He runs his fingers over the metal latch, like a magician at a children’s birthday party, and it pops open.
Joseph gasps. “Dude, you’re a regular wizard.”
I say, “Golly,” again, because I sort of believe in magic too. I know that feeling will pass in a while, and I also know I need to stop saying golly if I want to sound mature and responsible.
Joseph shines his flashlight into the trunk. Raj makes passes over it because he’s really getting into the mystical East Indian thing. He tries to say some Hindu words, but they come out sounding like an old time evangelist speaking in tongues.
“You were born in America weren’t you?” He looks really embarrassed when I ask him that.
Raj says, “Look at this picture, will you?”
He’s holding up a photograph of my mother breastfeeding me right after I was born. She looks glad to see me, but she looks worried too.
I pick up my certificate of live birth, held here for safe keeping in case I ever want to be President of the United States. It says I weighed six pounds and four ounces, and my mother’s name is Hyannisport Larkspur Smith, and my father is Unknown. Anonymous, just like Joseph’s dad.
Why hadn’t I been able to see that in the old sepia tone dysfunctional family picture? I see it now in my memory. How Dad loves me in spite of everything. How he watches his reflection in my eyes, and listens for his name in my voice, and doesn’t say anything, because he might let something slip and he’s promised not to.
Raj picks up a plastic brown bottle of pills. It says aripiprazole 5mg on the label. It tells my mother to take six tablets daily in divided doses. For schizophrenia. That’s something else I didn’t know.
Raj has found other things—a picture of Mom looking at the camera with crazy eyes, a diary unlocked and ready to reveal everything.
The diary pages are filled with tiny words almost too small to read, and when I start reading them I wish I hadn’t. Page after page, all about me. Drawings of me with blood running from my eyes and word balloons filled with threats written in a mysterious language only schizophrenics understand.
The sound of the front door opening drifts up the stairs. “Dad’s home.”
I start heading for the attic door, but Joseph makes a grunting sound and holds both hands over his head like a robbery victim. That’s how he tells me, “Finish what you’re doing. I’ll keep him busy.” Joseph’s been waiting for the opportunity to do something special for me since we met, and here it is.
I stay in the attic because it’s my mother who wants to kill me. Raj stays because he’s the mystical East Indian who figured out where the clues were hidden, and Joseph engages Dad in conversation because that’s the only way I’ll have enough time to figure things out. The problem is, neither Joseph nor Dad have much to say, so we won’t have very long.
“Look.” Raj holds up a folder with my mother’s name printed on it. Underneath her name is, CONFIDENTIAL, in big red letters. Inside the folder are a series of one-page letters from the Oklahoma Department of Health and Human Services, and another from Flanders Mental Hospital detailing Hayannisport Larkspur Smith’s progress.
“This one’s the most important.” Raj shows me a formal looking paper. Like a college application, only this is an application for voluntary admission to Flanders Mental Hospital.
Mom’s picture is on the upper left hand side of the first page. Her whole history is in her eyes—the daughter she loves and hates at the same time, medications that stop the voices but make her want to die, psychiatrists who finally say there is no hope.
The final sheet of paper in the file is her release, and her admission to a halfway house in N.E. Oklahoma City. There is an address, and a phone number, and a recommendation that she have no contact with her family.
Me and Dad.
“I know what I have to do,” I tell Raj. I fold the paper up and put it into my back pocket. By the time we are back in Dad’s closet every light bulb we can see is shining bright again. I take that as a sign. Why not?
Raj and I walk out of Dad’s bedroom and interrupt him and Joseph. They are in the middle of a wordless conversation about the decline and fall of everything.
When I walk into the living room with Raj, Dad’s expression changes. I can see the thoughts forming in his mind, molding his posture into a slump, shaping the muscles of his face into concern.
He’s wondering if it’s time we had that father/daughter talk about things like pregnancy and morality and STDs. I wonder how he’ll manage without words.
• • •
There aren’t taxis anymore, or buses. I don’t have a driver’s license or a car, and gasoline’s too hard to get even if I did.
“Bicycles still work,” Joseph says. He and Raj rode theirs over to my house, so it’s too late for me to object. Joseph brought his bow and arrows for protection.
Raj says the bow is compound, “Like a sentence with lots of ands and buts.” He’s fascinated by the pulleys and metal cables. “Designed by a mad scientist somewhere in China.” Raj points to an engraving on the black matte finish. “Mandarin characters.”
I can tell he has a lot more to say, but all this talk about mechanical engineering and China embarrasses Joseph. He pulls an arrow from his quiver and twirls it like drummer in a rock and roll band.
“Cheyenne Medicine Arrow,” he tells us. “Full of spirit power. I make them. Mom used to sell them on her website.”
Internet business is slow since Paypal went out of business and electricity is undependable, but the arrows are still arrows. Joseph looks crazy dangerous with a quiver on his back, and everybody will be able to see it when we ride our bikes to the northeast side of town. Mostly black people live there and I’m a little scared of them, even though I know I shouldn’t be.
“I don’t think white people are welcome there,” I say. “Unless they live in halfway houses.”
Raj and Joseph roll their eyes. It’s easy for them to judge. Their ancestors didn’t invent the N-word.
“So are we going or not?” Raj gets right to the point. Before I can answer he says, “There is no greater enemy than pride.” He tells us it’s a translation from Sanskrit so we won’t bother trying to figure out what it means.
“Dad has an old cowboy pistol in his bedroom,” I tell Joseph. “Maybe we should take it.”
“People who carry guns are looking for a fight,” Joseph says.
He has a point. Besides, none of us knows anything about guns.
Raj points to the front door and says, “Who stands still in mud sticks in it.”
I think he means we need to get going.
• • •
People always leave Oklahoma when times get hard. Raj says it’s because they read The Grapes of Wrath in high school. Joseph says it’s because everybody here came from someplace else. I say it’s because this is the Sooner State, and it’s already later than we think.
Anyway, people leave. The empty houses look dark and dangerous, especially the ones outside our neighborhood. Some have broken windows, and yards grown up with weeds tall enough to hide wild animals.
Cars line the curbs where people left them when they ran out of gas. Who knows where they were going or how they planned to get there when their automobiles quit working?
Joseph wants us to call him Joseph Little Wolf while we are on this trip, because that’s the name he used when he sold Authentic Indian Artifacts on the Internet. It’s easy to go along. We call him Joseph, just like we always did, but we remember his new last name.
He rides no-handed holding his compound bow while Raj and I hang back. I wear a helmet, like I always do when I ride a bike. It’s bright red fiberglass, strong enough to stop a hammer blow. Uncomfortable and safe.
Joseph says, “Indian warriors don’t wear helmets.”
Raj says, “What does courage look like in a man?” which would sound much more convincing if his voice didn’t crack.
We plan to go down Northwest Expressway, but
there’s a group of motorcycles about a mile down the road, so we turn onto a side street. Big mistake.
A large black dog jumps through the broken window of a house and charges. A boxer-mix follows, and then a pit bull and a border collie and several other mid-size dogs that move too fast to identify. All of them have big snarling muzzles and ribs that look ready to poke through their skin. They sprint toward us, but stop at curb, still not sure where we fit into the food chain. The leader of the pack comes out last.
“Damn,” Joseph says. “A coyote.”
Joseph and his mom know lots of Indian stories about coyotes, and all of them come to the same conclusion. They are more than extra smart dogs. Coyotes have spirit-power, like black cats and eagles. Hard to kill, not afraid of people, and if their magic fails them they can bite.
Joseph takes an arrow from his quiver and puts it into Indian Warrior position. He’ll threaten but he won’t shoot until the dogs come into the street.
“Go on,” he tells us. “I’ll catch up.”
Right now he’s Joseph Little Wolf without a doubt. The coyote pulls back a step or two when he sees the flint arrowhead, but the dogs don’t know enough to be afraid.
Raj and I ride our bikes back onto the highway, but we don’t go far. I take my helmet off and toss it in the road, because I don’t want to die with a piece of colored plastic on my head. And it looks like I might die pretty soon.
I say, “Golly,” one more time, because now I probably won’t be ever be mature and responsible and I like the way the word feels on my tongue.
I ask Raj, “What should we do when the dogs attack?”
He can’t think of anything brave or useful.
I jump off my bike and pick up a half-brick that’s lying beside the highway, and Raj tries the doors on some of the abandoned cars, but they’re all locked.
“The inner soul is not sullied by the miseries of the world,” he says as he finds a rusty tailpipe that will never scare a dog away. I guess that’s his version of, “Golly.”
The black dog charges into the street, and Joseph fires an arrow into his throat. When the dog skids onto the pavement, the coyote yips and all the other dogs go right for Raj and me.
Joseph kills another one, but the rest don’t slow down. It’s Raj and me they’re after.
I’d kind of like it if those bikers drove up now, and Raj must be thinking the same thing, because we are holding onto our pathetic weapons looking down the road where the motorcycles used to be.
I listen to the coyote yipping orders to his band of killer dogs. I listen to the sound of growling and claws on the pavement. But I’m afraid to look and see what death looks like when it’s running me down on an empty road.
I draw my half-brick back, determined to hear one yip of pain before the dogs tear me apart. Raj holds his tailpipe like a baseball bat, but I’m going to throw like a girl and he’s going to strike out. We both know how this thing will end.
Joseph kills another dog, but the coyote stays safely out of range.
Raj and I turn our attention to the animals charging us. They used to be man’s best friend but don’t remember anything about that now.
I throw my brick. Raj throws his tailpipe—I guess he might as well—and we wait in the middle of the street not facing death bravely, but at least we’re facing it. I’m breathing so fast the edges of the world turn black, like I’m looking into a tunnel at the end of time. So I don’t see the big white Ford pickup truck until it crashes through the pack of dogs.
A sign on the side of the truck says—Cheyenne Drilling Supplies. Natural Gas Powered Vehicle. Tsis Tsis Tas.
The driver is an Indian man wearing a cowboy hat. He might be forty, or fifty, or sixty, or a hundred years old. It really doesn’t matter, because there have always been Indians like him in this part of the world, riding up in pickup trucks at exactly the right time.
He shouts at us through the open window on the driver’s side. “Don’t waste time. Jump in.”
Joseph jumps in first. He pulls another arrow from his quiver and points it at the surviving dogs. They’ve lost interest, and the coyote is gone.
After a block or two, the driver pulls over.
He leans out the driver’s window and asks us where we’re headed.
Joseph says, “I’m Joseph Little Wolf. We’re on a mother quest.”
I show him the paper with my mother’s address.
“I’ll take you there.” Our Indian savior doesn’t think we’re crazy.
“I saw what you did,” he says to all of us, but mostly Joseph. “Very brave.”
Joseph hands him an Authentic Cheyenne Medicine Arrow, with a flint knapped point. The driver knows the arrow is a real power object, even if it was made by a one-eighth Choctaw boy to scam white collectors.
“Maybe we should ask if Karma can ride inside the cab?” Raj says
Joseph tells him, “It’s better if we don’t separate.”
So we ride down the deserted highway in the back of that natural gas powered truck and hardly think about our bikes.
• • •
The Northeast side of Oklahoma City was the poorest part of town. Now it’s exactly like everywhere else. Empty cars line the streets. Yards are grown up in weeds. Houses all have broken windows. Money doesn’t matter when the world falls apart. At least that’s how it looks from the back of a natural gas powered pickup truck.
Joseph says our driver is Cheyenne. “It’s printed on the side of the truck.”
I tell him Cheyenne Drilling Supplies is just a name. “Like Cheyenne, Wyoming, or Sioux City, Iowa?” I add a couple of football teams with Indian names and Raj throws in Crazy Horse malt liquor, but we don’t convince Joseph.
“I know a real Cheyenne when I see one.”
“Tsis Tsis Tas.” The driver has both hands on the side of his pickup bed. We were too busy talking to notice when the truck stopped.
“Arrow Boy got it right.” He tips his cowboy hat and tells us Tsis Tsis Tas is what his branch of the Cheyenne call themselves. The T and S words sort of mean, “The Human Beings,” but not exactly. “Name’s Charley Sweet Medicine. Pleased to meet you.”
He points to a brick bungalow. Its windows are intact. A sign on the door says Licensed Mental Health Facility. There’s a wooden front porch with a brown floor and a white banister and lawn chairs occupied by crazy looking white people—one man, one woman, and two who might be either one.
Charley Sweet Medicine says, “This is the address on your paper.” He climbs the steps and introduces himself, not scared at all. He shakes hands and listens to the crazy looking people tell complicated stories all at once.
I walk as far as the first step and wait for a break in the conversation. Charley Sweet Medicine creates one by crossing his arms and looking right at me. The crazy people stop talking and notice the three kids standing in the yard.
The crazy woman jumps out of her chair and runs down the steps, exactly the way the dogs came at us on the highway. I step backward until I run into Joseph. It’s the first time we’ve really touched, so I stop dead still.
“Karma?” the crazy woman knows my name. There’s only one way that could happen. She doesn’t look like the sepia tone mother in Dad’s family picture. She doesn’t even look like the photograph in the upper right hand corner of the Flanders Admission form we found in the attic. But this woman is my mother, Hyannisport Larkspur Smith.
I remember things about her—the way her eyes never settle in one place, the way she holds her hands together as if she’s about to pray. I remember why my mother would rather live in a Licensed Mental Health Facility than with her husband and daughter.
She wants to kill me—not always, but often enough—especially when she hasn’t had her medication, and she looks like she hasn’t had it for several weeks. She ran away to save my life, but now she knows it wasn’t far enough. My mother takes a couple of runner’s paces toward me, but her legs cramp. She stumbles but doesn’t fall. Her l
ips struggle to find words, but her mind is going too fast for her body.
She wants to say—“I tried to save your life, but that’s impossible now.”
I see those words as clearly as if they are written in blood. The crazies on the porch see them too. Hyannisport Larkspur Smith has told them all about me. And what she’s told them scares them to the bone.
A crazy man lunges out of his chair. His thin blond hair stands up like he’s full of electricity. Charley Sweet Medicine steps away.
Charley says, “Let’s talk a bit.”
Raj says, “Shoot him, Joseph.”
I hear a Cheyenne Medicine Arrow fitting into its place in Joseph’s compound bow.
“Sic Semper Tyrannis.” The crazy man pulls a little pistol from his right front pocket and points it right at Joseph. John Wilkes Booth said that after he shot Abraham Lincoln. I don’t know when I learned this or why I remember it. I know it means someone is going to die, because I had to find out if my mother loved me—and I still don’t know.
I step in front of Joseph, so the crazy man can’t shoot him.
I say, “Please,” because sometimes that works when nothing else will.
The pretend John Wilkes Booth cocks back the hammer on his little antique pistol. A flintlock or a cap lock. I don’t know the difference, only I know it is a very old gun and it might not work when he pulls the trigger.
He takes another step toward me, so I can look right into the barrel. It’s black in there, like a peephole through a door with no light on the other side.
My mother screams. No words, but her whole life is in that scream, from motherhood to madness. She steps between me and the gunman as the hammer falls.
A spark. A puff of smoke. Hyannisport Larkspur Smith falls to the ground. She looks at me and says, “I love you.”
Now I know for sure.
“Catch her,” says Charley Sweet Medicine.
I want to tell him it’s too late, but then I feel Joseph’s arms around me, and I realize I’m falling, exactly like my mother after all.
Sacred Alarm Clock Page 5
