Vanishing Act jw-1

by Thomas Perry

  "They used to strangle a white dog and hang it on a pole."

  "The usual."

  "And then they’d have the guessing of dreams."

  "That sounds like fun. Did you just have a dream?"

  "Yes."

  "Can I guess it?"

  "No."

  As they walked through the cool night air toward the low building, the music seemed to grow louder. The doors, one on each end of the building, kept opening to let more people inside, and each time a light would shine out into the darkness and the sound of the singing would rise. The beat of the drums and the squash-shell rattles were amplified by the thumping of hundreds of feet.

  When they reached the edge of the light shining from the doorway, Felker stood still and listened. "Getting shy?" Jane asked.

  "A little." The music changed. It slowed down, and this time a lone male voice that reminded Felker of a zydeco singer, with breaks and falls in his clear baritone, sang, "Ya ha we ya ha!" and the two or three hundred voices, men and women and children, chanted, "Ha ha." "I’ve got to wonder what they’re going to think of me."

  She reached out and touched him. She put her arm through his and gently tugged him toward the building. "Think of it as a Polish wedding. Everybody is welcome and everybody is here."

  He started to walk along with her again. "That I can understand. Just like in St. Louis."

  "Not like St. Louis," she said. "This is Poland."

  The door swung open and they were inside. The room was a big public meeting hall, with benches along one wall but bare otherwise. The people were in four giant moving circles, one inside the other. As the outer circle passed by them, here and there a brown face would grin at Jane or a head would toss its long black hair to reveal glittering almond eyes that focused on her and only passed shyly across Felker. But there were other faces he would not have expected to see here— people with white skin and light hair who didn’t look any more like Indians than he did. He started to feel less conspicuous.

  Jane tugged his arm again to pull his head closer and said into his ear, "Remember, Polish wedding. Join the fun and you’re a guest. Stand around and you’re a stranger."

  Felker took a deep breath and stepped forward to enter the outer circle, but once again Jane held his arm. "Boys in front, girls in back." She pushed him into the line in the middle of a string of men. Three little girls who had seen him try to step in among them giggled, careful not to look at him. He saw Jane slip into an inner line between Mattie Wilson and a woman in her late twenties, who looked over her shoulder to clasp Jane’s hand and then release it. They danced until people were hot and winded, and then the leader stopped singing.

  Suddenly, Felker heard an unearthly noise, like a dozen men growling and bellowing. The drums started again, and people grinned and backed off the floor. A strong hand gripped his arm. He turned to see an old man with skin like the brown leather on Jane’s bag. He was grinning so his black eyes narrowed. "Come on," the old man said. "You’ll get trampled."

  Felker walked with the old man to the bench by the wall. "I’m Basil Henrick," said the old man.

  "John Felker." He shook the old man’s hand.

  The door on the east end of the building flew open and ten men danced into the room wearing dark blue carved wooden masks with pointed leather ears and tufts of fur on top, huge eyes, and big teeth. They grumbled and grunted, bent over and glared at the people gathered around the walls. As he watched, he saw one of them pass Jane, who was on the other side of the building with about five young women. Some of the women wore Indian skirts with elaborate embroidered pictures on them and a loose red tunic above, dangling earrings, and big silver brooches like plates. Others were dressed like Midwestern farm girls after church, in modest dresses, skirts, and sweaters. They all seemed amused by the men in the masks, who were now roaring and grunting as they danced.

  "This is the Buffalo Dance," said Basil Henrick.

  "Buffalo Dance?" said Felker. "I didn’t know there were buffalo around here."

  This seemed to please Basil Henrick. "There weren’t. War parties ran into herds of buffalo around the Kentucky salt lick." He stared at the dancers and nodded his head to the beat of the drums. "They said, ’What in the hell are those?’ Couldn’t get over it."

  Felker found himself smiling. "What were they doing way down there?"

  "Fighting Cherokees. They fought pretty regularly everywhere from Maine to South Carolina, and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Any place farther than that, I figure they just went once in a while to steal women." The old man looked at Felker. "You know Janie from college?"

  "No," said Felker. "I met her through a mutual friend."

  "Yeah," said Basil. "You look over there at Janie, the first thing you notice ain’t her mind. You don’t say, ’Now, there’s a scholar.’ " He gave a hoot, then said, "Her daddy used to bring her up here when she was little. They’d go up to Toronto and see a show or something and then come down here and put on the blanket and be Indians again. Fine man. When he fell, must have been five or six hundred people went to the mourning council down in Tonawanda."

  "Fell? What do you mean?"

  "He was working a construction job. Big bridge out west somewhere. A cable snapped and down he went."

  "Terrible," said Felker.

  "It’s good money, and the Iroquois crews have always been able to get work because we’re not afraid of heights, but people die."

  "You’re really not afraid of heights?"

  Basil shrugged. "I sure as hell am. I was a railroad man myself. I got to see plenty, but I saw it from ground level. I think the part about not being afraid is bullshit. An Iroquois just trains himself to tolerate it. They used to say a warrior needed a skin seven thumbs thick." He pinched his arm. "Mine is maybe five thumbs thick."

  The buffalo dancers danced out the door to cheers from the crowd.

  "She putting you up at Jimmy’s?"

  "Yes," said Felker.

  "I figured. Mattie loves to have young people around."

  "Has she brought other people for visits? I mean, strangers?"

  Basil looked at him slyly. "Can’t say."

  The drums grew louder, there were rattles and clicking sticks, and the door flew open again. This time it was twenty-five men, all in breechcloths and paint, wearing feathers and bells on their knees, ankles, and arms. The dance was quick with sharp, violent movements, and the music was different now.

  "What’s this one?" asked Felker.

  "War Dance. The Wa-sa-seh, that’s the real name. It means Sioux dance. I figure when Great-Great-Grandpa had fought his way past the Mississippi, that’s who he ran into in the open country. It made an impression."

  "They lost?"

  "My guess is that’s an understatement. A war party that far out was probably no more than thirty fellows. On the average day out there, it wouldn’t have been too hard to run into a couple hundred Sioux warriors out for their morning pony ride, and those guys weren’t about to take any shit from us. Grandpa probably beat it back to the woods as quick as he could."

  "You sound like you wish you’d seen it."

  "With binoculars," said Basil. "Not up close. In the good old days, sometime around 1650, they took a census. They put one kernel of corn in a big basket for each person. That would have been maybe seventeen or eighteen thousand people. Throw in the rest of the Iroquois tribes, it was maybe fifty thousand. That’s not a lot to fight the whole world."

  When the warriors disappeared, Felker looked for Jane, but he couldn’t pick her out in the crowd. Two men walked to the middle of the floor and sat down face to face, with a drum and a pair of rattles. They sat quietly talking to each other for a few seconds, and nobody paid much attention to them beyond not stepping on them. Finally, the drum and the rattles started, the two men nodding their heads together to keep time, and at an invisible signal they began to sing.

  "Fish Dance," said Basil. "Come on. I’ll show you."

  He waited for
the column of dancers to pass, then stepped into its wake, dancing backward, and pulled Felker with him.

  Felker’s eye caught a movement to the side, and he turned to face Basil. As he did, Jane stepped between them and began to dance with Basil. Two young women Jane had been talking to across the room stepped in together and began to dance with Felker.

  "Two partners, John," said Basil. "Only honored guests get two."

  Felker grinned and gave a little bow to his two dancing partners. They were both dressed in Indian skirts, with elaborate embroidery at the hem and up the front to look like flowers. They had deerskin leggings with a slit in the front to show the beadwork on their moccasins, and they wore long silver earrings that glinted against their long black hair. All of their movements were precisely simultaneous. When they turned to dance forward, they spun like a pair of matched horses and took him by surprise so he had to glance over his shoulder to be sure he could change direction without stumbling.

  The two singers in the middle picked up the pace gradually, and their volume went up with it. In the noise of the feet of so many dancers and the song of the two men, it was possible to forget that this was a world that was gone. The two young women were unmistakably a kind of offering to a warrior who had come in from some battle, and they were still that. They weren’t some pale echo of an old tradition because here they still were, no less real than they had ever been. They were more than a ceremonial welcome, more than a symbol of abundance: They were the antidote to death. Their ornaments said so. It was written in all the colorful flowers embroidered on the clothes of these women from a nation that was always at war.

  The dance ended and the two women shook his hand. One of them said, "I’m Emma. You’re catching on very well."

  Felker said, "Thank you. I appreciate your giving me a chance to learn." In his peripheral vision he was watching as the other girl whispered something to Jane, who made a wry face and pinched her so she had to retreat, laughing.

  The music started again, and Jane stepped in front of Felker and began to dance. "Enjoying yourself?"

  "I’ve been in tighter spots than this," he said. He glanced around. "Hey, my interpreter’s gone. What’s this one called?"

  She said, "It’s called Shaking the Bush."

  The people regrouped as the clear, melodious voices of the singers cut through their murmuring. Emma stood before a young man who looked like an Indian warrior in a movie, and Felker recognized him as one of the war dancers. The warrior and Felker were shoulder to shoulder, dancing with Emma and Jane. All over the room these double pairs formed, the women choosing their partners and then all four dancing to the sound of the drums and rattles.

  In the heat and the noise, Felker’s mind began to lose the simple habit of insisting that it see only what was in front of his eyes. He looked across at Jane in her blue jeans and white blouse, and Emma in her costume of an ancient Seneca woman, and the two images began to merge and then to trade places. There was no difference at all. They could have been sisters—for all he knew, were sisters in the strange, ornate family system they had—or even the same girl seen at different times or in different aspects, like a ghost. Emma was smiling, but Jane was staring straight into his eyes, as though she was reading something there.

  He studied her closely and then said, "Why is it called Shaking the Bush?"

  "It just is."

  He leaned closer and realized that her eyes were glistening, welling up. "What’s the matter?"

  "Nothing," she said, and quickly looked away. After a second she brushed her sleeve across her eyes and looked straight into his gaze again, unflinching.

  After a time the music stopped. The man who had been singing stood up and gave a loud and apparently serious harangue in Seneca. Women went to the end of the room and collected covered dishes and put jackets on sleepy children. Young couples drifted out into the darkness with their arms around each other.

  Felker and Jane walked in silence across the dark field. The night was still and cold now, and their breath puffed little clouds of steam into it. Jane said, "Well, what did you think?"

  "I think the world got screwed up when we stopped living in villages. Having tribes, I guess. There were tribes in Scotland, where my family came from. They painted themselves blue and went out to throw stones at the Romans."

  "Maybe we can find a village for you," she said. "One with a lot of nice stones."

  He blew out a breath sadly. "You know, I actually forgot for a couple of hours."

  She held his arm. "Good," she said. "That’s the way it has to be." She looked up at him critically as they walked. "You know, I think you’re going to be all right. Once we get you settled, you might actually be better off than you ever were."

  "I don’t know," he said.

  "Happier, I mean." She squinted at him critically. "You’re no accountant."

  They walked up the steps to the front porch of the house and entered. She had not locked the door. She walked in without turning on the lights, and he didn’t either. He went into his room, took off his shoes, and sat on the bed. He took a deep breath and blew it out in a sigh before he became aware that she was in the room with him.

  She stood beside the bed, the moonlight through the curtain illuminating her as she unbuttoned her blouse. The light shone through it as she pulled it out of the top of her jeans and slipped it off her shoulders.

  "I know your dream," he said quietly.

  "Do you?" she said.

  "You dreamed we were going to be lovers."

  She stepped out of her jeans, then her panties, and began to unbutton his shirt carefully, one button after another, with a slow inevitability. When she reached his waist, she unbuckled his belt and waited for him to stand. Her hands were slow and soft and soothing as she stripped the last of his clothes off him, and then she ducked into his arms and her hair draped on his chest, still cold from the night air outside.

  15

  Felker awoke to the sound of a bird making its first quiet call, somewhere far off. He was alone in the bed, and there was no sound inside the house. He rolled to the side of the bed to look down at the floor and saw that her clothes weren’t there.

  He listened again, then sat up, swung his legs to the floor, and walked to the closet, where he had hung his backpack. It was still there, and the money was still inside. He found his clothes on the chair, where he would have put them. He was fighting the possibility that it hadn’t happened. He went to the window and looked out into the gray light, but there were only the empty fields and a few acres of woods about a quarter mile off. He looked down at the bed, but her side showed no sign that anyone had slept on it. He bent down and put his face into the pillow. He could smell Jane’s hair, a very light scent of flowers, but sweat too, a sweet, musky smell that made her real again and brought back the feel of her in the dark.

  "What are you doing?" It was her voice.

  He turned and straightened. "I was trying to identify the perfume."

  "I’ll have to ask Jimmy. It’s his shampoo."

  Felker shrugged. "There’s more to Jimmy than meets the eye." He looked around him. "I guess there would have to be."

  He followed her into the kitchen. She was wearing a man’s red plaid wool shirt that hung down over her jeans, and her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail. "Where have you been?"

  "I went out to get some eggs for breakfast," she said. She pointed to a basket on the counter beside the door.

  "You walked to the store already? What’s open at this hour?"

  She laughed. "This is a farm. You just go out and lift up a couple of chickens." She started to slip out of the big hunting shirt, and glanced at him. She could see he was staring at the way her breasts stood out under her T-shirt. She raised an eyebrow.

  "Come on." He took her hand and led her into the bedroom.

  "I thought you’d be hungry," she said. Her voice was low and tense, almost a whisper. "I brought breakfast."

  "This is more importan
t," he said. "If I die today, I won’t care if I had two more eggs."

  Then his hands moved up under her T-shirt and were on her breasts, and then he was slipping the T-shirt up over her head, and he tossed it somewhere, and the jeans were coming down over her hips, and he seemed to be everywhere at once, touching her and kissing her in a way that made her ache until she kissed him back.

  She had needed to hear him say he wanted to, so she could be sure that it wasn’t just something people did because they had been to bed together once, and knew that if they let that cold-light-of-dawn feeling go on for any longer it would go on forever. Then she forgot all of that because none of it mattered at all. It hadn’t happened. What was going on now was what she would have imagined while she was out walking in the dark morning, if she had let the longing take the form of a wish. He must have been thinking of it too, because there was nothing tentative, no hesitation. What they thought, they seemed to think at the same time, and the impulses were already movements before they knew. They drew together to let their lips meet in slow, moist, leisurely kisses that neither of them started or stopped because it hadn’t been an intention, just an attraction they hadn’t resisted. Their bodies had learned to know each other in the course of the long night, while the things they said to each other were still the words of strangers. She accepted it because there was no other choice, and she began to let herself feel glad instead of ashamed that this had happened.

  Later they ate breakfast. It was better with the sun up and light bouncing around the bright white kitchen, with the smells of fried eggs and hot coffee and the busy chirping of sparrows outside the window. "Want to have a picnic?" asked Jane.

  "I’d like that," he answered.

  Just as they were packing their lunch, they heard the first drops popping on the roof. It rained for three days. The cornfield outside turned to a rich, muddy soup and the grass in the fields turned an impossible emerald-green.

  On the fourth day the rain stopped, and on the sixth they woke up to find that the world had changed again. It was the first week of May now, and the small half-inch buds that had been folded tightly on the branches of the trees exploded into luminous light-green leaves.