When the Night is Over—Novel Excerpt

Autumn Fourkiller

 

The scene is set in Oklahoma. The scene is set in a town that doesn’t matter, last stop on the Trail of Tears. The scene is set because it must be, because it always was. You fool yourself into thinking you are too big, or too good, or too small, or too bad for this story to touch you, but it will. All good stories must.

I have such a limited grasp on how to be what I am, you know. I ache for the knowledge of it. To hold it in my hands. My father, when he heard the news, told me that our ancestors used to mourn in the extreme, winding an elegy so big and loud that the Creator, the Earth, the Long Man, might hear and take mercy. I wanted to know how to bring you back, but I was too prideful to ask it of my father, sitting there, stinking of sweat and liquor, lecturing me on love and loss long enough to ease me into giving him twenty bucks. I closed my eyes, tried to pretend I was somewhere else, and that you were living, live, your heart beating rabbit fast, eyes wide, taking it all in, casting a sympathetic gaze on whoever needed it. I wanted you back so badly it curled in my throat like an animal, leaving me unable to do anything but croak out: how? My father, again, smug and triumphant and there, a flicker of pity, just for me. I’ve only heard it told once, he said.

That’s all I needed to confirm that it was a fake tradition, a fake story, one made up by him, or by someone trying to prove themselves more knowledgeable about our culture than anyone else. But I didn’t care, not really. I was willing to try. I was willing to put enough effort and belief into the ritual that it pushed back in time, cementing itself in the past, giving me something to hang on desperately to. Tell me, I said.

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My father made the little money that I did not give him by driving around Bluebird, a cousin or a friend or a friend’s cousin of his. Bluebird had gone blind from the drugs they gave him to ease the pain of drinking rubbing alcohol and received a check from the Indian Health Service each month. He spent it mostly on cigarettes, scratch-offs, beer, and my father. Bluebird had no feet, and only three fingers on each hand, due to his diabetes and other, nastier habits. My father would pick him up in a bridal carry each errand day, buckle him into the truck, and carry him back each night. For all his failings, my father loved Bluebird in a way I couldn’t describe. He never was late to pick him up, never said anything about the myriad of ways they cared for each other. Child me was so jealous of Bluebird it hurt. Adult me finds this embarrassing. It does not escape me in telling this story I am—

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My father whispered the instructions lowly, as if someone cared to listen in. We were leaned against the Smoke Shack, the one with the big ugly Indian with an inaccurate headdress on the sign. I went for you, mostly, though I did meet my father there once every year or so, to him a grocery store gift card or a crumpled fifty. I despised him in the same breath I wept for him. He said to me, build a fire, somewhere empty, pine trees around if you can help it. He said, bring some tobacco, sumthin’, swishers, doesn’t matter. Smoke a few, make sure your thoughts are— he paused, contemplative, the way I hear he used to be—pure, I guess, he said. He waited as a stumbling old woman made her way past us, cartons of Marlboros tucked under the short sleeves of her housedress. You gotta tell a story, he said. And don’t stop. Tell the best goddamn story you can. From dusk til’ dawn. Create, he said your name here, from dirt, from breath. I blinked at the poetics, the hard draw of his breath. Pal, I said, not an endearment, his name, Pallas—my name, too, but I guess you knew that. Pal, I said again. Thank you.

He didn’t say he loved me, but he gave my wrist a squeeze, gentler than I thought him capable. Oh, now, he said, taking the money I offered him without bluster. He looked me hard in the eyes, the vein above his left brow pulsing oddly. If anyone could do it, you could, you’re my blood aren’t you? I nodded. This was mine and my father’s single shared truth. Blood.

I nodded again, unable to verbalize anything, already cataloguing my plan, conserving my words. Goodbye, Old Pal, I said, without looking back.

Goodbye, Young Pal, my father said, an echo, not an imitation, suddenly gone with the wind.

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And so here I am, Mack, in one of the first clearings you led me to after we met, where I watched you roll joint after joint, never bothering to learn to roll myself, beginning this ritual. There are pine needles under my feet and trees all around me and I’ve built a fire after carefully watching three tutorials and I—

I hate doing this without you. In my culture, my father’s culture, no one ever really dies. We are ghosts, or cedar trees, or wind, or birdsong. What are you now?

▱

Okay. I can imagine what you’d say. You’d say, Fuck, Pallas, you’re the funniest goddamn person I know, why are you making this story so fucking sad? Though maybe you wouldn’t curse, not anymore. You only cursed when we were so drunk that we couldn’t see straight. Then, we got clean, and then—

Well.

▱

We met when I was nothing but shaking hands and fear, the product of my conception, metallic and huge, somewhere deep inside of me. It was a scholarship dinner, the kind we both hated, with lots of people who thought they were promoting diversity but were actually there to make themselves look good. You know the type. I squeezed myself into a corner, and—I can’t talk about this yet. Not now.

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It started with wine coolers, didn’t it? Then weed. Then psychedelics. Then coke, bought for us with your family’s money, and it lit me up hard and I loved it. You didn’t like it, not really, you said it made you nervous. It should have made me nervous, but it didn’t. It brought everything a stunning crystal clarity, it relieved the boredom, which relieved the depression, the lethargy. I wanted to die that way, pupils eclipsed, rubbing pure energy into my gums.

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In my mind, it is only ever me that cries, but I know that isn’t true to life. You were a crier, too—not just for sad things, but for happy ones, too. You were so open and lovely that I had notebook pages full of the things you did or said, little reminders that I could let bloom on the page later. After, after, well, after, I went through them with a fine-tooth comb. I made notes about my notes, connected them to little paragraphs I had written over the years. I thought that if I could map out the smaller pieces of the puzzle that the big picture would come together without my having to reach for it.

▱

I move away from the place that brought us together and vow to never come back. It is not a solemn vow, not a promise, and so it is one that is easily broken. For one, I would miss your brother, Clue, even though it is hard now to look into his/your/his eyes. For two, if I were there, my mother would demand a sacrifice of constant communication. She knows right where to harm me, to hurt me the most. I love her—I love her as much as I loved you, but we are not the same kind of person. She married my stepfather and though we remained linked, palms touching, there is now a gap, however small, that cannot be bridged.

I live in a big house with two other people and a screened-in back porch. One is a PhD student, the other a retired postal worker. They are thirty and sixty years older to me. I live in what once must have been the attic. It’s quiet, peaceful, and I am not so afraid in the night.

I never saw you as angry as when I would regale you with whatever my stepfather had said or screamed at me that day. He can’t talk to you like that, you’d say. I didn’t say what I was thinking—he can, he will, he does—but I curled tighter into you, almost into a ball, something my large frame shouldn’t allow. Come home with me, Pal, you’d say. I wanted to. God knows I did. And I did, for a while, didn’t I? Not long enough. I can’t, I’d whisper back. I can’t break my mother’s heart. You didn’t understand. You did, and you didn’t. You thought I deserved more—but I knew the truth.

▱

Dinner with your parents was always a pleasant surprise. My mother, stepfather, and I didn’t sit at the table, and for good reason. I couldn’t eat around him—or I could, but I shoveled food into my mouth so fast it hurt to avoid speaking. It took years for me to settle into the idea that your parents wanted me there, that you wanted me there, that Clue, when he was home, wanted me there.

It was easier to believe that you wanted me because we were always together, and you were not shy about saying as much.

I don’t blame you, Mack. Maybe I should. But I don’t. I loved you so much everything else ceased to matter. I didn’t think that was a thing, and I used to roll my eyes at depictions of love that even got close to that. But you were my best friend, Mack. You were my best friend.

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It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, Mack. We were supposed to have a happy life after all of it. It was supposed to be me. Your brother didn’t call me, no, he drove to my apartment himself, he sat me down, and he told me. I didn’t ask what you had taken, I didn’t need to know. It could have been anything. In the final days, before we went to the cabin, before we dried out, we were running out of options. I never bought any of it, and after the shakes had subsided you cried and cried, you said it was your fault we had ended up this way. No, I said, no. It would have happened like this regardless. Mack, baby, don’t cry. But you did, I couldn’t stop you. I just lay on the floor across from you, watching you heave sobs so deep I thought you would retch. I was too dizzy to touch you, so I just looked on. I’m sorry, Pallas, you said, though you usually never called me that. I’m so fucking sorry.

Look at me, I said, and you did. It isn’t your fault, Mack. It’s not. It would have happened anyway, I said again. And I kept saying it until you stopped crying, until you gripped my wrist—not hard, not painfully, but like you were holding on—and closed your eyes.

▱

I don’t remember exactly when, but I don’t think I need to. You knocked at my window one fall night and asked me to come out. You didn’t let go of my hand. You took me to the creek and laid a blanket out. We split a bottle of warm, cheap champagne and spilled most of it. You named the stars in your own way, then stripped naked, and I followed, powerless under your sway. The water was so cold I screamed, and you laughed. This is the creek I was baptized in, I said. I know, you said, swimming into deeper water, the stones moss slick under our toes. I had never been naked before with someone like that. I expected to be afraid of what lay under the water, lurking, but I wasn’t. When you came back into the shallows and kissed me, I was not surprised. I love you, you said.

I don’t think the kiss meant anything, I think it meant everything, I think it meant—

I worried that someone would find out and accuse me of lying about being in love with you all these years, even though I always told them that I didn’t think there were multiple kinds of love, just different avenues after love was established, and you were my friend, and I was in love with you, and why did they have to make it seem like something wrong? You placed your thumb gently on my lower lip. Your hair was plastered to your forehead. The water cradled us both, suspending us. I had the odd thought that it felt like an inhospitable womb, only because my limbs were going numb. Afraid? you asked.

No, I said, but I was.

Filthy liar, you said, voice throbbing with affection. I could hear it, I could, and you kissed me again.

▱

I had lunch with your brother a few days ago. They say that only people who hate each other suggest lunch, but I refuse to go to brunch and Clue likes to people watch, so we did lunch. Your brother is as handsome as ever. That face, that smile. You always joked that Clue got the looks and you got everything else, but you didn’t mean it. You loved your brother in a way that I had only seen mirrored in small children, little brothers following around their big brothers, a minor deity in the flesh for them. That changes with time, I’m told, but Clue never fell from grace in your estimation. I didn’t understand how a family could be so functional, so gentle. I still haven’t unlearned that to love is to bruise, to dig in deep and not let go.

He pulled me in for a tight hug. We both avoided saying what we were thinking, that seeing each other was like seeing an apparition, a haunting. He has your eyes, I have the psychic imprint of everything we did together, became together, inflicted upon each other, pressed into my skin like a fingerprint.

Oh Pally, he said. I need a favor.

Anything, I said, without hesitation, remembering Clue holding me up at the funeral—I’d hated you then, Mack. The hatred rose forward violent and sickening from somewhere deep inside me. An untapped rage. I hated you for seeing me and taking me away from my quiet, boring, stupid life and performing some mythic and taboo alchemy that bound us together and making me feel like I was someone good and worth it and—

It seemed impossible that you could leave me like that, not knowing how to be what you had made me, and I couldn’t change one fucking thing about it, not without losing you. It should have been me, I had thought frantically at your funeral. It should have been me. Not you. Not my Mackenzie. You were the sun; you were the sun.

I’d felt the strong urge to throw myself into the ground with you. To claw at the earth until it relented and swallowed me whole. I couldn’t move, I was sweating so heavily that I could feel it soaking through my tucked in dress shirt, my slacks. I could see you, just there, beyond the tree line, on the dock, in the casino ballroom that very first night. My vision was on a wave, too bright and too loud. I thought I might vomit. I might—

Clue was there, then, grasping my elbow and waist, holding me up. Jesus Christ, Pal, he’d said. You’re burning up. I moaned, from somewhere deep inside of my body. Not a wail, but a true pain, nonetheless, leaking out of me. Clue, I said. Clue, it should have been me it should have been me.

Clue had grasped my face, pulled me close. No, he said. No. He gripped me harder, almost to the point of pain. It returned me to my body, just a little. Everything was slow syrup. No, Pal, he said. It should have been no one.

God, Pal, I heard in your voice, in your tone.

You were the sun. Blinding. Then only darkness.

I shook myself out of the memory. Clue wanted one of your t-shirts, and I knew exactly where it was. After lunch I gave it to him and when he kissed my cheek goodbye I did not flinch.

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Remember that time I thought my nose was broken because you convinced me to play catch without any gloves and said we would be fine? Five seconds later, blood had soaked through my t-shirt and you were saying fuck and shit and sorry and digging through my bag for a maxi pad which you promptly unwrapped and held to my face. I was crying, because of the pain and the surprise of the pain and because I was worried my nose was going to set crooked and I was going to be misshapen and because you had caught some of the sticky side of the pad in my hair. I wanted to articulate this to you but all I could get out between gasping wet mouth breaths is I’M GOING TO BE UGLY! and that made you laugh, and if I had not been weak from blood loss, I would have hit you. That night I lay on your parent’s couch with deep purple and black bruises under my eyes and glared at you anytime you passed near me. Get away, I said, voice coming out stuffy and croaky. Okay, you said, I will, just one second. Then you kissed the end of your index finger and brushed it against my left eye, which was the most swollen. I hissed through my teeth, though it didn’t really hurt. I just wanted to spite you.

Haven’t you injured me enough for one day? I asked, knowing I was being mean with no purpose.

You winced, just a little, and stepped back. I’ll be in the next room if you need me, you said.

I won’t, I said.

But I did, and you knew it, you knew it. I woke the next morning with you curled around my back, your breath humid and sour on my neck. I squeezed your arm, and you pulled me closer. Pal, baby, you said. Please forgive me. I can’t stand when you’re mad at me. I sighed, more from comfort and tiredness than anything else. I will always forgive you, I said. Whether or not you deserve it, I didn’t say.

I could feel your smile, and I let that familiar sensation lull me back into a dreamless sleep.

It’s not your fault, Mack. But I still forgive you. I said so.

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I was always committed to our friendship more than I was to the possibility of romantic love. The friendship always seemed weightier, more important. I loved you so much that it seemed impossible to categorize, and I didn’t want to. I also resisted the idea that one person could be so much for me. I tried to write it down, but nothing good ever came out of my exercises. I finally settled on considering you and our relationship as an untouchable whole, one I would not dissect or try to categorize for fear of corrupting something holy.

Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine it, like an orb of light or a little book. Now that you’re gone, I still have the little book, but I don’t know what to do with it, I refuse to put it down.

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In the night sometimes I wake with the fear that I am already my father, that any drink I take is a step down the wrong path, that I should have listened to the fear that told me to avoid anything that could be considered a risk. Look what happened to my siblings. Watch as my father grabs the mounted deer head on the wall and maneuvers the antlers towards his eyes, screaming, crying, saying his father is a ghost in the walls that haunts him. His tooth is chipped. The winds have either of his arms and scream and pull, and we’re saying stop it you’re scaring us please stop it. He doesn’t relent, but the winds somehow keep him from blinding himself with the antlers. My mother has just picked me up from my grandparents’ house and when she walks through the door life stops.

I only told you that story once and regretted it the minute it flowed from my mouth. You didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then you pressed close to me in the dark of your car and laid your head on my shoulder. I’m not sure you have any real darkness inside of you, you said.

Are you sure, Mack?

▱

In my dreams we lie on the dock, we share the same body.

I let you fuck me on that dock, the wooden planks digging into my back, in the open air, bared to the sight of all. I cling to you like a vine. After, we share the last of a blunt and lay there until the sun disappears.

▱

Tell me about the blue woman, you said, head in my lap, in that plying way you had. I swatted your hand away from where it was curling loosely around my neck. Stop, I said. I’m reading. Please, you said. I rolled my eyes, but I told you anyway. When I was just a baby my mother saw a blue woman at the end of the hall. She was bathed in light, she had long white braids, and she was terrifying. My mother thought she was there to take me; I was so sick. My father was gone, God knows where, and she was alone. She shook, she prayed. The woman came closer. And then, just like that, she was gone. My mother refuses to talk about it to this day.

She must have been so scared, you said.

She was, I said.

Who was she? you asked. I didn’t have an answer.

I didn’t know if you were talking about my mother or the blue woman. Both are a mystery to me.

It’s okay, you said.

You don’t have to say it.

 

Autumn Fourkiller is a writer from rural Oklahoma currently working on a novel about Cherokee ghosts.