Hummingbird Salamander(82)

Feverish with these thoughts. Going back and forth, round and round, until I realized if I didn’t set it aside, I would descend into a kind of mania.

I almost ran into a herd of elk around a corner, with a steep rock cliff to my left and old-growth redwoods to my right. Came to a gasping, skidding halt on the gravelly emergency lane. I’d been navigating a series of extreme switchbacks, taking a shortcut through mountains. The elk stared placid and yet unyielding at me. They had no panic or indecision to them. In that strange light, that moment of encountering life that didn’t care about my journey, their large, calm eyes seemed like those of all-knowing deities.

I took it as a sign. I called Hellmouth/Jack. Sick of texts. Sick of foreplay.



* * *



Hellmouth Jack’s voice was as I remembered from the bar. Sexy. Voice of the Devil.

“Nice to hear your voice, Jill,” he said.

“Not nice to hear yours.” But it was. Why should I be so comfortable with it?

“I understand your complaint.”

“I think I killed Langer,” I said.

“Think?”

“I tried to blow him up.”

Hellmouth Jack guffawed at that. A kind of admiring laugh. Like he admired the audacity.

“Hard to kill, as I’ve said.”

“What am I not seeing about him?” I asked. “What haven’t you told me?”

“Just continue on your course. Just keep on keeping on.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Just don’t be surprised if he’s not dead.”

That wasn’t an answer, either.

“Who do you work for?”

“At this point, I think I’m doing the lord’s work. Don’t you feel you’re doing the lord’s work?”

“Rebel angels,” I said.

“No one gets to decide who god is anymore. I think we both know that by now.”

Was that true? Silvina was dead and still playing God.

“What do you think Silvina was up to?”

A pause, but he answered. “Something radical. Barely controllable. The things you don’t know, about the people Langer helped her meet. You know when they say someone grew human brains inside some fucked-up animal because they don’t have the ethics god gave a pig? That kind of person. People who think that’s exciting.”

“Roger Simpson is dead,” I said, hoping for a reaction, but it just felt like anticlimax. Deflection.

“Is that a fact.” Flat. Too flat. Some equation changing.

“Do you want to know who killed him?”

“He didn’t die tripping on a banana peel?”

“I guess you don’t want to know,” I said, and cut the connection. A mistake. Calling him. Stupid.

But after I hung up and continued on, I was calmer. Colder. Another hour and I’d be back at the farm.

Silvina had known my address. My rational mind said that was just dedicated research. My irrational mind wanted to feast on something more than that.

What would I find? Hellmouth on the stoop? Or just a disembodied series of stairs into nothing and nowhere, each step composed of the latest numbers.

Years from now, I could imagine myself still following the ever-staler bread crumbs, convinced that just one more clue would bring me the solution.





[88]


It wasn’t all terrible on the farm. Just most of the time. Even something like my mother’s mania could be funny, joyous, uplifting. It could draw my father out of his shell, place a light in his eyes as surely as Shot could put dull nickels over those same eyes. She liked to dance when manic and would put on her grandmother’s ancient white lace dress and hand silly notes to us. Little stories about the animals around the farm. The adventures of cows or chickens or raccoons. She memorized them so she could tell them to us even after she’d handed them out.

This cheerfulness made us happier because good humor soured Shot, but also drove him away. He wanted no part of it. While our mother wore those clothes, he could put up no meaningful or just plain mean protest.

“Oh, c’mon,” she’d say as he got up to leave. “C’mon, dance with me.”

But he’d scowl and spit and leave and as soon as he was gone, she’d sit down heavily on the floor and giggle. A sound as infectious as hysterical.

Sometimes she’d get up again. Sometimes she couldn’t stop. One time she looked right at me, a troubled expression on her face, and asked, “What is happening to me?” As if some outside force possessed her. Perhaps it did.

No point asking our father. He would just become empty again. Of opinions. Of an inner life.

In the end, laughter led to tears, and we knew the signs. We always made sure to be absent by then. Because we couldn’t fix that, either. The stories turned morose and sullen. The talking animals murderous. The moral obscure.

And also in the end, just like my mother, I had no idea what had been going on back at the farm. I just knew she wasn’t there anymore.

But as I drove, I thought of her funny stories. I tried to conjure her up whole and like a mother should be. Like a shield against what I knew I was going to find back on the farm.

Hold on to that. Discard the rest. Even though it didn’t really work that way.