Helix of Cole

by Micheal Maxwell

  “Soon, my friends, soon,” Reed said as he patted the bag and rolled down his window.

  The miles and states rolled by. Reed seldom listened to the radio. He stopped only for gas and food in the mini mart. In a small town in Kansas, he bought a ham and cheese sandwich that he thought had a tangy aftertaste. Two hundred miles later, he was stricken with violent cramps and diarrhea. He found himself squatting in a ditch by the side of the road, cleaning himself with dry weeds. He cursed the store, the clerk, and the person who left the sandwich on the shelf too long. The second blast of diarrhea caught him off guard, and he was unable to hold it long enough to pull over. Thirty miles later, he discarded his soiled jeans and underwear in a rest stop bathroom and cleaned as best he could with the rough brown paper towels above the sinks.

  In Arizona, Reed bought a pint of vodka and a quart of chocolate milk to soothe his burning bowels. The time was drawing close to perform the peyote ceremony. His thoughts raced, and his imagination brought memories of his peyote visions of five years before. Now, at long last, he would receive the vision that would lead him to the final victory over government repression and a media that masked news with lies of the near fatal illness of our Mother Earth. As he drove, Reed spoke aloud, writing and revising the message he would send to Cole Sage. At times his anger would burn so hot, he would slam his fist against the dashboard.

  He wished he could remember the words of Mel Lyman more clearly. At times, he grew frustrated with himself because he knew he was mixing Mel’s words with others he read or heard. Once he caught himself reciting the words to Bob Dylan’s song Gates of Eden, another time it was Street Fighting Man by The Rolling Stones. He knew he must be careful. He must not make those kinds of mistakes. He read the confused writings that appeared in the underground press. He needed to stay clear of song lyrics and the Bible. Those crutches always make the writer sound weak and unable to speak their own truth. Quoting Mel would be fine. That was the real truth he must convey. He mustn’t copy from the book, though. Mel had been gone such a long time. His words faded in and out of Reed’s memory.

  The magic of the peyote will make it all clear, he thought. The desert seemed to be alive with the spirits of the Indians who lived and died with the dry winds. He once was sure he saw spirit vapors rising from the waves of shimmering heat. The spirits would guide him to the place he would perform the ritual.

  Near Wickenburg, Reed crossed the Santa Maria River. This is the place, he said to himself. The water cut a crooked path through the rocky terrain and flowed with cleansing power through the landscape. At the small parking area of a historical landmark, Reed pulled in and stopped the car near the guardrail. It was at least a hundred yards down to the water and at least a mile to where the river made a sharp cut through the rock and disappeared behind an embankment.

  The leather bag and the bottle of vodka were all Reed took from the car. In his excitement, Reed lost his footing and slid several feet as he hopped the rail. He pulled the bottle close to his chest as he rolled to a stop in the sharp rocks. He torn the knee of his jeans and cut a gash in his elbow. The banks of the river were uneven, making the way difficult. He tried to make his way in the river, thinking the smooth bottom would make it easier going, but the current made it hard to keep his footing, so he again took to the bank. The heat of the day, easily over 100 degrees, sapped Reed’s strength, and he stopped often to splash his face and soak his feet. His head throbbed from the heat.

  It took the better part of an hour to reach the bend in the river. As he looked back one last time to where the car was parked, he saw a path above him. He struggled and bruised himself for nothing. The path appeared to lead right back to the parking lot. Reed cursed himself for his stupidity and impatience.

  “No!” he said aloud. “This pain is a lesson. It is part of the spirit’s plan to humble me.”

  As he rounded the bend in the river, the water became much shallower. He again entered the water, this time to make his way across to the shaded side of the bank. The current slowed, and the crossing was cool and refreshing. About midway, Reed held the leather bag and the vodka bottle high over his head and squatted, letting the water cover him. The underwater world seemed to strengthen his tired muscles and clear his pounding head. He could feel the heat leave his body almost like steam. With a great burst of air, Reed blew a stream of bubbles toward the surface. He stood and enjoyed the sensation of the water running down his face as he faced the blazing afternoon sun. His T-shirt clung to his body as he left the river, and his tennis shoes sloshed with a sucking sound as he made his way up the bank.

  Some 50 or 60 yards away, a snarled dogwood tree bent out over the water at almost a 45-degree angle. This is the place, he thought. The soil at the base of the tree was a fine mix of sand and small pebbles. The tree, though large, did not give much shade, but it would be enough. The trunk had burned long ago and was partially hollowed out. As Reed approached the tree, he spoke to it.

  “I have come to use your shade to cool me for my journey. Your trunk will be my shelter for the night. I will use the magic of nature and the spirits of those who lived in this land to seek a vision that will help me defend and rescue our Mother the Earth. With the help of Brother Peyote, I have blended my soul together with the native people who lived in this land so long ago. Just like you would accept the prayers of the shaman tree spirit, accept me, too.”

  In his excitement, Reed expected that it might respond, but the tree stood as still as before. No matter, he thought, all of nature must be ready and waiting to come to my aid in this great quest. The healing would be from the earth. He pulled a few dry weeds from the hollow of the tree and stripped several saplings from the trunk. Reed sat in the hollow. He pictured himself as an Indian warrior taking shelter in the tree. He saw himself in a great feathered headdress, his face painted and ready for battle. Even though the warrior he saw was of the plains and would never have seen desert lands, Reed imagined himself in buckskin and sitting on a buffalo rug. To be of the earth, he thought, is to be pure. Not like the oil-guzzling resource abusers that overran the land and destroyed people and cultures that were here first.

  A fly buzzed around Reed’s mouth, and the tickle of its feet awakened him. The shadows fell long across the river, and the sun was setting behind him. As he pulled against the sides of the hollow, his knees cracked and he felt the sting of the cuts on his legs and hands. It would soon be dark, so Reed set about to gather firewood. The brush was dry and would start easily, but finding enough wood to sustain a fire would be difficult. He was able to break off limbs of a thick bush he thought might be Manzanita or Mesquite. He laid the branches across rocks and stomped on them to get an armload of big pieces. The wood was hard and dry and would burn hot and slow. After a couple of trips, there was enough to burn through the night.

  Reed possessed survival skills that would allow him to live on the land indefinitely. Starting a fire was as natural as turning on a light switch. As darkness fell, the sweet scent of the fire drifted slowly around the tree. Reed removed his clothes, and folded and stacked them neatly on a long flat rock. He moved to the edge of the river and rubbed his skin with the wet sand along the bank. The water was cool and a welcome relief from the heat. He repeated this cleansing process twice, then washed all the sand from his body before entering the hollow of the tree. Using soft leaves stripped from the tree, Reed fashioned a cushion on the floor of the hollow and at the small of his back. His shoulders touched the sides of the hollow, and he felt safety in the cocoon-like womb of the old tree.

  Breaking the seal on the vodka bottle, he took a long pull from its warm contents. He untied the leather bag and poured the peyote buttons into his hand. Holding them against the hollow of his chest, he smoothed the bag on the ground between his crossed legs. He spread the buttons on the bag.

  “Brother Peyote, hear me. Bring me a vision. Show me how I will save our Mother the Earth,” Reed said as he picked up the first button and put it in his mouth.<
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  The taste was sour and foul, like a cross between dirt and the smell of dog feces. Reed gagged at the taste and quickly took a sip of the vodka. As he continued to chew, his tongue began to numb. The second button gave the same initial burst of foul taste then numbed his mouth even more. By the sixth button, he could neither smell nor taste. By the fifth button, he finished the bottle of vodka.

  Reed sat still in the hollow of the tree, waiting. The peyote’s visions came on slowly. The effects of the eight buttons and the vodka were not pretty. Unable to process what was happening in his body, over and over, Reed wretched and vomited dull brownish green bile that ran down his chest and onto his groin. His body was silent and nearly motionless except for the jerking of his abdomen as it tried to reject the toxins he ingested.

  As the hallucinogen started to take effect, Reed began to panic and believed he couldn’t breathe. Still he sat motionless. Slowly, he closed one eye and then the other. Almost like waves, his lids lowered and opened over and over and over. Then he saw it. In the middle of the lake, a large grey-and-white dog was slowly walking across the water. His heart pounded as the dog stopped in midstream and bared its teeth. The dog made no sound for a long moment, then from deep in its throat came a low gurgling and humming. Why don’t you clear your throat? Reed thought, but the sound continued. For what seemed an hour, the dog stood on the water and made the fluid sound. Reed wanted to call out but could not. He wanted to wave the dog away but could not move his arms. He closed his eyes and, with all his will, forced his head to move from side to side. The movement made an aurora of colors shift within his head.

  “I am ready. How can I save the earth?” His words came in a hoarse whisper that sounded foreign to his ears.

  Opening his eyes, the dog was gone. Within moments, the sun set three times. The east became the west, and the reddish gold ball sank over and over behind the river’s edge. He closed his eyes and could still see the sun burning in the sky in front of him. Opening his eyes again, he saw a city coming up from the bank of the river. Tall buildings grew like time-lapse flowers in a nature film. Airplanes and birds flew above the buildings, and the moon moved across the daytime sky above the skyline. What city was this? His recognition was delayed by his focus on the moon. Right to left, straight across the sky as though suspended on a wire, the moon moved slowly back and forth in front of him. His eyes were locked on its movement.

  “Where is the man? Where is the man in the moon?” The whispering burned his raw throat. “He can’t be gone!”

  “He’s on the other side,” a voice said.

  “The back?” Reed said, swallowing hard.

  “Yes, you are looking at the back of the moon. What was dark is light.”

  The city seemed to sparkle in the moon’s light. In the center of the skyline was a black pyramid. Slowly the pyramid began to turn and grow taller. From its point, the blackness fell away like tiles. As Reed watched in awe, a new white, thin pyramid grew from the old—twisting and twisting, the thin white tower continued to grow.

  “I know this building,” Reed said. “What is it, Spirit?”

  “Be patient,” the voice said again. Reed couldn’t tell if he was hearing it or if the voice was in his head.

  The beautiful, tall, thin pyramid stopped turning. Its whiteness burned Reed’s eyes. He blinked and closed them. Even with his eyes closed, he saw the skyline. After a long moment, he opened them again. The pyramid stopped turning, and its sides were covered with windows. Up from the river rose a bridge, a wide span that partially obstructed his view of the beautiful city.

  Again, Reed said, “I know this bridge. Where is it?”

  And again the voice said, “Be patient.”

  Suddenly, the sky burst into a kaleidoscope of color, swirling and churning with deep blues and greens, then intensifying to reds, oranges, and yellows. It was a rainbow of mercury that filled the sky with shifting color. Reed felt the tree shudder and its roots being torn from the ground. He was being drawn skyward. As he rose, the tree pitched forward; he feared he would fall out, but his weight didn’t even shift. He was floating above a bridge. He rose high above the city. Coming up a hill, he saw a cable car!

  “San Francisco!” Reed screamed. “San Francisco!”

  The tree gently rolled, Reed fixed on the swirling colors in the sky. As it rolled, he found he was face down above San Francisco, looking down at the Golden Gate Bridge. Suddenly, the cables began to braid themselves together, becoming one long, rusty, orange braid that snapped like a whip above the water. The snapping and cracking tore slashes in the kaleidoscopic pattern of the sky above, revealing a cobalt blue sky behind. Soon, all the color fell into the water of the bay below.

  “Spirit, is this my mission?”

  There was no answer.

  “Sage! Sage is in San Francisco!” Reed screamed with laughter, tears filled his eyes, and he saw rain was falling on the city below.

  As he laughed uncontrollably, like a child who had seen a wondrous thing, the tree began to straighten itself. Reed closed his eyes and wiped them with the palms of his hands. As the roots of the tree stretched to reach the familiar anchor of the earth, Reed opened them to see the bridge before him begin to rise from the center tower. As it rose, it took with it the rainbow of color that had fallen in the water.

  Reed watched the bridge begin to spiral and twist. It was transforming into a multicolored helix. As it turned, the bridge created a constant uniform diameter. Spinning clockwise above the water, it was becoming a gigantic model of DNA.

  “This is your mission.” The voice seemed to come from outside the hollow of the tree.

  “I don’t understand. I don’t see. What is my vision?” Reed began sobbing. “This was to make my path clear. I don’t get it.”

  “Go. Then you will see.”

  Reed put his hands over his face and wept bitterly. Even through the tears and with his eyes covered, he saw the DNA helix floating and turning above the San Francisco skyline. The peyote continued to rush through Reed’s system for almost five hours. As its effects began to diminish, the hallucinations became more like strange dreams. At one point, Reed felt he was covered with insects and ran from his tree sanctuary to dive into the river. The water proved to be just as tormenting as he thought he saw strange fish and eel-like creatures swarming around him. He heard the voices of his mother and grandmother calling him from the other side of the river, and once he turned to see the face of a man he killed in Georgia. The man began questioning him on his mission, and Reed ran away when he realized he had no answers.

  Exhausted and shivering, Reed fell into a deep sleep around dawn. The crunching of rocks and gravel awakened him when the sun was directly overhead. His eyes felt swollen and burned as he tried to focus downstream to where the noise was coming from. Two men were making their way along the bank towards him.

  Reed was stiff, and his body ached from sleeping on the rocky riverbank. On one of his journeys into the river, he didn’t make it back to the leaf-softened shelter of the tree and fell asleep stretched out on the bank. The rocks hurt his knees and cut into his palms as he came up to all fours. Before the men spotted him, Reed quickly moved to the water. As he submerged, the cool water helped to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth where it dried. The acrid taste of the peyote came to life with the water and he wretched, spitting and rinsing repeatedly to wash the foul taste from his mouth. His stomach felt queasy, and he was still a bit disoriented when he came up from the water.

  “Nice morning for a swim,” said the tall thin man on the bank.

  Reed couldn’t answer. His tongue was still like a dried piece of leather in his mouth. He just nodded at the passersby. When they were gone, he retrieved his clothes and held them over his head as he waded back across the river. On his return to his car, he took the footpath and made the trip in less than 10 minutes.

  Five hours and 45 minutes on Interstate 10, and Reed was back at the ranch. He did not stop at the house and
did not speak as Thomas Whitehorse passed him outside the barn. All together, he was at the ranch less than five minutes. He loaded the footlocker in the trunk of his car and was gone.

  In Bakersfield, Reed slid into the front seat of a Ford 150 pickup next to the gas pumps at an AM/PM. The big bellied Mexican man who just finished filling the tank didn’t notice him until the tip of Reed’s buck knife poked him in the side. Reed put his finger to his lips and signaled silence. He then instructed the man to pull into the parking lot of the Wal-Mart across the street and drive to the far end of the building. Parked along the side among the pallets and shipping containers was Reed’s blue Kia.

  As the fat man slid out of the truck, Reed followed close behind, the tip of the buck knife at the base of the fat man’s skull. Reed took the key to the Kia out of his pocket and handed it to the fat man. He pointed to the car and ordered the man in.

  “Seatbelt,” Reed said.

  The fat man pulled the seatbelt across his thick middle and, without speaking, secured the belt with a metallic clank. With one swift movement, Reed drove the buck knife into the man’s ear and gave it a sharp twist. The man’s head slumped forward. Reed took the footlocker from the trunk and put it into the camper shell on the back of the pickup. Twenty-five miles later, he was rolling down Interstate 5 with the cruise control set at 65.

  The sun was setting as Jason Reed paid the toll on the Bay Bridge. Just as darkness fell on the city, he pulled into an alley behind a Mexican restaurant near 25th Street in the Mission District. He checked the latches on the footlocker, and then pulled it from the back of the truck. The windows were rolled down and the keys were in the ignition.

  “You guys stay away from my truck,” Reed said gruffly as he passed a group of hard-looking teens sporting gang tattoos. He looked back towards the alley, smiled to himself, and carried the footlocker up the street.