Burning Man

by Alan Russell

  Before I even got a chance to enter into his house, Seth extended a bottle of Sam Adams my way. My shaman only drinks premium beer.

  “Did you divine the kind of day I had?”

  “No,” he said, “but there was divine intervention of a sort. Father Pat was worried about you. Apparently, you didn’t return his calls. I found him waiting for you on your front porch.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Not to worry,” Seth said. “I invited him inside. We had a nice talk and toddy. I promised Father Pat that I would see to your spiritual needs tonight.”

  “I’d rather you saw to my toddy needs.”

  Father Pat and Seth didn’t exactly practice the same religion, but each enjoyed the other’s company. On several occasions I had been party to their wide-ranging discussions. As strange as it seemed, each had great respect for the other. On very different paths they had found God.

  Seth’s house reflects his travels. He’s been all over the world spending time with medicine men, witch doctors, healers, and sages. During Seth’s journey to become a shaman, he was even adopted by a tribe deep in the Amazon rain forest. By the sounds of his initiation ceremony, it’s not a tribe I’ll be joining any time soon. I was pleased to see my two shrunken heads now on display, gifts I’d presented Seth at his recent birthday party. After he told me he’d spent time working with a Shuar medicine man and then mentioning in passing that not too long ago the Shuar were infamous for shrinking the heads of their enemies, the shrunken heads seemed like an obvious present. The two heads look the real thing; one of them even bears a miniature resemblance to Seth’s round face, fan ears, flat nose, and hooded eyes. What it doesn’t show is his big smile and even bigger stomach. Imagine a cross between a koala and the happy Buddha, and that’s Seth.

  By now I was used to the figurines, masks, rattles, drums, and effigy figures displayed on the wall shelving throughout the house. There was also no shortage of native pottery, vases, and baskets. Tobacco leaves and other pungent herbs filled bowls and containers and contributed to a beguiling aroma that filled the house. I have always made a point of never looking too closely at what kind of herbs are in the house.

  Seth does workshops and has a loyal clientele. He says that his work requires him to be a combination of psychotherapist, healer, and social worker. Before becoming a shaman, Seth was a financial manager at an insurance company. One day he was wearing a suit, he told me, and the next he found himself being “liberated” in the Amazon rain forest. At least once a year, Seth returns to the jungle for what he calls a “refresher course.” Invariably, Seth says, he drinks ayahuasca, a brew made from a plant known as the visionary vine, and the vine of the dead. Evidently, what doesn’t destroy you makes you a better shaman.

  I plopped down in an easy chair while Sirius sprawled out in his hemp dog bed, filled with organic millet hulls that Seth had bought for him. A drug-sniffing dog probably wouldn’t have looked as comfortable as Sirius did. Seth brought over a water bowl for him before taking a seat on the sofa.

  “Father Pat didn’t offer particulars,” he said, “probably a confessional thing, but he did say you were working a difficult case.”

  “He only got the first part of my day,” I said. “It got worse. I’m working two cases now. One you probably haven’t heard anything about; the other you’ve probably heard too much.”

  I told him about baby Rose and Paul Klein. Seth is a good listener, and I surprised myself by talking at length. He took my empty and brought me another beer while I talked about the cases.

  “They’re both so quirky,” I finally said.

  Seth asked, “How so?”

  “Rose was found with pink bootees. I have never heard of an abandoned baby wearing bootees. And they weren’t just any bootees. They were knit by hand. In fact, someone knit a blue pair as well. We found those at the crime scene. I’m thinking the mother didn’t know if she was carrying a boy or a girl, so she had both colors. But why did she go to the effort of getting bootees if she was going to throw away her own kid?”

  “She cared about her child,” Seth said. “She wanted her to be warm.”

  “She didn’t care about her enough.”

  I looked into my bottle. There were no answers there, but I brought it up to my lips anyway and tilted it.

  “If I find the time tomorrow, I’ll be doing bootee calls,” I said. “Assuming the mom didn’t knit the bootees, she must have bought them someplace.”

  “I hope you find what you are looking for.”

  As usual, Seth’s words were ambiguous. “What aren’t you saying?”

  “Father Pat wouldn’t have come seeking you out if he wasn’t worried about how you might react to this case.”

  “This case isn’t about me. It’s about an abandoned baby that died.”

  “Then you shouldn’t mind that we’re concerned about the abandoned baby that lived.”

  “That baby is fine, thank you. But he could use insights into this case.”

  Seth took a sip from his beer, thought a moment, and then recited:

  “God appears and God is light, to those poor souls who dwell in night, but does a human form display, to those who dwell in realms of day.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Those are the last four lines of William Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence.’ I think Blake was commenting on perception. He understood that things appear different in daytime and nighttime, even though they are the same. When I...journey, I understand this.”

  “You’re talking about your soul flights?”

  He heard my skepticism and said, “If the sun and moon should doubt, they would immediately go out.” And then he smiled and said, “More Blake.”

  Seth talked about soul flights the way someone else might talk about going to Italy. As I understand it, even though his body stays grounded, his awareness—his soul—goes places. During his flights, Seth says he has an “awakened” vision and is able to see things he wouldn’t be able to otherwise. I guess what he was saying to me was that in my unenlightened state I probably didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground.

  “Why don’t you do a soul flight for me and find Rose’s mother?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. And besides, it was a journey meant for you. Perhaps it will be part of your healing.”

  “Speaking of healing,” I said, tilting my empty beer.

  “Would you like another?”

  “If you ever hear me say no, then I misheard the question.”

  Even though it was more than two years since the fire, Seth was convinced I hadn’t yet healed. I had convinced doctors and police administrators of my fitness, but not Seth. Maybe I was one of Blake’s poor souls that dwelled in night; maybe my shaman had seen that on one of his spirit flights.

  Seth returned with a tray filled with bread, some cheese, and the beer. I was willing to bet beer tasted a lot better than ayahuasca. He also brought a dog biscuit for Sirius. My partner enthusiastically inhaled it.

  “So what did your Mr. Blake have to say about crucifixions?” I asked.

  “I can’t recall any verse of his, but I do seem to remember that he drew several disturbing crucifixion scenes.”

  “Is there any other kind?”

  “Was it bad?”

  “It was bad. It was strange fruit.”

  Seth knew my shorthand and nodded.

  “The boy was shot in the eye.”

  “I heard.”

  “Something tells me that wasn’t coincidental. My gut feeling is that the kid was killed for revenge, as in an eye for an eye.”

  “Are you talking Hammurabi?”

  “I am. The boy was a bit of a prick. He was a bully.”

  “You think one of his victims struck back?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’m not sure.” More definitively I added, “Someone wanted an eye for an eye.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Gut feeling.”

&n
bsp; “Wouldn’t murder have been revenge enough? It seems to me that crucifixion would be...overkill.”

  “Paul Klein was put on display. His sins were exposed for all to see.”

  “As I understand it, the boy had a drug problem.”

  I shook my head. “The drugs were planted.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Crucifixion isn’t an easy process. I remember reading Sebastian Horsley’s account of it.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He was an English artist. Horsley was quite the eccentric. He liked to wear top hats and velvet coats. And he collected human skulls.”

  “Everybody has to have a hobby.”

  “Horsley decided to go to the Philippines to be crucified.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a pleasure trip. Why the hell would someone go and get crucified?”

  “It was supposed to be an art project. Every year, devotional crucifixions take place in the Philippines over Easter. It’s not a full crucifixion in that there’s a platform to stand on, but nails are driven through the hands of the penitents. Horsley’s crucifixion didn’t go as planned, though. His foot support broke.”

  “That had to have hurt.”

  “The pain was so terrible he blacked out. There is no good form of capital punishment, but crucifixion is among the worst killing methods ever conceived. It wasn’t just a means to kill someone, but was meant as a punishment to inflict terrible pain and to humiliate.”

  “That’s what the killer wanted,” I said. “He felt the need to humiliate Klein, the young man who had everything.”

  My burning vision had told me that.

  “With your two cases I don’t imagine you will be traveling,” Seth said, sounding hopeful.

  I had made arrangements for Seth to take Sirius later in the week. Shaking my head, I said, “I haven’t canceled the meeting yet.”

  Seth paused a moment before saying, “Oh.”

  His restive note made me ask, “Is there a problem?”

  “Not with my taking Sirius. But I worry about how your meetings with Ellis Haines touch you. They’re not healthy.”

  Every month I went and visited the Weatherman at San Quentin. The trips were bankrolled by the FBI. Ostensibly, I went to gather information for their Behavioral Sciences Unit. Haines wouldn’t talk with the Feds—he’d only talk to me. That’s how I rationalized my visits, but the truth is I felt my own need to see him. I journeyed to my own shadow side.

  “It’s just talk.”

  Seth shook his head. “No, it’s not.”

  He chewed on his upper lip a moment before continuing. “I know you doubt the worth of what I do.”

  I opened my mouth to offer some objection, but he waved it off. “It is who you are, and I don’t take it personally. That said, I will tell you that part of my work involves helping those that are sick in body and spirit. In order to assist them, I need to understand the nature of their illness, and that requires me to do special journeys so as to find what ails them.

  “Some of those I help are afflicted with what I call soul loss, which is what happens when the soul gets fragmented and a part of it does not know how to return to the body, or realizes it’s not safe to return. A moment ago I spoke of your own healing. Your wife’s death, and your near-death experience at the fire, marked you. I am convinced that part of your soul escaped and has not been able to find its way back.”

  I started shifting in my chair, the same way I start shifting at my front door whenever I experience a home invasion by the likes of Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons. The difference was that Seth wasn’t selling anything but revealing something.

  “You mask everything well,” Seth said, “but I know you no longer feel the control you once had.”

  “That’s why there’s Viagra.”

  Seth smiled, but he wasn’t diverted. “These monthly visits drain you. It is like going to a vampire. The only difference is that he is sucking what remains of your soul instead of draining your blood. You are playing with fire.”

  “Playing with fire is what first brought the two of us together.”

  “Haven’t you had enough of the burning?”

  His question was too close to home. “I’m trying to douse it,” I said, draining my beer, “but it’s a stubborn fire.”

  “I am glad you have a guardian spirit,” Seth said, looking at Sirius.

  Seth was convinced that ever since the fire Sirius had been transformed into Canis Major or something like that. My shaman was certain that Sirius was looking out for me.

  “Do all guardian spirits have as much gas as this one?” I asked.

  The shaman found that funny, and that effectively stopped him from shaking his rattles anymore in my direction. I hadn’t told him about my burning dreams, but I had this feeling he already knew about them. Maybe he’d heard me crying out in the middle of the night; maybe he really was a witch doctor. One thing I knew for sure was he was a friend, and that’s a rare commodity.

  We’d had enough heavy topics for the night, so we turned to the usual topics of sports, sex, and politics, frequently interspersed by laughter. It was typical guy talk, but yeah, it felt good for my soul.

  CHAPTER 9:

  A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

  When I went to bed I said, “Not tonight.” I am sure Father Pat wouldn’t have thought that much of a prayer, but it was about as good as I could muster. It wasn’t good enough, though. Once again the flames came, and I burned.

  Like all my other burning nightmares, the fire was real to me. You would think after reliving the horror so many times that I would have some clue I’m just dreaming, but that’s not the way it works. As always I was thrust back into the fiery pit.

  Even in hell some smells are worse than others. The reek of burning rubber assaulted my nostrils.

  It was probably a burning tire, which had been dumped in the canyon. Or maybe, just maybe, the fire had spread to the street and one of the cars was going up in flames. My pulse quickened. Hope made me breathe faster. By following the stench we might find our way out. It was a straw to grasp before it burned into a husk.

  The smoke was thick. It pushed and pummeled. For the sake of my partner, I stopped running from it. Sirius had been too still for too long. The Strangler was gasping as loudly as I was. He looked at me, hoping I would give him permission to drop his burden. While I lived—and he lived—that wouldn’t happen.

  I leaned closer to Sirius. “We’re almost there, boy,” I lied. “We’re almost there. Just hold on.”

  Through the smoke, Sirius’s eyes opened. They were glazed. He was almost no longer there.

  I swiveled my head, trying to get a bead on the burning rubber. It was coming from somewhere nearby. I had to find its source. And then it became all too apparent what was burning: the bottoms of my shoes were smoldering. I was fire walking.

  “Shit!” I yelled. “Shit!”

  I jumped up and down, stamping my feet. Tears came with my dance moves, the pain traveling up and down my body. There was a reason I’d been dragging my feet around: when you’ve been shot in the leg, you tend to do that. My hot foot gyrations were the equivalent of driving a hot poker into my wound. Adding insult to injury was the fact that my dance wasn’t helping to put the fire out on my soles. The ground was too damn hot. The fire in my shoes wasn’t going out.

  I awoke to all the sheets kicked off the bed. It felt as if the soles of my feet had been pressed by a hot iron. My heart was racing, my flight instinct in overdrive. Sirius kept nudging me, making sure I was all right. I took a few heaving breaths, and he licked my sweaty brow, vanquishing the demons for another night.

  When you escape hell, you are not supposed to look back. Orpheus made that mistake. Whenever I escape the fire I try to not dwell on the pain, preferring to float away on a cloud of relief, but before that happens I experience my moment after.

  Dinah Hakimi was looking at me. In the background of my vision I co
uld hear a familiar tune, the Beatles singing “With a Little Help from My Friends.” Dinah was exaggeratedly mouthing the words that she got by with a little help from her friends. As she lip-synched she was smiling and not trying to hide her protruding front teeth. Behind her teeth, though, something else was hidden, and reluctantly she reached behind them to reveal a razor blade.

  And then Dinah reached for a piece of paper, and I could see it was the card she had left at the tower of hope. She took the razor blade and cut into where she had written “You made my life HELL,” and blood started flowing from the page.

  The image was surreal and disturbing, and I doubt whether I would have been able to fall back to sleep save for another image that came to mind. Lisbet Keane was smiling at me and imparted a peace that had long escaped me. I inhaled the aroma of something nice, something that reminded me of Thanksgiving, and then I slept.

  When I awakened a few hours later, I stayed in bed thinking about the moment after I had experienced. I was fairly certain the razor blade symbolized Dinah’s contemplation of suicide. The young woman had sought out help, I remembered. Too many desperate young people never do that, thinking they can get by on their own. Dinah had gotten by with a little help from one of the suicide hotline counselors. She had said he was a good man.

  I decided it was worth seeing if she was right about that.

  I called Dinah’s cell phone, but when she didn’t pick up I left a voice message. A few minutes later I received a text from her. The message said, “I’ll call u in half an hour.” It was likely that she didn’t want to talk to me with her family around and wouldn’t call until she reached school.

  When she phoned back I could hear the background noise of youthful chatter. Dinah talked as she walked and said, “I only have a few minutes before class begins.”

  “This shouldn’t take long. I need the name and number of the man at the Community Crisis Line that counseled you.”

  “Why do you want to bother him?”

  “It’s necessary background.”