TEMPERED ESSENCE
Chapter XVII
THE GODS OF GHOST RIVER
“The word pneuma (breath) shares its origins with the word psyche;
they are both considered words for soul.”
- Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With Wolves
••••
Enduring… assurance in my enormous slashing claws, that could tear through the flesh of the fanged hunters who stalk the dim reaches of the night. Yet, a sickness takes me, not a year into life, that squirming festering pain…
… I awaken in the wet dark, the low thump thump thump, of a warm moist artery, not my own, stirs through my body as my jaws latch into the soft wall of my home… only to be lost to the light…
… my world is aroma, delicious chemicals, both of me, and the many thousands… squabbling…. Threatening…to steal the sun…
… Driving hunger, I seek nourishment, must eat, must grow. Long fat and strong… fat and strong…
Incalculable lifetimes, all too brief… ensnared… on to the next… a cycle unbroken… thrown from one to the next… agony…
… “That dumb fucking machine!”
It’s at it again... clogging up and spraying soda in chaotic directions… Just another shit day in my mundane existence… placing yet another bag of chips onto the shelves… that gnawing exhaustion creeping back into the fibers of my body… it’s nothing, it has to be… gotta keep moving… can’t stop for nothing… fear… if I stop… somehow… I will be over…
••••
Silver threads dance in my mind’s eye, coiling into a stream of thought. Memories, the brand of which that has no ownership to me, spools into a series of confused fragmentary… moments? Flashes of disconnected lifetimes, a tangle of minds and rich experience, I ponder the core of them, seeking a recognizable pattern to follow, to comprehend…
“Ooof,” I release a gasp of air as a gruff sixty-something year old man in a sallow beige suit cuts through the crowd, buffeting my shoulder, disregarding my presence, as if I don’t exist.
Fighting the claustrophobia, I dig my fingernails into the top of my hand to extinguish the anxiety, and check my charcoal suit vest for scuffs and tears. The building’s packed, sucked together into a room two sizes too small for the throng. Al’s memorial, brimming with… what seems to be, the vast majority of Vermillion’s population, a testament to a man who was, indeed loved. Today, I took a page from Dizzy’s book, sporting his look, albeit with no color in my tie and my long hair existing in whatever state it cares to. It’s a way to honor his memory my own way, a memorial for two, a secret I hold secluded in my heart. Dizzy deserved better.
“Mom’s got us a seat!” Bobbi exclaims through the horde, tugging at my elbow.
“Quit pulling my weenus,” I banter to him, unsure through the ambient waves of mumbling, he can even register my words.
Pulled onto a bench of oak and yellowing lacquer, I slide into a seat beside Bobbi. Drowned in shimmering color from the modern stained glass windows, Red Feather steps solemnly past our row, heading over to take her place in the first of the pews, reserved for the select group of folks with prepared eulogies. Wine, grey, and white Aolu’yi beaded earrings adorn her ears, Aria’s black dress flowing down the aisle in an uncanny sway, almost stripped of her personhood in her sorrow and missing sporty motorcycle leather. Somehow, her state of being is more unsettling than Al’s absence from this world.
“There’s my favorite guy!” A voice from my past pulls me from the darkness that is Aria Red Feather.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Eclipsed by Marta’s frame, is Bobbi’s always on the road father “Johnny Boy” White Fox, emerging from the right side of his wife, leaning into the aisle. Grinning through a wispy straight black beard, he performs absurd finger guns at his son. That same goofy expression he shares with Bobbi, etched with playful mania.
“Holy shit, son!” Bobbi exclaims.
“Bobbi, language!” Marta barks, “This is a church!”
“Not my church… not my god,” I mutter unheard under my breath, Navan’yu at the forefront of my mind.
“When did you get into town?” Bobbi bounces in delight, “I thought you had contracts through the New Year?”
“Naw man,” Johnny Boy mirrors his son’s energy, “I’m back! Your Mom and me will be taking a couple of weeks vacation, now there’s a third PA at the clinic. We both been saving up some PTO and we are spending a half a week here and then road tripping to some of the big parks for ten days. I’ll be back beginning of winter for the Sun Eater festival and then be on the road again until late spring.”
“Dinner tonight! I’m cooking!” Bobbi proclaims with the inevitability of an anointed profit.
“Deal,” Johnny Boy playfully shakes his son’s hand as though sealing a business contract, “Shame that day one had to be these circumstances… Al was a good man. Hell, I always assumed he was immortal.”
Marta shoots him a look, as her husband shatters the no swearing precedent, and buries her head in her hands in resignation.
“Yeah, I did too,” I nod in agreement, wondering if Nana knew Al before her passing… she must have, given the crowd, my gauge of his importance raising from local enigma… to local legend.
Silence falls over the room as Red Feather takes to the podium, her thread of time pulling her forward, ebbing ceaselessly from burgundy to platinum, as though the breath of her spirit.
•••
Blinding, the autumn light pours in from the south, I shield my eyes as Bobbi and I lean against the warm brick of the church, the sun heating the exterior wall to a pleasant temperature. Mourners retreat to their cars, with the odd cluster or two remaining to converse with each other in the parking lot. Soon to return to the regular rhythms of their day-to-day, this their one brief respite to be fully human… and the grief that’s part of the tapestry of our lives. I roll my fingers against each other emulating holding a cigarette, the craving long extinct within me, yet the tactile sensations are what I hold onto, grounding me to the here and now.
“I’ve never seen Red Feather look so rough,” Bobbi exclaims, “She’s always been sort of the cement to people’s lives out here.”
“Maybe she’s well over due to show some of the cracks,” I shrug, “Like the rest of us mortals.”
“Look at you being all philosophical!” Bobbi laughs, “Didn’t know you had it in you.”
“It’s been a weird few months, I dunno man.”
“Well, someone’s ears are burning,” he gestures as Aria steps silently across the pavement towards us.
“Hey, White Fox,” she murmurs, before nodding quietly to me, acknowledging my presence, “I am taking some time from the Nautilus, to get Al’s affairs in order, and… I need some time for myself.
She pauses.
“Bobbi, I want to promote you to general manager, which is salaried, comes with a pay bump and benefits, if you’re up for it.”
“Always been up for it!” Bobbi struggles to quell his excitement to fit the mood.
“Riley, I am looking to promote you to supervisor, which also includes a pay bump, all of which will stay when I return. Before I leave, I am planning to hire three new employees to a total of seven, so the place runs smoothly in my absence. I don’t want it to be understaffed for you two the way it has been. I think we all need a little peace in our lives, it’s too damn short for us to be working ourselves to death.”
“Sure bet,” I nod.
“On your shift tomorrow, I’ll have paperwork drawn up and ready for you to look over,” she absent-mindedly turns to leave.
“Hey, if you need anything sista, we’re always here for you,” Bobbi calls in her wake.
Red Feather pauses, turns halfway back, stifling a tear, and dips her head in acknowledgement.
A pang hits in my chest, as I observe her traverse the parking lot, watching her crack under the weight of it all. She was always so reliable, that wealth of information and wisdom. Working on the muscle car, she gave me purpose, a sense of competence, teaching me about a world of mechanical knowledge I never knew I had the capacity to learn. Now, I’m at a loss to even ease her suffering. Aria, trapped in the chaotic cruelty that is the engine of the universe, the gift Navan’yu bestows upon all of us. Or maybe, she will be forged by tribulation, hardened, and the cracks that won’t heal will fill with precious metals, rendering the soul more whole than ever before. Maybe, that’s what’s happening to me, the pressure transforming me into something that, untouched, I never could be.
“Heading to the store to get dinner stuff for the fam. You coming?” Bobbi draws himself up against the brick.
“I don’t think so… don’t want to take away from you getting quality dad time,” I explain.
“Hey, you’re always welcome!”
“Yeah I know, and I could do with some me time, don’t sweat it.”
“Well, if you’re sure, I won’t drag you along,” Bobbi says in playful resignation.
“No worries!” I give him a satirical salute, as he makes his way back to Carl.
Stoic, I observe the bereaved one-by-one leave in their rust buckets, expensive pickups, and outdoorsy vehicles. The sun plunges towards the horizon in the southwest, a rich tapestry of colors painting the sky in rich coral and fiery yellow. The last straggler from the memorial, I stand in silence watching the day end… Fuck, my birthday is nearly two weeks away… time flies when shit keeps happening… Maybe, for the Mistwalker, time isn’t real… something that’s beyond the realm of knowledge she’s allowed me to experience.
A built, tall, sandy blond-haired man with a scraggly goatee and a worn beanie rounds the corner, his keys jangling on the ring. A probing expression crosses his face. My best guess is he’s maintenance or the janitor for the church, locking up for the night.
“Hey sorry, just processing a lot of things, let me know if I need to move,” I answer his question he posed without words.
He contemplates the honesty of my answer and responds with a laugh, “Funerals are rough, take the time you need… but if anything looks like shit tomorrow, I’ll know it was you!”
Smirking, I nod with acknowledgement, “Fair’s fair!”
He takes a second to examine the setting sun, and adjourns to his red sedan, riding off into the shadows. His headlights cut luminous trails in the dusk, until I find solitude once more.
“Navan’yu?” I whisper to the night.
Silence.
“Will I make it through this?”
Silence.
“… Come back stronger on the other side?”
A chill runs down the length of my spine. I draw in a deep breath, oxygen filling my lungs, energizing my spirit. The autumn night cuts deeper than it should, as I raise my arms to rub some warmth into my shoulders, the air feels heavy, as though fluid. In the starlight, wisps of inky smoke-like matter glide, surrounding me. Slipping past my face, the texture fascinating, unlike solid, liquid, or gas, yet somehow holding elements of all three. Navan’yu dematerialized, yet present, a dutiful shroud of divinity. My protector, my confidante, my salvation… my fate… my god.