Soul's Road: A Fiction Collection

by Cody Luff

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Oh, yeah. I read it in a book of my Dad’s.” He flips through the magazine. “What’s an afterbirth?”

  “Well, uh, it’s a . . .”

  “Do you believe in spirits?”

  A woman in a paisley cotton shirt comes through the door, which has been painted to look like the door of a castle. “Henry Fishbein?”

  ***

  The floor of the round-domed yurt is cold, but the room itself is warm. Judith stands barefoot, accepting the chill into her bones. Others are dancing to a recorded chant, the singer’s words occasionally proclaiming love for self, love for the universe. Judith has come to the women’s circle twice, each time with her friend Alicia. They are by far the youngest women there. Judith’s premature gray hair blends in quite easily. Alicia is swaying her hips, eyes closed, arms crossed softly in front of her chest. It’s enough for Judith just to stand, to be out of her chair, and part of the group. Dancing is out of the question.

  She looks around the room. On a white board, Judith reads: 12/21/2012 at 11:11 p.m. Universal Time. She stares at the black words and when she closes her eyes, she sees them in reverse, white against the rusty red behind her eyelids.

  When the music ends, the women all sit. Cheyenne, the leader, whose musical fountain of words and hair and scarves and skirt flow from her, invites them to join her in a meditation. She says she will ground them with rooted words. Judith’s mind wanders to the Reno trip tomorrow. She has to leave extra food out for her cat. It’s only overnight, but he’ll probably scratch the couch. That reminds her she needs to get some travel-sized toothpaste on the way home.

  Cheyenne is calling for heightened awareness, bringing Judith back into the room. She asks the women to hum at a higher vibration. Judith hears it as sound, like radio static clearing to a song.

  Cheyenne slides into the topic of the evening—the end of the Mayan calendar. Instead of predictions of chaos, she explains how an astronomic event at that time will help bring about balance. “The Mayan people worshiped the sun,” she says, her voice hypnotic. “On the winter solstice of December 21, 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in 26,000 years.” She pauses and the numbers echo within the yurt’s wall. “We can only imagine what changes this will bring.”

  She will still be the same, Judith thinks. But the world will change around her. Steven may or may not be in her life. Henry will be with his mother that year. Since Lisa and Steven live on different coasts, their decision to share joint custody a year at a time makes sense. At the end of this one, Henry will spend his first year with his mother. Steven has told Judith he wants to be in Africa, or sailing around the world, something disruptive, for that first year his son is gone.

  Cheyenne’s voice changes, this time filled with awe. “So mark the day. And whatever energy typically streams to Earth from the center of the Milky Way will indeed be transformed. This conversion will allow us to open our consciousness and shift our energy.”

  Energy? Judith doesn’t imagine it is the kind she pays bills for, like electricity or natural gas. Something more elusive, like life energy perhaps, but she can’t put her finger on it.

  The shifting bodies and low murmurs lets Judith know the meditation is over. Big white pieces of paper and markers are passed around the room. The women are instructed to draw the sun or anything it means to them. They are not to stop and analyze, just draw the first thing that comes to mind.

  Cheyenne rings a bell when time is up. Judith’s sun has a blue dome at the top and a red dome at the bottom. Two orange lines, side by side, slash the center.

  “Look at that. See the eleven?” Alicia is at her side and she fingers the orange lines.

  Judith looks at the eleven she has drawn and then at the 11:11 on the board and thinks that that is why.

  “Does eleven have significance for you?” Cheyenne asks when she looks over Judith’s shoulder.

  “I wore an eleven on my junior high softball uniform. Oh, and it’s the age Henry will be at his party next week.”

  Alicia laughs. “Think bigger, girlfriend.”

  “You’ve drawn the poles in opposing colors. Did you know the north and south poles of the sun reverse every eleven years?” Cheyenne says. “The reversal signifies new opportunities.”

  Judith thinks of Julliard.

  “Also, a time of great personal growth.”

  Judith thinks these interpretations are a stretch.

  Cheyenne calls the women back to their seats. She invites them to share about their art around the circle. One woman has drawn a naked female figure in the orb of the sun.

  9/11 = 9 + 1 + 1 = 11. Judith often does math in her head, even when she is supposed to be listening to someone else.

  Another woman has drawn snakes around the sun.

  September 11th is the 254th day of the year: 2 + 5 + 4 = 11; the first plane to hit the towers was Flight 11; New York City has 11 letters; the State of New York is the 11th state added to the Union.

  The woman next to Judith has drawn a sunset. Her sun disappears behind smoke and black trees and a landscape of destruction.

  Twin Towers, standing side by side, looked like the number 11.

  That day, her father wore his blue suit; her mother, her red dress. They held hands when they jumped out of the 101st floor window.

  The women are waiting for her. “I have drawn the sun’s eleven year cycle of pole reversal,” Judith says. The other women “ah” but Judith is still thinking of her parents.

  ***

  The plaque on the door says Sierra Suite. Steven has a friend who comps him this room if it is not already occupied with a pampered high-roller. Henry pushes past them. In a moment, they hear him say, “It’s got two baths,” and, “This tub is huge.” Then he discovers the automatic curtain opener and closer and, with a ten-year olds love of buttons and anything that moves, runs around to every window.

  “You know what they call these things? Levigravitons.”

  Judith catches Steven’s eye. He shakes his head subtly back and forth.

  The maple table seats ten, high winged back executive chairs rimming its shiny circumference. Three different sitting rooms hold plush down couches with puffy pillows. The oriental rugs are soft under their feet. Judith takes off her shoes and wiggles her toes.

  Steven hugs her from behind. “Henry has his own room.” He kisses her neck.

  “Wow, three T.V.’s,” Henry yells. “One for each of us. I counted.”

  They order room service and Henry lifts every warming lid like they are Christmas presents. “Pizza and French fries!” He wants to take home the mini bottle of ketchup. And the small shaker of parmesan. He eats fast, talking about how the next day they will go to Circus, Circus to play games and watch the free circus acts in the middle of the arcade.

  After dinner, Henry asks Judith to read to him. He can do it himself, of course. Judith thinks about his mother so far away. She says sure. The book is The Alchemist about a man who supposedly discovers the secret of eternal life. The records show that he died in 1418. But his tomb is empty. Henry repeats that last part.

  “I wouldn’t want to live forever,” she says.

  “Oh, man, I would. Just think of all the inventions you’d see.”

  Judith can only think of all the people she would see die. Two is enough.

  Henry falls asleep quickly after they are done.

  Steven and Judith make love in the Jacuzzi bath, which is the size of a small swimming pool. He has brought orchid bubble bath as a surprise and afterwards, the scent still lingers. She sleeps dreamless in a field of flowers.

  When they are dressing the next morning, Steven tucks his sweatshirt into his jeans.

  “No, Dad, someone will call you a buffin. Keep it out.”

  Steven and Judith pass one of their looks, trying to determine if the word is hip kid-slang or another one that Henry invented.

  Judith dresses in her stand
ard uniform: brown sweater, black skirt, black ribbed tights, and clogs. That way she doesn’t have to ever think about her clothes. She is comfortable. She is dressed for the theater, for dinner, for reading a book. She is ready to teach at any moment.

  At Circus, Circus, Judith tries to shut out the whizzing, blaring, jangling electronic sounds. She audiates Rondo Alla Turca in her head, especially the fortissimo part. Henry eats a bag of cotton candy, watches a trapeze act, and wins enough tickets to pick a portable radio and headset from the prize counter.

  They head for the Fleischmann Planetarium. There are five different films showing in the dome and the next one is called SolarMax.

  “The sun is 93 million miles from the earth,” Henry says. Steven shrugs his shoulders. This could be a made up fact, but Judith thinks it is probably true.

  People speak in hushed tones as they enter the round room. When they sit, the chairs thrust their bodies at an angle where they must look up. The room swells with music and the sky above them fills with a desert landscape, the sun just showing over the horizon. Judith feels assured somehow by the largeness of the screen, how it encompasses her full view, and the confidence of the narrator’s words. Judith learns that the sun fires billions of tons of particles into space at the speed of a million miles an hour.

  “Solarflarity,” Henry whispers with assurance.

  The narrator’s voice informs them that sunspots are regions of strong magnetic fields. The sunspots have a cycle of magnetism which reverses the sun’s poles.

  “They’re cyclists,” Henry laughs in her ear. “Get it?”

  The diagram overhead reminds Judith of her drawing.

  The narrator tells them this happens every eleven years.

  Henry nods confidently and points to his soon-to-be-eleven self.

  The narrator’s voice rises in pitch. There has been an exciting discovery. Since there is no air between the earth and the sun, there is no way to hear the sounds the sun makes. Since the vibrations of these solar sounds make the outside of the sun move up and down, astronomers can study the sound by looking at the sun.

  The sun has ten million solar musical notes.

  “Solar Melodiopera,” Henry says.

  Ten million musical notes. Judith feels like standing up and declaring this. Did everyone just hear? The sun has ten million notes.

  The voice continues. “As the sun hums to itself, ten million pure tones change as they resonate through the plasma, revealing to us tides and currents far below.”

  A gigantic, fiery red sun explodes the curved screen, its surface covered by darker orange squirming worm shapes. And the glowing, pulsing orbs of notes she will never hear shower above her.

  ***

  Back at the Nugget, with his very own T.V. in his room, Henry falls asleep to a Harry Potter movie. Steven and Judith watch Letterman. Steven wants to make her feel good after the monologue, but he falls asleep during the first commercial.

  Judith tries to sleep but can’t. Music in the time signature of 11/4 plays through her head. She can hear Dave Brubeck’s Eleven Four, the urgent high hat and rambling clarinet pushing the beat. 11/4. 11/4. Of course, she remembers. Sedi Donka. From Bulgaria. Compounds of seven and eleven. For her master’s thesis, she chose music from Eastern European countries, loving how the unusual meter informed the hops and jumps of native folk dancers. It had almost made her want to do that. To dance.

  She looks out at the slick-wet streets and lights of Reno from their 22nd floor view. 11 + 11. Maybe she is going crazy.

  Steven’s laptop is on the table. She flips it open. It hums to life.

  A little Googling and suddenly there are hundreds of references. A football is 11 inches long. Both M.A.S.H. and Cheers, her two favorite shows in the 80’s, ran for 11 seasons with 11 main characters. A rocket must travel at a speed of over 11km per second to escape the Earth's gravity. Einstein believed there were dimensions not visible to us, 11 dimensions in all.

  She should stop, go to sleep, but she can’t. On a numerology site, she finds a way to determine her life path number. She takes her birthday, March 8, 1971, and adds the numbers as the site instructs. March, which is a 3, gets added to the 8. Then add to that the year, 1 + 9 + 7 + 1. She comes up with 29. Add those together. 2 +9 = 11.

  Judith is an 11.

  She leans back in the executive chair. If she adds those two together, 1 + 1 = 2. She is a 2. But, no, the site says that 11 is a master number with a master vibration and should not be reduced.

  She reads about elevens. They are attracted to the unknown; intuitive, sensitive, and spiritual. The last word seems loud, bigger than the others. She is not spiritual. Believes in nothing but the finiteness of existence. She is not calmed by this belief, but at least she can understand it. When she reads that others turn to elevens for teaching and inspiration, she thinks of her Suzuki students. How many of them has she inspired? Eleven years she has been teaching. That number is failing to surprise her now.

  The glow of the computer dies with a slide of a button. She makes her way back to the bedroom and slips under crisp sheets. She still cannot sleep. She tosses and turns and thinks about spirits. And God. And the unknown.

  ***

  Alicia is feeding the chickens in her side yard. It rained all weekend while Judith was gone, and on this Monday afternoon it is still raining so Alicia’s yard is full of mud.

  “We can survive this upcoming catastrophe,” Alicia says from under the hood of her rain slicker. Since she started believing in the end of the world, Judith hasn’t seen as much of her friend. Alicia lives on a ½ acre in the South Bay and has turned every inch of land into “sustainable space.” Raised beds are lined in neat rows. Beyond the chicken yard is a shed for two goats and a cow. “I can’t say I agree with Cheyenne completely. But I still want to take action. Just in case.” She hands Judith a bucket of murky water and asks her to splash it in the corner by the bean plants.

  Judith pours it out, brings it back with fresh water for the chickens. “What does the number eleven mean to you?”

  Alicia stops with her hand in mid-air, a light brown egg suspended there. “In numerology? Lots of things, why?”

  “Oh, a friend told me she was an eleven.”

  “Hmm. When I took that class, my partner was an eleven. If I remember, she had lots of potential but too much self-reflection got in the way of it.”

  “I see.”

  “Oh, you do?” Alicia aims a playful spray at Judith.

  “Really, it’s for my friend.”

  Judith leaves to run errands but ends up at Ocean Beach. She parks, gets out, walks 200 feet, gets caught in a flash downpour, goes back to her car. She does not enjoy the wetness. There is too much water in front of her and around her. She is hypnotized, though, by the black waves, lurching above the sand in angry pelts. She tries to conjure anger, what it feels like. There is only a thud at the thought of it.

  Waves collapse, their thunder so loud she can hear them through her rolled up windows. She closes her eyes and the lap and crash recedes until she can hear Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor as if she is in her childhood living room. Her father and mother sway to the weep of the violins. They twirl, caress, waltz, sob, no, she is the one sobbing, great ins and outs, matching the pull of the waves, generating from beyond her heart, dissipating with anguish. Generate, then dissipate, here, not here, gone.

  When she opens her eyes, she half expects them to be there, dancing down the beach.

  ***

  At home, she turns on her electric fireplace and imagines the smell of wood. She checks her email. The music director’s assistant at Juilliard has written. The official interview will take place within the next three weeks. They need to hear from her.

  When she left New York seven years ago, didn’t she leave for good?

  ***

  A pile of boys wrestle in the backyard, knocking each other over, bodies slamming into the wet grass. They slide in the mud patches and their clothes and skin streak w
ith brown.

  Steven joins Judith where she is sitting in a lawn chair. “Hi.”

  “Gotta love a birthday party,” she says. “At least it’s not raining.”

  “Henry doesn’t want to do the year plan.”

  “What?” Judith pulls her chair closer. “I thought he was all for it.”

  “He cried last night for hours. He wants us all to live in the same place.”

  “Here or there?”

  “Henry,” Steven yells. “Get off Ryan right now. He can’t breathe.” Steven puts his hand on Judith’s chair. “Sorry. Um, there.”

  “New York,” Judith mumbles.

  “New York,” Steven echoes.

  She gets up to turn the hamburgers on the grill.

  From his chair, Steven says, “Your job offer.” He waits until she turns toward him. “I think I believe in fate. I didn’t know I did.”

  When Judith looks out at the boys, the sun is there, blushing behind the trees. It seems to have been missing for weeks. She pours a glass of lemonade and she and Steven watch the mass of yellow rise into the sky.

  Steven wraps her in a hug. “Is this okay?”

  “I haven’t had much time to think about it. I mean, it’s awfully sudden and—”

  “I mean the hug,” says Steven.

  “Yes. It’s nice. Why?”

  “I didn’t think you liked hugs,” he says.

  “Oh.” It is a question and a statement. She thought he didn’t like to hug. She hugs him back. He kisses her. She runs her finger down his back. Steven’s hand, hidden from the boys by her body, cups her breast.

  Henry runs over. Judith and Steven separate. “Thanks, Jude. For my Bionicles.” She has gotten him the last three he needed to complete the set. “I got you something, too. Just for the heck of it.” Henry hands her a clumsily wrapped package with a handprint of mud on its side.

  Steven shrugs when Judith gives him a questioning look.

  Inside the box is a sage and rust sweater with swirls of brown and cream.