Last Chants

by Lia Matera

  “And so the first time I met Billy, a group of us were in his longhouse with this child. He asked us to journey with him. He said he needed many eyes to search for her spirit because it had obviously run very far away.”

  Fred was sitting forward, apparently taken with the metaphor.

  “It was one of the most arduous journeys I’ve ever undertaken,” Arthur said, paintbrush poised over a drum he felt he’d botched. “And one of the longest. We traveled for hours, searching, at one point through fire, through a sea of it. But we did finally find the poor child’s spirit, running as fast and as far as it could, running and running and running, using up all the child’s energy and mobility. It took several of us to catch her and soothe her. But only Billy could persuade her to return.”

  He stared ahead, not seeing us. He was back on the journey, back in Billy Seawuit’s longhouse.

  “When he breathed the spirit back into the child, she reappeared behind the child’s eyes just as surely as a face appearing at an empty window. She looked around, asking for her mother, as naturally as if she hadn’t been silent for three years. She was alive again. She was with her spirit again.”

  Fred continued to look interested, if not convinced.

  “Her legs were too weak after the hiatus to carry her, but she wanted to stand, to move and stretch. And though it took time, she is quite normal today, I believe. But what interested me most as a scholar, as a documentor of these experiences, was that, beneath the metal wheels of the girl’s chair, deep scars had been burned into the wood floor. She had come through the fire with us.”

  He stared at each of us in turn. “I photographed the burn scars, and the photos have appeared now in several journals along with my commentary.”

  “I’d be interested in seeing them,” Fred commented.

  “I’ll be happy to send you copies. I’ll jot down the citations for you tonight. I believe very passionately that psychiatry should open its mind to so-called primitive medical practices.”

  He bowed his head, taking a few deep breaths.

  “But the true miracle,” he continued, “was Billy Seawuit himself. He was free from our modern pettinesses and envies. And he understood what he knew, which is even rarer. He was a blessing. The embodiment of a blessing.”

  Arthur went back to painting the drum: A stylized raven—looking somewhat improved—stood atop a clam shell.

  Edward, still hovering behind me, said, “Okay, so what was he doing here? What was Seawuit doing for Galen Nelson?”

  Arthur looked up from his work. “I can’t believe Billy was contacted to help develop a computer program. Nor would he have been interested in coming to do that.” He looked confused. “Once he was here, of course, the rock held his attention; Bowl Rock, I mean. And the Pan legend.”

  “They contacted Billy?” I looked up from my work. “Galen Nelson told me they brought you here as a consultant, to help them create mythological background images. He made it sound like Seawuit came along for the ride and got interested in the project.” I racked my brain. “I can’t remember exactly how he put it, but that was my impression.”

  Arthur looked astonished. “But no. Nelson himself asked Billy to come here. I came later, when Billy told me about Bowl Rock.”

  “What reason did he give Seawuit?” Behind me, Edward sounded frustrated. Because it was time to cut to the chase?

  “I don’t know. Billy didn’t tell me.”

  “I thought you guys were close.” Edward was sounding suspicious.

  “But this was a mundane matter,” Arthur explained. “Simply a travel arrangement, something Billy planned to do for a matter of some days. Days in which we had no plans together.”

  “So because you had no plans, you didn’t ask him what Nelson wanted?”

  “I have only this feeling to offer: that Billy can’t have been there in regard to a computer program.”

  “Why?” Edward demanded.

  “Because no program can substitute for the spirit. It’s truly that simple. It may be that Billy was told this was a pretext and was asked not to contradict it. But it’s important to remember who he was: a powerful healer of mental illness.”

  None of us bothered to say it: Toni Nelson did not act like a sane woman.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  We weren’t burglars, more’s the pity. We had no choice but to knock on Galen Nelson’s door.

  Nelson answered immediately, looking crestfallen to see us. He glanced curiously at the cap that hid my newly blond hair. He looked pale, surprisingly more gaunt. His hair was tousled. He was fully dressed and shod in hiking boots despite the late hour.

  He said, “The police have been wanting to talk to you.” He moved backward to let us enter.

  I walked in first, as we’d arranged. Edward would linger to make sure the door was unlocked. Arthur would watch through the window for Edward’s penlight to flash. Then he would creep inside, go downstairs, turn on Nelson’s computer, and load in three diskettes worth of data—we hoped.

  Such was our “plan.” If it didn’t work or didn’t generate a reaction, this would be a long, wasted night.

  But if things went optimally, Galen Nelson would mention seeing Toni today, or speak of Pan in the past tense, or contradict something he’d said about Joel Baker. Perhaps, shocked and goaded, he’d admit he’d summoned Billy Seawuit on a pretext, that TechnoShaman was a facade. Any tidbit from this taciturn man would be a coup, a stepping-stone, a reason to delay despair.

  We’d do our best to trick him or, at least, surprise him. The plan was long on desperation, short on logic. Arthur felt that was a plus. Edward said he’d write to me in prison.

  I apologized to Galen Nelson: “I’m sorry. I was out of town. Edward says you’ve been looking for me.”

  He shook his head cynically. “I’m supposed to believe you saw a naked man drag my wife off, and then you left town?”

  “I had to leave. I have a life, you know. It’s not like I didn’t have Edward tell you about it.”

  “Yeah?” Nelson said. “And what is this life of yours, Alice Young? Why is it none of the Alice Youngs on SelectPhone are you?”

  “What’s ‘select phone’?” Edward asked, stepping up beside me.

  “A CD-ROM telephone directory of the whole country,” Nelson explained.

  I’d hate to see his next phone bill. “I have an unlisted number.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “That would be none of your business.” The get-huffy routine; any lawyer can do it. “Are you accusing me of lying about Toni?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish I were! She’s not back yet, is she?”

  “No.” He looked more annoyed than concerned.

  “You’re not worried about her.” Edward was as subtle as ever.

  Not surprisingly, Nelson looked offended.

  “She attacked me,” I told him. “Out in the woods. I’ve got makeup over my eye, but I’ll wash it off if you want proof. I think Pan was defending me when he pulled her away.”

  “But you didn’t stay to make sure? I doubt it. I doubt your whole story.” His tone certainly matched his words.

  “I was afraid of her. She scared the hell out of me, so I took off.”

  “Well, thanks for the details—a day later.” He ran an exasperated hand over his hair. “Maybe Toni did fight with you, I don’t know. She’s got a temper, and she’s been upset—you saw how she jumped on me the other day. But—”

  “But you’re married to her.”

  “Meaning I had it coming?” He sounded martyred.

  “Meaning men will put up with a lot from someone who looks like Toni,” I was sorry to say.

  “And you think I’m proof of that?”

  “I hear Seawuit thought she was a knockout,” Edward continued prodding. Arthur hadn’t convinced him Seawuit’s intentions were shamanic.

  “Seawuit?” Nelson’s tone was dismissive. “If he did notice her looks—so what?”

>   “So you moved him onto your land. Your own back-door man.”

  “What makes you think Seawuit had any interest in Toni? Why should he be?” His hands were shaking. He tucked them beneath his armpits. “What’s Seawuit got to do with—?”

  “Were you jealous?”

  “There’s not much point in getting jealous,” he said carefully, “if your wife thinks anyone who cares about her is a liar.”

  He had us there.

  Behind him, the front door opened slowly. I could smell the night air, feel the cool draft.

  I watched Arthur enter, looking as frightened as a mouse. Toni Nelson had complained her husband ignored outdoor perfumes; I hoped she was right, I hoped he didn’t notice the sudden scent of forest.

  Luckily, Nelson’s attention was diverted by Edward’s cell phone ringing. I wondered if Edward had planned it somehow, timed it with Fred.

  “Do you mind if I take this?” Edward looked as surprised—and far more annoyed—than I was.

  I tried not to follow Arthur with my eyes as he crept along behind Nelson, heading for the basement stairs.

  Edward fumbled with the phone, perhaps to keep Nelson focused on it.

  “Yeah?” he answered curtly. Then he listened, his face expressionless.

  Whatever was being said to him, it must be important. Edward was not naturally nonchalant.

  “Thanks,” he said, before hanging up. To Galen Nelson, he explained, “Family. Sorry.”

  He barely glanced at me. But he was telling me something. Family, he’d said: meaning Fred had called?

  “I have a niece who’s autistic.” He still didn’t look at me.

  Arthur had made it to the stairs and was on his way down to the basement.

  “There’s been some kind of mix-up with her treatment. Her records are lost—they can’t find them where they’re supposed to be.” Though Edward looked calm, he’d grown pale. “Private eye in the family, you know how it is. Anything fishy, you get a phone call.”

  Nelson didn’t seem to care about Edward’s family woes.

  But Arthur was downstairs now. It shouldn’t take him but a moment to turn on the computer, open the video-player program, and insert a compression software disk. These would expand and play my tromp l’oeuil masterpiece, two diskettes worth of QuickTime movie—a brief loop of a shaking rattle and a drum being pounded.

  A niece who’s autistic, Edward had said. He must be referring to the story Arthur had recounted. They can’t find her records where they’re supposed to be.

  When I used Fred’s computer, I’d seen a list of his programs. One of them was MedLine, a National Library of Medicine online service. It provided modem access to medical and psychiatric journals and data bases.

  Had he looked up Arthur’s citations? Had he searched for the articles Arthur claimed to have written?

  Had he phoned to tell Edward they didn’t exist? To warn him—as he had after the hypnotism—that Arthur might be lying?

  Why else would he call at so awkward a time?

  I could feel Edward withdraw from the situation before us. I could feel him retreat into a corner of his mind to think.

  If Arthur had lied about Billy’s reason for being here—lied late and long—then maybe Nelson was telling the truth. Maybe Billy had come to help with a computer program, after all. Maybe Nelson had had good business reasons to want Seawuit alive. Maybe it was Arthur—determined to exalt “spirit” over technology—who hadn’t.

  And maybe it was Arthur who’d needed Billy’s shamanic healing. Maybe years of travel and drug-induced journeying had taken their toll.

  I’d been told in a sleepy fantasy—I hoped it was “just” my imagination; I hoped reality was roughly as I perceived it—to follow Arthur.

  Maybe that had been the voice of my suspicions, roiling beneath the surface. Maybe my subconscious—never mind the spirits of the upper and lower worlds, never mind my future self—had been speaking to me, telling me to keep an eye on him. Maybe my fond feelings for Arthur were actually transferred protectiveness toward my parents. Maybe my daydreams were telling me I felt something else, underneath.

  I glanced at Edward. He’d been polite to Arthur, but he’d never bought in, not like I had. He’d remained detached enough to voice some skepticism.

  I looked at Galen Nelson and felt like a fish out of water. I didn’t understand him or his wife or their relationship or what was going on now. And yet somehow, I’d become committed to entrapping him.

  “Well, shall we call the police?” Nelson suggested. “Is there anything about Toni you haven’t already told them through me?”

  That’s when we heard the rattle and drum downstairs.

  “What in the—” Nelson looked at least as shocked as we’d hoped. He bolted toward the stairs.

  We followed, less surprised but in just as much of a hurry.

  Nelson charged down to the basement, with us not far behind. He stopped at the foot of the stairs, stopped as if suddenly turned to stone, one arm forward, one leg back.

  He stopped, staring at his computer.

  I knew what was on its screen: an altered rattle shaken by a computer-darkened hand.

  I looked for Arthur. We’d told him to hide quickly; but we’d had no suggestion where.

  He’d certainly done well: I couldn’t see him.

  In a moment, however, I heard him. I heard the plaintive waaa oo aa waaa aaa neeee I’d heard our first day here, when Arthur lay alone inside Bowl Rock.

  Behind me, Edward whispered, “No trace of Arthur’s journal articles. Fred checked.”

  I nodded.

  I watched Nelson move cautiously forward, apparently mesmerized by the display on his computer monitor.

  He bent closer to the image. I’d morphed it; it was changing from a rattle to a drum now. The sound changed, too, from shaking to banging. Soon, this drum would morph—jerkily, to my embarrassment—from one with a raven to one with a bear, both blurred to disguise maladroit brush strokes.

  For a moment, Nelson stared as a chimpanzee might stare at his first television. He tilted his head.

  Then he got savvy. He grabbed the computer mouse. But I’d made the image full screen with no menu bar. There was no place a mouse might click to stop the program.

  Nelson turned to stare at us. He was flushed with excitement. He asked, “Did you put this on here?”

  “We just walked in,” Edward pointed out. “What is it?”

  “You really didn’t put it on?” Nelson repeated. He looked near tears.

  Edward stepped closer, hand in his pocket. He was pointing a tape recorder microphone at Nelson. With all this extraneous noise—Arthur continued his waaa oo waaa aaa neee—I hoped the tape picked up Nelson’s voice.

  This was our only chance to record Nelson saying something unscripted, spontaneous—and, we hoped, illuminating, if not incriminating. I wished Arthur would stop, I wished he’d shut up.

  I became a little obsessed: with trying to hear what Nelson would say, with needing the moment to provide resolution, with wanting to get on with my life.

  I saw that Nelson looked happy, hopeful, excited to the point of stuttering. “Tech-TechnoShaman.” He pointed at the screen. “Look.”

  For a man we’d decided didn’t believe in this project, who’d hired Seawuit as a healer and not a consultant, he looked thrilled. Not cynical, not scared, not any of the things we’d expected.

  I looked for Arthur again, wishing he’d stop the waa uh waa nee. He was standing in a corner now, solemn and pale. His mouth was closed. He wasn’t chanting at all.

  “Do you see this?” Nelson said excitedly. “I didn’t put this on here. I just reconfigured this hard drive yesterday; it wasn’t on here then. It’s been imported. You didn’t put it on? You really didn’t?”

  I stared at Arthur. But the moment I saw his lips weren’t moving, I stopped hearing the chant.

  Arthur looked as shocked as I was.

  Edward was assuring Nelson we
had nothing to do with it. Responding to his nudge, I motioned for Arthur to drop back behind the couch.

  But Arthur seemed frozen, his expression not unlike Nelson’s. Had the computer drumming sent him off on a journey? Was he in a trance?

  If Nelson turned his head slightly, he’d discover Arthur. Our chance was slender to begin with. And Arthur was about to blow it.

  Not caring what Nelson might think, I gestured broadly. When Arthur sank, I wasn’t sure if he’d cooperated or fainted.

  Nelson knelt, fingers poised over his keyboard. A simple force-quit command would reveal this was a program, not magic. Further inquiry would reveal its time of installation. It wouldn’t take Nelson long to realize he’d been duped.

  But for the moment, he looked ecstatic. “We’ve been trying to import pheromone-based images. We’ve indexed images to scents. It looks like the computer went into the image banks. Maybe. It’s picked up . . . I don’t know what scent, whose scent; I don’t know what it reacted to.” He knelt in front of the machine. “And I don’t recognize this loop. But we have thousands, some I haven’t seen.”

  So much for our assumption he’d recognize Billy’s drums and rattle.

  To Edward, I whispered, “Did you hear the chanting?”

  He seemed annoyed by the distraction.

  “Did you, Edward?”

  Tersely, “No.”

  Maybe the drumming had affected me. Maybe I’d drifted into mental vagary, conflating my current stress with memories from Bowl Rock.

  “Where’s my—” Nelson patted the littered table top. “Stay with it. Tell me what it does. I’ll be back with the handicam.”

  He dashed up the stairs. He didn’t want to force-quit the program. He wanted to memorialize its appearance on his screen.

  Edward turned as if to strangle me. “What the hell is Arthur—”

  Arthur bolted from his hiding place then. He ran up the stairs, taking them two by two like a young man.

  “Wait!” Edward cried.

  But Arthur was gone.

  “Jesus, what’s he doing?” Edward fretted.