The Removed(27)

“I see,” he said, eyeing me closely. “I take it in you’re not in the military?”

“No.”

“Government agent?”

“No.”

I saw the face of a deeply sad old man. I saw in his eyes a longing for an answer neither of us could grasp. Maybe he was connected to some universe, some other reality I didn’t understand. His eyes watered, and I looked away.

“Heck, that’s good,” he said. “I carry a blue-steel Colt, sometimes a .38 Special. Back in the seventies I got court-martialed for firing a gun into the ceiling of a base in El Paso. There’s a mud pit and firing range out by Devil’s Bridge.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” I said. “Sorry, I need to go.”

“I can show you where it is. We can go there. We can go there right now if you want. Are you Native American?”

“Sorry, I’m in a hurry.”

I turned and headed back to Jackson’s house, past the laundromat and dumpsters. I walked quickly, as quickly as I could, but it felt like I’d been walking around for hours. I turned down Jackson’s street and saw his low-slung car parked in the drive.

Inside the rotting house, Jackson was talking on the phone. He looked up at me as I entered. “Hang on, he just came in,” he said into the phone. “I’ll call you back.”

I sat on the couch across from him.

“That was Lyle, asking about the game,” he said. “We were talking about avatars.”

“What game, the sports game?”

He nodded impatiently. “That’s right, the Jim Thorpe game. Lyle wants some specific information from you.” He crossed his legs, jostling his foot. “Since the sports game has to do with the American Indian, I guess I need to know what Native Americans eat. Is Indian skillet a real dish? Indian tacos, fry bread? Anything culturally specific to Native American food?”

“I eat what you eat,” I told him.

“Beans and cornbread?”

“No.”

“Possum?”

“No.”

“Help us out,” he said. “I figured you could help some here. What kinds of food?”

“This is dumb, Jackson. How is this important for a sports game?”

He clicked his tongue, thinking. “Maybe a cultural reference in case a player wants to have lunch with Jim Thorpe. The game’s Thorpe hologram should show a man looking forward to a good meal after competition. It’s a bonus round: eat with a champ. Eat some possum or rabbit with Jim Thorpe, maybe fry bread too. We’ll need accurate cultural references, which is why I need you to tell me everything you can.”

“Christ, Jackson, what a terrible idea,” I said. “No wonder you guys haven’t done much. Nobody will want to pretend to eat as a bonus round.”

He crossed his arms, thinking. We both stared into the floor, a long silence between us. When I looked up, he was making a steeple with his fingers and looking at me. “Maybe we’ll try something else,” he said. “I’ll need you to pose for some camera shots.”

“You need me to pose for camera shots.”

“For the game, yeah. We need to fine-tune our hologram of Jim Thorpe, and there aren’t many Native Americans in this town. A year or two ago a Native American preacher and his family rolled into town. They were part of some larger cult, I think. They stayed at a roadside motel out past the interstate and ran church from their room. A few people went, including the mayor and some of the city councilmen and their families. Eventually I think the mayor ran them out of town, though.”

“Why is everyone so focused on Jim Thorpe?”

“Thorpe was an Olympic gold medalist,” he said, looking at his nails. “A Native American man, a fucking legend, considered to be the greatest athlete in the world, right from our home state of Oklahoma. Think of the decathlon, long jump, high jump, javelin throw. His hologram doesn’t do him justice. In fact, it doesn’t look like him at all yet, but we’re still in development. What better person could there be for others to play against in a simulation? We’re building out a full Olympics simulation. Compete against Thorpe in baseball, football, basketball.”

He went on, using technical computer jargon I didn’t understand. “I’ll need to film you, if that’s good with you,” he said. “I just need to work on something for a few minutes.”

I leaned back on the couch and looked up at the ceiling. He worked on his laptop across from me. He typed rapidly, pausing every so often to make little sniffing sounds, which grated on my nerves. All that sniffing. It was as if he was doing it on purpose while he worked. What was the sniffing about, and was it supposed to irritate me? I couldn’t handle it.

I wondered where Rae was, and whether she felt sorry that I was gone. I thought, too, about what memory I could share at Ray-Ray’s bonfire if I decided to go home. Ray-Ray used to give me piggy-back rides through the house. One time we flew a kite together in the backyard, just the two of us. I was afraid of letting go, thinking the kite would fly away. Ray-Ray held it with me, placing his hands over mine. I remember looking up at the kite and watching how it snapped in the wind, feeling panicked. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” he kept telling me. But I couldn’t fly it for very long. Something about it moving around up there so high made me dizzy, almost nauseous.