25
Jo was right, Jack thought. Innocence seems precious only when people feel guilty about what’s known. It’s wishful thinking, and in this way it’s arrogant, blind and irresponsible. Jack had the impression that Jo meant for him to come to this conclusion, but it didn’t feel predetermined. Also, he didn’t feel that it applied to him, completely. He had not romanticized that young girl’s naiveté. He’d used her in a way he’d expect to be used, had he been in her place: as a resource. Bring us food. Help us complete a task. Help us attain a goal. As he led Jo and Micah down the path to his house, Jack wondered whether their plan to smuggle Che Guevara into the country was itself an act of naiveté. It was certainly romantic. The reason he was helping was, on the contrary, completely pragmatic.
Jack was a few paces ahead, so when he entered his house and saw the toy box he’d placed there earlier, he had a moment to change plans before Jo came inside. He was no longer sure he wanted to have that conversation, and anyway, now was certainly not the time to do so. Instead he brought the two of them up the hill and spread his blanket out.
He handed the bottle to Micah, then explained his theory. He was rather drunk, and enjoyed speaking to them so casually, as though they should have no secrets.
Micah looked a bit dismayed, and kept glancing nervously at Jo. Jack took the bottle back and drank deeply. This was exactly what Jack had expected of them, of course; radicals were big on ideas and never very prepared for the facts. That’s where Jack felt he could be of service.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.”
After an awkward smile, Jo pulled Micah off to the far side of the windmill and they argued in whispers too low for Jack to make out. He listened to Jo hiss at her accomplice, and recalled how she’d never been able to completely let go of her voice, so that when she whispered it would squeak through, filling the middle of words with an enunciated vowel sound, stranded between brief distances of quiet respiration. It had always been something he knew might drive him crazy from anyone else, but which he found endearing in Jo, one quirk among many that had made him love her.
Jack had exactly no tricks up his sleeve.
This was an obstacle, but not an insurmountable one. He’d always performed well under pressure. Emergencies made things matter in a way he rarely felt otherwise, and it was as though his hands became charged with a knowing beyond the brain. Once he’d rescued his father from an encounter with a rattler by taking off his pants and whipping them stuck against a cactus on the snake’s far side, then yanking the thing down on the rattler’s back, pinning it to the ground. He’d heard his father calling, drunk in the middle of the day, and hadn’t known what he’d do until he got there, at which point it had become clear to him in a flash. He was twelve at the time. Later, his father would describe his dumbstruck horror at watching his son disrobe before the deadly reptile. “Unless that thing has fangs, son,” his father would claim to have said, “it ain’t gonna be much use.” Of course, he hadn’t said anything at all at the time. He’d only fallen over after the snake had been killed, and vomited in the sand.
When they returned from the windmill, Jo came to Jack, knelt before him, and kissed him on the cheek. Then she stood and walked back down the hill.
“Jo’s going to let us work out the details,” Micah said, watching her go.
“Was it because of what I said?”
“Well, she wasn’t really putting two and two together, if you know what I mean.”
Jack sighed.
“But we’re not deterred,” Micah said. “We’re still on track.”
“Well he’s coming up through the ground whether we plan for it or not, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Uno Che,” Jack said, shaking his head.
“Yes, sir.”
“I mean, have you ever heard of such a thing?”
“I don’t know,” said Micah. “It’s not all that different from the old stories. People speaking with the dead, spirits in the trees… Skin walkers.”
“Skin walkers… You mean shape shifters?”
Micah shrugged, and nodded northwards, toward the gathered tribes.
“Well,” said Jack, “except this is real.”
“In all honesty, Jack, I’ve stopped making that distinction. It’s not a question of whether or not things are real. It’s a question of whether or not you have to deal with them.”
Jack shrugged, and held his hand out for the bottle. It sounded like a semantic argument. Jo would always get him into semantic arguments, and he’d grown pretty good at spotting one. He had little patience for such things.
“Let me ask you something,” Jack said. “Do you know about Busk ceremonies? What they were?”
“Ta-nah-kee-kee.”
“Ta-nah-what?”
“The green corn ceremony. Creation out of chaos.”
“Think you could be a bit more specific?”
“Basically, it was a seasonal celebration of renewal. The tribe gave thanks and forgiveness. You’ve got the Busk name part right: young men made the passage to
adulthood by receiving battle names.”
“You heard about that?” Jack laughed. “Shit. You know, I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to name the kid.”
“It’ll come to you, I imagine.”
“It better.”
“I think Busk was originally about a week long. There were stages of it. Fasting and feasting.”
“Well, we’ve got the feasting part down. And around here, people eat fast.”
“One thing I remember hearing, though, is that it was a pretty exclusive affair. No one outside the tribe.”
Jack drank, and watched the bonfires blaze across Warsaw Canyon Road. The drumming and chanting was so steady that he could forget it was there until falling quiet and having it climb up from the subconscious. Like the sound was a memory. In the darkness it almost seemed to be coming from the fire.
“Well, that would be a pretty small party around here,” Jack said.
“Two’s company.”
“Fortunately,” Jack continued, “I have no interest in carrying on the traditions. I’m just trying to hold this community together.”
“Traditions are like opinions,” said Micah. “Everybody has one, and they’re making up new ones all the time.”
“And most of them are stupid.”
“Exactly,” Micah laughed. “I like you, Jack. I almost feel like, under different circumstances…”
Jack held the bottle up. “To different circumstances,” he said.
Micah raised his fist. “Viva la Revolución.”
They drank in silence for a while longer, and then Micah sat up straight. He gave Jack a long, hard look, as if trying to make a decision. Even drunk as he was, Jack felt a seriousness descend upon them.
“Jack,” he said finally, “I haven’t told you about this before, because I wasn’t sure you’d want to hear it. But it seems like there’s been a level of trust established, and maybe you won’t read me wrong.”
Jack nodded, bidding him to continue.
“Fact is, I had access to some information back home, information about your family, and I know from Jo that you were never told too much about how you ended up here. So I guess I’m wondering if you’d like to know.”
Jack heard this as one might overhear someone else’s conversation. The sense was that something important was going on, but without context the significance simply hovered there, charging the air with nothing to conduct it, no spark. But he did have context. He was the context. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to respond in an appropriate way. Was he too drunk? Perhaps he was simply in denial. Or perhaps, he thought, taking another long, slow pull from the bottle of bourbon, it had never actually been something he’d wanted.
The chanting suddenly stopped, and the silence rushed in to fill the void left by the vanishing song. Jack held out the bottle toward Micah, a peace offering.
“Maybe another time,” he said.
Micah smiled, nodded. “Well,” he said, “let me say at least that the word Seminole itself is Creek for ‘people who live at a distance.’ So maybe there’s something to you living out here all alone after all.”
Both men satisfied, they moved on to discuss what they’d come there to discuss.
