LAST WEEK: Jim is visited by Amimi. He thinks he sees Kristjan, but it’s really a skinwalker. Jim finds two odd coins, just like the one he wears around his neck.
Read last week’s installment here. See all installments here. Read the next installment here.
Chapter 69
River
San Francisco — 1985
Jail
For two days, Huck perches on the window ledge of River’s hospital room. River wonders if Huck remembers the other hospital window he’d once waited at, long, long ago.
Huck scavenges food from the streets and dive-bombs the occasional red-tailed hawk. A few songbirds cheer when he harasses the hawk. Others, raising their young in the nearby trees, chase Huck when he flies too close to their nests. But Huck has no appetite for their offspring. He prefers remnants of junk food easily scavenged from the street.
River lies in the hospital’s half-light, the twilight between waking and sleeping. He dreams of a pale, flawless man. Rainbow tears drip from his fathomless eyes, tinting his white skin.
After three days, River, though not strong, is well enough to return home. He’s wheeled out to a waiting police car by a silent nurse and Officer Jackson.
“Royal treatment,” River says. Huck swoops down to gently perch on River’s shoulder.
“Shoo!” the nurse cries, waving her arms like a twisted windmill.
“Leave him be,” River says.
“Jackson,” Huck caws.
“Well if it ain’t my old friend,” Jackson chuckles. “It’s okay, nurse, I’ll take them from here.” The nurse sniffs, muttering about dirt and birds, and sashays into the hospital. River and Huck are driven to jail.
“First time I ever booked a bird before,” Jackson says.
“If I’m gonna be here a while, maybe Huck had better wait outside?” River asks. He hopes that Jackson will let Huck stay. He always feels lost without Huck.
Jackson holds out his arm to Huck. “Come on, kiddo,” he says. “The jail’s no place for birds.”
But Huck refuses to leave. He hops just out of range of Jackson’s fleshy hands.
“Huck,” River commands. “Go to Jackson.”
“Jackson,” Huck caws. He cocks his head to one side, examining Jackson with bright quizzical eyes. But he will not come to either man. Jackson and River both sigh.
“Worse than a goddamn cat,” mutters Jackson. “Guess you’re getting booked,” he says to Huck. “But hell if I’ll fingerprint you.”
Chapter 70
Jim
Onteoras — 1985
Survivors and Outcasts
Jim wakes in the sharp bright unforgiving light of dawn. In his cool, damp tunnel, the mole cricket is still asleep, dreaming of love. Outside, it is warm and bright. Jim looks out the window. He watches songbirds and sparrows scraping for seed. He marvels that they can be so chipper without caffeine. Perhaps seeds contain caffeine? After all, coffee is a kind of seed.
Stretching, he walks to the stove, brews a cup, and sips it hot and black. Then he wanders out to the barn.
Once inside, he welds the new old coins onto a chain and fastens them around his wrist. He feels their heat against his pulse, comforting as a lover’s kiss, reassuring as a promise. He begins to bend screws, nails, sprockets, broken watches, and forks into claws. He imagines new crows, but the metal has another plan. Beneath his hands, warm in the coolness, scrap metal wings sprout from silver barn doves … or are they pigeons?
What is the difference? Jim wonders. Except in how we think of them… doves: the symbol of peace and the Holy Spirit; pigeons: vermin, rats with wings. Man has always despised the survivors—coyotes and pigeons—it’s those we manage to exterminate that we revere. Once we have destroyed a being, we venerate it. Wolves, Natives, and all the wild places in the soul.
The crows, hanging on their gossamer threads of spider silk, begin to swing violently back and forth.
The dust in the barn swirls, forming a small twister. It gathers cobwebs around itself. Faster and faster, it spins, catching stray sunlight shimmering with iridescence in the dimness of the barn, forming a rainbow crow, then slowly elongating into a wolf. The wolf rises on its hind legs. Dust fur falls like rain, feathering into the plumes of a dove. The dove’s wings become sleeves. Amimi is shining like a hologram in the glooming.
“Once, these woods were so heavy with pigeons that limbs broke from trees where they nested. They traveled like the Lenni Lenape. Feasting when the earth was rich, moving when it needed rest. Now they are no more.
“We, too, traveled as Kijilamuh ka’ong directed. Sometimes, we lived on the small running birds you call quail, sometimes on wild turkey, sometimes on fish. We buried their bones beneath the roots of seeds that Kijilamuh ka’ong had provided: corn, beans, squash, and tobacco. We planted beans next to corn, for the great green stalks were a support to the climbing beans that could not stand alone. We planted all together, all in harmony as Kijilamuh ka’ong would. Kijilamuh ka’ong does not plant in rows.
“We were like those traveling birds of gray rainbow feathers. Making camp and staying when weather smiled and food was plentiful, then taking wing and moving on when crops were done and game was scarce.
“Pigeon always returns home, teaching us to stay heart-close to family and friends, no matter how far away. Pigeon reminds us that those we love are our roots, a support in even the toughest winters. They have made us who we are and who we will be. Pigeon is a foundation, the nurturer, protector, and teacher.
“If you have Pigeon as your totem, you are never alone, for Pigeon will watch your back. He sees the wide circle of life around and below. He looks to the past to learn about the future. Pigeon is never lost. He encourages us to focus on our destination rather than our direction.
“They are gone now, those great winged-gray clouds of family and hope, shot from the sky for sport, living only in the memory of a dead woman.”
Amimi’s dust face grows and sharpens into a beak. Her eyes move sideways on her head, catching the orange sun. She expands, growing giant. Particles move apart, breaking into the light, filling the barn with a glowing haze that is briefly blinding. The strands of web holding the metal crows aloft break and the crows drift down, gentle as feathers, to the barn floor. The light fades, leaving Jim alone in the barn with his creations.
Jim is tired. But his hands are not. They create a small flock of pigeons. Then a small half-moon blade, a bent spoon handle tail, and clusters of nails form a tiny, hanging baby opossum. A soda can cut into a lima bean-shaped oblong with bent wire antennae and six legs give birth to an immortal cockroach.
What is it today? he thinks. All the outcasts of the animal world; before you know it, I’ll be welding rats.
That night, in the dark of Jim’s dreams, rainbow pigeons rain from the sky, opossums swing like pendulums from the stars, and silver cockroaches sing.
“Man kills the forests at his feet
The ice caps melt under his heat
Under his ever-cutting hand
Civilization turns to sand.
Making wastelands of the wild.
A sandbox for his only child.
Men talk money while we wait
Meekly to inherit fate.”
Chapter 71
Gabriel
San Francisco — 1985
Mother
That night behind closed eyes, a beautiful, pale woman cradles Gabriel in her arms. He’s as brilliant and distant as a star. She gazes at him with eyes green as emeralds, green as longing, green as spring.
Awakening in the dawn, his orchids’ stems, leaves, and buds are suddenly alive with color. His spectrum is almost complete. The rainbow, that promise of hope, that sign of continuance, has begun to arch into his soul. But the color is still separated by the black lines of his existence.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Ryo asks. Even though he knows Gabriel cannot hear him, even though he knows he is talking to himself. “The Buddha said, ‘If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.’ I think that’s true in a way. Not that you are seeing clearly. All those black lines dividing color like leaded glass, they’re in your head, not in the flower. Still, we mostly see what’s inside ourselves. At best, we see a part of the whole, a fraction of the color spectrum, a smidgeon of the sound waves. Other animals can feel the magnetic pull of earth and stars. Spirits can read thoughts and see the continuum of the universe.
“It’s strange that you, Gabriel, who can touch electricity, reset circadian rhythms, and call both the living and the dead, cannot see the hummingbird flash, or hear my voice.
“My undoing was not in missing the beauty of a blossom…” Ryo continues, even though he knows he might as well be talking to the wind, “it was that I wanted beauty and perfection in everything—permanently. I should have realized that nothing, not even eternity, lasts forever.
“I wish I’d known that happiness is seeing the water lily you’ve been watching for a week blossom, even if the bloom lasts only a day.”
Chapter 72
River
San Francisco — 1985
Hot Breath/Cold Breath
Autopsy report on Wang Lijun, Asian Male, 47.
The deceased was shot by over a dozen bullets, perforating lungs, legs, and arms. Death was caused by a silver bullet, which penetrated the deceased’s heart.
River sits in a folding chair behind a rough wood table, Huck on his shoulder. Jackson and his partner, awake for once, sit on the other side of the desk. River thinks of all the movies and TV shows he’s seen where someone is questioned in just such a room. Things never turned out well for the questionee.
River has always liked Jackson, but now, watching his large, red hands, River imagines his own face, smashing back and forth between them. Surely, they wouldn’t really hit him, at least not in front of Huck. River knows Jackson has a soft spot for Huck.
“Where did you get the gun, River?” Jackson asks.
“I don’t know. It was in my hand when I woke up.”
“What attacked you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know a lot, do ya, little buddy?”
River wonders when he became “little buddy.” Jackson is a large man, 6’, meaty and red, but River, at 5’11”, is muscular and strong.
Jackson sighs. “Didn’t you see anything?”
River shudders involuntarily, remembering the sharp wolf face condensing into Wang Lijun’s flat features. Jackson’s eyes narrow.
“I remember being struck from behind. Hot breath. Claws. Teeth.”
“Yeah… well, there were claws and teeth alright. Apparently, you were attacked by some sort of prehistoric wolf. I tell ya, crime in this city is getting weirder and weirder. First there’s that gay blood sucker and now this….” Jackson sighs.
“Jackson?” Huck hops onto Jackson’s desk, cocking his head so he can look up into Jackson’s eyes.
Jackson grins and shakes his head. Glancing sidelong at his partner, he shamefacedly pulls out a few lint-covered peanuts from his breast pocket and puts them near Huck.
“Jackson!” Huck takes a peanut and glides onto the floor. Huck shreds the shell, picks out the nut, and swallows it whole. Then he delicately tears the shell into small bites and swallows them too. Jackson laughs. His partner looks at the remnants of nutshell on the floor.
“Ah, don’t worry, it’ll get cleaned up,” Jackson says.
Huck leaps up for another.
Jackson stares at River.
“I don’t suppose you know what Mr. Wang was doing either, do you?”
River shakes his head. Jackson exhales noisily. “Didn’t think so. Look, River…” River is relieved to have ceased being “little buddy.”
“We talked to your employer. We know you and Wang worked together. We know you didn’t get along. But besides that, we don’t really have anything. The gun wasn’t registered. It disappeared out of a pawn shop the other night. Nothing else was stolen. You were holding it. The only prints on it are yours. But you say you don’t know how it got there. We know it fired a hell of a lot of bullets, all of them into Wang, but they ain’t what killed him. And there weren’t no gunpowder on your hands. So, we can’t hold you.
“And then there’s the fact that you got attacked… nothing matches up… this city is a mess. It’s giving me heartburn, I tell ya,” Jackson groans. “We’re letting you go. We have to. But River, if you do remember anything… anything at all… let me know, will ya?”
River nods. He walks out of the room and is given his belongings.
Huck grabs another peanut from Jackson’s outstretched hand and flies after.
Watch the author read this week’s installment in the video below:
NEXT WEEK: This story seems incomplete, as fragile as glass, as insubstantial as love. Pamela puts her finger to his lips. River takes her hand. She tries to pull away, but he holds her fast. Her hands are surprisingly cold.
Edited by Mitchelle Lumumba and Sophie Gorjance.
E.E. King is cohost of the MetaStellar YouTube channel's Long Lost Friends segment. She is also a painter, performer, writer, and naturalist. She’ll do anything that won’t pay the bills, especially if it involves animals. Ray Bradbury called her stories “marvelously inventive, wildly funny and deeply thought-provoking. I cannot recommend them highly enough.” She’s been published widely, including Clarkesworld and Flametree. She also co-hosts The Long Lost Friends Show on MetaStellar's YouTube channel. Check out paintings, writing, musings, and books at ElizabethEveKing.com and visit her author page on Amazon.