it up everywhere. “Sorry, Chief, but you must get this a lot, but your parents, were they big De Niro fans?”

He flicked what was left of the cigarette down to the curb and stomped out the spark. “I don’t and they weren’t.”

The truck driver was finished loading beer into the Chief’s pickup.  Raging Bull gave him a wave and got in the driver’s seat.  As he peeled away, I was still scribbling in my notepad.

I’m not lying, by the way.  His name really is Raging Bull. And no, his parents probably were not even aware of Robert De Niro.  I had my doubts when I heard, like I told you, I nearly laughed in his faceIt wasn’t reality to me. That is my greatest regret in this whole affair.  When he told me his real name, all I could think was how it would make a funny line in my story.  Ridicule is more than doubt. Expressing doubt begs explanation. Expressing ridicule ends conversations. I refused to even accept his terms for his own existence.

I can see in your face that you don’t understand what I’m talking about yet.  Let’s go on.  Just mark it down.  After the Chief drove away, my fate was sealed.  I didn’t know it yet, but the Oglala Sioux of Pine Ridge had a plan for me.

So, I was standing in this parking lot.  Did I already tell you that Tucker had left?  Okay, well he did. I’m not sure when exactly, but he and his friends were gone.  I think at that point it was starting to get a little late, but can’t be sure.  Things get a little blurry in my memory.  Let’s say, it was nightfall.

Anyways, I’m standing alone in the lot.  There are no cars in sight, and everyone else is gone.  I figured it was time to see if an Indian diner was like the ones I knew from back home in central Jersey.  Nothing like a steaming pile of disco fries to make a dead end seem okay. But, here’s the thing.  When I turned the key in the ignition, the engine wouldn’t start.  I have had bum batteries before and know that clicking noise when a transmission is busted, but that was not this.  There was nothing.  No noise.  Nothing.

I was fucked.

Before I even popped the hood, I dialed the number on my AAA card.  The mobile reception was not good, but it was enough.  They agreed to send someone right away.  That was that.

I checked out the random mess under the hood anyways.  I mean, I have no idea where any of those tubes lead or what part of it is even the engine, but I also didn’t want to look so darned helpless.

I kept up the act for about a half hour.  The sun was gone and a loud whistling wind was whipping past the buildings.

After another half hour, I was lying down on the hood staring up at the stars and tapping the ash off my third cigarette.  It’s a unifying thing, stars.  Everyone gets that distant look in their eye and gets mumble mouthed after looking up at a clear night’s sky.  I wish I were one of those scientist types that could list off a bunch of facts about plasma and black holes and the Oort Cloud.  Those guys can’t really capture the majesty of the view either, but it does seem like they have some perspective.

I sat on that car for hours.  Can’t be sure how many.  It must have been at least three or four, but I really don’t know.  What I do know is that at some point, cars started driving past me more and more frequently. The first one brought me out of a daze, the second rumbled past a few minutes later, then a few came in a bunch.  They were all going in the same direction too.  Down from the way I came, and then left at the light.  I can’t remember if I had the good sense to be scared at that point, but I do know I got inside the car. A dry, prairie wind was blowing, but I wasn’t shivering from the cold.

A long, blue van turned into my parking lot. I couldn’t see the driver or if there was a passenger, but it sure as hell didn’t look like AAA.

The side door slid open and Tucker stepped out. He looked different from earlier: somber and diluted.  His flesh grey and ashy in the moonlight as if the blood beneath it had stopped running.  Three other dark figures got out of the van behind him.  They walked over to my car.  I didn’t do anything.  I couldn’t.

They circled my car, two on the driver’s side, and two on the passenger.  Tucker opened up the passenger door and sat down.  “Come with us, Chris.  We’ll give you a ride.” The flavor was gone from his voice.  It wasn’t exactly a friendly offer.

I still don’t know for sure, but it sure makes sense that those hoodlums busted the rental while I was in the liquor store earlier.  All they would have had to do was cut some wire or loose some bolt and I wouldn’t know the difference.  Also, he shouldn’t have known that my car was busted.  Maybe I like hanging out in parking lots.

“Chris, come with us.”  With that he reached over and grabbed my arm.  It was like a steel vice crunching my bones.  He was so unearthly strong.  I tried to pull him off, but it was too much.  One of the others opened up the driver’s side door and put his hand on my shoulder.  He didn’t say a word.  I stepped out willingly and went with them.  All it took was a rough squeeze of my arm; he didn’t even have to twist it.  We all got into the blue van and left the rental where it stood. Right before we turned the corner, I noticed that Tucker hadn’t even bothered closing the passenger’s side door.

When the van finally stopped, the boys pushed me out to a bone-chilling sight.  It was a high school gymnasium with huge grated windows.  Huge black, billowing clouds of smoke were being purged from within.  From each tall, rectangular window came a chimney of thick smoke, and together they rose into the night’s sky.  The polluted air was so dense that it blotted out the stars.

Chris took a long pause here.  He pulled a blue handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his forehead.  The stress of reliving these events was clearly getting to him. I should remember to call Dr. Fitzsimmons and consult him on delusions of grandeur.

I tried talking to them, but it was no use.  I had one hand-vice on each arm and they were leading me directly into what I assumed was a burning building.  In comparison with the horror that awaited us inside, a burning building would have been far preferable.

The closer we got to the rusted double doors at the side of the gym, the more I struggled.  I started shouting at the boys.  “Why are you doing this! What is this place!”  The rapidly decreasing air quality corresponded with an equally rapid deterioration to the elegance of my pleas.  Soon the air was thick as Shanghai smog and I was shouting nonsensical profanity.

Tucker grabbed for the door and swung it open revealing a scene that will forever be burned into my brain.  I saw the shadowy silhouettes of at least a hundred people swaying and dancing through the darkness. Their individual movements were erratic, but together there was a pulse to them, as if the group shared a single heart.  They formed a great circle around a huge bonfire built at the center of the basketball court.  It was like being transported back in time.  I had seen daguerreotypes of Indian Tribal ceremonies in the Old West, but to hear the rhythmic chanting in exotic native languages and to feel the pulsating floorboards underneath your own feet…

It was transcendent. I lost myself in the raucous ululations and the pulsating rhythm of bare feet stomping on wood.  The experience was completely alien to my entire existence.  I’ve heard Tuvan throat singers warble their way through ancient melodies and I’ve sat with Tibetan monks for hours in front of small piles of sand, but never have I seen people so completely committed to such a foreign and archaic ritual.  That was the most frightening part of all, that this was happening in the American heartland; supposedly the most modern country in the world, not some Siberian outpost.  The ideas and the heavy smoke were convulsing in my head and I couldn’t think straight.

I didn’t have much time to make sense of it either. Tucker and his gang of mindless drones led me around the outside of the circle.  One of them grabbed an aluminum folding chair and led our little squad into the center of the circle.  He set the chair up and forced me down into it like a single spectator to their grim game.  Had they not held me upright in that chair I would have doubled over, coughing and hacking up phlegm.

Across the fire I saw the double doors creak open again. A beam of moonlight cut through the motes of ash and dust in a desperate promise of salvation. It was not to be. Two shadowy figures cut through the light instead.  At the sight of them, the dancing and chanting stopped.  Every Indian found a place around the fire and knelt down. In the cacophony of the ceremony, my racing heart was one part of the tumult, but in the silence that accompanied the two figures’ walk to the center of the gym, I was sure that it would draw attention to me.

Of the two leaders whose presence quelled the crowd, one was tall, wearing a massive and elaborate headdress, and the other was thin and small. It was clear the from the larger man’s confident gate that he was the Chief.  His headdress was exactly like you would see in the movies, huge colorful feathers bound by leather and falling down past his shoulders.  They walked up to the fire, directly opposite where I sat, and stood quietly for a moment.  The Chief was clad in the same denim jeans I had seen him in earlier that night, but the leather jacket was gone.  He wore no shirt at all.  His torso gleamed in the flickering firelight and great shadows filled his the sunken sockets of his eyes.

The other man I did not recognize.  As noble as Chief Raging Bull looked standing tall in front of his tribe, the other man face was an ignominious cipher.  He wore a black cap with a wide brim and a black wool jacket buttoned up to his neck.

The Chief raised his hand in the air in an unnecessary call for attention and spoke, “Brothers and sisters, one hundred and twenty two years ago we were reborn. We were divided.  We were small.  We were dying. The Earth mother lay stricken with a cancer the white man calls ‘Industry’. Before the fatal blow could be dealt, our ancestors lent their wisdom. In the righteousness of our ways we earned salvation for the world.  From our penitence came the seed of new civilization. From our devotion the tribes will rise anew. The specter of the old ones lingers still in this plane.  Let us harvest the fruit of eons and feast on the flesh of spiritual truth incarnate. Tonight, Let us dance with their ghosts!”

At the climax of his speech the sitting Indians rose and threw themselves once more into a pulsating mayhem, more furious than before.  They lurched and rose as one, and the din raised shook the rafters.

I was outside myself.  The intensity of the Chief’s delivery had separated my soul from my body.  I had submitted completely to the will of the group, but the hands on my shoulders held me back from joining the dance.  Tucker stood in front of me and pulled an electric razor from inside his jacket.

When I heard him click it on, the artificial buzzing brought me back to my senses.  I was sitting just outside the three-point line on a high school’s basketball court in South Dakota. That’s when I started struggling again. The boys exchanged a few words over my head and a blunt object slammed into my temple.  The world went black.

I woke up some time later with a splitting headache and a lap full of my own hair.  The Indians had whipped themselves into a frenzy and Tucker had haphazardly shaved my head.  Ash from the fire was stinging the cuts and raw scrapes I could then feel on my scalp.  It was completely disorienting. I could hardly tell where the rich, black smoke was billowing and where the shadows from dancing tribesmen were flickering.  The atmosphere was a mix collective insanity and febrile nausea.

I didn’t notice the girl sitting next to me until Chief Raging Bull broke from the circle and walked toward her.  She was being held down on an aluminum folding chair like mine, but she still had all her hair. I recognized that beautiful blonde hair from earlier.  It was Sally.  The Chief was shouting above the chanting chorus. “…gave us life.  We honor them,” then he added some nonsense syllables I didn’t understand. He looked Sally directly in the face and stood stock still.  His face was bright red with emotion, “Our mother blessed us with a daughter.  You are chosen.  You will give us all new life.  With one gift, we receive revitalization for all…”

Though her expression was stolid, tears cut long swathes down through the thick grime and soot on her cheeks.

Tucker pulled her up from her chair and led her right next to the blazing flames.

The Chief re-joined the dancing throngs.  His voice boomed to the corners of the gym with no inflection and seemingly no strain, “… and her three sisters dance with us.  They dance with us.  Today again as it was yesterday.!“

Three huge piles of some type of sediment sat in the shadows to my left.  While I was unconscious, some of the Indians must have brought them in.  And I saw the two pallets of Budweiser on my right as well. As if choreographed by a professional, when the Indians passed by three massive piles they grabbed a handful of whatever it was and threw it into the fire.  It might have been some type of grain or beans, but I can’t be sure.  On the other side they each grabbed a bottle of beer.  When each person made their way past Sally, they opened the beers and let the shower of excited carbon dioxide spray the girl.  She was rooted to the ground, petrified by fear, soaked in alcohol and, I assume, entranced by the intricate and terrifying display.  The dancers were joining in with the Chief’s chant.

“…Nanissáanah! Nanissáanah! Nanissáanah!…”

The small, stocky man that had entered with Raging Bull came up from behind me.  His face was unnaturally wrinkled, like it had been sagging in old age for far too many years.  He stopped directly in front of me and spoke two words in my direction. “Remember Everything.”  The words spilled over his lips, but they reverberated from a place deep inside, echoes of memories lost to time.

He walked up to Sally.  Tucker backed off and joined the chanting circle.  His friends had long since joined as well.  Fear was doing the job far better than their strength had.

“…Nanissáanah! Nanissáanah! The Black wind blows away evil.  Our dance will hasten the coming of the New Spring! Nanissáanah! Nanissáanah!…”

            The old man stepped up to the drenched Sally.  He place one hand on each of her cheeks and leaned in.  What followed was not quite a kiss, but it wasn’t really anything else.  I don’t have any words for it except, well, he sucked her youth out through her mouth.  Every second that his face was touching hers, I saw color drain from, first her feet, then her arms and neck, and finally her face.  Her gorgeous, full blonde hair dried and crackled with a grey death. When the man was finished with her, he dropped the empty husk to the ground. A gruesome squelch and a small splash; it wasn’t a body that lay there in a puddle of bubbling brew, it was empty, sallow skin.  Sally was gone.  The old man that had limped into the gymnasium next to Raging Bull was gone.  A broad shouldered Indian youth stood tall in his place.  And the dance raged on…

“…Nanissáanah! Nanissáanah! Wovoka lives on! Jack Wilson lives on! Nanissáanah! Nanissáanah!…” 

            The sight of an empty girl, the throbbing pain in my head, the poisonous bile rising in my throat, the revitalized man they called Wovoka standing tall and dark in front of the flames: I couldn’t stand it anymore. Unconsciousness overcame me once again.

* * *

            When it was clear Chris was done talking, I leaned forward and clicked off the tape recorder.  The café was busy and the other patrons were bustling around us.  Someone spilled an iced tea.  A baby was mewling to its mother.  The employees were tending to their steam machines.

“It happened.” Chris pulled off his hat, showing me his bald misshapen head. “They did this.  It’s not growing back.  Feel it!” He lurched towards me head first.  It was a disgusting display of desperation. “I’m not crazy! Feel it!”

I guess Patricia was right. This was a mistake. There was definitely no story here. Just a sad, sad man.

I couldn’t think of anything to say to him. I sure as hell wasn’t going to feel his head. At that moment I felt like any response would have either validated his tale or insulted him, but I had to say something, “It doesn’t matter now, Chris.” I’m a reporter, not an enabler.

He gave me a resigned shrug and started pulling on his jacket.  The resolute expression had returned to his face. It had been his last act of persuasion. Pathetic. If only he knew how little I cared, how little anyone cares.

The Round House -Louise Erdrich (Fiction)

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The Round House -Louise Erdrich

This National Book Award winner for 2012 is touted as a Native American “To Kill a Mockingbird”.  Well, all the legal details are there and same with the social message about societal discrimination.   The prose was a touch bland.  After 14 books, Erdich writes professionally, but not passionately. though the research and care with which she crafts the tale show that beneath the cauterized exterior is a little bit of that youthful outrage.  

Overall, this novel is a success, but occasionally a burden to read.

12/28

B