Black Ambrosia

by Elizabeth Engstrom

  I ran out of busy work at nine o’clock. The two living-­room lamps emitted a yellow light that re­flected weirdly from the dark-­black picture window in Lewis’s front room. I paced. I sat on the edge of his couch. I paced. I sat. I felt stiff, wound tight. My hands pulled and twisted on each other, fighting a war in my lap.

  Lewis would be home tomorrow.

  I wanted to go out. Into the darkness. I wanted to surrender myself to it, give myself up to the strange­ness, the altered side of my personality that came so alive after sunset.

  I wanted to go find Boyd, to see if they had tracked and killed anything that they could calmly blame for the deaths.

  Boyd.

  I wanted to see Boyd. I ached to see Boyd.

  My hands fell apart and lay on my thighs like two broken birds.

  Boyd.

  I leaned back into Lewis’s stiff couch and closed my eyes. I remembered being in the cab of Boyd’s truck, snugly bookended by the brothers. The scratchy feel of the forced hot air, the music on the radio, the spotless windshield . . . I remembered his smell, woodsy and alert.

  I remembered our fight.

  My fingernails dug deeply into my palms as a jabbing nausea fired up behind my breastbone. It would not take long for Boyd to discover who was responsible for those deaths.

  I began to pace again. Just below the surface, feelings were prodding me, poking, trying to get through. New emotional plateaus were about to be reached in my upward climb to adulthood.

  Boyd was the only one who understood me. He was the only one who could leash my passions.

  I wanted Boyd—

  Dear God, I wanted Boyd to stop me.

  With this thought, my breath whooshed out of me as if I had been kicked. My stomach cramped and I fell to my knees. After a few moments the pain eased and I made my way back to the couch, feeling frail and delicate. I lay down, suppressing urges to bolt. Compelling urges born of panic insisted that I pack my bag and leave Lewis’s house that very night. “Go,” my insides said, “without even packing a bag.” As soon as that thought was clear in my mind, it was replaced by another that said, “Go to the bus station. Entertain yourself.” And another devil on my shoul­der said, “Find someone in need.”

  My body seemed to throb with each new idea, but it would not respond with action. I felt bloated and heavy, as if the excesses of the past three nights had finally wreaked havoc with my internal system.

  I closed my eyes, and laid my flushed cheek against the cool plastic of the couch. I was hoping to sleep, hoping to bypass the maddening internal dialogue that I knew would plague me as long as I denied myself the darkness.

  I closed my eyes and began to search for a place inside, the meditation place, the one place that had aided me before. I heard the music, the beautiful music, and the yammering inside my head was stilled.

  I listened to the music, relaxed into the meditation, swayed back and forth with the rhythm. Just as I felt centered again, the music parted and I heard Her voice, the clear, beautiful female voice that spoke with delicious lips right next to my ear. The voice was crisp and cool like a mountain stream, and the words massaged my heart and I melted into them. She said,

  “It is time, Angelina. Come. Follow me.”

  I saw a wisp of something ethereal slip down the corridor of my mind, and I followed.

  I awoke at three-­thirty in the morning. The night was waning and I felt in need of a bath. My confining clothes had left imprints on my sticky skin. I stretched some, then drew a hot tub and soaked a long time while I pondered. I remembered little of my meeting with Her. I knew only the feelings.

  I watched the bath water lap at the edges of my body as I examined the feelings, pulling up one after another. The most potent came first. It centered in my solar plexus, it jittered in my stomach and at the bottom of my throat. I recognized it as something secret, something fun, something just a tad naughty, something not to tell our parents, but to giggle over in our bedrooms, with the doors closed and the lights out. At night.

  She and I had a secret, but I didn’t know what it was.

  The second feeling was of responsibility. I could feel slight tension in my shoulders and I knew I had made a commitment, possibly a lifetime agreement. With that feeling was another . . . a feeling of secu­rity.

  I would serve Her and she would care for me.

  With these feelings came a new freedom. I could relax. I had only to carry out my assigned tasks. I felt lighter and freer than I ever had. Life would be easier from now on. I would be told where to go and when. I had no urgencies, no worries. I had an important mission, and as a Chosen One, I was here at Lewis’s for a purpose. I would be told when to leave.

  Lewis would be home tomorrow.

  I poured more lavender skin softener into the bath and began to scrub and shave.

  I would be leaving Lewis. But not quite yet.

  LEWIS GREGORY: “I got home about four in the afternoon and she was asleep in the bedroom. At first I thought she was drunk, or drugged or something. I couldn’t wake her up. I shook her and slapped her a little bit, gently, you know, not hard or anything. I really started to get scared. She was barely breathing. When I put a cold washcloth on her forehead, her eyelids flickered a little bit, and I got a few sounds out of her. I checked the medicine cabinets, and the kitchen, and couldn’t find anything she could have eaten, or taken, that would do this to her, so I just kind of waited. I brought my suitcase in and sat down and watched her. And slowly she woke up. She just woke up. Jeez, I’ve seen heavy sleepers before, but . . .

  “By five-­thirty, she was pretty aware, and by dinnertime she was active and nervous. It was strange. It was like watching something . . . regenerate. A flick­er of the eyelids, and then slow, groggy movement, and finally awareness. It was strange. Reptilian, I guess you’d say.

  “I was tired from driving, and by nine, I was ready to go to bed. She said she wasn’t, and stayed up all night watching television, I think. Anyway, in the early morning hours, I felt her crawl into bed with me. When the alarm went off at six-­thirty, I tried to wake her up, I was . . . you know . . . glad to see her, but she was out again.

  “I’d never seen anyone sleep like that before. She didn’t sleep like that before I left for California. I had time to get used to it, though, because it never changed. Up all night watching television, asleep all day long. She slept right through Christmas Day. New Year’s, too. I’d be up half the night just trying to be with her . . . I got so run down, I almost got fired.

  “I loved her very much, but she’d changed. She was too different. And I loved her for staying as long as she did, after I just lost my mom and all. When it was time for her to go, we both knew it.”

  13

  I stayed with Lewis for a little over two weeks after he returned from California. Those weeks were very difficult for both of us. I wanted Boyd. I wanted to hear him, to see him, to touch him. At times I imagined I saw his truck drive by outside Lewis’s house as I sat alone at night, the television chattering mindlessly into the empty room. The television was on for Lewis, a special effect so he might be com­forted, thinking I was being entertained.

  I was not entertained. I was tortured. All night long I paced the front room, waiting . . . waiting. I would meditate for hours, delving into the internal music, losing myself in that peaceful place, but the longer I kept myself imprisoned at night—confined to Lewis’s dreadful living room—the less frequently I could locate that place where I mentally soaked my feet and renewed my strength. I hated staying there, yet I was not ready to leave. My emotions and, undoubtedly, Lewis’s were in constant, painful tur­moil.

  And then one evening when I awoke, it was time to go. I believed that mysterious forces had been busy, the delay had been fruitful; arrangements had been made, contacts had been activated, the path had been cleared. My prudent behavior in waiting wo
uld be rewarded. This Truth rang true. There was a power in the music, a power in the universe. The forces that controlled all things reassured me that I truly owned my own place in the world. As different as I might be, my niche had been gently carved and prepared.

  I dined with Lewis that night, then held his hands and looked into his eyes. All my will focused right there, at that moment, wishing for a happy and fulfilling life for Lewis. He was a good man. I wished for rapid appreciation on his home, and a wife and sons to keep his level of respectability right where he felt most comfortable.

  No words were necessary between us. We hugged, then I packed. I declined his offer of a ride to the bus station, but took the offered sheepskin jacket and a hundred dollars.

  At the door we kissed, and I stepped down the walk, then down the sidewalk, willing myself not to look back and not to run, but to walk calmly. I heard Lewis’s front door close behind me, and I had a moment of sadness as I imagined him entering his lonesome living room with the plastic couch and orange carpeting and the little touches of life he and I had bought when times were better between us.

  But that tiny moment passed, and the door had shut, severing the cords that bound me to him, and suddenly my feet were free, my breath came clear and strong, and I jumped into the air as high as I could and fairly skipped through the cold, clear air of Westwater, flying with the freedom of the newly unburdened. Again I resolved, no more entangle­ments. I had a commitment, one comfortable com­mitment, a tightly bound agreement that anchored my soul to the forces that be, and that one was enough.

  I heard my boot heels echo off the exterior walls of the houses, and then the buildings, as my stride took me confidently toward the bus station, where I bought a bus ticket to a warmer clime.

  “When Angelina left Westwater, I knew it. I felt her drawing away from me as if she were draining out my life. The attraction between us was more powerful than anything I’d ever heard of. I tried to keep busy—I tried to go hunting, I tried to work, but she’d ruined me. She’d ruined me. I felt that if we could just sit down and talk, if I could really just talk to her, to find out more about her and the way she thought, then maybe I could let her go her own way.

  “But she was too damned different. I’d known some different people before, but Angelina was differ­ent in a way that was so opposite that we matched. Like two halves of something torn apart, the terrain of her soul seemed exactly the opposite of my own. And I thought we would fit together, if we could, and make a whole.

  “When I thought about her sitting right there next to me in the truck, after killing those people, and then trying to tell me that maybe Danny had asked for it, at first I was furious. I mean, how dare she? And then I was amazed that she could do that. Kill someone, I mean, and be curious about people’s reactions, instead of remorseful. Curious! Shit. I’ve felt funny about shooting a rabbit for dinner ever since Dad and Kyle and Bill hung up their shotguns. And then I was a little afraid. Afraid for the others out there, afraid, in retrospect, that maybe she could have killed me, right there in front of the movie theater. And wrapped a towel around my neck. Or in that field instead of old Mr. Simpson. But I knew she would never kill me. She would never kill me.

  “And then I was lonely. I was lonely for whatever it was that she sucked out of me when she left, leaving an empty hole in my gut. I just wanted to sit her down and talk to her for a while. For my own sanity.

  “So, you see, I had all kinds of motives for trying to track her down. I believed I was the only one who could. I guess I still believe that.”

  14

  There were only three other passengers on the bus, and it pulled into the darkness while I slid into a depression. I felt as if I had been suspended in a colorless, odorless solution. The bus nosed its way toward the freeway, then picked up speed, carrying me away from Westwater, away from Boyd.

  I shrugged up my shoulders until the padded shell of overcoat arose about my ears, and I pressed the back of my hand to the fogged window as telephone poles whipped past in the night. My pack was on the seat next to me. A black soldier smoked a foul-­smelling cigarette in the very rear seat; a middle-­aged woman dozed in the safe seat directly behind the driver. The cavernous emptiness of our passenger tube echoed around me. This was not how freedom was supposed to feel.

  I thought momentarily about Lewis. He and I were surely members of different species. I had great respect for Lewis; I admired his ideals, his drive, the all-­around tidiness of his affairs, but there was noth­ing the two of us had in common at all. Nothing at all.

  My mind was filled with Boyd, my whole being was filled with Boyd. He pulled on me like the tides. I thought I needed to escape him, to get farther away, and farther still, out of his range of influence.

  But that was silly. The influence was in me, not in him, not in the air. Nevertheless, the pull was real, and I felt it all night long.

  Dawn soothed the desert and I had just enough energy left to admire it before I nodded off. I slept through the day and awakened at twilight, refreshed, alive and tired of the bus. I disembarked at the next rest stop and took a look at Red Creek, New Mexico. Impulsively, I told the driver he would be going on without me. I washed up in the cafeteria facilities and had a bite to eat before hitching up my pack and heading back out to the road.

  The blacktop stretched forever in both direc­tions. I had no need to imagine which way we had come. To the northwest lay Westwater. Its force still pulled on me. I began walking east, the sound of my boots a comforting, familiar sound on the shoulder of the road. I had not known I had mourned that sound until now; there was no other sound like it.

  I took long, rapid strides in the early evening air, getting my energy up, pumping hot blood through my muscles. I breathed deeply and swung my arms. It felt good. The flush of freedom was beginning to come back again; maybe I had snapped the string that held me to Westwater, had finally outrun the magnetic influence.

  The moon rose over the low hills; there was barely any traffic. The desert gleamed in the moon­shine. I walked down the middle of the deserted road, tapping out a pattern with my boot heels, feeling the light of the moon bathing me in its cool warmth as it gleamed off the wide stripe of road ahead. I imagined I was walking down a canal, clicking my heels along on top of the water.

  My thoughts returned to Boyd. What made him so different from Lewis? I wasn’t thinking about individual differences, like hair color and tastes in furniture. I meant fundamental differences—the way I was different from my classmates, the way I was different from everybody else. Boyd had that differ­ence as well. He and I were different from each other, yet there was some common . . . there was something similar . . .

  We were in the vast minority, Boyd and I. Most people were basically the same, showing healthy ex­pressions of their individual differences. They mar­ried, had best friends, served on committees, and played bridge. All those activities seemed so foreign, their motivations so alien, to me.

  My freedom fled. Frustration loomed before me, showing me an eternal search, a quest as hopeless as that for the Holy Grail. I would search for inner peace, for a common bond, normalcy, and never find any of it. It seemed my destiny was to be a futile search for answers to questions that were barely asked.

  My frustration seemed as endless as the road that stretched before me, silvery and shining in the moonlight. As endless as the path of my life, as endless as the fence that stretched alongside the road, as endless as the herd of sheep that bedded on the other side of the fence.

  As soon as I conceived the idea, blood raced to each capillary in my body. My whole being flushed. It had been weeks. Weeks. Suddenly, right here, was an antidote to my frustration. I could feel the relief already, creeping in around the edges. How could I have ever forgotten? The music was my companion­ship, my eternal friend. I needed only to evoke it.

  I jumped the fence and caught up a lamb from next to its mothe
r. I ripped at it furiously and drank, knowing at the time that it tasted wrong, it tasted . . . bad, but I was helpless to stop myself.

  When I was finished, I was disgusted with my behavior. There was no relief in the act at all. I found the sheep’s trough and washed myself, noticing the thick medicinal smell in the water and then the official quarantine sign posted nearby. I noticed how oddly calm the entire flock seemed to be. They had hardly reacted, even as the little one bleated in the face of its death. I had thought it peculiar how little noise and struggle the lamb had put up—and there was none at all from its mother. I found myself faintly amused but too wrapped up in my own loneliness to pay much attention. I washed and anticipated the sleepiness—and the music, the heavenly music—that always accompanied a kill. It didn’t come.

  A mile farther down the road, the sickness struck. I vomited until there was nothing left, and still I heaved. By sunrise, my eyes had swollen shut and my fingers were as thick as stuffed sausages. I could barely lift my head. I lay in a shady dry drainage ditch all day, feeling my skin stretch tighter and tighter until I thought it would pop, thirst overwhelming me, wait­ing to die.

  As evening cooled the air, I felt slightly better, and by moonrise I could stand. I propped myself against a signpost, and when a car finally came along, I staggered to the side of the road. It was a young woman with a child. She stopped for me. When she saw my face in the interior light of her car, she gasped, then took me home with her, fed me, bathed me, and put me to bed.

  Her name was Sarah.

  I stayed with her for three days while the allergic reaction to the medicated lamb passed. The opening of her home to me was an act of charity and selfless­ness that was to follow me for a long, long time.

  Sarah Monroe. She was a swarthy-­skinned, tight­ly muscled dance instructor. Sarah lived with Samuel, her three-­year-­old son, in a tiny one-­bedroom house. The boy’s large brown eyes were curious and ques­tioning, calm and patient; I had never before met such a child.