Reincarnation Blues

by Michael Poore

  “Not tonight,” she said. “I’m going to get a little drunker and go to sleep.”

  “I’ll wake you when I get back,” he said, leaning down and kissing her.

  “No,” she protested. “Are you kidding? Let me sleep. I gotta work early tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  Isn’t that dumb? That was the last human conversation Milo had, in that life.

  He paddled out past the shallows, muscled his way through breaking waves, and slid downhill into the deeper country, where the waves were still swells, right before they began toppling.

  It was his favorite thing. Sitting on his board out there, waiting. Glimpsing the candlelight in the bungalow window. Wondering what Tanya was thinking about. Wondering how Burt was doing at home, a few miles up the beach. Sleeping? Hunting along the shore?

  That was Milo’s status in the minutes before the shark. Not bad, as such minutes go.

  He even managed to meditate a little, folding himself up inside the moment. He noticed the moon, like an anklebone, like a story, up in space. The night and the breeze and—

  The shark hit him.

  It drove upward like a rocket and smashed into the air with the surfboard in its jaws. Milo experienced it the way you might experience getting hit by a bus. Sudden and hard, and knowing something bad was happening without knowing what yet.

  And then knowing and being afraid.

  Getting eaten by a shark wasn’t any different for a wise man than it was for a shoe salesman or an aardvark. He felt what was happening with terrible clarity—the awful tearing, crushing—and he screamed and yelled just like anyone else.

  Too bad. He had always kind of thought he would go into death like an explorer, in a golden flash of peace and wholeness, and here he was being chewed up like a ham.

  His last words were “No! Fuck! No!”

  The voice in his head began to go quiet; the light inside him started to go out.

  Burt, Milo thought, before he went totally dark, would be smart enough to go find a new friend, someone who would appreciate what a fine dog he was. It was a good and kind thought, a wise thought, and then something like a fast-moving interstellar night flooded through him and snuffed him out like a—

  —

  With a flick of its tail, the shark dove for the middle depths, leaving behind a cloud of gore and pieces of surfboard.

  It didn’t stop to savor or to be appreciative. It was still hungry, so it looked for more food.

  One half of the shark’s brain noticed the ocean, noticed the sounds and heartbeats of the sea.

  The other half noticed the warmth of good food digesting in its belly and remembered being a perch, and a mackerel, and a clam, and a whale, and a dog, and a cat, and the Strawberry Queen.

  Dying was nothing new, of course.

  Milo had died nearly ten thousand times, in almost every way possible.

  Some deaths were horrid; some were not so bad.

  The best way to die, of course, was instantly, but this was rare. Milo had died instantly just one time. A tower crane dropped an iron girder on him. It was the only time he got to the afterlife and had to ask, “What happened?”

  Of course, even if you knew she was coming, Death was never routine.

  Four times, Milo had been executed and therefore had known in advance the exact hour he would die. He had been burned at the stake in Spain, beheaded in China, hanged in the Sudan, and gassed in California. Knowing death was coming, you could usually manage to act brave. But it was just an act. Inside, it felt like someone was working on you with a plunger.

  Milo hated the ones that hurt. Fourteen times he had died in combat: speared, knocked off a parapet, wounded and bled out, speared, run over by a chariot, paralyzed with a mace and run over by a horse, kicked in the face by a horse, speared, bayoneted, exploded, shot and bled out, shot and dragged by a horse, fallen on by a horse (Milo hated horses), and choked to death by a giant German infantryman. Once, he had been captured by the Turks and flung by catapult back over the walls at Vienna. This was his favorite. Crushing speed, and then flying through the night in a universe of battle smoke, the fires of the starving city beneath him. Horrifying but wonderful, wonderful!

  There were deaths of haunting beauty. As an Arctic explorer, freezing to death, he felt nothing but the illusion of warmth, and his brain released little chemicals of peace and satisfaction. He slipped away as the sun rose, flashing on the ice like a knife catching fire.

  He didn’t always get to grow up before dying. He knew what it was like to spend all summer at Children’s Hospital, with his hair falling out, and to die holding Charles, his toy alligator.

  Milo had died during orgasm, died after rich dinners in fine company, died in moments of perfect love. Died, in one future life, in a starship crash at the speed of light, in a moment that resonated forever inside the envelope of time, so that it was always happening, like a guitar string that would never stop humming. He had fallen from trees and choked on waffles. He had been eaten by sharks and cancers. He died of bad habits and angry husbands and killer bees, once, and dumb accidents like sticking a high-pressure air hose up his nose when he was working in a tool shop, trying to be funny.

  Between lives, when he could remember it all, he sometimes wanted to relive being catapulted into starving, besieged Vienna. How strange to want to relive a death. Forty times he had asked Death to make this happen.

  “Why?” Death had asked him.

  He thought it over. “I flew!” he answered. “I was weightless.”

  She said, “Nothing’s weightless; that’s why we die.”

  He settled for the memory: weightless and perfect and closing his eyes, remembering the fire and the speed and the rushing wind and some rising kitchen smoke he had flown through, smelling of onions and roast dog.

  You don’t come from dust, no matter what they say. You come from water, and you go back to the water when you die, like a river rolling downhill.

  Milo woke up by the water, as he’d done almost ten thousand times. Woke up on a railroad bridge over a dark, sleepy old stream full of stumps and catfish.

  Death was there with him, sitting cross-legged, leaning against an old steel truss. She was always there when he awakened, watching him with those watery, sensitive eyes, wearing her long black hair like a cape.

  She didn’t have to be there. She could snuff out his life and leave him to wake up on his own. But she never did. Not once. It was okay; the universe would get along without her for an hour. There were other Deaths on the job, dark and pale and sensitive just like her.

  “Suzie,” he whispered. (She didn’t like to be called “Death.” Who would?)

  “Shut up,” she said. “You know better than to talk right away. Give it a few minutes. Be still.” She chewed on her hair, hiding a smile.

  It took a few minutes for your soul to get its shit together, moving from one world to the next. You had to let yourself come into focus, let the memories of all your lives gather. Even if you’d done it a bunch of times.

  Milo was not surprised by the railroad bridge or the catfish stream. Things were the same everywhere; what they had on Earth, they had up here. You needed food and language and shelter and air and coffee “down there,” and you needed them “up here,” too.

  Milo’s body was very much like his Earthly body, except young again. He wore a pair of jean shorts and nothing else. All as it should be, the way it always was.

  After a minute, he cleared his throat and said, “Thanks for the shark.”

  “You know I don’t decide how you’re going to get it,” she said. “The universe has its own boa.”

  “You could have yanked me out of there, you know, before—I mean, it really fucking hurt.”

  She looked angry for a second. Her eyes blazed (literally). Then they cleared.

  “You’re messing with me,” she observed.

  “I’m messing with you.”

  Miles away, a train gave a honk and a wail. />
  The railroad bridge, Milo observed, was a rusty, forgotten thing, with weeds and wildflowers shooting up out of the cross ties. Abandoned obviously, but in the afterlife, that didn’t mean a train wouldn’t come cannonballing along, despite the rust and weeds. Things in the afterlife had a way of changing when you weren’t looking. Or when you were.

  Milo climbed down into the tall grass by the river, looking out for snakes. He reached up to help Suzie down, and she let him help, which was nice.

  He wished they could have more time together, getting him focused and settled. But he knew that wouldn’t happen. The others would be here soon.

  He examined the woods and the water. He’d been awake for five or ten minutes now, which meant—

  “Five,” he whispered. “Four, three, two—”

  “Milo!” sang a voice behind him.

  He turned to see two women picking their way along the riverbank, sidestepping rotten branches, surprising a—croak!—huge frog and—splash!—a snapping turtle.

  Suzie heaved a theatrical sigh.

  “I’m going to bug out for now,” she said.

  “Suzie—”

  “It’s been a long day. I mean, a whole ferryboat overturned in the Sea of Cortez this morning. A hundred and fifty lives all at once. Yeah, yeah, it’s my job, but…”

  Milo started to say something, but she was gone in a burst of wind and dry leaves.

  “Okay,” he said, and turned to face—

  “Milo!” The first of the two women, a big old Earth mother with a giant Oklahoma smile, bustled up and threw her arms around him.

  “Milo,” she warbled, squeezing. “Milo, Milo.”

  “Mama,” said Milo, speaking into her armpit (she was not his mother).

  The second woman, smoking a cigarette, looked like a cranky office manager who had retired to Florida. She was followed by a cat.

  “Nan,” said Milo, shaking her hand.

  “You’re late,” she said, as always.

  They were not angels, and they were not gods. Milo knew a hundred things they were not but could not have said, for sure, what they were.

  “You look fit,” said Nan. “Do anything useful this time around?” A second cat appeared from beneath her skirt and shot off through the grass, chasing something.

  Mama said, “Shhhhh!” and waved her big hands in the air. “Talk is for later. Hush now, and let’s just get him home.”

  She took his arm, and the three of them set off down the riverbank.

  —

  Through the woods, until the river emerged by a motorway, and they followed the road into a small town. Rode a bus for a while, still following the river. Crossed over a shining lake, with houses afloat on the water.

  You were expected to be quiet and meditative in the hours after you died. You were supposed to think about what a good job you had done (or had not done). Your new home, when you got there, was a reflection of this. If you had been Gandhi, or someone similar, you’d probably get to live in a big house with a garden and a pond. If you cooked and ate cheerleaders, on the other hand, you might have to rent a shack beside the landfill.

  They got off the bus and walked through a neighborhood of bridges and canals. The farther they walked, the less clean the sidewalks became. Milo, who hated litter, picked up a French fry box. No trash can in sight, he just carried it.

  They stopped eventually at a warren of apartment buildings. French fry boxes and other trash populated the dead grass out front.

  “Aw, man,” said Milo. “Really?”

  Mama avoided his eye.

  “Disappointed?” asked Nan, giving him a crooked look. Five or six more cats had accrued around her.

  “I was a wise man!” Milo protested. “A spiritual master! I helped people. I was in tune with the planet—”

  “You went fishing,” said Nan, “and gave advice. Everybody does that.”

  Fuck it. Milo tossed his French fry box onto the grass, beside a discarded sock.

  “You didn’t actually achieve much,” said Mama, laying her big hands on his shoulders. “You had nine thousand nine hundred ninety-four lives of experience behind you. Don’t tell me that was the best you could manage. Not my amazing, electric-souled Milo!”

  “Don’t coddle him,” snapped Nan. “You always coddle him. God forbid he should actually do something.”

  Milo itched to give them both the finger. Instead, he let them lead him into his building (Propane Estates 2271) and up three flights of stairs to his own door (Number 12). Painters had painted it shut, but Mama body-slammed it open.

  It was like every other apartment in the universe. Furniture that didn’t match. Light fixtures from the 1970s.

  “Get settled,” said Mama. “Take a nap. See what’s in the fridge. We’ll be back for you sometime soon.”

  She looked at Nan then, as if some communication, something subtle, had passed between them.

  “What am I missing?” Milo asked.

  Neither of them would meet his eyes.

  “We’ll talk later,” said Mama. “Rest.”

  “ ’Kay,” said Milo.

  Mama and Nan and a hundred cats walked out the door.

  “Cat piss,” he said. This time he’d really gotten screwed. It could be hard to tell, down on Earth, if you were living a truly soulful life. Up here, the hindsight was clear. Too much beach, too much beer, not enough changing the world, blah-blah-blah.

  Fine. Screw it. There was always next time.

  He tried a light switch over by the door. No lights. He tried a switch in the kitchen. Nothing. The power wasn’t even turned on yet. Man…

  He made his way down the hall, letting his eyes adjust in the half-light. The hall opened into a single bedroom. Over here, the shadow of a bed, an end table, a clock radio—

  The air stirred.

  Dust and dry leaves whirled up in a funny little tempest. The leaves formed a shape and slowed down, until only the shape remained.

  Suzie coalesced beside the nightstand. Nearly cocooned in black hair, eyes softly (but literally) burning.

  She wrapped long arms around him and gave his lips the lightest flicker of a kiss, the way a snake might kiss.

  He drew her closer. The flickering kiss deepened.

  “You should at least let them get out of the neighborhood,” Milo said. “They’re not blind, you know.”

  “I think maybe they suspect,” said Suzie.

  “Well, if they do find out—and they will—they won’t approve. You know they won’t.”

  “Shhhhh,” Suzie hissed.

  Then she coiled around him, forcing him to the floor.

  Cheap carpet, he noted. There were going to be burn marks.

  —

  Eventually, the half-light from the windows became a deep purple dusk.

  Morning, noon, twilight, and night didn’t always happen in order in the afterlife, the way they did for the living. Order was often an illusion. There were fewer illusions here.

  They had worked their way up onto the bed. Both were nearly exhausted and damaged here and there.

  Milo buried his face in her hair, breathing deep. She smelled like midnight.

  “I missed you,” he said.

  She propped herself up and looked down at him.

  “Please,” she said. “You don’t even remember me when you’re down there screwing around with your Tanyas and Amys and Batangas and Li Wus and Marias—”

  “I can’t help that. It’s what happens when you live a life. I still sort of miss you, somehow, in a something’s-missing kind of way.”

  “Liar. But you’re sweet.” She bit him a little, on his neck, drawing blood.

  “I brought something for you,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you remember this?” she asked, and from the depths of her hair she produced a copper circlet. Banged up, half-green with verdigris, it was a rough sculpture of a snake swallowing its own tail.

  “An armband,” Milo said, taking
it from her hand. Holding it, feeling its weight, he realized the armband was familiar.

  “From my first life,” he said.

  “And your first death,” she added. “Remember?”

  He remembered.

  He turned the armband over and over in his hands and let the memory rise up like a dream.

  INDUS RIVER VALLEY, 2600 B.C.

  Milovasu Pradesh opened his eyes, when he was able, and the world flooded into him, a river of color and sound. The parents who had brought him into the world lived among green trees and mountains. Between the mountains, green fields. A river flooded by, tumbling into a deep, misty gorge.

  The world was full of voices: The roar of monsoon rains, the sounds of insects and night. His father telling stories, his mother singing songs.

  No one in his village knew that he was a brand-new soul. How would they? You don’t come into the world with numbers on your forehead, telling how many lives you’ve lived. The only way anyone might be able to tell, at a glance, is by watching your eyes. New souls have the hungriest eyes, drinking in the world for the first time.

  “He’s like a stone,” said Milovasu’s father. “When he is watching something or listening, he is completely still. He barely breathes.”

  “He’s like the sun,” argued his mother. “You watch. One of these days all this watching and listening will catch fire inside him, and he’ll be like a god; you watch.”

  “He will be a leader,” said the village leader, and everyone agreed.

  The village leader had once been a warrior of some distinction. He wore a soldier’s copper armband, a ring in the shape of a snake swallowing its own tail. He slipped this ornament from his arm and allowed Milo to wear it around like a hat one afternoon.

  Milo learned quickly. He walked when he was three months old. Walked, in fact, all the way to the gorge and had to be chased and snatched up at the last second. Potty training was a breeze. His first words came out in a sentence, proper and whole: “Father, do you hear the wind blowing in the trees?” To which his father replied, “What? Yes, I hear it. Holy shit!”

  Always, he was the leader in the games the boys played. Until the year he turned six and stopped growing. One day, it seemed, the other boys shot up another foot, and Milovasu stayed the same. No one knew why.