Is Everybody In?

I’m dead. Not the cold corporeal type of death, but a warm,

living death, a ghost trying to regain what he has lost. A death where everything is a faded, pale facsimile of the life I had. I went into my study and sat at the desk, it’s an old theatrical make-up table with a gilded mirror surrounded by those old fashioned bulbous lights, naked, astringent, that push light into every crevice and nook, nowhere to hide. Every night I sit surrounded in this room, a shrine to my “career.” The desk is stuffed with my newspaper reviews, photographs, journals, scrapbooks and notes. The mirror was cleaned up and glimmered, a relic of an age gone by, salvage from my past.

 

I lit a candle and popped a tape into the player on the desk, I watched the candle flicker and dance, casting shadows against the wall, hoping it would set the mood. A voice from the speakers said, “ladies and gentlemen, from Madison, Wisconsin, The Unknown Soldiers!” I cleared my mind and let the music transport me back, opening the flood of memories. It was a ceremony I’ve been practicing, a little ritual to help induce self-hypnosis. I closed my eyes, and I could see the audience cheering, an impressionistic flash of colorful clothes, and faces looking up at me. I had been the singer in a Doors tribute band, The Unknown Soldiers, it seemed like if I could concentrate hard enough and remember all the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings, I’d find myself on that stage again. The music was raw but powerful, then my voice came booming out of the speakers, it was huskier than Jim Morrison’s, but I was able

to tear out screams as well as his. We sounded like what The Doors had on a night Morrison wasn’t too drunk. I remember those days like the touch of a lost lover, the sensation lingers. More salvage.

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The Captured Dead

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Comancheria 1874

The dark of the night pressed in around the warriors, save the light of the fire carving a shelter out of the liquid darkness that surrounded and threatened to drown them. Each was dressed in brightly colored shirts of red, yellow or blue buckskin. Medicine shirts the shaman Isatai had given them. They huddled around the fire looking glum. They couldn’t even look at each other. All they could do was stare into the flames. It was early June, it must have been warm, but they all huddled in close to the fire trying to gain its warmth. The white man had driven them to this, into the night.

            “Why are you not dancing, celebrating?” Isatai asked. “What you have done today is a very brave thing.”

            “We did a terrible thing, the wasichu will kill us all,” said one warrior.

            “It will bring the soldiers,” said another.

            “They will outnumber us, and their bullets are faster than our arrows.”

            “The wasichu believe they can take this country, but they have grabbed a rattlesnake by the tail and soon it will unwind and strike at them and shake off their grasp.”

            “How will this happen?”

            “Have you no faith?” Isatai asked. “Did not the medicine shirts I’ve given you protect you from the wasichu bullets today?”

            “They were farmers, and gatherers, not warriors.”

            “The soldiers are many. Like the buffalo were, now are the soldiers.”

            “Did I not predict the drought? Did I not ascend to heaven to visit the Great Spirit and look down upon the wasichu’s god? The Great Spirit gave me the power to defeat the wasichu, and yet you do not believe?” The warriors all sat, doubting his words. “I will show you. Look into the flames and you will see.” Isatai started chanting, drums began pounding, the rhythm gathered and met the beat of their hearts, and that sound matched their thoughts. It was one sound they could hear. Then they felt a deep pounding of hooves vibrating through their bodies. As they stared into the fire, they saw the face of a great buffalo, its mane, aflame. It grew in their eyes, engulfing them in its spirit, the vision raced through their hearts like an engine. They believed. “What we have done today will bring the soldiers,” Isatai said, “and the dead will come to protect us.”

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