Picture this. Instead of sprinkling sand in your eyes
the Sandman gives you a shot of liquid fire in the ass. Da
frick.
Lying there in the raw, middle of the night, sticking to
the sheets, my body was self-basting, my skin tingling like
a Christmas goose. Not enough? My head was on a countdown
to blow up because some Indians on the street below
were beating tribal drums and one of them was torturing a
tribal chant. Woi Yesus.
I can’t sleep all that well these days, not since losing the
company of someone else in the house, that someone else
having been my husband, Connors, who finally did what I
long expected he would do: leave me for Esther, his pharmacist’s
assistant. I should care.
When you blow Spokane you can blow it off big, like
for LA or Miami or New York, or you can leave small, like
for Missoula or Seattle. I left small, but that’s mostly because
I wanted to leave fast. Funny, because I had pretty
much made up my mind that I would never leave the place.
Not that I ever liked it that much. In fact, I didn’t like it at
all, but I had settled in, at least for this lifetime. That was
before Connors let his cock run away with his conscience.
So I bitch-slapped the city and took it on the arfy-darfy to
the upper left-hand corner of the map. Discovering that
my husband was bumping uglies with another woman,
younger and well oiled, catapulted me to the nearest place
large enough to lose myself in, Seattle. Never went back,
never going back.
I peeled myself off the bed and moved like a human
heat wave to the living room window. On the way I passed
by the mirrored wall that still can make me jump, thinking
I’ve seen an intruder. Middle of the night, the light, or lack
of it, was in my favor. I couldn’t see the veins in my legs, or
notice the jiggling parts. Not that I looked that bad, for
a woman my age. I sighed. I was taking me as I was becoming.
And the hot flashes were killing me.
Both the drum and the chant stopped abruptly, but I
was this far so I went to the window anyway. By the time I
reached it I was wide awake, and they started up all over
again.
I was living alone in a one-bedroom apartment on the
eighth floor, Pioneer Square. I’d been there for six months,
not all of them good.
The sound of the drum and the chant could have just as
easily been coming from inside the room. From inside my
head, da frick.
I slid open the window. The night was chilly and damp
against my burning face and body, which I was now flashing
to Yesler Way. I should care. This time of night, there
Picture this. Instead of sprinkling sand in your eyes
the Sandman gives you a shot of liquid fire in the ass. Da
frick.
Lying there in the raw, middle of the night, sticking to
the sheets, my body was self-basting, my skin tingling like
a Christmas goose. Not enough? My head was on a countdown
to blow up because some Indians on the street below
were beating tribal drums and one of them was torturing a
tribal chant. Woi Yesus.
I can’t sleep all that well these days, not since losing the
company of someone else in the house, that someone else
having been my husband, Connors, who finally did what I
long expected he would do: leave me for Esther, his pharmacist’s
assistant. I should care.
When you blow Spokane you can blow it off big, like
for LA or Miami or New York, or you can leave small, like
for Missoula or Seattle. I left small, but that’s mostly because
I wanted to leave fast. Funny, because I had pretty
much made up my mind that I would never leave the place.
Not that I ever liked it that much. In fact, I didn’t like it at
all, but I had settled in, at least for this lifetime. That was
before Connors let his cock run away with his conscience.
So I bitch-slapped the city and took it on the arfy-darfy to
the upper left-hand corner of the map. Discovering that
my husband was bumping uglies with another woman,
younger and well oiled, catapulted me to the nearest place
large enough to lose myself in, Seattle. Never went back,
never going back.
I peeled myself off the bed and moved like a human
heat wave to the living room window. On the way I passed
by the mirrored wall that still can make me jump, thinking
I’ve seen an intruder. Middle of the night, the light, or lack
of it, was in my favor. I couldn’t see the veins in my legs, or
notice the jiggling parts. Not that I looked that bad, for
a woman my age. I sighed. I was taking me as I was becoming.
And the hot flashes were killing me.
Both the drum and the chant stopped abruptly, but I
was this far so I went to the window anyway. By the time I
reached it I was wide awake, and they started up all over
again.
I was living alone in a one-bedroom apartment on the
eighth floor, Pioneer Square. I’d been there for six months,
not all of them good.
The sound of the drum and the chant could have just as
easily been coming from inside the room. From inside my
head, da frick.
I slid open the window. The night was chilly and damp
against my burning face and body, which I was now flashing
to Yesler Way. I should care. This time of night, there
was nobody there anyway besides those three drunken Indians
under the pergola, sprawled all over the bench, their
legs splayed this way and that way, gathering themselves
for another run at their fading memories. Have at it, boys.
Nobody sleeps anymore. It’s a national epidemic.
I’d noticed them before, down there, encamping for the
night, unwilling to check into one of the missions, or rejected,
just as likely, and they were never what you’d call
quiet, but this was the first time I heard them singing back
to their roots.
The fat one was beating on an overturned city garbage
can with a stick. The other fat one had a stick, too, and he
beat it against an empty Office Depot box. The skinny
one was the singer, who was most frustrated because he
couldn’t get it right. Empty forties lay scattered at their feet.
“No, that ain’t it,” said the skinny singer. “How the
fuck does it go?”
Their voices carried easily in the still night.
They put their heads together and concentrated, their
baseball caps turned backward, their foreheads almost
touching. They wore sneakers, and jeans, and though it
was cold all they had, the fat ones, were hooded sweatshirts;
the singer, a light Windbreaker.
The three beered-up tribals started again, first the ancient
drumbeat and then the eerie high-pitched chant that
made the hair on the nape of my neck rise up.
Again the singer stumbled. “That ain’t it, goddammit.”
He was hard on himself. Maybe he had moved too far in
one direction ever to go back and retrieve something left
behind as worthless then, now for some reason damn valuable.
The totem pole loomed behind them on the cobblestones
in front of the Pioneer Building, commemorating
the settlement that once thrived on that spot, where the ancestors
of these three lived off the bounty of the bay and
knew how to sing the songs.
The three drunken descendants of those proud and
persevering people swatted one another with their caps to
remember how the song should be sung. They tried again
and this time the singer used his hand to beat the box along
with the fat one, to spook out the rhythm that hid from
them, to hook back the thing that was lost and floating out
there. This time when the singer began to chant, I just
knew he had it at last. It filled me with dread and excitement.
They’ve nailed it! They’ve tapped into their own genetic
memories! They remember!
Shit they did. It all fell apart again, sunk under its own
psychic weight. The singer looked whipped. I could feel his
pain and disappointment all the way up on the eighth floor.
He kicked the garbage can and sent it flying. “Fuck! Fuck
it all!”
They trudged unsteadily up First Avenue, but one of
the drummers staggered back and slung the garbage can
over his shoulder. He hurried to catch up with the other
two. The singer turned to him and yelled, “Whaddafuck?”
“I’m bringin’ the drum.”
“That ain’t no drum. That’s nothin’ but a fuckin’ garbage
can!”
The drum bearer put it down and examined it. The
other two kept on plodding up First Avenue. This lagging
drummer was slow to leave behind his garbage can, if
that’s what it was instead of a drum. For a brief moment
there, for a measure, it
was a drum, and he was brave. In
the end, though, he left it overturned in the middle of the
sidewalk.
A solitary figure crossed First Avenue at Marion to
avoid the three drunks.
