Mothership

by Bill Campbell

  Awake oh mountain. Awake oh Batungbayanin. Listen to the voices of your children and come to our aid.

  Once, a woman came to us through the portal of the gods. She walked with us for many days, and taught us to be canny and wise in our dealings.

  She spoke to us in the tongues of our ancestors and taught us to gather together our histories for the generations that follow.

  “You belong to the mountain,” she said. “And the spirit of the god flows in your veins.”

  There are those who say she died, there are those who say she sleeps, and there are those who say she was taken to the mountain’s heart when she woke him from his slumber.

  What is true, I cannot say.

  We tell these histories to each other, and we write them down on the barks of trees so those who walk this mountain after us will remember.

  Culling the Herd

  C. Renee Stephens

  It started in the mirror. Well, maybe it started when Ms. Waters, my eighth grade social studies teacher at Masterman, told me that Egypt was in Africa. At least, that was what began my interest in Kemet and Netjer—the power we call God. But that wasn’t when it started. It definitely started in the mirror. Between soaping and rinsing my face, flossing and brushing my teeth, brushing and picking my hair, I glanced at my reflection. I watched the familiar image which, suddenly, seemed strangely unfamiliar. My eyes were farther apart, cheekbones broader, nose flatter—my face more triangular. I squinted. My collarbones became horns. The play of shadows and light on the bone and muscles of my chest sketched a cow’s head. That phantom image of the bovine goddess Het-Heru in the mirror, more perception than real, was the beginning.

  It didn’t happen suddenly like in graphic novels about super-heroes. There was no accident at the Smith-Kline labs that I pass on those Saturday nights that I’m roaming Center City watching the kaleidoscopic web and then deciding to head to Sang Kee for some Chinese barbeque. No gamma radiation transformed me. I wasn’t born this way either. I don’t come from some distant planet. I was born in a Philly hospital that no longer exists, that was swallowed by some big branded network back in the day. I guess the records of my birth are probably lost.

  No, it didn’t happen suddenly. It happened so slowly that I barely noticed except for those brief moments in the mirror when I looked unfamiliar, or when I was reading books by E.A. Wallis Budge, Basil Davidson, and C.L.R. James about Kemetan culture and my navel would begin to itch. Even when I visited the Amarna exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania museum with my daughter, when I stood among the residue of the era begun by the revolutionary Akhenaten, I didn’t notice. But I was drawn to her statue.

  That same attraction happened when I visited her at the British Museum and at the Sackler Wing of the Met. It is important to understand that I was not compelled to seek her out. There was no voice in my head, no obsession. The attraction was an affinity. I enjoyed all of the Egyptian art exhibits but would spend the longest moments with her, because something about her was like something about me.

  I would stand in front of the black granite statues and stare at the lion-headed goddess, searching for that sameness. She is beautiful. I am not. Her leonine face isn’t fierce but is almost serene. I am not that either. I didn’t find what I was looking for in those long minutes of staring. I can’t even really tell you what I was thinking. I wasn’t marveling at her power or wondering why a deity of war would be female. I thought about those things later. While I stood there, I just looked.

  When I started to see the threads of colored lights, first the pale blue one connecting my belly with my daughter’s, I didn’t associate the optical illusion with Sekhmet—“She who is powerful.” I associated it with illness. My doctor said that the lights might be a symptom of a migraine. (I didn’t tell him that it was just one light and very specifically a blue light that looked like a thread connecting me to my daughter.) I didn’t experience any other migraine symptoms and the thread didn’t go away. So I went to Will’s Eye Hospital and the ophthalmologist assured me that there was no retina tear or PVD or other optical issue that might be causing the phenomenon. My therapist asked about my relationship with my mother and suggested that I come for two sessions a week. I didn’t. Especially after I saw the blue and yellow and pale pink braid that tethered my neighbor Michael and his wife Tina, and then the thicker green leash between he and his brother Peter.

  I began to understand the significance of the vision when I noticed a trace of blue developing between Peter and Tina which, months later, had thickened and brightened. I got my first glimpse of the power, my power, when I stepped out into the hallway as Michael was arriving home from work and asked him to help me pull down a jammed window. I knew how to wedge a screwdriver or butter knife between the window and wooden casing and jiggle it just enough to allow me to force the window down. But I was hoping to distract Michael long enough for Peter to safely escape his brother’s home and his rage. I failed. Michael said that he’d had a few beers before coming home and needed to take a leak before he helped with my window. He was in a rare good mood. So I hoped that I had been mistaken when, as I was going down the worn white marble stairs to get my mail earlier that afternoon, I had seen Peter entering Michael and Tina’s apartment … with a key. I just grinned at Michael and said there was no hurry, watching him fumble his keys.

  And then I saw the green light turn pink at Michael’s end when he heard his front door opening and the soft intimate murmur of a female and then a male voice. Then saw it flair to red in such a violent rush that Peter, who was just stepping out of the apartment, stumbled back as if Michael had physically pushed him. I was too amazed, mesmerized, by the flashing colors of rage, jealousy, love, pain, lust, excitement, fear and fury to call 911. I watched the fireworks that exploded around the grappling and the jabs and bodies crashing into the door jamb then the wall then the railing and then the railing and then the falling. Both of them—cascading down those grayed and stained marble stairs in a blur of vibrant strands of light that grew paler by the time they reached the first landing and lay in an awkward jumble of limbs.

  For a moment, there was an eerie silence which accented how loud the fight had been, except I hadn’t heard the screaming and the curses or thuds of flesh against flesh or flesh against plaster and wood. I didn’t hear any of it as I watched, only afterward in that sickening silence that was broken by a wheeze and groan. Tina gasped and then released a sharp keening sound that vibrated in an odd citron that pulsed down those white marble stairs even as she turned to face the wall and wrapped herself in a violet shroud.

  The sound that came from the jumble on the landing became more wheeze than groan. Tina’s citron lifeline brightened the fading strands for a brief moment, but, already, one of the threads was cooling to silver then gray. I couldn’t read the spurts of color that burst around it, but imagined by their softness that there may have been forgiveness. I don’t know. What I do know is that as I watched the life fading from Michael or Peter I had a strange feeling, as if I was suddenly inside a plastic bubble. Sounds were muffled and my vision was blurry. I felt a tickle in my belly and then took a sharp, deep breath like you did when you were a kid playing in the bathtub and testing how long you could hold your breath underwater. Or maybe it was more like a slurp, sucking a noodle from chicken noodle soup or a strand of spaghetti. I’m not sure, but I know that I saw a thick, bright white braid whipping up the stairs at me. I think that I tried to duck, but it hit me and I felt a cold splash like water trickling down my spine. And then, I imagine, I must have looked serene like Sekhmet because, for a moment, I felt that way.

  Then I was afraid to look down those stairs. I knew that I had sucked what little life had remained in those men and there would be no lights down there. I was afraid of that darkness and the power that I had used so easily, so unconsciously. So, I looked at Tina who had turned around and was staring at me as if she had seen me suck that burst of life energy. Her face was red with a fury that ex
ploded toward me like bloody vomit. Before it could hit me, there was a flash like from a camera, the bubble around me seemed to rip and, even though she had collapsed into a heap on the lovely marble tile floor, I actually heard what she had been screaming at me. “Do something!”

  I turned around and went back into my apartment, closing the door softly. I went to the kitchen and put on a pot of water for tea. My cell was on the counter, so I dialed 911. As I waited to hear the sirens, I picked up the remote and turned on the television, more for the noise than to actually watch something. I wasn’t surprised to see the kaleidoscopic web, the strands of light connecting all of the people on every channel. Makes television so much more interesting as I read the colors of how people are really feeling while they say their lines conveying some other emotion entirely. It’s like reading aloud the word yellow that is painted boldly in purple, then the word green in blue, then, well, you know what I mean. The best actors are able to have long moments when the colors match. That’s amazing. They have their own talent, their own special power.

  So, with all of this talk about power, I want you to know that I’m not like a super-villain either. Yeah, I do go around tweaking people’s energy so that fuchsia anger becomes crimson fury and then wait for the explosion. It’s almost an art now, causing flash mob-road rage-assault-murder-cop-killing-gang war-riot-low-intensity war. The people I touch or drink are random strangers, so I am not making judgments. It isn’t like with Michael who I hated because he abused his wife. Tina isn’t a very nice person either, has a level of meanness beyond having had an affair with her husband’s brother just for spite. It isn’t about power or justice or good and evil. I’m not addicted to the life energy that can sometimes make me so sick that I have to leave Killadelphia and drive to an empty motel down the shore or in the Poconos and lie in a dark room for days. Naw, I’m not a hero or villain. In a sense, you can think of me more like a plague or something that Sekhmet uses to cull the herd.

  The fact is, there are just too damned many people.

  Dances with Ghosts

  Joseph Bruchac

  “Hello, my name is Harley Bigbear. I’m an alcoholic.”

  Harley leaned forward waiting. No “Hello Harley,” in response.

  Well, what can you expect from a bottle of Old Turkey? He tapped one long fingernail against the side of the half-empty bottle and then looked around the stark expanse of the new trailer’s kitchen. Empty shelves. Empty cupboards. Nothing on the dividing counter between the kitchen and the living room except a small wide screen TV. Hi-def, of course. Satellite on the roof since the Kwasuck Rez is too far removed for cable service. Still, 250 channels. Not bad for a little sell-out Ind’in boy who needs to keep up with his sports.

  Need to get some dishes. Or maybe not. Then I’d have to start eating. And why spoil a perfect friendship? Just me and my bottle, strolling down the avenue. Staggering, actually.

  Harley leaned back in the chair. A little too far. Overbalanced, he found himself falling, but he ducked his chin into his chest and turned it into a backward somersault that was almost graceful. All those years of Ranger training. He came up in a sitting position, legs crossed. He’d even had the presence of mind to plug the open bottle with his thumb so he hadn’t spilled a drop of the precious elixir. Only problem was that his skull had come up hard against the edge of the built-in refrigerator. Ka-Thonk! He felt warmth trickling down the back of his neck from the re-opened gash in his head made by that big redneck trucker in the casino’s bar, a disgruntled loser at the slots who had taken offense at Harley’s long hair. The trucker had made a decent start at taking Harley’s scalp with a broken Coors bottle before Harley patiently disarmed him—breaking no more than two or three minor bones in the man’s hand while doing it.

  Harley reached up his free hand to pull out a drawer, extract a dish towel— price tag still attached—and press it against the wound. Shouldn’t bleed long. Using the bottle as a crutch and smiling at the aptness of that metaphor, he managed to get back up to his feet.

  Fairly stable. And why not? Makes sense mathematically. Only 10:00 a.m. and barely through half a fifth.

  Then he noticed it. Right in the middle of the round oak table in the small living room of the trailer. A yellow legal pad with writing on it. On top of the pad a small green battery-powered pencil sharpener and a yellow # 2 pencil. As clear an indication of who had just been there as a Z marked on the wall of a hacienda by a masked cinematic avenger.

  Friggin’ Harold. His twin.

  Which to put down? The bottle or the dish towel? He removed the towel from his head, looked at it. Who would have thought there was so much blood in the old man, Macbeth? The sensation of pulsing from the back of his head told him that pressure had to be reapplied if he didn’t want the room to look like a scene from a slasher flick. Crap. He put down the whiskey bottle, dug another, heavier towel out of the drawer, dropped the incarnadined cloth into the sink as he put pressure again on the back of his head.

  Then he edged slowly toward the table, the way you’d move when you were trying to creep up on a particularly obnoxious bottle fly with a swatter in your hand.

  He carefully pulled the legal pad toward him with the edge of his hand—like a CSI agent trying to avoid putting fingerprints on a piece of vital evidence. The sharpener and pencil covered the second line of the message, but the first was as clear as day.

  Neat block printing, as usual. As if writing a note for a lightly retarded child.

  GET SOME CLOTHES ON read the first line.

  Harley looked down at himself.

  Good point.

  He stood up, padded barefoot into the bedroom, sat on the pristine bed— bare mattress, no sheets or pillow—and dressed himself from his duffel bag. Socks first. Clean boxer shorts because you never know when you might get into an accident and you don’t want the people at the hospital to see dirty undies. T-shirt with picture of Geronimo and inspirational message. Defending Our Borders Since 1492. Levi jeans. XYZ as Mama always said to him and Harold, both of them so eager to get out into the woods and play that zipping up was usually forgotten. Smile followed by that flash of pain like lightning behind his eyes.

  Shoes, get my shoes on. Nice, steel-toed work boots. Lace em up, tie them. Double tie them. Gotta get the loops exactly even. Untie them. Relace them, tie them again. Nothing in my mind except neatly tied shoes. No broken faces. No voices screaming. No IED explosions. Crap. Crap. Tie my goddam shoes.

  Feeling more sober than he liked, he rose from the bed and went back to the legal pad. He picked up the pencil and used it to slide the sharpener down the page, uncovering the second line.

  BRO, YOU GOT GHOSTS.

  And what Skin doesn’t? Harley thought. But somehow he understood that message meant more than the usual haunting by history’s memories—sharper than razor blades—that every half-awake Indian he knew accepted as part of the admission fee for still being around in the 21st century. So that wasn’t it. But what was? Harold was never one to waste words. Or to belabor the obvious. It is a puzzlement, my dear Anna.

  On to line three. EAT. FOOD IN FRIDGE. ROCK ON.

  End of message.

  Oh well, might as well keep body and soul together. If only to make sure he was up to making it to next week’s council meeting and putting forward a motion that would make the Chairman choke on his gavel.

  Despite the trailer and the TV—and the case of Wild Turkey that had turned up last night on his little back porch—Harley still intended to point out a thing or two that would not please the powers-to-be. Yeah, they were all rich—or as close to rich as an Indian can be—thanks to the casino and the payouts every tribal member got every single month. They were lucky. Contrary to popular belief every Indian reservation in America wasn’t getting rich from their casinos.

  Harley did the math in his head once again, rehearsing what he’d been planning to say.

  Yes, we are lucky. Out of 300 tribes, only a quarter of us even have gaming o
perations. And out of that quarter, less than 25% are really profitable. And out of that quarter of a quarter, only 10% are making enough to be able to pay out money on a regular basis to every tribal member—like that $2,000 a month we get. But even with pay-outs and a profitable casino like ours, one that’s lucky enough—hah—to be located close enough for lots of poor and elderly white people to come here, courtesy of our special free buses, the deal sweetened by our free buffet and open bar, where does most of the money go? It goes off-rez with a big chunk dropped into the pocket of the tribal chairman. If we are going to make money off of gaming, then we have to invest it back into infrastructure. Remember what they did to the beaver here in the east and the buffalo herds out west? They are going to do the same thing to Indian gaming. Are we going to stay victims forever? We need to go another way.

  Harley squinted his eyes. Migraine again. He dug for the bottle of aspirin in his duffel, shook half a dozen white tablets into his hand, threw them into his mouth, chewed and choked them down dry. The bitter taste coating the inside of his cheeks felt right as he ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth.

  Food. Go into kitchen. Open fridge. Fresh-squeezed OJ with pulp. Organic eggs. Loaf of wheat bread. (No bacon, nitrites are bad for you.) Soy milk and granola. Good old Harold, the health nut. And on the bottom shelf, perhaps to protect them from breakage by drunken twin, a plastic glass for the juice, a bowl and spoon for the cereal, a plate with a knife and fork on it for the eggs and toast.

  Harley took out the bowl and spoon, the granola and milk, shut the fridge and sat down at the table to eat, the crunchy taste of grains and nuts and soy milk washing away the last of the chalky aspirin grit that had coated his teeth and tongue.

  Ah, feelin’ almost human.

  He let his gaze drift to the picture window of the trailer that looked out on the backyard. Someone, Harold of course, had loaded the newly-hung bird feeder with black oil sunflower seeds and filled the liquid for the hummingbirds. Two male ruby-throats were dive-bombing each other and making little clacking noises as they did so.