The spear an ancient weapon, from the first dance. The long jointed arm a thrower, formed for this. The first man shaking his spear, raging at the wilderness, at the void, claiming the world. Galen tried to dance back in time, tried to reconnect. Tried to make himself that first man, stamping at the earth, fueled by breath, a fire all around him, and he crushed hard enough to break furrow and crust, felt the spear’s power, and then he lunged. He lunged into the wall, lunged through the air headfirst with a scream and drove that spear into the wall, into the spirit fortress, and it hit hard and bounced and he flew and banged into the wall with his shoulder and head and fell to the ground and rose again. Aaaah! he yelled. Aaah! His hand a living thing, a hive of pain.
He grabbed his spear and stepped back into place to stamp again. The same piece of earth, his blow felt all through the crust, reaching downward, sending shock waves. He built again, step and rock and the low grunts, feeling his source, the energy coming from deep within him. He would use everything to break through the spirit wall. He would circle back and come from another time.
Galen turned in a circle as he rocked and shook his spear. The shadows long, walnut trees like sentinels, casting their truer selves across furrows. They had been waiting for this, waiting through lifetimes, waiting for him, for his coming. They would rise up out of their shadows in the earth, and that would be their shape. Not the shape of a tree, of what we imagined, but a deeper form. Galen screamed and shook his spear, triumphant. He had seen into the spirit world. This was his first true seeing, to see the trees would form up out of their shadows, that they were made of earth, not of wood. He might even be the first man to have seen this, the first to know the trees. Ho! he yelled, acknowledging the gift. He circled and crushed and looked sideways at the dark long shadows all around him, and he understood now that the stamping of his feet was what would free the spirit selves of the trees. He was the unlocker, the one to break through. He plunged his spear into the earth, rocked the handle as he danced to loosen all that would hold them back.
They were growing as the light fell, and they would rise impossibly tall, great dark earth presences reaching into the sky. They would stride miles at every step, cross continents. They would carry him, loft him, and fling him.
Half waking, Galen lived in the double world, seeing the presences and also still chained to appearances. He had to not look too long at any shadow, because if he did, it became only shadow, and the dirt became only dirt. He had to keep his vision moving, had to keep circling and spinning. Engulfed in fire, unable to breathe, his body failing but spirit gathering.
Galen realized he was singing, a low, guttural song, a song of becoming. Gathering his previous lives around him, he saw that they were time itself. He was summoning time and being in his final burst of becoming.
Galen began to feel afraid of what was happening here. The shamanic was different from the meditative. Shoveling dirt, he had focused on the fling and fall and the nothing. It was a dissipation. But this was a gathering now, something entirely different, something frightening because it might be exactly the wrong path, a trick. How could becoming be the goal? Detachment was supposed to be the goal, and detachment was not the same as becoming.
Galen spun and stamped but he was exhausted and confused. He didn’t understand how it all fit together, and his confusion had made the spirit world recede. He was hot and tired and wet and muddy and the shadows of the trees were only shadows, and all had fallen so quickly and so terribly. He could feel the bones in his thin legs, the muscles locked and stiff. Empty, all his movements now.
Galen stopped dancing, stood in place dizzy and hungry and thirsty. He was alone. The air still, no wind. The endless hum of the air conditioners all along the high wall. He realized there was no cranking. That sound had stopped. He wondered how long ago. He had been dancing for a long time.
He dropped the pitchfork. The sun no longer burning, much of the orchard in shadow, and he lay down in a furrow, in the radiating earth, decided he would just lie here until he understood, but he was starving and parched and couldn’t focus at all. His head and shoulder hurt from lunging into the shed. So he rose on cramped legs and walked slowly to the house.
That pile on the lawn still waiting to be burned. The grass still waiting to be cut. The house always waiting, through lifetimes. Impossibly large and ornate and white. A solidity that was untrue. The great chimney at the center, and the giant trees. A house that promised peace and reasonable people but had held only crazies. A house that was a way to hide.
Galen walked into the kitchen and went for a glass of water, gulped it down, and then gulped another. And still he felt thirsty.
He didn’t know what to eat. Always a problem. He held the refrigerator open and stared blankly at too many items that made no sense. Pickle relish. Not easy to make a meal out of pickle relish. Sauerkraut. He could maybe eat that. In a dish covered with Saran Wrap. He brought it to the kitchen table, took a fork from a drawer. Real silver, unpolished.
It seemed that sauerkraut should go with something. He looked in the pantry, in the canned goods, and found French-cut string beans, took them to the counter, the electric can opener.
He sat and forked the green beans from the can, cold and salty and without other taste. He chewed and swallowed and it felt like the inside of his stomach had collapsed and the food was having to push the folds back open. He forked sauerkraut and liked the vinegar. Vinegar was right.
The house dimmed as he ate. The sky outside turning a darker blue. He finished the green beans and most of the sauerkraut, then drank another glass of water and went to the sink, where his mother usually stood, looked out at the shed and orchard and sky. Everything farther away as the light dimmed, all distance increased.
He thought he might stay at the sink for a while, but found himself rising up the stairs to his mother’s bedroom, stood in the doorway and swayed in place, thinking nothing, then went to her bed. The house not hot like outside, the high ceilings and drapes a sanctuary.
He lay on her bed and closed his eyes and could feel the inside of him spinning and tilting, everything caving. The dirt on his skin his blanket, his hand throbbing in a dull and reassuring way, and all was so peaceful. His mother resting now, too, in that place of her memories, in her own sanctuary. The land all around them breathing easily, the orchard at rest, the hedges, the fig tree, the oak. All resting, finally, and the heat fading away. She had wanted to keep him here, and here he was.
Chapter 27
Black rock. Volcanic. Rock that had boiled, shot through with air. Broken now, severed and sheared and sharp as glass. Pores and hollows. The walnut trees growing from the rock, roots worked into vents and cauldrons, snaking along fissures. Soft flesh of wood encased.
From the surface, no way of telling how far they reached. The roots and trunks white against the black.
Miles between every tree, the orchard grown. And Galen carrying a small sack of water, a sack made of flesh, and he had to let a few drops fall on the roots of each tree. Rare that he saw a tree at all. Mostly wandering, looking for the next, and the land growing as he walked, cracking and stretching, opening great chasms that filled with melt and hardened and he continued on.
His feet torn, unshod, and clicking on the rock. His joints clicking also, each movement of knee or hip or ankle, even the movement of his eyes. The sack thick with fat held very little water, and it had to be held carefully. He must not drop it. If he dropped it, all would be lost. And so he stared at the rock, careful in placing each step and click.