And I waited for her to fold us out of there, or produce a magic gun, or call on some other kind of moving monstrosity to do her dirty work, but no, she just stood by my side and the monster took her in both its great paws and lifted her high overhead until she screamed.
Her voice cut into me, clean and fast, a saber slice through the heart, and my blood ran ghost cold and my muscles stiffened hard as roadside dead and my brain sizzled like a ball of dough in burning oil.
And I saw, as clearly as the city spread out under me from the high steel, that Medicine Spirit Woman wasn’t there to save me. No. She’d come to see if I could save her.
And I wanted to. With that need, I was alive, more than I’d ever been. Everyone I’d ever known and left behind — from my quiet and steady foster parents to my scarred, bony mom to that asshole whose ass I kicked in junior high and even that Taliban bastard whose head I opened up real wide with four from the 9mm when he came at me through a window — was alive, inside, welcoming me back to my own life with arms spread.
Where are you, Grandpa?
No answer. No words of wisdom. Again. But I thought I understood. Fighting was for the living, and that’s what I had to do for her. No gun, but I was a warrior. Maybe I should have brought a knife.
Jump in. Just do it. That’s what warriors do.
I tackled the thing low and from the side, wrapping arms around hips in a solid tackle. Figured Medicine could take the fall. But I grabbed a crumbling pile of debris and landed flat on my face. It stomped on my back once before I rolled and kicked, ducked a sweeping arm that managed to clip my knee.
The good news when I got myself standing was that Medicine was free. But she wasn’t running away. No, she was standing there, watching. Waiting for me to be all I could be.
The monster’s first punch sent my flying into solid rock wall. The second broke a couple of ribs. The third spun me into a heap that fell through rotten boards and left me hanging ass high halfway down a pit, a horn screaming in my ears and an earthquake rocking my head. That one brought me back to the war.
The thing dragged me out and whipped me into tile work hard enough to chip teeth and ceramic.
This was when I found out it wasn’t only the past that could stick to me. Fear could too.
Things weren’t going right. Not such a big deal. Didn’t know what to do. No news there. Pain. I’d had plenty of that before.
Too much white man, not enough Indian, Grandpa might have said if he’d been talking. If you say so. None of that was what was making dread creep out my gut to squeeze my heart.
I was scared because I was losing her. My Medicine Snake Woman. She was the future, a hope, the breath of life. I didn’t care what she really was or where she came from, I just needed her.
Suddenly, I felt bad for my real mom. She’d come to need what was the death of her, just like me. Medicine was all inside my head, sticking hard, making me think, holding me back. I lost that space of doing something when you’re ahead of fear, when it just can’t catch you. Couldn’t walk the heights no more.
The monster wasn’t done with me, but its priorities were clear. Medicine Snake Woman came first. Blood curse — curse duty-bound man later. It went back after her.
And Medicine didn’t move. Didn’t look to the monster for mercy or to me for help. She stood her ground, full of her life, her strength, standing or falling to whatever came, whether it was musket fire, cavalry charge, flood, or fire. Or a monster. Leaving it all to me to do what had to be done. But I had nothing.
Maybe she loved so much she was setting me free by dying.
No.
How much do you love her?
His voice shocked me. I hoped I was in a dream, but my body told me otherwise.
Grandpa, help me.
Do you love her more than anything?
Do something.
More than yourself?
Yes.
The monster picked her up. Twisted an arm. She cried out. It liked the sound, shuddering and rattling as if laughing. If there’d been a fire, it might have stuck Medicine on a spit and watched her roast. It slapped her with a finger. Poked her. She sagged, shuddered, a doll in a fighting pit. She was already dead, but her death hadn’t caught up to her yet.
And even on the precipice, half-broken but still breathing and peering out at the world through eyes that didn’t seem able to close, she was larger than anything I’d ever known, full of promise and beauty, a treasure fallen from the sky, a thing no man, not even all living men put together, could wrap their arms around and hold.
Then the questions hit. Not as hard as the monster, but they hit. They’d both warned me. Loving the moon was one thing, but wanting to possess something that wasn’t mine, that was bigger than me and the monster and the whole damn city, country, world — that was a problem. A transgression. It wasn’t her, and it wasn’t my own life sticking to me, slowing me down to a stop. It was my need for her, for all that love I thought was missing, that was keeping me down.
Well, that and a royal ass kicking.
I had to get back to having no fear. I had to put all of that crap about wanting and losing out of my mind. Be strong. Be alive. Now. Not in the past or in the future. Just alive walking on high steel like I was on solid ground getting the job done. A part of everything, holding on to nothing.
I would have to kill her, in my heart.
I slipped past the smiling faces of the welcoming committee to my life, headed for the back room where the mother who gave me up hides out, along with the father who couldn’t keep himself alive for me. There was a blackboard back there full of rules. Along the walls stood a police lineup of white, black, brown people, Indians, Asians, a motley mess of mutts like me, all proud and pissed. There was that hard-ass DI who smelled Indian on me and didn’t like it. Shadows in the mountains lobbing mortar shells and setting off IEDs. And there was her.
I dove into my life. Went deep. Drowned in all the pain and hurt I’d been through, the bugfuck craziness of talking to a ghost in my head and being blown up and falling in love with the moon.
Went quiet. Silent. Dark. Closed the door to that back room, and when I did another opened with stairs moving up to a light.
Went up high, walking on girders across the sky, not afraid. Doing what I had to do. Walking in the steps of my ancestors.
I had to kill Medicine Snake Woman in my human heart to keep her in my spirit’s heart. To walk without fear in the sky. To perform my duty to all my people.
I stood. Rattled, creaked, and bled. Walked the broken bits of my body step by step to the monster, staring hard at its back, not listening to Medicine’s panting, her small cries, the rustle of her blouse, the sounds her bones made.
She didn’t belong to me. She was everybody’s.
Easy as stepping through clouds, I reached the monster while it played with its catch and slid my hand through the gravel pit of its back, sank my arm deep, to the shoulder, until I touched what I knew I’d find. Everything alive has one. Even the ones who’ve transgressed, just like the ones who stay pure and true.
It was small and wet, but it beat hard and fast, like mine had when I’d held Medicine in my arms. The monster stiffened, squeezing Medicine to screaming and locking my elbow to the breaking point. Another moment and my arm would have been dead, and so would I.
But I’d already closed my hand, crushing the monster’s heart until it was mud dripping through my fingers. The avalanche of calcified souls collapsed, sending me flying back to keep from being buried and crushed. I landed bad and took another knock on the head. Decided to lay for a while and dream.