Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments (9 page)

I wanted to swing open the doors and unlock the chains and set them all free. I wanted to do something to help them.

“And where would they go?” a man next to me said. He was tall with long white hair tied back in a ponytail and very blue eyes. My parents were nearby, maybe over at a shooting booth, where my dad would be winning every stuffed animal he wanted, but I couldn’t see them.

“Anywhere,” I said, almost a whisper, because I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, and if this man wasn’t a stranger, I didn’t know who was.

Those eyes seemed to look right through me. He was three or four feet away, but he still seemed too close. He was like fire, radiating something that required distance to feel comfortable.

“They’ve been in these cages for a long time,” he said. “They’re used to them. That’s what happens, you know. They get used to them. What good would it do if you or I went around and opened those cages?”

I was surprised that he was taking me seriously. I found myself feeling less scared of him.

“They would be free,” I said.

“Perhaps. But for how long? What do you think would happen — what would
really
happen — to these animals if they were released right now?”

I understood what he was saying, but the injustice of it all made me stubborn. “They shouldn’t be there.”

He nodded sadly. “It’s one of those problems that can’t be solved by two people at a circus.”

People? I was just a kid. No one had ever called me people before.

Once again, the man seemed to know what I was thinking. “Even
many
people couldn’t solve this problem,” he said. “Some problems grow so big it takes something just as big to solve them. You’ll understand that someday. You’ll have to.”

The man contemplated the cages for a while in silence. “But maybe we can open just one cage.”

They had these sheepdogs they used to begin a show, seven of them. Their long, moppy hair hung over their eyes, and they had these funny expressions, as if they had a joke to tell you. They were locked in a cage, too, just like all the other animals. The man walked over to that cage, and the lock came undone at his touch. The cage door swung open.

It was like magic. Like something out of Harry Potter. That’s what I thought at the time.

“Go have some fun, my pets!” he shouted.

Sheepdogs, as I’d learn later when our family got one, are naturally gregarious. They didn’t need a second invitation. They bounded from their cage and out into the crowd, where they greeted and knocked over almost everyone and everything they came in contact with. They had a wonderful time.

The man looked at me but didn’t speak. I mean, his mouth didn’t move.
You will forget me. You will think I was a dream, but I’m a traveler. I’m from another moment many moments away from this one. I’ve seen you fighting gods when you are older, so I’m glad to be in this moment and see you as a boy. One day you’ll wake. And you will fight gods. And you will travel. And you will be the one to make the great choice to end or begin all choices for your kind. This I see. This is my prophecy and also my memory.

My mom and dad came over as the dogs ran off farther into the crowd, my mom carrying a large stuffed bear.

“Did you see those dogs?” my mom asked.

I nodded. “The man set them loose.”

“What man?” my father said.

I pointed where the man had been, but he wasn’t there anymore. No one was.

The man was right. A day, a week later, I thought that he must have been a dream. People didn’t talk without voices. Everyone knew that. And who fights gods? I mean, outside of stories. It was too strange. I decided before long that I’d fallen asleep and dreamed. Then I forgot him. I forgot him just like he said I would.

I’m back to being in one place, on the path again. But I remember him now. The man from the circus. Where did he come from? And when?

I think of what Running Bird said before, about everything happening simultaneously or whatever. Does that mean that right now the moment at the circus is happening somewhere — or som
ewhen
— else?

Fighting gods? A traveler from where and when? And what did/does he mean, I will be the one who will make the choice to begin or end all choices? I would like to blame the memory on Running Bird, who, I know, is nearby. But it’s my memory. It happened long ago. The traveler said one day I would wake. Is this what he meant?

“You lost again?” Running Bird says as the path disappears in a rocky slope. He’s above me, where the slope levels before a second, steeper slope.

“I wasn’t lost the first time.”

Running Bird smiles. His smile reminds me of the Road Runner’s — a big birdie smile. It’s like he is always laughing at some private joke. When Running Bird looks at me that way, I feel like I’m the joke.

“So you’ve come to sweat.”

“And you’ve come to tell me if I’m a god or not.”

“Demigod,” Running Bird says without a trace of sarcasm.

I don’t hear her coming up behind me, but I sense her. She reaches me just as I make it to the lodge. I turn around to greet her but am surprised when she jumps up and wraps her arms around my neck. I forget how small she is. In my mind there’s something that makes her large, but she’s light, easy to hold in my arms.

“I was so worried about you,” Catlin says. “At first we didn’t know who’d been killed in town. We just heard it was a boy.”

“And two girls,” I say because they’re on my mind. My fault.

I remember the first time I saw Catlin, in a dream. She was sitting on that bed in the room where Lord Vertenomous kept her. A very pretty girl — delicate, I thought. Long blond hair, small face, long neck, arms, legs. Michael called her my dream girl. She wasn’t, of course. She’s real. She’s right here.

“I’m okay,” I say, unhooking her arms and setting her down on the flat rock.

“Sorry,” she says, and blushes. “I was just worried.”

I’m about to ask how she found me when Running Bird says, “Time to sweat, Warrior Boy. You come, too, little girl. This boy may need medical attention. We’re going extreme with our sweat.”

“I’m not a little girl, old man,” Catlin says. She glares at him. She only
looks
delicate.

“You want to come or not?” he asks.

“Okay,” she says, “but don’t call me little girl.”

“Guess I can’t go naked if you come,” he says.

“Please.” I turn to Catlin. “Come.”

Running Bird calls me homophobic. He says that nudity is the natural state of man. Clothes are artificial.

“I’m not homophobic. I just don’t want to see a fat old man without clothes,” I say. “I’m fat-naked-old-man phobic, maybe.”

Catlin says, “Me, too.”

“Okay,” Running Bird says. “We’ll keep some clothes on. Always good to have a cute girl in the sweat lodge. Makes the heat less painful. It’s still going to be plenty painful, especially for the white boy. But less if he has his girlfriend in there.”

“She’s not —” I say.

“I’m not —” she says.

We both stop because we’re talking at the same time, and then we’re both embarrassed and confused about the embarrassment.

“Let’s go,” he says, and there’s that Road Runner smile again.

We follow him over to the sweat lodge, which is sort of like a giant beehive set back in a crevice between two large slabs of rock — a hidden place. The ground is uneven, and piles of fallen stones are scattered here and there. A small stream trickles through the hidden place. There’s a fire, a big one with a ring of rocks around it and several flat, smooth river stones in it. How can he have a fire in this no-fire zone? Then I realize that, because of the way the cliffs hang over the crevice and the caves up there, the smoke never makes it to the sky. It’s drawn into the caves. This place has been chosen carefully.

“You two go sit over there while I get the ancestors ready.”

“What ancestors?” I say anxiously. I half expect a gaggle of old naked men to appear, all ready for a good sweat.

He points at the stones in the fire.

“Ancestors are going to make us sweat. What is family for, anyway?”

I watch as Running Bird uses big iron tongs to take rocks from the fire and pile them inside the beehive. When he’s satisfied with the pile, he sprinkles water on it and closes the tent flap.

“It’s going to be like a sauna, I guess,” I say, kind of hoping he’ll confirm this so I’ll know what to expect, though I’m not exactly a big fan of saunas. I mean, I’ll sweat if there’s a reason, but I don’t see any point to sitting around just to sweat.

“Like a match is like a forest fire, white boy,” he says.

There’s a hole in the mud side of the sweat lodge, and I feel heat coming out. I say, “Is that to cool it down a little?”

“Good eye,” he says, and then he puts rocks where the smoke is escaping to hold it in. Not the response I’m looking for.

“Don’t people,” I say, “die of heatstroke?”

“What does not break the back makes it stronger. You ever heard that?”

“Yeah,” I say. That was one of my dad’s sayings, and I’ve heard it way too many times in my life. “I’ve heard that. I wasn’t really worried about my back.”

“You got the Warrior Spirit to protect you, Chosen One.”

“Not so sure about that,” I say.

“And we got us a healer,” Running Bird says. “She can probably bring you back.”

“Probably,” Catlin says, smiling that little crooked smile of hers. It’s a smile that isn’t quite a smile, or a smile that has something else in it that isn’t a smile. So why do I like it so much?

Running Bird actually high-fives her. He practically has to get down on his knees to do it, she’s so much shorter than he is.

“You need this,” Catlin says to me. “You need to sweat.”

I need it? I can think of a lot of things I need I’d put ahead of a sweat. A cheeseburger and fries would be way ahead of a sweat. Anyway, I’m fine. I killed an alien. He would have killed me and everyone I was with, so I killed him. I’m fine with it. Well, not fine, exactly, but okay. Well, not okay, exactly.

Fighting with gods,
the man from the circus said. The aliens aren’t gods, though. They’re a long way from gods.

“Come on, girls and boys,” Running Bird says, taking off his T-shirt and revealing powerful shoulders and arms and a substantial muffin-top stomach hanging over his jeans. “Time to sweat. Strip down to undies, and let’s get going.”

So we do, and I have to admit at least one good thing comes from being here: I get to see Catlin in underwear. She is hot. Not that I’m looking, except in the way that any guy, even a guy with a sort-of girlfriend, would look. I appreciate hotness. Who doesn’t? Catlin has some cool tats. She has what look like Japanese symbols on her shoulder and a sunrise on her lower back just above her underwear line.

When she catches me looking at her, she smiles that not-quite-smile of hers. I smile back without thinking. Then I feel like I’m doing something wrong even though I haven’t done anything wrong.

“Let’s get this over with,” I say to Running Bird.

We step into the sweat lodge. It’s like stepping into a furnace. My face feels like it’s on fire. I can’t breathe. As I try to draw in a breath, something gets caught in my throat, and I try to cough it up, but I can’t. I’m like a cat with a hair ball. When I finally get that under control, I realize I can’t see anything because it’s so dark. I’m about to run from the tent because I’m a sane person — well, mostly — and this seems like a sane response to burning heat and fire, when Running Bird mindspeaks to me.

Control your pain, Warrior Boy. You have to breathe another way, avoid the heat. Breathe another way.

This reminds me of the dojo and working out with Grandmaster Kim.

“Control breathing!” he’d shout, his heavy Korean accent booming in the small, closed room. “Control pain!”

He was big on controlling your pain.

I can’t see with my eyes, but it turns out I can see with my mind, sort of. I find my way to a place next to Catlin. I feel her struggling like me. Her mind touches mine, and we both pull back. All of a sudden, after all we’ve been through, we’re shy with each other. Maybe because we’re in our underwear. Of course it’s because we’re in our underwear. I’m an idiot.

Running Bird starts chanting in a language I’ve never heard before. Then he sings. He has a surprisingly good voice. It’s getting hotter and hotter in the sweat lodge.

He sprinkles more water on the ancestors. This intensifies the heat, which I wouldn’t have thought possible. These are not benevolent ancestors. They have a mean streak.

Fortunately, Running Bird hands me a gallon jug of water. That helps a little, though several times I feel like I’m going to pass out. I’m surprised I don’t.

“Got to let yourself go, Warrior Boy. You’re fighting it. You’re here now, but you have been here before and will be here again. Don’t make distinctions among the three. You can dreamwalk without being asleep if you don’t make the distinctions.”

Crazy talk from the crazy man, but I try anyway. I use some of the meditation techniques from my martial-arts training, and suddenly I’m floating like I’m on the surface of water. Floating. Floating. I feel better, more relaxed.